Hi Arielle! We are so stoked for you to be our latest Vibin’ On You feature. Can you tell our community a little bit about yourself and the work you do?
Arielle Egozi: I’ve always been interested in edges — the edges of conversation, society, stigma.
I’ve used my work to push up against those edges and expand them out further. Whether it’s been through writing and creating content around periods, sex, and social justice, or working in the media and advertising industries doing everything I could to create space for diverse perspectives and representation when there was non (there still isn’t, I don’t care what these new campaigns say).
These last few months I’ve slowed way down, even as everything was chaos around me. I slowed down so much that a few weeks ago, there was nothing left. When I arrived there, I found what was most honest in me — to serve Truth in however it needs to show up.
I’m now exploring what it is to be using my body to expand those edges as well.
You had a creative agency, Bread, that really focused on helping brands be as inclusive as possible in their marketing. Since you’re moving away from that, tell us what you’re up to!
Arielle Egozi: A few months ago I had a creative agency in New York City, working with startups across all industries. I might have been “living the dream”, but I was experiencing rolling panic attacks, severe anxiety, and consistent blackouts — all mostly responses that my body learned to communicate with me after the sexual trauma I’d experienced.
I’m good at a lot of things — part of that is because I work really hard, a lot of that is privilege — but I never felt like I fit in any place I was in. I saw the Truth in something, and I did everything I could to get there, but the way the world is, everyone’s always trying to get you to pull back from it instead.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been exploring how I could make Truth my job and use the energy of my body as a tool for others to get there. The world is different now and so am I.
I’m now being held in the sacred belly of the world’s oldest profession — sex work. My work, put simply, is to be in presence as I guide clients of all genders through the journey of finding their own inner balance. We figure out what that path looks like together. Sometimes it’s explicit as clients share themselves in front of me, other times it’s entirely conversational. It is always energetic. I’ve coined my practice The Spiritual Domme for a reason.
I choose this right now for many reasons, the biggest one being that holding space for others and helping them connect to themselves is the thing I’m best at, and the thing I know I can outcompete almost anyone in. It’s also what makes me feel most connected to everything I am.
In the best moments, I get to serve as someone who can not only create the container and hold it for whatever comes up in a session, but can see past the superficial desires of a client and guide the energy, either gently or with more force, to where it needs to go. It’s the definition of what being a Domme means to me, what I’ve been doing my whole life. I’m just starting to be paid for it.
The results that happen in the spaces where I share this power has been the only validation I need to trust that this journey is worth risking a lot for.
Coming out as doing this work has been both incredibly difficult and incredibly rewarding.
Where do you draw inspiration & creativity from, especially when times are tough?
Arielle Egozi: The energy of nature is what unspools everything good inside of me. Being barefoot in grass, jumping in the ocean, watching a sunset, laying back on a rock. Reminding myself that I am part of all that surrounds me, my skin the flesh of an animal too, starts making all the silly things I think about irrelevant and turns the big hard things into journeys I can take to explore.
Life has put my nervous system through it, and I experience a lot of uncomfortable physical sensations triggered by my brain. In the last two years, it manifested into pretty severe anxiety, but before that it was extreme dissociation. Dancing is what’s gotten me through all of it, and continues to. It’s what pulls me in and grounds me when I’m having a panic attack or blackout or before a speaking engagement when I can’t breathe.
When I’m in my body, there’s space to create. I draw inspiration from the relationship I have with myself, and the relationship I have with the world around me.
Your dance videos on Instagram are one of our favorite things. They’re so powerful, raw, beautiful, and joyful! How have these videos impacted your sense of self on the internet?
Arielle Egozi: Funnily enough, for a long time I thought they’d be completely irrelevant to anyone else, but even though I wasn’t confident about it, I kept sharing them. It felt important. With so so so much happening in the world, it felt silly to be sharing all the things that needed to unbridle themselves within me, but I quickly learned that not only is this the medicine I need to get through not just these times, but life, this is exactly the medicine a lot of others need too.
For so long my internet presence was so carved out and specific, and it started suffocating me. I am not the memes I post or the sex education I share. It stopped feeling fun and it stopped feeling like me. It was scary to start moving away from all of that which had made my career in the first place, but it wasn’t aligning anymore, so I had to trust that feeling and keep moving.
This new space I’m in (mentally, and on the internet) feels much more freeing. I get less free shit and I don’t get asked to participate in as many events, which at first took some getting used to, but now it feels like alignment. The things that are coming for me are exactly for me, not some weird projection of what people thought I was or wanted me to be.
Do you have any advice for folks out there who are looking to get out of their heads and into their bodies?
Arielle Egozi: We all have different bodies and abilities, and it literally doesn’t matter whether you can walk or not, dance or not, move or not. All you need to do is breathe.
And get off the damn phone. I know it feels like another limb, but turn it off.
Get out into nature if you can. Sing. Put on Cardi B and move if that feels good. Hug yourself, touch yourself, explore yourself.
Hire a sex worker. Hire an energy worker. Hire me.
I lead with my body and yet I couldn’t be where I am if I hadn’t gotten the support and guidance I needed to reconnect when so much had been shattered in my. Even without physical or sexual trauma, capitalism and the pressure of productivity is enough to keep us all running away from our bodies and what actually feels good.
What role does self-pleasure play in your life?
Arielle Egozi: I spent most of my life running away from pleasure. Now it is my compass.
If something doesn’t feel good, I won’t do it. Not only that, but if something doesn’t feel totally, completely, effortlessly good, I won’t do it. It’s not worth it. And I don’t just mean eating-candy-good. I mean full-bodied I WANT THIS good. Things can “feel good” on the surface, but one layer deeper we still know it will never actually feel good if it isn’t good for us. I’m talking about alignment.
As a creative, my work is what I can make out of my emotion. It is literally my job to take care of my emotional self. If I’m not okay, I can’t produce. And now, as I step into caring for the emotional selves of others, I have to be even more careful with how I’m investing my energy.
Self-pleasure is what has taught me confidence, power, consent. I’m still a recovering people-pleaser. I lived sitting on nails so others would be comfortable, betraying myself for people that aren’t my responsibility. The only one I am responsible for is me, and I take that role seriously. Which means I take pleasure seriously.