The first use of the word JoyGasm is actually Jim Carey as the Joker in Batman. I have no memory of seeing this, as comic book movies tend to scare me. ;)

The text below is an excerpt from the JoyGasm book, which shares many tools that were created by Elena to heal her self-loathing and post-partum depression experience. You can order the book here JoyGasm.me/Book if you want to read the whole story.

Meeting JoyGasm

For the month after I leave my son's father we live in a shithole of an apartment and scrape by. I'm heartbroken and miserable. When my month of punishing myself for failing my relationship ends, we move back in to finish our lease at the beach house. Along with the great view comes all the memories, the pain, the heartache, and the big bills. I have no idea how I will pay rent. My room mates were paying it before, and the experience of Derek and I breaking up drove them away. I have no income, my capacity to work is non existent. I have a lease for another 2 months, and $1200/month to come up with. In this moment I decide to just say fuck it and keep living the lie, instead of asking for help.

I am wound up like a wolf, caged, tortured and destroyed from the woman I used to be. I have an aching knife wound in my chest, and a vengeance ready to kill. I have no idea if I will be okay taking care of Alex by myself. My room mates are not coming back. There is no witnesses to keep us safe in “good behavior”.

I don’t want company anyways. If I have roommates then someone would witness me in THIS, and that would be horrific. No one can see me like this.

We spend days on end in the house. Alone.

The only reason we leave the house is for our evening walk. Otherwise we sit on the roof top, watching the surf roll in. We are hidden, out of sight from the world.

No one can see me like this, I’m known for being bubbly and happy and full of joy. I’m not, and to be seen as I am would be death to my persona.

Alex is 2.5, and finds his own adventure around the patio. The world is his playground, and his needs are simple. He watches the birds, plays with markers and breastfeeds. I smoke pot, spend time watching TED talks on power posing, depression recovery, and mindfulness. More often than not I just get lost in my thoughts of misery and watch the view. The ocean and the trees bring me moments of joy. The birds especially are my friends, they speak to me, squawking in the trees. They seem to do it at just the right moment to acknowledge something I said, or to laugh at me.

As the sun hangs low over the peninsula, the sky turning many shades of purple and gold and orange and blue, the clouds hanging luminous in the sky. I watch my friends the black birds move in and out of the trees, the flocks moving together, dancing with the sunset each night. The pelicans and dragon flies drifting in and out. I make a pact with the pelicans that every time I see them I will simply stop whatever is going on and watch them until I can’t see them anymore.

Music also holds me gently in this time, the lyrics of Jamiraquai echoing through the ocean air.

“She’s just a cosmic girl, from another galaxy…” I dream they are singing about me. That’s right. I’m cosmic. They are the only voice of companionship and reason.

I cry here, one the roof top, in the place of our love and romance and commitment. My heart is deeply broken.
I cry for him, for he is now gone
I cry for the lost vision of love and life,
I cry at the stress of being a single parent,
and the bills I don’t know how to pay.

I cry because I am trapped here.
I can’t handle the cold weather.
I can’t go back to Canada
until the snow melts.

My heart aches.

To live without the balm of being immersed in nature, or the sweet sun on my skin would be to risk even more depression. I am trapped here until at least May.

I’m not actually sure
I’ll get out of this alive.
Part of me hopes I won’t.

On one of these endless rooftop days, Alex is blessedly having a mid day nap. I sit and smoke the third joint of the day, and feel sorry for myself. Feeling sorry for myself spirals downwards, I start to cry and then bawl. My body wracked with crying and spasms of sorrow.

“I don’t want to feel this way anymore!” I cry into the bright blue sky, my voice becomes lost in the sound of the ocean.

The reply is both unexpected and simple, and comes from inside and outside of me at the same time.

“Do what you’ve been studying, open your arms, throw your head back and smile like you mean it.”

“What the fuck, it can’t get any worse than this.”
I have been studying tons of stuff about positive psychology, body bio feedback, and how to create joy in the body. I can follow the instructions.

So, still crying, I put a 2 minute timer on my phone. I put a smile on my face. 90 degrees in the corners of my mouth, bigger, bigger. Crows feet in the corners of my eyes. Perfect execution of a Duchenne smile through tears streaming down my face. I am happy.

My arms open, power posing to the world.
I am powerful.

I want to contract, but my arms hold my heart open, and through tears, my smile shines on.
I am vulnerable.

All I want to do is curl up on a ball and die. My heart wants to close and they are forced by the position of my body to stay open.

