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Embodied PsychoSexuality: What is it, why is it important, and how does it impact our clients?

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Today I’d like to talk about what embodied psychosexuality is, why it’s important and how it impacts our clients or patients as well as ourselves. So, first of all, let’s just look at “Embodied Psycho Sexuality”. Psycho sexuality has been around as an idea, and also as a theory since the time of Freud.

There’s this concept that the psyche, our consciousness, our mind, our feelings, our beliefs, all of that aspect of having a human awareness, isn’t disconnected from our sexuality. In fact, there’s a strong connection between the psyche and the body and sexuality. The importance of this is that if there’s things happening in the psyche, it can impact the function of the body, especially sexual function, pleasure, orgasm, et cetera. The converse is also true… if there’s something happening in the genitals, perhaps pain or a blockage or an experience of some kind that can also impact the psyche.

Therefore, there’s a bi-directional communication between our “awareness self”, our “feeling self”, and what’s happening in the physiology of the genitals. That is to say that the most common method of resolving issues of the technology of psycho sexuality is talk therapy. If you’re a medical doctor how do you bridge the gap with your patient?  You want to provide better care and just knowing what’s going on in the body, isn’t enough.

Learning to ask the right kinds of questions will reveal more information. For example, are they enjoying their sexual relations with their partner? How do they feel about their relationship? How do they feel about sexuality? These types of questions are very important because they can reveal what’s underneath the issue, Psychotherapists, counselors, et cetera, are also learning to use it because they’re noticing that they need to be able to bridge the gap into the topic of sexuality. And so they’re being trained in how to properly form our questions, how to listen better, et cetera.

So what is the embodied part?

The embodied part is my own work because I couldn’t just take talk therapy. When I first started to teach and counsel others, I had several doctors: MDs, PhDs, sexologists and sex therapists who worked with clients in that way, combining talk therapy with psycho-sexual methods. One of the things that I noticed with these student-professionals was there was little embodiment. I believe that embodiment is crucial if we are going to transform someone’s life. The underlying reason for this is “limbic resonance”. When you’re in a position of holding space of caring for, of having influence, and you’re going to talk about sexuality, but you have hang-ups around sexuality, or you have your own wounds around sexuality, or you’re not very expressed in your sexuality, there is an inauthenticity and a disconnect that happens subconsciously for the patient.

When you’re speaking to someone, what you embody around sexuality gets transmitted, whether you’re aware of that or not. This is very confronting as a practitioner because it’s really important to feel at home in this topic, in your own version, in your own way. There’s no way that you must be, but just that you’re at home in it so that you can hold a state of acceptance. Curiosity and professionalism around this topic is very, very important.

The embodied portion of this methodology is two-fold: there’s the embodiment piece for the practitioner themselves, how to really embody their own comfort with the topic. And then there’s the embodiment in the client, to have them process something that’s deeply physical, deeply emotional, with more than thinking and talking.

For the therapist, doctor, leader, or workshop facilitator who is holding in themselves when they’re speaking as well as what the client or patient experiences. It’s about sharing a skillset so that the concepts become a real for them as they experience it in their body. The most crucial underlying factor is that talk therapy is not enough when it comes to trauma in the body. Therefore, we need to touch the body. We need to breathe into the body, and we need to open the body in order to actually transform or repattern the cellular memory of the body. There are very specific embodied somatic practices that are given at the same time as some very important psychological premises, that frame reality in a new way so that the client can feel a sense of their own empowerment, feel a sense of their own sovereignty, particularly in terms of sexual sovereignty.

How does this then apply to specific groups of people?

I’m not going to talk about gender or sex right now, because I feel that every person is a sexual being. Therefore, no matter who your client is, no matter how they identify, no matter how they orient, there is a grounded understanding that if we can get the psyche and the body to work together, we can get a person to feel comfortable and confident with what the sensations are. We can get them comfortable with what the experiences are and they can start crafting more of what they love and transform and heal past experiences.

Because we live in a world that doesn’t understand that sexuality has a natural place, healers who are embodied psychosexually are imperative. If we view sexuality as important to our survival as breathing ourselves, this gives our clients an opportunity to define for themselves what’s important in the realm of sensuality and sexuality. Allowing them to process this without imposing our own values and ethics on their choices will allow you to be far more effective in treating them.

I have not come across any other modality that creates lasting positive transformation.

