What I learnt from my first ever "burn"
On Sunday, I returned home from my very first “burn”. Kiwiburn is a seven-day festival experience, centred around the 10 burning man principles. An experienced I have craved & feared for many years.
It was magnificent.
I bathed & danced naked daily.
I was consensually electrocuted & spanked.
I danced bigger & wilder than my body knew was possible.
I did a 2-hour hike in sheer yellow lingerie.
I had multiple orgasms, amidst an acid trip, in a river.
I witnessed the most wondrous, weird & delicious things my brain is still in the process of digesting.
Kiwiburns are a space with very, very few boundaries however, personal boundaries are celebrated & encouraged.
Things normally living in the social shadow, are brought into the light of permission & celebration. Bodies, sexuality, drugs, hedonism, radical self expression, conversations our communities normally avoid having…
This expansive experience quickly became a powerful mirror for me to connect with my own truths, growing edges, & wounds.
Here’s just a little of what this burn reflected me:
I’m currently largely demisexual. Meaning, for the most part, I don’t desire to have sex with anyone that I don’t have an emotional connection with. Simultaneously, I’m feeling incredibly sexual inspired & adventurous. I’m currently getting creative with ways to honour both of these aspects of my sexual self.
I am more highly sensitive than I’ve ever been. I’ve always been a part of the 20% of the population who has “an increased sensitivity of the central nervous system & a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social and emotional stimuli” (Elaine & Arthur Aron). But, tens of thousands of hours of conscious sexuality, breathwork, energy work, & meditative practice over the last 5 years, has heightened my sensitivity even more. I spent many hours of this burn frozen in my tracks, overwhelmed by the intensity of everyone’s highly expressive energy, & also many hours indulging in the absolute exquisiteness of feeling everything so deeply.
It’s necessary self-care for me to escape my “real world” regularly. An HSP, who works intimately with so many people, it’s easy for me to lose myself. Travelling to other countries has been a tool that I’ve used since I was very young, to remember where I end, & everything else begins. The burn was the drastic escape from my usual reality that I was desperately needing to refresh & remember who I am, during the pandemic. I can’t tell you how thankful I am for this.
I’ve been deep & loud in my radical sexual expression for many years now, a pendulum swing that was necessary to find balance again, after so many years of freeze & trauma. Although my sexuality is powerful & integral part of my wholeness, it is not all of me.
I have a part of me, that often feels really, really alone. Even when I’m surrounded by people I love so deeply, who love me back just as hardcore, I can feel this wound. During this festival, I realised the degree to which this part of me wants to sabotage my relationship. It’s the part of me who never feels loved enough, & is also terrified of being enough for love. I’m practicing deep acceptance & love for this part of me.
My relationship with Chris, is actually fucking incredible. We’d been having really challenging conversations about our relationship, coming into this burn. Parts of me were worried that our relationship would be broken by the burn, like so many others. I had surrendered to the likelihood that truth on our relationship would emerge, whatever that looked like, during this experience. I ended up falling in love with Chris more deeply than I ever have before.
I’m overflowing after my holiday break & so incredibly excited to be guiding a new cohort of courageous humans in their own journey of healing & liberation!