My neck falls backwards, my throat exposed to the world. I am abandoned, hopeless, wracked with sobs, and then, surrendered. I will stay here until the timer goes. It’s only two minutes.

Something I could never have expected happens. Although I had rejected the Christian/Mennonite faith I was raised in (as many of us do) and have no relationship with Jesus as an adult. I see the image of Jesus, laid on the cross upon the mount. As I see him, the image moves closer, and we begin to come closer. The image of him comes from behind me, and moves into me. In that instant, I am there not only witnessing myself, but also inside his body. My own opened arms flow and merge with his. Overlaid on top of his on the cross.

I feel him whisper through every cell of my body.

“Forgive them, they know not what they do.”

The words echo and repeat, moving from my heart into the essence of eternity. The speaker is inside our shared body.

I think of Alex, who is just 2.4 years old. For the first time it occurs to me that he doesn’t mean to hurt me. He is not intentionally torturing me. He is simply a child, moving his way through the world as best he can.

I think of his dad, wracked in his own pain, his years of alcoholism, the abuse and pain he has suffered in his own childhood. He “knew not what he did” when he left me. He does not know the pain in my heart. He has not wounded me intentionally.

This is my pain. They did not know they did this to me.

Yet undeniable is this excruciating pain in my heart.

My body is still pressed up on this imaginary cross, overlain against the body of Christ. Finally I feel seen and known deeply. Finally someone in the world understands the depth of my pain. HE knows the agony that is true in my heart. In my minds eye, we are one. I see him on the cross and I feel his pain. The pain infinitely bigger than mine. His pain, our pain, at being misunderstood in the world, of the betrayal by a loved one. As we merge deeper, my palms turn to balls of fire, the nails drive deep into my hands as well as his. The agony of being pinned to the cross, helpless, dying, humiliated for speaking the truth, for coming to offer love to the world, and being killed for his gifts. My heart explodes in technicolor, “Forgive them father, they know not what they do.” The words echo again through our body. We understand each other, finally someone knows the depth of my pain. I am seen.

A great wave washes over me. It surges inside and through and over me. I begin to feel the most delicious experience ever. It makes me want to laugh at all of it. My sobbing body begins to twitch in a different way now, and the wave catches hold of me from the inside. I am loved. It loves me more than love has ever been known, and then it begins to tingle every pleasure nerve inside my body. My body, already spasmodic from pain and sorrow beings to change, the twitching and writhing begins to feel orgasmic. My body is lost in throws of union and communion and ecstasy. I can feel the resonance and the tune of my soul, and I can FEEL the truth of divine love. This lightning fire snakes through my body, and seems to last forever. When the shaking stops I am left in stillness.

I know my life has forever changed.

I spent years looking for this feeling.

Years of terrible sex, giving my body to men, hoping they could touch me in a way to ignite this fire. The experience I’ve been searching for my whole life, just found me. Deeply.

A part of me is now whole, healed and never alone. I feel loved beyond what I have ever known, my mind is still and calm for the first time in years.

Breathless from the experience, I ask, “What was THAT?”

“JoyGasm” the answer sings through my heart
from that voice that comes from everywhere.

“What a strange word.” I think to myself.

In a whisper that makes my soul sing
I hear one more thing from them before they go.

“So now you know. Go share it with the world.”

Learning to Live with JoyGasm

JoyGasm grips me, the love, the memory, the instruction to share, and the aftershocks. Oh, the aftershocks.

I am in a mundane moment of life, Alex is sitting on the couch, I'm making breakfast. All of a sudden I can feel it coming, light a freight train, bearing down on me, this surge of orgasmic energy, pulsing, and powerful. I grip the counter, bracing myself for the intensity as I feel the surge start, and it takes me. I shake, twitch and pulse, pleasure, and love. When I come out of the moment, I look down at Alex. He’s only 2.5 and looking up at me with the innocent eyes of a child, I wonder what he is thinking. I only sort of care. It makes for some awkward in moments of parenting, but I’m just grateful to not be feeling depressed ALL the time.

As the waves become a “normal” part of life, I learn that I can shut it down, or turn the intensity down if it isn’t a good time. I can say yes or no to the experience.

More often than not I say yes. It’s a welcome reprieve from the overwhelm and depression of my life.

Now that I can feel orgasms in my whole body that I can turn on without having to deal with any of that bullshit of men, foreplay, or the shame around masturbation, I feel like I’ve hit gold. I’ve been given hope that some day I won’t feel like this ALL the time. Finally something is going right.