Personally, I would prefer to have a client come through and have their experience and be empowered and transformed enough that they no longer need me. Having them become a functional sexual being in the world is what I would love. There is ample opportunity because I’ve rarely met a single person that feels wholly at home and relaxed in their sensuality and sexuality. It’s just that kind of world we live in.

Today you have the opportunity through learning embodied psychosexuality, practicing this method, bringing it into your business, to be on the leading edge of humanity’s evolution. It is time that humanity starts to mature their relationship with sexuality, start to heal the wounds around sexuality, start to bring more awareness and understanding to their bodies, to their pleasure, to all the sensations that come in this realm of sensuality and sexuality. To be on the forefront of that, to be on the leading edge of that is very exciting!

The last thing I want to say is that embodied psychosexuality has a direct physiological impact; a measurable, direct, physiological impact on the function of the sexual organs. Now that we’ve demonstrated that it’s becoming more important that people understand the embodied psycho-sexual piece and that we bring this into every single modality that is dealing with sensuality or sexuality on any level.

I’m excited to be presenting this work to encourage practitioners, to continue to grow in their own personal development and professional development, and to bring a new methodology that can truly be effective that can truly allow for a person to become sexually sovereign and thoroughly functional and thriving in the realm of sensuality and sexuality.

I hope that you I’ve answered the questions that you have about embodied psychosexuality. I invite you to visit www.EmbodiedPsychoSexualMethod.com and take a look at what the program looks like. If you want to be part of the program, the window’s kind of small (we begin November 12th!) so jump in!  After you complete the application, we’ll speak, you and I directly one-on-one. Let’s get you embodied and feeling confident in how you lead these conversations in your personal life, as well as for the women you serve in your business.

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Eradicating Gender Based Violence [or not?]

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Currently I’m in South Africa, discussing and exploring solutions to the growing GBV (Gender-Based Violence) problem. On November 27th, 2019, I had the honor to sit on a panel with incredible thought-leaders as a guest of Francesca Fondse of WIIN WOMEN (SABC Livestream).

The theme of this event was to examine the economic impact of GBV.  What was revealed was staggering: Using the 2 out of 10 women measurement, the economic impact equals 28 Billion Rand (nearly 2 Billion USD, to give context). Yet what was also shared was that the measurement was very conservative and that the numbers are closer to 8 out of 10 women (just over 7.6 Billion USD). That’s PER YEAR!!

One of the obvious questions was: Imagine what could be done for the people with that money? 

Considering that GBV activism was started 1991 and that we are currently facing a pandemic of violence (1 in 3 women will experience it in their lifetime), it’s shocking to recognize that nearly 3 decades of activism has had little impact in eradicating GBV. The bigger question I’ve been asking myself throughout this week is: Why? What are we missing?

To answer this, I want to share a personal story (trigger warning):

Many years ago, I had a spontaneous, vaginal infection that no one could cure. I went to all the natural remedies first, then gave into going to my doctor. But all she could do is tell me that it was nothing she’d ever seen before and give me a prescription that only helped for a week, then the painful symptoms were back.

In fact, it wasn’t until I shifted from my left brain of ‘doing everything I could’ to get rid of this nasty infection to stopping and allowing my right brain of ‘sensing what is true’ that I finally found the answer: radical self-acceptance.

You see, for 18 months I felt less than a woman because my vagina was not available (discovering this identity crisis was amazing in-and-of itself). I was so focused on ‘getting rid of’ the problem that I never once sat down to feel more deeply into my problem. However, once I did, I received a very clear message that the more I tried to get rid of my anger (showing up as inflammation in my body), the more intense my imbalance would get! Why? Because my anger was me!! And my psyche knew that I couldn’t get rid of me!! By finally stopping all the trying and doing, and allowing myself to deeply feel my body and embracing my anger as it was a part of me, I healed. In fact, 24 hours later, the incurable disease was gone and never returned.

Now, how does this apply to eradicating GBV? 

Sitting with the immensity of this pandemic situation and the excruciatingly painful realization that it’s only getting worse made me aware that we must be focusing on the wrong outcome!

GBV belongs to every single human being on the planet. It affects us all, whether we are aware of it or not. So how can we, as individuals, possibly affect change on a global scale?

