facultyexplore advaya’s teachers
Explore advaya's faculty of teachers, scientists, practitioners, philosophers and storytellers, who share multidimensional, local and diverse narratives from across the world.
Bayo Akomolafe
Sophie Strand
Satish Kumar
Vandana Shiva
Veronica Strang
Manda Scott
Beloved Sara Zaltash
David Abram
Dr Andreas Weber
David Whyte
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Dr. Predrag Slijepcevic
Charles Eisenstein
Aisha Paris Smith
Brontë Velez
Aisha Paris Smith
Somatic sexologist, bodyworker and life coach. Aisha blends her conscious approach to life with the profound experience of being in a body. She embraces all that it means to be a human with flesh, blood, bones, ego and eros. She experiences every day the wisdom of her body and has seen clients transform through the power of somatic methods.
Somatic sexologist, bodyworker and life coach. Aisha blends her conscious approach to life with the profound experience of being in a body. She embraces all that it means to be a human with flesh, blood, bones, ego and eros. She experiences every day the wisdom of her body and has seen clients transform through the power of somatic methods.
Aisha specialises in hands-on sex coaching, offering her clients a direct and practical approach to reconnecting with and reclaiming all aspects of their bodies. For Aisha, this work is about more than pleasure - it’s also about finding safety, freeing self-expression and integrating shadow.
She works with the principle that when we can be with and integrate all parts of ourselves, we will each have a greater sense of who we are, where our individual purpose and pleasure lie and how to create a life we love.
She came into this work inspired to support couples create a relationship that works on all levels. Today, her clientele ranges from couples to teenagers and the elderly - people of all ages, descriptions and identities.
Aisha is fully accredited by the ACSB and a professional member of the Association of Somatic & Integrative Sexologists.
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Joy and The Body
This course is an opportunity to return to the joy of the body & the richness of life. How we feel about our body is never in isolation to how things outside appear to us. Our body is our world, so let’s fill our world with joy.
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Bodyfulness
What if we were able to get to the root of cultural crises? What if we were able to transform cultures by transforming the ways in which we inhabited our bodies? When we understand that lying at the root of behaviours that cause harm is often embedded trauma we can start to relate to each other a lot more compassionately and understand that ideas/actions don't arise out of a vacuum. Somatics and physical self-awareness is essential to breaking free from oppressive systems and stories that are either internal or external to ourselves.
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Somatic tools for a joyful reality
In the upcoming six-week online course with Aisha Paris Smith, Joy and the Body, we will step into somatic awareness, exploring body-based practices, and observing the openings, shifts, and releases they facilitate. Ahead of the course, advaya converses with Aisha about what somatic tools are and how they can be so powerful in creating a joyful reality.
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Relishing the sensuous
We are being called to live a sensuous life. Rather than further developing our minds and intellect, the current moment calls for relishing the sensuous nature of our bodies. This is not a denigration of science, of knowledge. It is an invitation to enliven it. If science has shown us that our bodies have such incredible capacities, why don’t we feel it for ourselves?
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Pleasure is a necessity
In this free webinar, somatic sexologist, bodyworker and life coach Aisha Paris Smith joins advaya to talk about the necessity of pleasure in our daily lives. We live in a social context in which it is normalised to have under-resourced bodies. Despite the human body having an incredible capacity for pleasure, most of us don't access it. We struggle to relax, to enjoy, to engage. But self-created joy is possible, and we can reclaim our personal guidance system, through touch, care, and attention. This is a radical act, and a necessary one. In this spirit, advaya and Aisha are offering the upcoming course Joy and the Body—and in this webinar, we will focus on why these conversations and practices are so crucial. Aisha will introduce what joy can feel like in our bodies, and how we can begin to cultivate an internal environment that enables us to receive. How does this then change our external realities, whether that is our lives, or our shared world? Why do body-based practices, and focusing on the body matter in this time? Join us to find out, and reclaim pleasure and joy as daily necessities. During this webinar you will also learn about how the course breaks down and connects, and preview the exciting upcoming course.
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Seven questions toward a body-led reality
A body-centred life is within reach for all of us. Somatic sexologist, bodyworker and life coach Aisha Paris Smith speaks with advaya and introduces seven core questions that can orient us towards a bodyful reality. These core questions form the foundation of each session on advaya’s online course with Aisha, Joy and the Body.
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Pleasure is a necessity: resourcing our bodies with joy
In this free webinar, somatic sexologist, bodyworker and life coach Aisha Paris Smith joins advaya to talk about the necessity of pleasure in our daily lives.
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Somatic tools for a joyful reality
In the upcoming six-week online course with Aisha Paris Smith, Joy and the Body, we will step into somatic awareness, exploring body-based practices, and observing the openings, shifts, and releases they facilitate. Ahead of the course, advaya converses with Aisha about what somatic tools are and how they can be so powerful in creating a joyful reality.
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Joy and the Body: an introduction
Welcome to Joy and the Body, a six-week online course, a journey into relating to your body afresh: truly, joyfully, and safely.
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Processing an experience changes how it shapes us
In the first week of Joy and the Body, Aisha Paris Smith reminds us to keep things simple: pay attention to what our body is saying. Honouring pain and suffering is the only way to let it move through us and hence leave. Consciously engaging with it changes how it shapes us somatically. Identifying so we can respond effectively helps support our bodies to regulate out of unpleasant and difficult experiences. Aisha offers some questions for us to process our experiences and feelings.
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What is blocking your wants and desires?
adrienne maree brown says: "Desire is a map that we have to follow, if we want to get to the end of the journey, the journey of becoming who we are." In the second week of Joy and the Body, Aisha Paris Smith unpacks wants and desires, and what they reveal about our bodies and selves. What do wants support? What happens when we voice them? What happens when they are blocked? From fear of our own power, to doubting our self-knowledge, Aisha offers some reasons why our wants and desires may be blocked, and what repressing and blocking may look like.
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How to build new and positive meanings about our bodies
Audre Lorde once wrote: "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." In the third week of Joy and the Body, Aisha Paris Smith talks about the importance of reclaiming the meaning we make about our bodies. How does meaning impact our access to all the goodness available inside our bodies? Other people and our environments and culture, the systems we live inside of, influnce our projections onto our bodies. Where does the meaning you attribute to your body stem from?
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My biggest discovery was that you can literally recreate your life
In the fourth week of Joy and the Body, Aisha Paris Smith talks about pleasure as a resource. When we know what feels good, we become more aware of what feels not good. Once we've experienced pleasure, we know we can aspire to more. In this clip, she talks about pleasure that is cost-free, within the body, and individual pleasure that weaves into a political act of reclaiming pleasure in under-resourced communities. She also shares a practice of mindful pleasure that you can do any time, any day, any where, for yourself.
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Finding freedom from body shame
In the fifth week of Joy and the Body, Aisha Paris Smith talks all about body shame. If you've been struggling with body shame, this might help to illuminate: why feeling shame may actually be important; what shame does in our bodies and how it blocks us from experiencing joy; how shame digs deep and impacts our sense of identity; what we do when unconscious and conscious shame comes out; and how we can find freedom from it, after accepting and sitting with it.
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The body as a place of joyful expression
In the sixth and final week of Joy and the Body, Aisha Paris Smith invites us all to build our capacity to receive joy. How can the body be a place of magic when it comes to receiving and creating joy? As the course comes to a close, Aisha also shares an affirmation she holds close to her heart, to continue your journey in building a lifelong relationship with your first companion—your body.