Brand & Website for Pleasure Activist, Meena Bhasin
This is a creative diary of my Brand & Website Journey with Musician, Embodiment Guide & Pleasure Activist, Meena Bhasin. You can visit her website here.
(I) The Back Story
Meena and I first met at a Sacred Feminine Retreat in September, 2023, where she led an incredible Sacred Sensuality ritual. I began following her on IG and was struck by the visceral rawness of her shares, especially around Gaza. It’s rare to see someone publicly turn their insides-out. To be so skinless in their expression. And what it can do is wake up your own insides as well. Watching her was daring me to ‘go there’, and so when she opened up her ‘Pleasure in Darkness’ journey, I was in.
As a professional musician, Meena’s doesn’t use music as ‘background’. She works with music like a herablist with her plants, keenly aware of the medicinal properties of each piece and how they interact with our emotional chemistry; carefully crafting the right concoction to metabolise, alchemise and release what’s stuck.
“The patriarchy has taught to suppress, not harness, our inner fire. but this burning world needs us now more than ever, to FEEL, with open hearts what is broken and birth a new future together. Learning how to use music, breath and sensual movement to transmute heavy emotions has been nothing short of life-changing for me. It has not only brought more pleasure and life force energy into my daily life, it has opened my heart to parts of myself (and the world) that I didn’t think I had the capacity for.”
I believe that expanding our capacity to feel is literally how we heal our world.
Yes, the pain and destruction we’re witnessing IS too much. But humanity can’t afford to go numb or look away any more. When we have safe spaces to go all the way into the ache, we can start alchemising our grief and rage into healing action.
That’s what Meena helped me do. She concocted potent journeys of music and movement that made it safe (even pleasurable!) for me to fall apart, to go places I’d been scared to go by myself. When I finally re-emerged from our ‘Gift of Grief’ session, I found myself in some sort of newborn stupor, eyes-wide mouth-gaping for at least 2 minutes. I’m not sure what that was, except maybe a breaking opening. A readiness to see more, feel more, speak up more.
After the ‘Pleasure in Darkness’ journey, our friendship and activism continued to deepen, and we began a Coven for Collective Liberation with a few other kindred spirits, meeting monthly to turn our heartbreak into action.
Then in May 2024, Meena shared this portrait of herself from an insanely beautiful shoot with Captured Moon Photography:
“I cried when I first received this photo of myself today. To me it represents the grounded, primal, fiercely erotic energy within me and within all women when we step fully into ourselves and own the fullness of our power. I see a women who is of the earth, standing with the earth and fighting for the earth. She will protect all life and allow life to penetrate her fully. With all its pain and pleasure. Marinating in all of life’s juices. Demanding a better world for all.”
These words, and those images, felt like the soul of Meena’s work, and I was ITCHING to create an Online Temple that vibrated with this frequency. And so, I did something I’ve never done before. I left Meena a VM saying I just HAD to create a website for her, and that we would make it work no matter what. And we did =).
(II) The Creative Process
With fire as our central theme, we used a deep furnace-red as the site’s canvas, with gold, flame and ember sparks as graphic elements. I combined a strong editorial font with a flowing handwritten font to capture the fierce-tender duality of her work.
Like so many of the women I work with, creating a ‘fully expressed’ brand and website often involves reclaiming or reintegrating a lost part of themselves.
In Meena’s case, her journey into feminine embodiment was in many ways a departure from her 3-decade career in classical music, a world that was feeling increasingly stifling and patriarchal. And so she’d created ‘Sensual Reveler’ a few years ago, a space free from that identity where she could rewild herself again.
But as we journeyed through our creative process, Meena started feeling the tug.
While a split between her ‘professional musician’ self and her ‘pleasure activist’ self had been necessary for a while, by rejecting that world, she was also rejecting the music inside of her. It became clear that the call wasn’t just to deepen into her embodiment work, but to reclaim what was artistically hers, and to weave the seemingly disparate worlds of music, social justice and sacred sensuality together.
Photography: Captured Moon Photography
Music: Jagwar by SHELLS
“Our role right now is crucial: to hold death and rebirth at the same time. To embody sacred rage and desire simultaneously. We need the heat of our inner fires to burn down systems of oppression, and forge a new world where there is safety, dignity & liberation for all.”
Connect with Us!
If Meena’s work is calling you, do visit her website to explore some of her gorgeous offerings, from Feminine Fire Circles, to Sacred Sensuality journeys, to collaborations with those in the social justice, leadership and embodiment spaces. She also has a beautiful collection of free pleasure meditations and playlists for you to sink into.
And if you desire an unapologetic expression of YOUR sacred medicine, click on the button below to explore my Brand & Website Therapy offering.
Hey there!
Thank you for reading my creative diary! I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below. If you’d like to explore working together, just click this button to learn more!
