Heartspace: How I learned to feel my chest
my journey with body dysmorphia, gender, and connecting to my breasts
I've spent the past couple of days sick with a chest cold in bed, watching romcoms and drinking lemon ginger tonics and napping in the sunshine and gentle breeze that comes through my bedroom window. Honestly, being sick can feel so ideal.
And it's so interesting that I've wound up with a chest cold this week, because I've just released a new offering that's all about connecting to the chest/breasts?!
Currently I feel so much pressure and congestion in my chest, and though it's uncomfortable, it feels like a potent reminder that I still need intentional space and time to connect to my heart space... this new offering is for me, too.
I never had much of a relationship to my chest/breasts until about 4 years ago.
Up until then, my relationship with my chest/breasts was mostly rooted in being a teen and wearing two bras to try and make them look bigger, and then kind of giving up on the dream of having the type of cleavage girls sought circa 2012-2016 with the VS double push-ups and Kardashian hour glass bodies being peak "hot girl shit."
I tried strapping the ultra padded bras that felt like pillows to my chest to feel more desirable, and I tried wearing the low cut tops out to house parties like my friends, and every time I tried to bring attention to my chest I just felt so weird about being in my body. Friends would compliment me when I showed cleavage, saying things like “where did those come from Tay?” and I would laugh along with them and fake a sense of pride in my exposed tiddies. Really, I felt super weird and would keep adjusting my shirt to try and get it to sit right when all I wanted was to put on a hoodie. I didn't have the words for it then, though I'd learn much later that what I was feeling was body dysmorphia.
Eventually I just dissociated from my chest.
I stopped wearing bras, not necessarily because it became trendy but more-so because it felt more comfortable, more authentic, to give as little attention to my breasts as possible. I remember being in change rooms in my early teens trying on clothes, and I would always try things on without a bra, and then sigh when I thought of having to wear a bra when I’d actually wear this thing in public, and then I’d take it off, feeling defeated, and I wouldn’t bother buying it.
I rarely touched my breasts myself, and I rarely let partners touch them. They were just there, hanging from my body, these extra sacks of fat that I didn't necessarily hate, but definitely didn't love. I felt completely indifferent to them, and this was how we co-existed for years.
I got my nipples pierced to make them “prettier” when I was 21 on a whim with my college roommate, and this worked, actually. I started not minding the way they looked with jewellery attached and I felt more comfortable naked, but I still never really bothered or encouraged much connection or attention to them. They were just there, which was what I’d refer to as a body neutrality mindset - not loving, but not hating, just co-existing with.
In 2021, I did a 4-week somatic pleasure course with Stella called Pleasure Within, and for one of the weeks we focused on the chest/breasts and connecting physically to this part of our bodies.
I was living in my van at the time, and I remember saying to myself before I opened the zoom call, "maybe I'll skip this one. It doesn't feel like it's for me."
But for some reason I didn't skip it, I joined the zoom call from my friend's bedroom in Portland OR. After we spent some time chatting and learning from Stella about the connection between breasts and heart, the societal conditioning held by our breasts that disconnects us from this part of the body through shame, “good girl” conditioning, internalised Madonna/Whore thinking, and how connection to the chest can deeply enrich our sexual experiences, she guided us into a somatic self-massage practice to connect to our breasts.
So there I was, in a new friend’s basement bedroom in Portland, topless on the floor beside a lamp, rubbing coconut oil into my breasts to moody lo-fi music with a group of other femmes on zoom while everyone watched TV upstairs.
After a while, I exhaled fully and let myself be guided into a self-massage I had never explored before. I was shocked by how intimate it felt, to touch my chest in this new, loving, completely present way. They'd always been there, and yet my breasts had never felt so alive, so activated. They'd never felt actually connected to my body, or my pleasure, in this way.
At some point, Stella said "the breasts are an extension of the heart," and this is what really shifted my perspective. I had never thought of it like that.
To me, my breasts had always felt like an extremely gendered, sexualized part of my body, and because of this, I had spent years in this strained, somewhat numb relationship to them. When I realised I was non-binary, I chalked this disconnection from my chest up to simply not wanting to be read as a woman, and that made sense for a while. But when I took the time and space to connect intentionally, it became clear that my breasts weren’t the source of my body dysmorphia - it was the stories I had around what they meant, that made me feel uncomfortable in my body.
Up to that point, my breasts symbolised the very gendered and sexualised way I was perceived in the world. They made a statement about my identity I hadn’t consented to in a world that loves to tell femme people who they are and how they should behave.
Subconsciously, my breasts had carried all of the double takes made by men as I walked down the street, the unwelcome hands grazing my hips as I’d been passed in bars or cafe lines, the weird, suggestive comments made in my work places, the mechanics that hadn’t taken me seriously only the day before, all of the times I’d been taught through gestures and jokes that I’m more valuable when my body fits a certain size, all of the fawning I’d done to keep myself safe, and all of the times that the fawning didn’t work.
Somehow, because the breasts are one of the most markedly “feminine” parts of my body, to connect to them meant accepting, or surrendering to, all of the bullshit that comes with being in a femme body as “just part of life,” simply because I have them. To ignore them gave me a sense of numbness to the violence implied by being in a femme body. To connect to them was to connect, and really feel, the weight of it.
Of course it was easier to dissociate.