When asked the opening question of what is the most successful strategy that I know of, my answer was simple: We must claim our body as our own. The path to body sovereignty isn’t simple, but it’s crucial as not a single charter of human rights clearly states that we have the right to our own body (sure we have the right to not be enslaved, but that’s different from the right to our own body). Our human collective has not yet accepted that we do indeed have this very obvious right: just look at the existence of over 14 million enslaved people, the trillion dollar business of the sex trade and the prevalence of abuse on all levels of society.

So what can we do? I believe the answers lies not in the eradication of GBV, but in its transformation.

Transforming GBV means moving from violence to respect. And this act first begins right here, with each of us transforming our own tendency to self-violation into self-respect. By owning our own shadow around our body and sexuality, we no longer partake in the denial which is only serving to propagate the violence.

Through claiming our body as our own and initiating radical stewardship of our sovereign space, we enter a more conscious, responsible relationship with ourselves. Which can then can be extended outwardly to others.

When we are embodied, present, and aware, we can sit and have the painful conversations needed to move the needle forward. We have greater capacity for curiosity and compassion, we become the living solution. We will no longer turn a blind eye to the abuse around us, we will interfere and bring to light the violence within our homes and community, and we will be willing to be held accountable for all the ways we personally contribute to the problem.

Now, can we do this? If after 3 decades of trying and things only getting worse, is it worth the effort to heal?

The answer is a whole-body, whole-spirited YES!

But it won’t come through blaming, shaming, and fighting AGAINST GBV, it will come through self-ownership, self-responsibility, and fighting for RESPECT of one another.

That said, I want to claim a radical goal: Transforming GBV by January 1st, 2021. What will it take? What can you do, right now, to make this real?

I intend to share more ideas in the coming months and would love to know your suggestions to transforming GBV by 2021, so leave me a comment below! If you enjoyed this article, please share it as the more of us who engage in this conversation, the more radical and lasting the transformation will be.
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Love: How We Can Have Longevity Through Evolutionary Coupling

I picked my friend up from the airport. He’d flown in to comfort me after my divorce. On the drive back to my house, I bitched to him about the shitty dates I’d had since being newly single. As always, he listened and offered his empathy in a gracious way.

We’d been friends for nearly two years, strictly platonic. Our connection was very honest, real, and held back no punches when need be. So it came to my immense surprise when we shared our first kiss later that same day of his arrival.

It wasn’t only a kiss. It was the cosmos opening up and infusing both of us with profound awe and deep awareness. However, it would still be a few weeks before we fully surrendered to the fact that we had truly met our match.

That was ten years ago.

We’ve had a huge journey. Many ups and downs and all-arounds. Yet what remains very true is that we cherish our evolutionary relationship, one where our love isn’t only devotional towards one another, but equally offered up as a devotion to love itself.

I share my story here because there are few living examples of what evolutionary love looks like—one where we feel seen intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually. It is from this place of embodied experience that I wish to share my stance on love.

Love is a calling.

To desire intimate relationship is a profound yearning for many of us. It’s one that can feel deeply vulnerable to admit to, whether we are single or partnered.

The call to love cannot be ignored. For some, it can actually be an obsession. I have many friends who, in their pursuit of this desire, feel thread-bare and wrung-out. et they still prevail, because the calling is stronger than the disappointment.

Love will ask everything of us.

When love does come, at first it plays a little trick on us. We are infused with PEA—the in-love hormone—and see life and our new partner with rose-colored glasses. It’s similar to how nature creates uber-cute babies as a preventative measure against the massive stress that new parents will face. We can only see the beauty in our partner in this phase, yet fairly quickly in, we must face the initiatory gate of love: all that is within us will need to be loved into wholeness, lest it interferes with the relationship.

This doesn’t mean that we need to be all sorted. In fact, I doubt we ever get to a place of ‘being sorted’. Instead, we have the opportunity to turn some of our awareness inwardly to address all the parts of us that yearn to be loved. It’s as though those unloved parts say: Oh good, love is in the house; maybe now we have a chance to be integrated.

We yearn for love, and we fear love. We know it’s the best thing ever and the most terrifying. Because of love, we can no longer hide in our patterns and habits. We must evolve.

This is why ‘normal’ relationships don’t work. We believe that our partner will change (into the potential we sense within them), and they don’t, while they believe that we will never change, and we do.

To love is to respect.

