Keywords

relationship dynamics childbirth quality interactions consent emotional needs somatics embodiment sovereignty stress fatigue grounding exercises self-care personal passions resentment energy leaks boundaries parenting accountability personal development relational issues mediation self-awareness mindfulness body awareness sensory input grief pleasure societal norms validation disembodiment childhood experiences external approval miscarriage

 

Transcript:

Speaker 0

Have you ever wondered, am I bad at receiving? Have you ever asked yourself, when I give to my spouse, is it actually to satisfy them, or is it to satisfy me? Are you someone who struggles to engage socially without some sort of performance or shtick? In this episode, I'm joined by Whitney Lowry, an embodiment facilitator who has supported hundreds of women and couples in getting them back into connection with their bodies, their needs, and each other. On this little journey, you're going to learn what it means to feel safe and at ease in your body, how you can be better at receiving, how to discern if what you're receiving is something you actually really asked for in the first place, and why your spouse or any partner for that matter isn't actually responsible for your happiness. Thanks for joining me on Born to Know, the podcast that brings you conversations with experts and thought leaders in every field to peel back the layers of this epic world we live in and see where choice really resides for each of us every day. We are all born to know and to live as our most authentic and liberated selves. Whitney, I'm so happy to have you here with me. This is such a pleasure for me. I've been looking forward to this conversation, like, for years, but, you know, I know we're just starting this project, but for years, I've been looking forward to it. Ever since we started working together, I had the pleasure of of working with you one on one and really going through a big transformation myself. So I'm super excited to have you here. You're an embodiment facilitator, and I would love to start out with what embodiment is. How would you define that? Yeah. So first of all, 

 

Speaker 1

 

I love being here with you, so thank you for having me. But I would just define embodiment as a connection to your body. Feeling in connection with your body in this moment. 

 

Speaker 0

 

How would someone be able to identify, like, in this moment that they're embodied or disembodied? Like, what are some signals that one might see or feel? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. So as I'm sitting here, I can feel my feet pressing into the floor. I can feel my butt pressing into the yoga blocks and the cushion that I'm sitting on. I can feel my tailbone and kind of repositioning. So I'm a little more on my sit bones rather than putting the weight on my tailbone. I can feel that I was restricting my breath just a little bit, listening to you and talking to you, and feeling a little bit of warmth or what we call maybe some little bit of charge in my face. Just getting ready to come on and speak and hang out, feeling like some aliveness kind of whoosh up to my face. So it's just my ability to sense all of that and notice it. 

 

Speaker 0

 

What might be a sign that someone's not, like, sensing these things? Right? Because just as you were speaking, I was imagining, like, going into certain situations. Like, you walk into someone's home and they're having maybe a gathering at their house and, you know, you feel that kind of like, most people say, you know, can't wait to go inside and get a drink. Right? Like, most people are already noticing that something doesn't feel quite settled. And rather than, like, taking the time to identify where that those feelings are coming from or what that sensation is in the body, they they look for something to kinda, like, would you say, like, suppress it or or support it, which is typically like alcoholic beverage, I guess, for some people? Yeah. 

 

Speaker 1

 

I think that it can fall on the spectrum. So some people are gonna be so numb that they wouldn't even notice, so disconnected that they wouldn't even notice the charge. And we're numb for a reason. A lot of a lot of the times, it's just a coping mechanism to help us push on through the day, endure the tasks that we have at hand. It it helps us actually get certain things done and achieve, which is one of the biggest fears that a lot of people have when they start becoming embodied because there are some adjustments that need to be made as you start noticing and feeling yourself a lot more and how you're doing certain tasks. And there's a fear of, well, if I don't stay numb and completely detached from how my body feels about this thing that I'm doing, then I'm not gonna get nearly as much done throughout the day. So showing up, going to a friend's house, we might numb out in that situation because of a lot of different reasons. How we feel around other people, the dynamics that are at play, and how we relate with other human beings. You know, a lot might be coming up for us in that moment, and it might feel better to just check out and numb out and stay in a in a head space where we can just talk and be quite disconnected from all the charge that we're feeling. On the other side of the spectrum, it might be overwhelming the amount of sensation that we're feeling. You'll hear a lot of people say like, I'm really, really sensitive. Well, often what they mean when they say that is that their sensitivity and their ability to manage their sensitivity isn't really balanced. And so they don't know how to, as you said, support. Right? It's rather supporting the charge rather than suppressing the charge. So if I walk into a friend's house and I notice that I have a lot of charge come up in my body and being around a lot of people for the first time in a while, maybe I just have a lot of stress going on at work and there are other things I need to be doing. You know, it could be a lot of different reasons where we have charge come up. My ability to notice it, feel my feet, take a breath, feel the back of my body. I might even squeeze my butt cheeks just to, like, wake up a little bit of sensation there. And notice that maybe I need to go to the bathroom. As soon as I walk in the house to just stand and like breathe and move my body a little bit and help my body land in the space and adjust. Let out a couple of good sounds, move some of the charge around so that I feel that I'm supported, I'm nourishing my nervous system, I'm taking care of myself. And then when I feel more centered and more grounded, I can go back out into the party. Rather than walking into the party and immediately starting to drink alcohol, which is a depressant, and it I'm I'm doing as a way to depress my nervous system, which is on some level instinctual. We know that we know to do that. We know that when we're feeling really tired to reach for the tea or the coffee or the sugar, you know, like we know these things to wake up our system or to relax our system. But we can also use nervous system tools and embodiment exercises to wake ourselves up, to upregulate, or to calm ourselves down, to downregulate. I like to call it, like, coffee and chamomile tea for that reason. It just helps people kind of grasp it. But knowing how to meet yourself in that moment. What's like the benefit of having a 

