Every practice develops its own language. 

Not to exclude. 

But to make visible what has been difficult to name. 

The words we use shape the way we understand ourselves. 

They influence what we believe is possible. 

They determine whether we see our experience as something to fix or something to become curious about. 

Over time, I realised many of the words I used in practice carried a slightly different meaning to those I had inherited. 

Not because the dictionary was wrong. 

But because relationship changes language. 

At the heart of SomaEros are three ancient ideas. 

Soma. Psyche. Eros. 

Three ways of understanding what it means to be human. 

Three living experiences that continue to shape this practice. 

This lexicon is a collection of those words. 

Some are familiar. 

Some have been gently reimagined. 

Together they offer another way of understanding body, intimacy, desire, pleasure and relationship. 

It is not complete. 

Nor is it intended to be. 

Like every relationship, it will continue to evolve. 

A 

Adaptation 

An intelligent response to an experience that once required protection. 

Agency 

The capacity to choose from presence rather than survival. 

Aliveness 

The felt experience of being fully available to life. 

B 

Belonging 

Feeling at home within yourself before seeking home in another. 

Blueprint 

The patterns the body learns through repeated experience. 

Not fixed. 

Not fate. 

A living map that can soften, expand and be lived differently over time. 

Body 

Not something to control. 

A relationship to cultivate. 

Boundaries 

The expression of self-respect in relationship. 

C 

Capacity 

The ability to stay present with more of life without abandoning yourself. 

Choice 

The moment survival loosens enough for something new to become possible. 

Clitoris 

An organ devoted entirely to pleasure. 

A reminder that pleasure is not an afterthought, but an essential part of being fully alive. 

Consent 

An embodied yes. 

An embodied no. 

And the freedom to change either. 

Curiosity 

The opposite of judgement. 

The beginning of every practice. 

D 

Desire 

Life moving towards connection, creativity and expression. 

E 

Embodiment 

Knowledge becoming lived experience. 

Erogenous 

Areas of the body capable of giving and receiving sensation, pleasure and connection. 

Not fixed locations. 

But an experience shaped by safety, curiosity and relationship. 

Eros 

The life force that moves us towards connection, creativity, pleasure and vitality. 

More than sexuality. 

More than desire. 

A fundamental impulse towards aliveness. 

Expansion 

Growing your capacity rather than becoming someone different. 

Expression 

Allowing what is true to become visible. 

H 

Healing 

Creating enough safety for life to move again. 

Hypervigilance 

A nervous system attempting to keep you safe. 

I 

Intimacy 

Remaining in relationship with what is true. 

L 

Labia 

The outer and inner folds of the vulva. 

Unique in every body. 

A reminder that variation is nature, not exception. 

N 

Nervous System 

The body's ongoing conversation with safety, danger and possibility. 

P 

Pattern 

Something repeated until the body discovers another option. 

Pleasure 

Information. 

One expression of a body becoming available to life. 

Practice 

Returning. 

Again. 

And again. 

Presence 

The ability to remain here without leaving yourself. 

Psyche 

The inner landscape of the human experience. 

Our thoughts, emotions, imagination, memories and unconscious patterns that shape how we relate to ourselves, others and the world. 

Within SomaEros, psyche is not separate from the body. 

It is in continual relationship with it. 

R 

Receive 

Allowing something good to arrive without needing to earn it. 

Relationship 

The space where we discover ourselves. 

Repair 

Returning to connection after disconnection. 

S 

Safety 

Not the absence of challenge. 

The presence of enough choice for the body to soften. 

Self 

Not something to create. 

Someone to remember. 

Sex 

One way humans communicate intimacy, play, expression and Eros. 

Shame 

The experience of believing something essential about you makes you unworthy of connection. 

Soma 

The lived experience of being a body. 

Not the body as an object to fix. 

But as a relationship to inhabit. 

Soma is where sensation, memory, emotion and nervous system meet. 

It is where life is experienced, not simply understood. 

Somatics 

The study and lived experience of the body from within. 

An invitation to listen to sensation rather than only think about it. 

Survival 

The body's remarkable commitment to keeping you alive. 

T 

Trust 

Built through repeated experiences of safety. 

Not promises. 

V 

Voice 

The embodied expression of what matters. 

Vulnerability 

Allowing yourself to be seen without abandoning yourself. 

Vulva 

The external anatomy of the female genitals. 

Not something to compare. 

Something to know. 

Care for. 

And come into relationship with. 

W 

Wholeness 

Nothing added. 

Nothing removed. 

Simply more of yourself becoming available. 

Woman 

Not a role. 

A lived experience that deserves curiosity, choice and self-definition. 

Y 

Yoni 

A Sanskrit word often translated as sacred space, source or womb. 

For some, it offers a language of reverence and relationship. 

For others, vulva feels more grounded and anatomically precise. 

Within SomaEros, both words are welcome. 

What matters most is choosing the language that feels true for you. 

SomaEros 

Pleasure as Power. Presence as Freedom.