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Meet Aili Seghetti, the founder of The Intimacy Curator, and head Intimacy Coach based out of India.
In a country that boasts a population just shy of 1.4 billion and has one of the highest contributors to mobile traffic leading to porn websites, the lack of approaching Intimacy, or rather understanding it, is very alarming.
We have a rich culture that in ways more than one glorifies and celebrates sex, but why is there such a taboo related to it in today’s time? Do Indian people know what sex toys are ?
For many individuals, not being able to learn, or engage in practices that help one in understanding their own sexual desires is a direct result of the taboo that India has associated with the act of sex.
Combine that with the general lack of awareness with respect to terms such as consent, hygiene, and kinks, and there you have it - a recipe for disaster.
Amidst all of this, Aili decided to start TIC, in an attempt to bring intimacy coaching services to perhaps the people that need it the most.
The Intimacy Curator is an organisation promoting self-discovery through emotional and sexual wellbeing. Their ultimate goal is to help people discover their innermost selves through intimacy and promote gender, sexual, and relationship diversity.
Team IMB: Why did you start this? And that too in India?
Aili: When I initially moved to India, I would constantly be confronted with non-consensual gestures and touches, the frequency of such incidents was so much that I began to wonder why this is such a huge problem here.
At the same time, I also noticed a sense of shame prevailing in people even in spaces where safety and consent existed. Looking at these situations made me very curious and though I have traveled all around the world, I decided to settle and make this a personal mission to work towards - to understand how exactly does India deal with the concept of intimacy.
It became a personal issue to understand people and their perceptions towards sexuality and intimacy. I began to wonder why there was such a huge taboo associated with the teaching of Sex Education, a subject that would ensure that people get to know about safe-sex, consent and the importance of pleasure.
I wanted to create a platform, a channel for people where they could express their intimate-selves, where there was a possibility of shedding shame, where they learnt the vitality of consensual intimate settings, where they understood that a three lettered word is not taboo-ridden.
I also realized that people don't think of intimacy as a technique that needs to be learnt, some think that it is not important to learn how to be intimate while some believe that it is naturally in them. But like anything in the world, intimacy includes many practices that need to be learnt and I wanted to create a space where I could teach people the ways of being intimate.
All of this drove me towards becoming an Intimacy Coach. Therapy tends to pathologist people, but from a coaching point of view, there is nothing wrong with your feelings, but we help you to navigate these desires with your partner(s) in a way that this desire is expired, accepted, appreciated, and is mutually satisfying.