The word ‘love’ is confusing, since there seem to be a million and one ways to interpret it. So I prefer to use the word ‘respect’. If we say we love someone but don’t respect them, then we do not love them. We may have affection for them, but it’s not love. The same holds true towards ourselves. To love is to respect.

This is where ‘evolutionary’ relationship comes in. It’s the truth of the connection now, as well as the truth of the evolution of both individuals and their relationship. To evolve with another requires, at its foundation, respect. Without it, there’s no tenacity.

Love can be hijacked.

Love is one of the predominant inquiries of most of the women who train with me, and through hearing thousands of stories and questions about love, it has become clear to me that the pure impulse for love is often hijacked by social mandates and ideals about love.

It’s not uncommon for women to have long bullet-point lists about their perfect partner—an ideal that no human could live up to. Yet it’s not as common to understand the gifts we are bringing to a relationship, as well as what is and isn’t negotiable for us.

Most of us have learned about love by the way our parents loved each other. Let’s call that our first imprint of love. More often than not, we will choose the kind of love that resembles or is in complete opposition to what we learned. It isn’t until we separate out all the ideals and ideas of others on the topic of love that we will come face-to-face with what love truly means for us.

When we do this, we start to be more confident in our ability to create and participate in an evolutionary relationship. And when we love like this, not only do we change for the better, but our love also serves both those closest to us and our communities.

If love is in your heart, and you desire to create an evolutionary relationship, you’re invited to join my Song of Love – Creating An Evolutionary Relationship training. Click HERE to find out more! Because love is so individual, it would be fantastic to read your thoughts on the topic in the comment section below.

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Desire Song of Eros

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The presence of Eros is a sign of vitality and life, yet for many of us, we have a complicated relationship with it.

In this video (below) I explore the importance of this desire song, what can get in the way of it, and why we want to unlock this potent power within us.
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I’d love to know your thoughts on your own turn on and desire! On January 8th, I’m hosting an exclusive, first-time, in-depth exploration of this particular desire song. If understanding, harnessing and enjoying this part of your life is important to you, please come join us. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER (If the timing isn’t right, we will be recording this training and giving all participants access to the replay).
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Are Double Standards [about your body] Impacting Your Joy & Vitality?

It’s the holiday season, so it’s natural to indulge in all the stuff we normally wouldn’t consider eating (okay, maybe we secretly desire it, but let’s not admit that out loud). And then, we have the post-holiday-indulging hang-over and somehow all of our naughtiness doesn’t seem worth the pain.

To magnify our rising guilt, we become unpleasantly aware of that the beauty standards which we are immersed in haven’t miraculously shifted to include our new-found holiday fluff-factor. Actually, those impending standards suddenly appear even less attainable than before.

This double standard of you-are-free-to-indulge-all-you-want-so-why-not mixed with you-must-look-like-a-supermodel-or-else-you-won’t-be-lovable is a tough one to wrestle with, because behind this pendulum we find the presence of shame. When shame comes to the party, dissociation and numbing behaviors tend to follow suit. So of course, after all of this, our bodies protest and shut down. The real question is: What can we do about this right now?

Feeling bloated, tired, cranky and disheartened is not fun. The good news is, these states can be changed. Our bodies want to feel vibrant, balanced, joyous and creative, so how can we get there?

3 Steps To Igniting Body Confidence:

1. She’s a three year old. Yep. Our bodies are like kids. They love to play, to move, to be snuggled, to enjoy treats, and most importantly, to be adored. When we criticize or scold our body, she shuts down. The best way to counter negative self-talk is to come up with five reasons we love our body for every negative comment. Love your body like she’s your favorite three year old!

2. Occupying space. As odd as this seems, the more we can fully be in our body and also claim our physical space, the more our body can relax. Relaxation supports all the systems in our body to function more optimally. For some of us, this can be a foreign experience, so it’s best to start with baby steps. We can practice just noticing one part of our body for even just a few minutes per day. Each day, moving our awareness to a new part of our body will slowly lead us to have a more embodied experience of ourselves. Notice where you are in space and how much you are filling your personal space.

3. Listen with curiosity. All the yucky ways (and pleasurable ways) we feel speaks to having a dynamic relationship with ourselves. We can do this by noticing how we feel after we eat or drink something. If we feel more alive and energized (and sensual), then we know we are giving our body what she needs. However, if we feel more tired, cranky, or shutdown, then the ‘juice isn’t worth the squeeze’—whatever it might be, it’s not enhancing our vitality and it’s best to avoid it in the future. Practice hearing, deciphering, and following your body’s messages.

