Confirmed Celibate — What 3 Years of Celibacy Taught Me About Trust

Confirmed Celibate

What 3 Years of Celibacy Taught Me About Trust

QUICK ANSWER

Is this shaman safe? It’s the question people rarely say out loud. Three years ago, after a radical self-assessment of his own patterns, Pierce chose celibacy — not as punishment, but as a practice of holding energy instead of needing to spend it. What it taught him: how to like himself, feel fully alive alone, and release shame he didn’t know he carried. The discipline became proof — if he can sit with his own most intense energy without discharging it onto someone else, that’s exactly what makes it safe to be in ceremony with him.

The Question Nobody Asks Out Loud

You’ve thought it. Maybe not in words, but somewhere underneath the curiosity about ceremony, about medicine, about sitting in a room with someone you’ve only seen on a screen — the question is there.

Is this Shaman/Facilitator safe?

Nobody wants to say it out loud. So let’s say it, plainly:

Will my body be respected, no matter what state I’m in?

Is there a hidden agenda in this room?

Will my boundaries actually hold, even in an altered state?

Is this a cult, or something that asks me to give up who I am?

Can I trust this person with the most vulnerable version of me?

Will what happens here ever be used against me, or repeated to anyone else?

If a shaman or facilitator isn’t offering their vulnerability, how can they hold and respect yours?

Why That Question Matters

It comes to my attention a few times a year. Shamans, facilitators — here and abroad — who cause harm to women. I won’t name names. It doesn’t need names to be true, and it happens more than anyone in this space wants to admit.

It’s disheartening. Disconcerting. Frankly, disgusting. A true shaman holds a high moral code. There is no gray area here, no thin line to debate. It should not happen. Period.

I’ve had women call me — strangers, after watching a video — and tell me what happened to them in someone else’s ceremony. I help them process it. Release the shame, the attachment, the darkness they walked away carrying. I walk them through what a safe ceremony actually looks and feels like, what real safety protocols are.

Some of my staff, working alongside me now, have lived through the inappropriate actions of past shamans and facilitators they ceremonied with. Once they saw a transformational, integrated Aya ceremony protocol — the look, the feel, the prep, the interactions — they felt safe enough to join my team.

The Origin

I began this celibate journey after a radical self-assessment of my past relationships — the ones that didn’t serve me. What is my pattern here?

I realized that as a protector, a provider, I used taking care of everyone — being the giver — to deny my own vulnerability. If I never stopped giving, I never had to receive. And if I never received, I never had to risk being loved back. Then I would burn out, and do it again.

I realized sex had become a coping mechanism instead of a co-creative experience. I was performing instead of allowing authentic feelings to show up and be present. I felt I had to release them — rather than alchemize them.

As I went deeper into that understanding, I saw the fear underneath both patterns: the fear of being alone. And underneath that, how much pain I was actually carrying.

Celibacy taught me to like myself. To enjoy my own love. To feel how alive being alone actually is. In fact, I was never alone — I was disconnected. Not from people. From my ancestors. And ultimately, from mySelf.

The Choice

Three years ago, I chose something different. Not a religious rule. Not punishment. A practice — a way of training myself to hold energy instead of needing to spend it. I’m three years in, heading toward five, with no intention of stopping.

If sex made me feel intimate, connected, loved, sensual, powerful, passionate — then I made a decision. I would not engage sexually again until I could feel all of that about myself, and sustain it through the day, on my own. Otherwise, I was just using sex to feel what I should already be allowed to feel simply by being myself.

What It Actually Taught Me

In one ceremony, I felt immense pain everywhere in my body — like iron, someone lightly hammering away at it, a gnawing, bone-deep ache. I asked the medicine what it was showing me. It showed me the faces of women in my life who had told me, “You’re hard to love.” I was carrying defensiveness, old hurt, walls around my own feminine energy — and the medicine wasn’t going to let me look away from it.

Holding this discipline didn’t make temptation something I had to fight. Once I chose celibacy — holding my energy instead of releasing it — the desire to share it, even when flirted with, simply wasn’t there anymore. It was easy.

That’s the part people don’t expect. When I tell people I’m celibate, the most common reaction is one word: “Wow.” No one expects it from someone who’s healthy, fit, what most would call attractive. But the ease is the whole point.

Now I can feel things fully — pain, desire, joy, whatever comes — without attaching it to another person, without needing to share it or seek it outside myself. I can feel good, on my own, all the time. That means I can simply be in any room, any situation, without an urge running the show underneath me.

Sexual energy is creative energy. The more I can sustain it instead of spending it, the less I live in my head, the less I have to hide. The more authentic I’ve become. The more at home I am in my own body.

The shame dissipated.

Why This Is Actually About You

This was never just a personal discipline. It’s the proof.

If I can sit with my own most intense energy and not need to discharge it onto someone else, that’s exactly the quality that makes it safe to be in ceremony with me. No agenda hiding in the room. No hidden need being met through you. Just presence, held clean.

Close

You can’t ask someone to devote themselves to their own healing in a room with you if you haven’t first proven you can devote yourself to your own. This is what three years — heading toward five — has taught me. Not restriction. Devotion.

Devotion, held long enough, becomes trust you can actually feel.