 

Speaker 0

 

more embodied experience? Because when I've talked to people about this practice, they're like, wow. It seems like it takes a lot of effort, and it takes a lot of time. Right? It takes a lot of effort, and it takes a lot of time. And, like, really, what am I getting out of it? You know? And my answer and so I'm curious. So curious to know what you'd have to say. My answer is, like, will I feel more connected? And I don't end up feeling exhausted or resentful after the situation because I never really, like, abandoned myself. So if I do a practice before entering we're gonna use the example of entering the the house with the party. If I do a practice before going in and and grounding myself and consciously not hugging and, you know, kissing everyone on the cheek, which is actually what I don't like to do. And I always would just do it because it was like the social norm in my culture and family. And so now as an adult, I just I'm grounded enough and I feel my body enough that I just don't do it. And I, like, can create enough spaciousness so that when I greet them, I can connect with them without having to engage in a physical practice with other people that I don't wanna do. And so then later, I feel actually more energized not having, like, betrayed myself in that moment and, like, exchanged intimate energy with people that I don't wanna do that with. So for me, the benefit is, like, I feel like I'm high fiving myself and I'm not exhausted later. 

 

Speaker 1

 

I would say more choice in in how you are is the the primary reason that I like to give when people ask that question. More choice in how you are. Because otherwise, you're just moving on autopilot and relying all on old default dynamics. And you're probably saying yes when you wanna say no, and you're saying no when you wanna say yes out of fear of punishment if you honor your body and yourself. And then also, when you have more choice in how you are, let's say I notice that when I walk in, I have a lot of charges come up. Maybe a lot of fear come up about how there's somebody at the party that I don't really wanna be around or something. If if all I have is the somatic awareness of noticing the fear in my body, that's great. That kind of level of mindfulness and awareness is, is wonderful. But if you don't know how to dance with it and how to even shift it into what you want to feel, then you you're unlikely to feel like you have a lot of power and choice in your life. That you're just kind of having to, you get swept up in a feeling and wash down river. And then what can happen is you can start to isolate more because you don't really wanna be around other people because you you don't know how to work with how you feel around other people. Or you start to drink more and rely on a lot of these coping mechanisms around parties so that you can kind of just not deal with all of that stuff. So I would say more choice in how you are and that of course has a lot of implications. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. More choice in how you are is, you know, you become a more sovereign being. I think, like, over the years, what I've come to notice in my work is that everyone wants to feel more free, and everyone's trying to figure out how to get there. And you brought up a juicy word. You said punishment. And my next question was actually gonna be about pleasure. And so I think the two are, like, inextricable. They're so interwoven, pleasure and punishment. But I would really like to dive in to what pleasure means, you know, and I personally, I think in working with you, or I feel and I know that in working with you, I rediscovered pleasure. And I say rediscovered because I feel that I did have it, like, as as an infant, you know, as a baby, as a fetus, like, it's just pure love. It's just pure receptivity. We're just receiving all the time. And that's how we're born 

 

Speaker 1

 

in 

 

Speaker 0

 

a state of receptivity. And we slowly get, like, organized, I guess, and corralled into social norms and expectations and structures that start to create the polarity of pleasure and punishment and, you know, reward. We go into all these intricate black and white spaces as we get older. And so I'd say, you know, at one point, I lost pleasure, that freedom and that carefree sensation that you get from like, you know, eating an ice cream. Right? Because suddenly, you know, you can only have the ice cream if you do the other thing first. And so it just didn't feel good anymore to eat the ice cream. I was like, oh, I gotta, like, eat all this, you know, other food in order to have this one thing. I still want the thing anymore, and it's just not fun. It doesn't feel good. And now I'm only eating ice cream because I was allowed to do this, and I only ate the thing in the first place because it would make my mom happy. So now it's so complicated. And so pleasure becomes almost for me, I reflected on it and pleasure almost became like a thing that I had to jump through so many hoops to get and I just, like, kinda gave up. And so in rediscovering pleasure, it was such a journey for me because I realized how simple it was and that I just had to peel back a lot of layers, you know, a lot of belief systems about, like, how I could get it. And when I realized that I could just have it all the time and everything I do can actually be super pleasurable, whether it's like a a task or a chore or an exercise or something that somebody would normally coin as boring or tedious. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Right? 