I sit on the roof and meditate with the energy. I must share this. I can practically see the people sitting in circle with me as I practice, as I open up I also know deeply that I will share, it is already written.

I had been already given the idea of doing a 1 and 2 minute awareness meditation by my coach. So it is a natural progression to start working in 2 minute increments with JoyGasm. Through this I learn that I can pulse the orgasmic feeling, ride it, and hold the feeling inside my body longer if I ask for it. Little orgasmic micro meditations. I set a timer, drop into the space, and force myself to stay there, hold the stream, until the timer has gone.

More than the pleasure, JoyGasm gives me something I haven’t had in years. A vision of myself that is powerful. The hope that things can be different. For years I’ve been consumed by the pain of the moment, the despair of life. I now have something to live for. I will share this with the world. I will give this amazing gift to others. JoyGasm gifts me the vision of a future in which I am not depressed.

Despite this revelation, my days are still mostly consumed with pain. Nothing has changed. I still can’t pay my rent. I’m still completely alone. Alex’s terrible twos had been destroying me, and they continue to do so. I have enough self awareness to realize that I am incredibly depressed. Now that I have hope of a different future, the drill sergeant that stopped me from getting back with Derek begins a “self care regimen”. A daily gratitude journal, night time “I love you’s”, and now a daily JoyGasm. Although it’s the most amazing feeling to be in JoyGasm, it’s a pleasure and pain to do this practice.

Some days I don’t want to do it. Some days I don’t.

On many levels this horrifies me. I’ve spent most of my adult life looking for this holy grail of connection, pleasure and feeling love. Here it is, with no strings attached, only a request, the intent and receiving it. I know it is always there, but I don’t want to use it. I want to stay in the misery. JoyGasm is only allowed to be a reprieve from the mundanity of my life, and a saviour from the self hatred that bubbles all around me all the time. I begin to berate myself for this self loathing. I can see that I am committed to suffering. I hate myself more for having the answer, and knowing that I won’t use it.

This self hatred makes things worse, and my stress levels hit epic proportions, daily tasks become impossible. I stop washing the dishes, I prepare simple food for myself once a week, and eat when I need to. I have a cleaning lady who cleans once a week. She saves my sanity. Otherwise we would have been living in a ditch of dishes, cockroaches and frustration at small child who never gives me time alone.

Alex is crying again. I don’t know why. He wants my attention. I have no capacity. I could care less. “SHUT UP” my inner dialog says. I want to punch him. “You can’t hit children” Says the voice of my mother. I have NO more patience for anything, I can’t make him stop making that awful sound. I’m going to snap. I’m going to do something awful.

In this moment I remember that I can shift and transform pain in to pleasure. I take my murderous rage and breathe it through. 3 breaths. I’m sort of calm. 3 more breaths, it’s orgasmic. 3 more breaths. I feel peace. 3 more, I am hopeful. He’s making the same sound, but my inner world is at peace. 3 more, I have conquered this moment. I have found something that allows me to take my “I’m going to kill you” all the way down, and then transform the energy into JoyGasm. It worked! I can now manage my urge to kill. I am saved at least from that horror, for now.

I've discovered 5 Fantastic Fingers - to watch the 15 minute video that outlines this technique Join the Gasm-Gasm Course.

I’m sitting on the patio again, and Nahko’s song sings through the air. I see a dragon fly at the exact same moment that the lyric sings “Dragon fly wings by and sings now teach it”. I am thinking about JoyGasm. This is my destiny. The seed had been planted, this is my gift to share now. I wonder is this something that I can actually teach? How do I do that? Yet the visions of myself sitting on the roof with a circle of people is undeniable. All I can think is ”this is what I was born to do.” I type pages and pages of text. I lay out events, this is how I go about sharing it. This is the science of it, this is why it works, this is the method for sharing. It comes from a place beyond me, and my mind is flooded with grand visions of being the Tyler Durden of Love Club, traveling north America and creating communities of people who love each other in this strange and JoyGasmic way. This is my path, there is no doubt in my mind.

The ironies of life are many, as I project into the future I am already surrounded by friends and community who would come and sit with me, who are curious and open minded to try this new thing. Yet the poison of silence still permeates my life. I could ask my friends and spiritual community to try out my new event, but I can’t find the courage to ask them. I could ask them for help with Alex, but I can’t. My heart is in such a vulnerable and isolated space, I can’t ask for help.

The text below is an excerpt from the JoyGasm book, which shares many tools that were created by Elena to heal her self-loathing and post-partum depression experience. You can order the book here JoyGasm.me/Book if you want to read the whole story.