Hey there!
I’m Emily Athena. I am a somatic sex educator and coach. If you’d like to learn more about me and how I got here, read on.
The somatic piece came way before the sexual piece for me.
First and foremost, I am a dancer.
I have never separated myself from my body and how it moves through the world. Those are one and the same for me.
I grew up dancing and simply never stopped. I have a BFA in Contemporary Dance from the North Carolina School of the Arts and became a professional dancer upon graduation. I danced in contemporary dance companies, contact improvisation groups, and a circus, as an aerialist, fire dancer, belly dancer, and freelancer. I also became a fitness instructor, Pilates teacher, and personal trainer to supplement my dance career. Getting to train celebrities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area was a professional highlight.
The only problem was, I was in pain all the time. After dancing with chronic injuries for ten years, something needed to change. The pain made me a dull shell of my once vibrant self. Although I knew I had to let go of my identity as a dancer, I also knew that movement would never leave my life. My quest was to stop it from hurting me and learn how it could heal me instead.
Luckily, my training as a contemporary dancer included many somatic practices, and during my career, I continued to attend somatic trainings such as Continuum Movement with the late Emilie Conrad and Functional Range Conditioning.
Slowly, my body stopped being a tool for production and profit. It became my source of pleasure and compass of truth.
Then there’s the sex piece.
Like most people, I had nearly no sex education. I was confused and disempowered. This led to me having sex that I didn’t want to have and losing sexual interest in my partners after a short time. You know, the sadly typical shit.
My way into sex education and coaching was a fortuitous coincidence. I wanted to learn Elemental Body, a method for postpartum core rehabilitation, to use with my Pilates clients. That method was part of the larger curriculum of The Artemis School for Women’s Sexual Sovereignty. To learn it, I would need to attend the whole program. After the first module in June 2015, my life trajectory changed. I knew I would become a sex educator and coach.
After finishing The Artemis School, I became an assistant with the school for the subsequent two years. The other training programs I attended were Yoga for the Pelvic Floor with Leslie Howard, El Dorado’s Elevate U, Planned Parenthood’s Sex Ed Bootcamp, Human Sexuality and Psychology at Rogue Community College, and courses with Eva Clay and Kimberly Ann Johnson. I began teaching classes and courses, seeing clients, and working at Love Revolution and As You Like It in Ashland, Oregon.
Any foray into sex coaching is incomplete without knowing how to work with trauma. While not everyone has direct sexual trauma, everyone has likely experienced sexual distress or shame. To fill in this gap in my education, I attended the Somatic Experiencing Professional Training Program.
Helping people understand their sexuality is activism to me. Sexuality is the root of your power. Dissolving stress and shame and finding your truth here will echo out into all areas of your life. It’s deep, meaningful, necessary work. The most brilliant part of my training is not the information I learned. It’s the work I did on my own sexual shame to get to where I am now. The place where I can sit across from you and listen with an open mind and heart to anything you are ready to share. Nothing is TMI, gross, weird, or wrong. That’s the magic of Somatic Sex Education and Coaching. If you’d like to learn more about working together, go HERE.
It would be my honor to support you in shedding shame and reclaiming your pleasure and power.
With unconditional positive regard,
Emily