 

Speaker 0

 

Like, I realized that I could actually feel pleasure in everything. And then we have the whole, like, sociocultural filter of pleasure being taboo or wrong or, I don't know, kind of like hidden in the shadows. But I think we misunderstand what pleasure means, you know? And so I would love to hear how you define pleasure and, you know, you help us help us all redefine it. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. I think that when people come to this work, whether they're coming in because they want more pleasure and they wanna learn some pleasure practices or they hear the word eroticism and that kinda sounds exciting and thrilling, my sense of it is that it's all just about adding to your aliveness. So what you do to add to your aliveness. Pleasure has a purpose. So if you look at a lot of the foods that are the most pleasurable to us, foods that are rich in color, foods that are rich in flavor, those also happen to be higher in nutrition. You know, now, and of course, we can get into all the things that we add to other types of foods to to mimic this process, but things that we find pleasurable are often really good for us. Being in the sun, walking around barefoot, experiencing a really good hug, you know, listening to music, dancing, just like the feeling of adjusting how we're washing the dishes so that our lower back is more comfortable and we're not kind of absent mindedly, like hunched over washing the dishes in a way that's actually putting strain on our body because we're holding our weight in places where we're gonna cause injury. So pleasure is a way to take care of not only our animal body, but also our mind and our and our heart and our spirit. So it's a way that we honor and nourish the the whole being. It's definitely not just about what happens in the bedroom, which is what we've compartmentalized it into. 

 

Speaker 0

 

What do you think people gain from assigning suffering to the things that they do? Right? I didn't wanna get into the victim just yet, but I I wonder why it serves people to feel like work can't be pleasurable or a task can't be pleasurable. Cleaning their house simply just couldn't be pleasurable. Why do you think that that would serve someone? Yeah. I mean, is there you think there's a motive underneath that? 

 

Speaker 1

 

I think one of the things can be negative associations with pleasure, that that everybody pretty much has to comes to terms with. So when you distill a lot of these things down, and we'll talk about the different sentences or words that people might use. But when you reduce them down to the fear underneath it, it's often I'm gonna be punished for being in pleasure. Because usually there was something you did as a child that was fun for you that got you into trouble. You know, maybe you're you were the kid that was sitting there looking outside the window while you were at school under artificial lighting all day long, sitting perfectly still, which is, you know, totally natural for a child. You know, that's definitely what children should be doing all day long, is sitting perfectly still and being silent, unless the teacher points to you and then demands that you know what she's asking you off the top of your head. Yeah. That's definitely very natural. That's what other animals are doing for sure. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. Sitting for eight hours straight at a desk. Totally. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Of course when you looked outside and it was sunny and there were flowers and you want to go play on the playground and you got up to initiate that movement, I'm sure that was rewarded. I'm sure you were told, yeah, go outside, like, listen to your body. Go outside, move your body, play. I'm sure that's what happened. No, of course not. You know? You're told how many times a day you can pee before it's disruptive. You're told you have to sit here and ignore what your body wants because what your body wants is nothing more than inconvenient information that's gonna get you in trouble. If you follow through on it, you're gonna get punished. And then if you pay attention to it, it's just painful. It just it just hurts to to know what you want and to not be able to have it and to not be able to get it. And to even feel that it makes you bad because it's wrong that you want it. And then you show up thirty years later to a pleasure coach and you're like, I don't know why I don't feel connected to my desires. I don't know why, I'm so confused about what I want and what I like and what interests me and what hobbies seem interesting. Yeah. It's like, it's it's not it's not a personal problem. It's a collective problem. So we've been taught through programming and conditioning, and everyone's lives look different. You can you can be homeschooled and have your own story. But no matter what, it usually comes back to pleasure was bad. For some reason, you got punished when you did the thing that you wanted to do, reach for the cookie, eat when you wanted to eat, go outside when you wanted to go outside, you know, put on a certain outfit and dance around the house. Like, there were certain activities that were just not okay for you. And then, if if you lived in a household where your sense of worth and your ability to receive love and respect was pretty dependent on you achieving certain goals, making certain grades, participating in certain activities, then there were definitely rewards and incentives for you doing things that you might not have been all that interested in. But your ability to receive love and respect was dependent upon you doing those things. So playing sports that you didn't really care about, being really good in subjects that you didn't really care about. And so you start to shape an identity that's based on not what adds to your aliveness, but is all about earning a hug, earning love, earning attention, earning affection. And so the wires can get a bit cross there. And in order to do those things that again, you're not all that interested in, that don't really add to your aliveness, you need to be able to cultivate a high capacity to endure discomfort. You need to be able to push through all of your discomfort, which I believe we are sensitive for a reason. That sensitivity exists to help us course correct and come back into alignment with our with our minds and hearts, and spirits and souls, whenever your belief system is there. And it's like follow the breadcrumbs back, you know, to what adds to your aliveness. But when you have a really high capacity for pushing through, for leaning into the discomfort, for leaning into the hard, for going even harder, going even bigger, then you're carrying around a belief that what you want is wrong. So you've gotta focus on what other people tell you you should want because they're right. Just remember you were wrong. You were taught that you were wrong and they were right. And so this develops into a grown woman who doesn't have a whole lot of internal attunement, doesn't trust herself and what she likes and she's interested in, and is constantly looking outside of herself to be told what she should be interested in. 

