Uniting the masculine and feminine within the Self and your intimate relationships
Origins of Pelvic-Heart Integration
Jack W. Painter, PhD who originated the world famous modality of Deep Holistic Bodywork called Postural Integration® (PI) in the 1960s, also pioneered “pelvic release,” a hands-on technique that helps release armoring and trauma at the level of the genitals and pelvic-floor in the 1970s. This work in turn became part of the Advanced Postural Integration Training.
His close relationship with Margo Anand, founder of Skydancing Tantra, and his collaboration with Willem Poppeliers, founder of Sexual Grounding, resulted in a potent cross-fertilization of their scientific and professional work. This collaboration led to the development of Energetic Integration (EI) and later, in the 1990s, Pelvic-Heart Integration (PHI).
PHI provides a valuable framework for sexual healing, both in terms of unraveling sexual dysfunction and restoring trust and harmony between men and women. It also addresses also the central questions of how to be sexually alive and how to connect heart and genitals in a mature, relational way.
Pelvic-Heart Integration : Transforming Patterns of Sexual Frustration from the Past
Much of the focus of Pelvic-Heart Integration is on restoring the natural energy flow of life (sexual) energy. Special attention is given to the integrity of the energy flow between the heart and the genitals. Before this natural energy flow was disrupted by limited, non-comprehending, or frustrated parents, a child’s heart and genitals were part of a unified current of orgastic, vibrant energy characterized by innocence, curiosity, and joyful excitement.
The PHI process involves learning to recognize how we have cut off this flow, how our acquired gender identities support or undermine our actual sexual relationships, and how our past and current relationship patterns are linked to our sexual blocks. Pelvic-Heart Integration helps us understand that no force, principle, or idea is inherently problematic or sinful, including sex. The separation of sexuality from love is what makes sex problematic or “sinful.”
Love is often confused with comfort and the false stability gained from emotional “business deals.” This confusion distorts and complicates our understanding of love. Hearts are “broken” when we, or someone beloved, says “no,” withdraws, or shuts down to stay safe or avoid pain and frustration. As we run away from the deep feelings of our broken hearts, we invest a lot of energy in seeking worldly, personal, or sexual recognition.
The Pelvic-Heart Integration Workshop and Training
In a PHI workshop or training, these concepts are not merely discussed but felt throughout the whole body. Participants are supported in exploring their attachment styles, generational wounds, protection and defense mechanisms, and in recreating an inner triangle between mother, father, and child or other ancestral configurations.
We use massage and touch to open the currents of warm pleasure in the tissues of the body. Gentle or deep contact with the skin, tissue, muscle, and bone helps to open every part of the body, welcoming any desire or fantasy into the flesh. Through this work, participants gradually become more aware of how sexual cravings, when they surface with force, can cause parts of the body to cut off the experience. The chest and heart may pull back due to memories of past pain, or the belly may contract to separate physical excitement from emotional disappointment.
Participants are encouraged to explore, at their own pace, various breathing techniques that can lead to new levels of excitement. By riding waves of charging and discharging energy, they discover the power of expressing accumulated or forbidden charge. This healing process extends backward in time, transforming old family dynamics into new, yet unimagined possibilities.
Getting the Masculine and Feminine Together
By focusing our attention on the dynamics of the masculine and feminine within our own bodies, we empower ourselves to effect change more effectively than when we try to change others or blame them for perceived shortcomings. We also discover how our characteristic breathing patterns, thoughts, emotions, and body armor block the free flow of our life force and inhibit our capacity for sensual pleasure and orgasmic release.
In PHI, we begin by viewing the masculine and feminine as expressions of the breath. The feminine corresponds to the inhale—taking in, receiving, and filling ourselves up. Its energetic flow moves from the genitals to the heart and then outward toward the world. The masculine corresponds to the exhale—releasing and letting go, characterized by erectness, solidity, attunement, and penetration. Its energetic flow moves from the heart to the genitals and then outward toward the world.
The masculine and feminine energies in the body also have a directional or cyclic flow: the feminine movement from the pelvis to the heart is complemented by the masculine movement from the heart to the genitals. When these forces come into contact and eventually merge, whether within one’s own body or in connection with another, sexual pleasure and excitement result, potentially culminating in a full-body orgasm if the natural flow is unimpeded. However, this internal flow, as well as the circuit formed when two individuals come together, loses its integrity when a person’s internal connection between the heart and the genitals is severed.
As we explore and work with each other during the workshop or training, we uncover these old patterns in our bodies and discover what our bodies truly long for—what our masculine and feminine sides really want. When our bodies begin to harmonize the aspirations of these two sides, and when our inner mother and father support the sexuality of our inner child, we are loving ourselves and creating a strong flow between the pelvis and heart, rather than solely seeking love outside ourselves.