But if connecting to the breasts is an extension of connecting to the heart space, then connecting to my breasts, connecting to my heart space, doesn’t necessarily have to be about connecting to being a “woman.” It can be about connecting to my heart. And what might be possible from learning to really, physically, connect to my heart?
After this first experience of being guided through a safe, loving somatic practice for connecting to my heart, I was able to see my breasts in an entirely new, non-gendered, blank canvas type of way. If the breasts are an extension of the heart, then I get to work on a brand new relationship to my heart through touch and attention, I get to re-write the scripts, the stories, that live here. My own touch on this part of my body that had been stolen from me, felt like coming home. It felt safe and nourishing, and it allowed me to feel a lot more comfort in my body overall, because there was no longer this part of it I was avoiding.
Not only did this new way of connecting to my chest unravel the invisible caution tape I had placed around my breasts, it also allowed me to involve my breasts in solo and partnered sex, and it even allowed me to find joy in having my breasts become part of my gender expression.
This became even more interesting when I started performing burlesque.
I had always shied away from wearing the gendered garments of traditional burlesque attire, not wanting to draw attention to this part of my body that even I didn't fully understand. I felt weary of wearing bras in general, so to bedazzle and don a flashy “look at me” garment on my chest felt completely unnatural, so much so that I decided burlesque just wasn’t for me.
When I started to practice more connection to my breasts as an extension of my heart space however, my gender expression began to include my chest, not necessarily in a conventional showgirl way, but in a way that felt exciting and organic for me, and I was able to create my own costumes for burlesque that felt aligned with how I felt about my chest and how I wanted to be seen.
I also kind of became the queen of popping pasties and baring my nipples in public venues by accident, which then started to become intentional. Because my journey with my breasts had been so much about removing the gendered narratives around them and reclaiming this part of me as an extension of my heart, covering my nipples felt more and more tied to the sexualised gender norms that differ between male and female chests. If I performed in a venue where male nipples were seen, then my nipples simply would be seen, too.
Now, as a clinical somatic therapist, I notice how often the chest or breasts come up for clients when we discuss body image, how seemingly folks of all genders, orientations, shapes and sized feel some type of way about their chest.
Male clients are terrified of having “man boobs” and what that says about them, so they either hit the gym hard or hide in bulky clothing. Femme clients struggle between “too big” and “too small” or saggy, lop-sided, weird, annoying, flat, and wishing to just cut them off. Non-binary clients and folks of other genders often feel like their chest is the first thing to either give away their assigned gender at birth, or the first thing to poke a hole in the gender they’re presenting as, or the first thing they want to help validate their gender. However they look, our chests make bold statements about our identity before we’ve opened our mouth.
With age, we want breasts, and then we don’t want them, and then we want them to be as they were when we were young and didn’t want them. With professionalism, we get dressed based on the size of our breasts, because a top that appears “slutty” on someone with big tiddies is “modest and professional” on someone smaller. With fashion, we rarely find styles made particularly for a voluptuous-chested babe, and even the lower-cut styles are designed not to have much going on, but then we hear “you look like a boy” or “you’re flat” when we wear them on chests that resemble what we see on runways. We get called “top-heavy” or “bottom-heavy” depending on our ratio of ass-to-boob, we hold them up, down, apart and together with tape and wires and compression. No matter what they’re doing, they’re wrong. And most folks that wear bras can’t wait to get home and take it off at the end of the day.
So, what would it be like to release your chest from all of that, even for a moment?
What would it be like to connect with your chest exactly as you are?
What would it be like to hold space, and reverence, for all that our chests carry, all of the generations of breasts before you that were categorised, labeled, and owned because of them?
What would it be like to wipe the slate clean, settle in, and connect to the heart of what makes you, you, that lives underneath them?
What’s left when you strip away all the cultural narratives, the societal gaze and beliefs projected onto your body, and instead connect inward in a way that feels safe, affirming, and aligned?
How do you feel in your body, when you get to feel authentically?
Join us for Heartspace
JOIN HEART SPACE
A 90-minute guided somatic self-massage practice to reconnect with your breasts and heart space.
Together, we’ll explore what it means to be in our bodies in a way that feels aligned, pleasure-based, and most importantly, ours.
Through reflection, somatic practices, and guided self-touch, we’ll begin to peel back the layers - softening into what’s true, what’s yours, and releasing all that’s been weighing on your chest for so long.
Whether you're longing for deeper connection or simply curious, you're welcome here.
This is a space for self-tending, embodied presence, and community care.
HEART SPACE
Tuesday, July 8th
7:00–8:30pm EST
Online (Replay available)
JOIN HEART SPACE
What to Expect:
Somatic practices to support deeper connection
Reflective journaling prompts
Space for sharing (optional)
Emotional processing and expression
Invitations for self-touch (optional)
A longer guided self-massage focused on the chest/breasts
This is for you if:
You’re curious about exploring this part of your body
You desire a more tender, authentic relationship to your chest/breasts
You carry pain, shame, or disconnection here
You want to unpack cultural narratives and reclaim your body’s truth
You’re interested in somatic tools, self-touch, or expanding your relationship to pleasure
Hosted by myself and Stella Artuso, the incredible human that introduced me to this practice.
Join us in reclaiming your body, your breasts, and your heart.