 

Speaker 0

 

What's interesting and comes up for me is, like, I I think of where do we draw the line? Because sometimes we wanna accomplish something, and we push ourselves even though there's you know, we it's what I what you've called, what you taught me was an edge practice, right? Where it's like, I'm uncomfortable with this, but I I know that it's expanding my capacity to do more of what I want. So I I push the edge. And so how do we know? Right? Because, like, I played a lot of sports growing up and had a lot of fun playing sports. And my mom was always like, you wanna try that? Okay. So I was on the diving team for a while. And I was like, you can try swimming. You wanna swim team? Did gymnastics for six years. I played basketball for four years, and then I played volleyball for a very long time. And so she always supported my interests. And I remember when I got to volleyball, I really wanted to be good at it because I felt so much pleasure in, like, winning, you know. And I'd get uncomfortable. Right? My body would get tired, and I would say, like, no. Let's, like, we're get we're gonna win. And like, I never felt in those moments that I was self betraying. I felt that I was just getting closer to what I wanted by working harder. So how can someone tell the difference between, you know, pushing their edge to get what they want and then actually just like overriding their system and kind of self abusing. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. It takes some time of noticing yourself so that you can discern. So it's gonna take a little buffer of time of noticing the sensations that you experience leading up to that event, during that event, and after that event, and just tracking yourself. Because there's nothing wrong with with pushing. It's just when someone's living a life where they're pushing all day in their career, they're they're just constantly, constantly pushing. Pushing through discomfort has a purpose, and and we need that ability. But when we start to live that way all of the time, we usually have a lot of tension in our tissues because we need to harden ourselves and lean forward. And and that very act is kind of embracing. Like, you can feel it when you, like, push into a wall. You know, there's a lot of tension from your face, your jaw, down the front of you. Your breath is held and sucked in. Your pelvic floor muscles are pulled up and tightened. And a lot of people are living like that all day long. That's what I wanna call into question. If you wanna expand into something, if there's, like, a new skill that you wanna learn, like, let's say that you really wanna learn dancing right now. Like, I'm starting to get back into partner dancing. It's it's a big edge for me. When I go to do that thing, there is gonna be a certain level of discomfort that I need to push through because your brain is always gonna wanna keep you exactly as you are. Whatever that status quo is right now, your brain has a very little interest in you expanding, you know. A lot of people who are into neuroplasticity, a lot of neuroscientists will talk about the difference between surviving and thriving. So your brain wants you to survive. One, it's because the terrain that you're in right now, your brain knows that terrain. That terrain is familiar. It knows how to keep you alive. It can keep you alive in the Savannah. The, the moment you drop yourself in the middle of the jungle, your brain has no idea how to keep you alive there. And it will do everything in its power to try to get you to go back to the savanna. So we will talk about this in terms of inner criticism. The inner critic will get really loud. Intrusive thoughts will become incessant. You know, every catastrophic worst case scenario you can imagine. You'll be inundated with these images and these thoughts because your brain is trying to get you back over into the savanna. So knowing how to dance with that, how to navigate with that, and know that it's just a part of the process. And then, okay, yeah, I know that my brain wants me to to not dance, to not show up to these to these partner dances because it's a new thing that I've gotta learn And that's energetically expensive. Your brain really wants to conserve energy and now you're gonna learn this whole new language and put in a lot of effort over there. It doesn't really see the reward for that. So we we need to be able to navigate some of some of the discomfort that's gonna be in our heads, and we're gonna feel the impact of that in our bodies. But there's also just a a fair bit of charge that's gonna come up as I show up and I start dancing with people. Fears about being bad, being rejected, you know, looking, stupid and silly, being unfeminine compared to the other women. Like, all of my stuff is gonna come up in those spaces. So it would be easy to show up into those places, feel that discomfort and say, okay, this isn't, this isn't pleasurable. Ergo, I should stop because I've always wanted to be a dancer and to get really good at dancing, but because I'm showing up to this practice and it's not immediately pleasurable, then it's not adding to my aliveness. I don't like it and I wanna quit. So that's a problem because no matter what you choose to do when you're starting to step into more pleasure, there's gonna be a fair amount of discomfort that you need to wade through. Because again, your women usually are going from working all the time, mothering all the time, very little time for themselves to spending some time with themselves, whether it's taking a painting class or dancing or whatever. So all of their fears, all of their stuff about pleasure is gonna come up when they start going into that, into that space and learning how to, how to be with that, how to be with that in their bodies and support themselves through that. And reduce the friction as much as possible. We call it micro dosing. It's also referred to as titration. But if I wanna dance, how can I ease myself in into that so that I'm more likely to keep going? How can I get a tiny win so that I can keep going? Well, I can find some footwork drills to do at home. If I wanna learn tango, I found a coach I can work with online in the comfort of my home. I don't have to even show up anywhere. No one has to see me. I can work with her once a week and then do a lot of footwork drills and send her videos via Telegram in between. That's a great, like, tiny place to start so that I can allow my nervous system to experience something that's edgy, that's a bit scary, and then stabilize in that because it's calibrated and controlled. I'm appropriately challenging myself as I want to expand into something that I really want in my life. I wanna dance more. If though, I don't microdose, I don't titrate and I just show up to a practice session and walk out on the dance floor with a whole bunch of people who are much better than me, more experienced, I I haven't really danced with a man in a long time, that's probably gonna be an overwhelming experience. And it might be likely that I I don't really stick with it. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. That's so important. Well, it does. I I I so I recognize that how we know the difference between self betraying, you know, enduring through things we don't actually wanna do and then titrating into something new that's uncomfortable is really seeing how we feel afterwards. I mean, that's a big indicator for me. Right? Do I feel depleted? Do I feel resentful? Do I feel excited? So I guess just noticing how you feel afterward, and then also knowing that anything new we wanna do may not feel pleasurable at first because our brain is trying to return us to, you know, what we know and what's kept us safe and adapting for so long. So I guess those are the two ways to know. I I went as you were talking, I was thinking of, you know, an experience I had because I went to a school that required all the children to do performing arts, musical theater. It's just part of the deal. And I remember it was like sixth grade, and I was in the front row, and I was singing and dancing, but I was doing the opposite steps. Like I was like, it's like the right foot was going while everybody's left was going. And I was like, embarrassed I was called out by the choreographer and like embarrassed in front of everyone. And it was like, if you can't do this, you will go to the back row. And I was like, I thought we were having fun. Like, I thought this was supposed to be fun. You know, like, that and so then I went to the back row, and like, I never wanted to participate in that, you know, lose ritual again. And so I, you know, in my thirties, about four years ago, I was like, you know, I wanna, like, be done with that story that, like, I only dance if I am if the conditions are right or something. Or, like, I can I only I can't dance around anyone because, you know, I have to have a substance or I have to, you know, have certain conditions in order to do it? I was like, I just wanna I just wanna go to a dance class and be in the front row and, like, feel good. You know? Wanna be in a room full of women in the front row and just, like, see myself in the mirror and, like, experience the collective energy and then also, like, the energy running through me as an individual and, like, what's wrong with that? So I started by doing choreography at home alone. And then eventually, I recorded myself so I could watch myself, which is really hard to do. I could watch myself on a video even though no one was around. And I realized I'd been avoiding this because it reminded me of all of the experiences that were, like, compounded after that one traumatic experience, you know, in musical theater. And so that's, like, what I alchemized there. And then eventually, I'd say almost like eight months later after starting that practice, I, you know, was going to group classes with all women, and then I got to the front row. And then I feel like I reached, you know, at my peak moment when the teacher and instructor asked if I could dance behind her while she videoed herself for her YouTube channel. I didn't wanna be on YouTube dancing, but the fact that she asked me to be there, like, I don't know. It's like I I know that I had to work so hard to rewrite my story. It took pretty much a year, and I did. You know? But I didn't I didn't want to, and I had to titrate in. I had to do it in small steps. First at home alone, then online, then recording myself, then eventually going to the dance class, being in the back row. After a month, I went to the middle row and then the other middle row and then finally got to the front and it was a a big completion for me. And so, you know, all of these things can be so alchemizing for these past experiences. Right? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. I I think of in Betty Martin's book, The Art of Giving and Receiving, she refers to it as the principle of contradiction. So it's it's recalling a certain experience, but then contradicting the what happened last time. So, you know, with you, you you had a an experience that contradicted what happened to you the first time. At this time, the teacher gave you praise and celebrated you, whereas the first time, the opposite of that. And Betty Martin talks about how if you were, let's say, someone whose needs have never really been heard, speaking your needs to someone who can sit, hear them, and honor them will contradict the fears in your head telling you like, if I do this, it means this. If I do this, this thing is gonna happen because at some point it did. So if I have a fear of, you know, my sagging breasts and cellulite, But if I stand in front of someone who can see my sagging breasts and my cellulite and say that I'm beautiful and praise them and celebrate them. And maybe I even drag my sagging breasts across their body and we have some fun and we just bring it all out into the open. But I met with love and appreciation. That experience is gonna contradict what might've happened to me in the past. But we do this slowly and microdose it so that your body can actually process it. You can actually take it in and receive it and feel it and be with it so that you can overwrite that original experience. So that it's no longer, you know, in control of you. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. That's really powerful. I I remember getting introduced to her work as part of my home play that you assigned me. And, you know, it was yeah. It was pretty revolutionary for me to start to become aware of my motivations behind wanting to give to someone. And I became you know, there's many principles she introduces, but let's go to the basic one. My motivations behind wanting to give, My motivations were really because I wanted to receive the pleasure of seeing someone receive what I'm giving, you know. And then I became really aware that I had a hard time receiving, which this is like one of the main themes with the women that I that I coach and and teach in varying degrees. Right? But just could not receive. Like, as soon as someone was giving me something, I was already, like, strategizing as to how I could repay them. And I know one of the practices that you and I did together was, like, just on my own. In my room, by myself, could I actually give my arm pleasure by just doing really soft touch for an extended period of time before, you know, I started bringing in those other voices that were like, okay, but now what? Okay, but what's next? Okay, but you've been doing this for too long. Okay. You know, so just allowing those to come in and leave. And so when I could actually, like give my arm pleasure for ten minutes without telling stories, I started to titrate into what it is to receive something. It had nothing to do with anybody else. And this is what I always like shout from the roof tops is that a pleasure practice doesn't have to involve another human being or really any extravagant tools or situations. It doesn't even really require any money. You just have to be able to sit with your own body, you know, and even, like, listening to something. Right? Like, listening to the Quran or listening to an educational podcast. Like, can I receive this information without jumping forward into the future to plan out my day? Or can I receive this information without figuring out all of the benefit that it's giving me? Can I just receive it for what it is, the sound, the teaching? Can I let it land in my body? You know, can I receive it? And so there's a membership that I'm running called the sovereign women circle, and the main theme that just keeps coming up is that everyone's like, you know, I don't know how to receive this. Like, my husband wants to contribute to this, but if I don't contribute financially, I feel like I'm not pulling my weight. I can't receive his support. You know, It comes up in so many ways. And so why do you think, collectively, we have such a hard time receiving, maybe as women, maybe men too, you know, in various situations. But what what's that about, And how can we start to shift that in small ways? How can we tie trade in? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. So two things come up immediately as you're saying that. And and one is make sure that when you say, I'm bad at receiving or I can't receive, that you're actually receiving what you want. Because we'll talk we'll talk in a minute. We'll talk in a minute about what happens when you are receiving what you want and you can't take it in. That's a that's a separate issue. But first, I I wanna make this first point because a lot of people when they say I'm bad at receiving, will you help me get better at surrendering and receiving? What they're really saying is, will you help me get better at liking something I don't like? 