To feel good in our body, we actually need to give our body what she needs to thrive. These are simple things: enough rest, exercise, good nutrition, fresh air, and pleasure (yes, pleasure is key to maintaining our ideal weight, for example).

And this is something best done with the support of others, because shame will only grow more in isolation. By choosing to make feeling amazing from the inside out, our priorities change.

Wellness, aliveness and vibrancy are the result of dynamic living. This means to being prepared for our needs to change. I have eaten almost every style of ‘diet’ there is available, each time being dedicated to truly heeding the messages of my body and following her wisdom. If I had been attached to the ‘ideal’, I would have missed the opportunity to follow my body’s wisdom. By listening, and sometimes dramatically changing how I eat (like going from being vegetarian to eating meat), my body is able to be her most vibrant self.

If you’d love to learn more about how to relate with your body with more delight and confidence, then I’d love for you to consider my in-depth Body Confidence training. This is not an easy topic to address, yet leaving it in the shadow doesn’t actually improve our situation. We get to choose to feel amazing and we can create a lifestyle where this is fun, easy and effective. I’d love to know how you feel about your own body and the possibility of having a benevolent, loving relationship with her.

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What is your pain or discomfort trying to tell you?

“He will leave me if we can’t have sex, but I’m in so much pain, I really can’t”.

“I’m confused by my recurring issues with my vagina, it seems like there’s always something wrong and I really just want to relax and feel good.”

“I feel ashamed by the changes in my body. I just want to be orgasmic, why is it so hard?”

No matter what the complaint is, the truth behind all of them is that when our body isn’t well, we feel betrayed and frustrated.

Yet when our body is in a state of imbalance, it’s attempting to speak to us. the problem is two-fold: we don’t know how to listen nor do we understand what is being said.

Recently, in interviewing a leading Ob-Gyn about women and sexual health, she stated that there is always a psychological connection with every issue.

This affirmed what I already discovered over 10 years ago when writing up my PhD: we are psycho-sexual beings.

This means that what we think and believe is not separate from our body.

Now although this can be an intriguing idea, how is it useful when we are suffering from on-going sexual imbalances?

Personally, I healed my vagina of an ‘incurable’ imbalance. The truth was that I was in pain, I couldn’t have sex, I thought my partner would leave me, and I couldn’t find the answer through alternative and traditional medicine alike!

I was left with only one option—go within and listen.

So I did. But that was not enough. I needed to trust what I was hearing and act accordingly. And what was afflicting me for 1.5 years healed overnight, never to reoccur again.

Since that moment, I became well aware of the immense power we each have to heal ourselves and to bring imbalances back into vibrant wellbeing.

3 Keys To Getting To Know Our Psycho-Sexual Self:

1. Contemplate that it’s possible. I have witnessed incredible transformation for women who were willing to consider the idea that their body was just simply misbehaving and that there may indeed be a deeper learning available through the imbalance.

2. Admit what is obvious. This can be as simple as “I’m in pain” or “I’m angry” or “I’m scared”. Through being able to ‘get real’ with ourselves, we are able to orient ourselves to the actual current reality we are experiencing. For example: I’m feeling like I’m getting a bladder infection. I must be pissed off. Oh! I am pissed off. 

3. Take action. Using the above example: I drink a few liters of water, own my anger, and apply tea tree diluted in coconut oil to the opening of my urethra. These are steps that I know work for interrupting a bladder infection. Action is normally pretty clear, the problem is that most of us don’t really want to face what we need to face to actually heal. 

By being willing to fully embody our sovereign space (our physical body) and to meet what is emerging for us with as much courage as we can muster is an act of deep self-respect and self-love.

There’s no need to suffer unnecessarily or for prolonged periods of time. It may require of us to put on our ‘big girl’ panties and face reality. Good. It’s time we take our own power back into our own hands. We may have to have temporary discomfort, but it will be worth it in the long run.

The impact of shifting our perception from victim (things that happen to us) to sexually sovereign (states of being that we move through) cannot be underestimated.

If learning to hear and heed the messages from your body is important to you, I’d love to invite you to consider exploring my Your Yoni Never Lies Deep Dive video training.  

I always love to hear directly from my readers, so feel free to leave me a comment or question in the comments section below.