We re-script our inner triangle to support both healthier relationships and greater sexual fulfillment. By allowing and supporting the masculine heart-pelvis flow within both inner parents, and by embracing the feminine pelvis-heart flow within both inner parents, and thus within ourselves, we can recapture childhood innocence, curiosity, and excitement at each stage of our lives. This internal integration provides a sensual constancy to our love and enables us to share love with others without losing ourselves. We realize that love exists as part of our inner experience, whether the lover is present or absent.
To Feel Part of a Continuing Cycle of Genital and Heart Energy Through the Generations
In PHI, we have the opportunity to examine how our growing and changing bodies express sexuality through various stages of life: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age. We explore how our character is formed and reformed throughout our lives. When we begin to physically and emotionally feel the connection between the genitals and the heart, we allow our inner parents to be present.
At this moment, we realize that our inner parents share the same aspirations as our real parents and their parents, regardless of whether these longings were fulfilled or remained unconscious. We recognize that we are part of a continuous, concrete, physical flow of genital and heart energy, a flow that our children and their children can continue to fulfill.
Methodology: Creating New Levels of Excitement and Pleasure
A PHI workshop typically begins with playful warm-up exercises that teach about energy meridians and balancing yin and yang energies. This is followed by work with the “energetic cycle,” where the discovery of your past, present, and future sexual force is done with the body. Through touch, breathwork, movement, role play, active imagination, and bodywork, you will become aware of how to integrate your body into your sexual, love, and spiritual life.
We explore how our sexual awareness is contained in our deep body tissues and breath. Participants are guided to awaken their desires and sense of freedom, and encouraged to explore various breathing techniques at their own pace, leading to new levels of excitement. By riding waves of charging and discharging energy, participants discover the power of expressing accumulated or forbidden charge. Allowing this energy to flow freely helps open old blocks and cultivate streaming currents of warm pleasure.
We experience physical openings and the connection between the heart and genitals. Breathing exercises and bodywork are used to release energies and simultaneously restructure the pelvic segment (pelvic floor, buttocks, psoas), diaphragm, and rib cage. Regardless of your level of experience, you will learn how to maintain your sexual unity and dare to reveal yourself. Soft or deep contact with skin, tissue, muscle, and bone helps open every part of the body and allows any desire or fantasy to be welcomed in the flesh.
Trainers teach and demonstrate, participants practice on each other, and then share their experiences. The theory behind the work is delicately intertwined with the experiential aspects.
Working with the cycle at different stages is repeated throughout the workshop and training, serving as building blocks for a Pelvic Heart Integration session. Following our guidance, you will work on untangling the ancestral lines of sexual/spiritual transmission. By symbolically integrating the ideal parents of your inner sexual child, you will reconnect to an inexhaustible source that binds you to the genital desires and aspirations of the hearts of your parents and their parents, regardless of whether their real sexuality was complete or unfulfilled. This is the spiritual groundwork for grounded, unified, and sustainable love and sexuality.
Before all else, we are our own lover, in love with our own body. When the male and female parts within us are harmonized, we can more easily feel, touch, and share joy with another person. We can love someone else without fear of losing them or losing something inside ourselves.
This inner joy—physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual—is complete and indestructible, regardless of the reaction of the other. This body ecstasy that radiates from our core allows us to experience deep encounters with those who have also found their inner joy. By staying connected and working with the ever-present force of an ideal inner mother and father in our sexuality, we can recapture our childhood innocence, curiosity, and excitement at each stage of our lives. This way, we discover how our love is part of our inner experience, whether our lover is present or absent. Thus, we can let excitement flow through the generations while maintaining sexual and spiritual satisfaction in the present.
The Founder and the International Trainers of Pelvic-Heart Integration
- JACK W. PAINTER (1933-2010), was a former professor at the University of Miami and a pioneer of the Human Potential Movement in the 1960s. Jack was renowned for his exceptional ability to both practice and teach methods of Bodymind Integration. He developed a style of holistic bodywork called Postural Integration® (PI), which is now used by hundreds of practitioners worldwide. He subsequently developed Energetic Integration® (EI) and Pelvic Heart Integration® (PHI). These methods are taught independently by some trainers of ICPIT, the organization Jack founded in 1988, which accredits trainers of PI, EI, and PHI.
- DIRK MARIVOET is a Psychotherapist, Trainer and Supervisor for Pelvic-Heart Integration®, Postural Integration® & Energetic Integration® – Teacher and Supervisor for Core-Energetics®. Loves the Fire, lives in Ghent.
- ELISABETH RENNER is a Psychotherapist, Trainer and Supervisor for Pelvic-Heart Integration®, Postural Integration® & Energetic Integration®. Loves the Water, lives in Graz.
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