 

Speaker 0

 

That's good. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Will you help me get better at will you help me get better at, like, enduring this thing or liking something that isn't all that interesting to me? And it happens with with men and and women where in order to preserve attachment, we think that we need to start to like this thing that our lover is doing to us because we want love. We want connection. And they seem to like to do this thing to us. And but notice I'm not saying doing it for us because who is it for? That's Betty's like primary question. Who is this thing for? Who's this touch for? Who's this action for? Who's the gift for? And what I've seen a lot with couples, couples have been together for decades. They show up and they start doing this touch work. And let's say like, let's say my partner has been touching my breasts for a certain way for fifteen years. And it will come up in a session that they'll finally realize that he's been touching her breasts that particular way thinking that it was for her because maybe she liked it one day and said so. But she's been giving him the access to her body and access to her breasts thinking that the touch was for him. So he thought it was for her. She thought it was for him. It was for no one. So in that situation, no one is giving and no one is receiving. So let's just be clear about that. Make sure when you say I'm bad at receiving, you're actually receiving what you want. What would be a gift for you to receive in that moment? Because if, if that's not what's happening, then it's just something being done to you. You know? But it's not necessarily a gift. And if it's not a gift, then you don't need to worry about receiving it and taking it in. So we might wanna go down. I don't know if you wanna go down on that further before I talk about the other thing, which is not being able to take in what you want. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. We can we can go a little bit deeper into that before we go into receiving not receiving what we want. 

 

Speaker 1

 

I'm just curious, like, in the conversations that you're having with the women in your community, how do you think that might apply? Like, women trying to get better at going along with what's happening rather than asking themselves, am I receiving what I truly want? And clarifying with him because he may think that he's giving a gift, you know, it's like clarifying who's this for. 

 

Speaker 0

 

I think it's a combination. I mean, there's a particular member who well, there's a few actually who feel that because their husbands don't provide or give, they have to step up and receive very minimal support, you know, and they have to, like, penetrate more financially, for example, contribute more financially because if they don't do it, nobody else will, you know. And so they think that it's, you know, making him happy because, you know, he's not stepping up to provide the thing. And so there's that, and then there's also women who, you know, will participate in certain certain family activities or participate in certain activities in general that they think the husband really wants them to participate in because he always plans them. And so now I'm wondering, is he planning them because he thinks that the wife likes them? And is she only going because she thinks the husband likes it and that everybody is just miserable? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yes. Like, it is highly likely that is exactly what is happening. And that's and that's what people realize in these sessions is how long someone has been putting energy and effort and even financial investment into so called giving their person something only to find out years down the road that not only is that not something that their person wants to receive, but that they actually resent them for doing it. And that can be really heartbreaking for a lot of people who think that they're showing up in service, and they're they're they're doing something, like, really loving and nourishing and nurturing and showing up and saying, I see you, I value you, I want you, and I love you, and here you go. Only to find out years later that the person has resented every single moment of that activity and and that thing. So it can be really painful. And it's why I ask people to just, when it comes to dinner tonight, when it comes to whatever activities are planned for this weekend, just start to clarify. Who's this for? Is this for you or is this for me? Because that can start to nip some of these dynamics in the bud. It doesn't just happen in the bedroom. It can be really helpful to start practicing some of these things outside of the bedroom, actually, because the bedroom is the most charged, intense, you know, arena to practice certain things. But just start to get some clarity because especially couples in long term relationships, they make a lot of assumptions. Actually, couples who have only been together for a shorter amount of time make less assumptions and are better at clarifying and checking in with the other person. But couples who've been together for a long time make a lot of assumptions. And they're the ones who could who could benefit from the work the most, which is always kind of funny because Betty's work is all about consent. You know, that's like the language that people use it or use it with a lot is consent, consent, consent. And that language doesn't resonate with people in long term relationships because they think like, oh, no. That's just where when, like, you're dating and you you wanna make sure that you don't sexually assault anyone. No. No. That's that's not applicable to us. But it's not. It's so much deeper than that. And people in long term relationships are not getting consent right at all. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Oh, absolutely. I mean, agreements and contracts are not even something that's touched on, you know, like you did the wedding contracts, like most people don't even read it. It's just like a generic download from the Internet, and then then they think that's it. You know, it's and that's how resentment builds and people go into autopilot. I have a few women over the years that, you know, as we process their birth trauma, we end up kind of reverse engineering back to dynamics in their marriage. And one of them, I remember, said to me that, like, everything in the bedroom was really, like, nothing like, the the all the things that occurred between them were things that she never really was into, but she knew that he was really into it. And she actually expressed him a few times like that doesn't feel good, and he'd kind of ease off, but then would continue to find another avenue to try to get the same thing. And so I wonder in those situations, like, when there's one person who's trying to step into having a conversation around consent and doesn't really know how, and then the other person is completely, I don't know, in their own world, you know, the partner, like how does one handle that? Like without getting an intermediary or something, like, you know, what's what's the process? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. So in Betty's language, that's stealing. Right? It's like when you're trying to to steal from someone because taking something is when there's full consent, we're in agreement. But when someone keeps pushing past the boundary like that, that is that is stealing. And that can exist for a multitude of reasons as far as, like, dynamics that come from their childhood and what they've learned they must do in order to get their needs met and what they might even feel entitled to. And I'm I might kind of sidetrack the conversation, but it's bringing up a point that I feel like is kind of interesting to this idea of of giving and generosity. And what I see with a lot of women is they show up to this work thinking that they're the superior one because they're so generous. And I say that in air quotes because they're not actually being generous at all. They're giving and again, maybe not. They haven't really confirmed a lot of the time if they're what they're doing for their for their person to the person is actually a gift for them. But it's a lot of sacrificing for the family, sacrificing for the marriage, self betraying. But here's the problem, that's not generosity, that's not giving. Because to give a gift, first of all, you have to be a happy yes to giving. Which immediately eliminates most of this so called giving that these humans are doing. What they're doing usually is they're constantly doing to other people or for other people because they believe that they'll be punished if they say no They don't actually feel like they have a choice in whether or not they are in service to other people So they feel that they must do those things in order to preserve attachment. So that's not true generosity. The reason I pointed out is because it can lead to a real sense of entitlement and in indebtedness and they can start stealing. So if I work a job that I don't like, and it's to provide you with a certain lifestyle, I can feel entitled to doing certain things to your body as payment for what I'm enduring with my body in order to provide you with a lifestyle. So that's why these dynamics can get pretty dark, pretty nefarious, pretty quickly. Is we need to look at where we feel entitled to other people's time, attention, and access to their bodies. And that again comes back to after all the things I've done for you, but I do this and this and this for you, this sense of indebtedness. Some people really want you to be indebted to them so that they feel justified. And first of all, sometimes just wanting what they want. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Oh, yeah. And they when they're not, legitimized around wanting what they want, they have to find ways to mask that. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Earn it. So we need to be very mindful of how this is showing up in in our relationships. It's affecting touch. It's affecting our sex lives, of course, but it's not just about the bedroom. It's not just about what's happening there. However, those can be the spaces where we notice the dynamics because they might be more painful or more obvious there. But if you have a hard time honoring your body's limits in the bedroom, you do that everywhere. It's not just happening in the bedroom. You don't you're not like a perfectly boundaried, honor your limits, really in connection with your body woman. And then you walk in the bedroom and just fumble the ball constantly forgetting and can't speak. That's not how it works. You know, that that these skills are transferable and they're habits that you're practicing everywhere. So the bedroom can be a great way of noticing. Everyone shows up to do sex coaching because they think sex is the problem. It's not. It's just the arena in which you notice all of the problems. But so I would say going back to her, let's say it's a let's say it's a woman because sometimes it's not. I'm gonna be honest. Like, sometimes it's these things are not quite as gendered as we think they are. Women can feel very entitled to certain things and men can feel very entitled to certain things. But let's say your community is women mostly. Yeah. Seventy percent. So let's say she feels like he keeps stealing something in the bedroom. He keeps taking something that she's told him multiple times is not okay with her. In that case, there might be a need for a pause on sexual activity or certain types of sexual activity and renegotiating of agreements to figure out what's going on. A lot of those situations, you do need a mediator, you know, because it's just so easy for people to enter into these kind of figure eights of blame and shame and fight without someone to come in and and challenge both people to think about the part that they're playing and take accountability for for their part of the dance. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. And and just, just a little question that popped up here is what happens when, say, the woman, just keep talking about the woman, starts to recognize who's taking, who's stealing, you know, who's giving with the happy yes, who isn't, and starts to become just keenly aware of all these dynamics. And it's like, okay. I'm ready to, like, take accountability for how I'm showing up. And the partner is like, what? This is I'm not interested in workshopping this. And, like, she cannot unsee it. And I've been asked this question before, and, you know, some people refer to Laura Doyle's work, the surrendered wife or the empowered wife where it's like, don't expect the other person to change, just change your behavior. And I'm really oversimplifying it, but change your behavior and the way you ask, and and things will fall into place. The new dynamics will shift and emerge. How much do you really believe that? Because she's very much against mediators and couples therapy. And so, yeah, it's a it's a topic that continues to come up in the membership, and some of the women I work with, it's like, well, just let them continue to do that or, you know, draw the boundary, and then I, you know, I get the silent treatment for three weeks because I drew a boundary and, you know, I'm not really sure if the surrendered wife approach is working for me. And so what does a woman do? Right? I mean, I could think of a really clear solution. 

 

Speaker 1

 

First of all, I completely understand why there's the hesitation for couples therapy. The kind of mediation that I'm talking about is working with a Betty Martin will of consent. Thank you. Will of consent facilitator if you wanted to explore that kind of work with your partner. Let's say you both decide to do the workshops, read the books, you're you're just kind of doing it together for fun. There might be certain things that come up and then you can work with someone there on that. Now going back to what you were saying of what do I do Laura Doyle's work, The Surrendered Wife. I've read the book, and I'm not gonna remember any of the nuances. But I will say the majority of the women that I work with, I just work with them, not their husband or their partner or their person because not everyone is legally married. I don't work with him. I work with the woman alone. And it is profound What can shift when she changes her behavior? Because all of the patterns in their relationship are interdependent. So the moment that you change your side of the dance, there's a ripple effect and everything kind of changes from there. Now sometimes there can be a backlash against it at first. It can be one of those things where it gets worse before it gets better because the other person is kind of discombobulated about what you're doing and why you're doing it. And they're used to this game that y'all play even though it might be miserable for everyone and no one likes it. The brain wants to maintain the status quo even if it's miserable because that's the terrain that your brain knows. It wants to stay on the savanna and now you've gone to the jungle. And so there might be a little bit of a backlash. So sometimes it can be one of those situations where it feels like it gets worse before it gets better, but then it gets significantly better. And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes women grow let's say grow. That's the word everyone loves to use. They grow in a direction and it just doesn't make sense to be to be with the person anymore. I wanna be completely straight up about that. Now again, I'm just working in the in the field of eroticism and pleasure. So I do not want to present myself as an expert in an all things relationship. But there are times where a woman's desires for life, for the dynamic that she wants to have with her children and her husband are just so out of alignment with what a man has a physical capacity for and a willingness to step into. If he's unwilling to meet you there, there's not really a lot you can do about that. And again, this is like one of those annoying things that people do on the Internet. I am not I don't have a sophisticated understanding of Laura Doyle's work. So take this with a grain of salt. But what I've seen because a lot of my clients have read that book, and are trying to apply that and kind of go on their own arc with trying to apply that to their relationship where they have some, some good weeks and some very bad weeks with it and usually kind of fizzle out and stop applying the practices. But what I've seen is women use those kind of modalities as a means of control, where they're desperate to try to move their relationship in a certain direction and are using just about every tool they can imagine to try to get a certain result and a certain outcome. But the problem with that is that you can't control the other player. So either they're gonna step into that with you and, and go for it. Or they're not. And so that's why you'll hear a lot of people say, look, grow into the life that you want for yourself. That makes you happy to be alive, makes you grateful to be alive, where you feel more connected to your body, to your sense of aliveness, to your sense of purpose, to your community. You have stronger relationships. You're just more grateful to be here, to be you. Grow into that, and he'll either meet you there or the relationship will fall away. Which is kind of a like a shitty billboard for someone who works with with relationships. I feel like I need like a better bumper sticker. It's like, well, it's fiftyfifty. It'll either work or it won't, you know. It's like if I was a doctor or something, I don't think anyone would feel super excited about that. But it's it's just been my experience that that's the truth. There there have been people that when they come into this work, I'm like, yeah, they're gonna probably divorce by month six. You know? They make it. They're still together years later and they are thriving and they're doing well. Other people, I thought we were having a great time. I thought things were great and it just went in a direction that I didn't see coming because things were revealed. You know, all kinds of interesting things were revealed. So you just never really know where this is gonna go. My thing always is when I started doing this work, a lot of women come into this work saying, I'm at a breaking point in my relationship. I don't know if I'm gonna stay in it. You know, I just wanna come come to this work and and take care of myself. And it's like, okay. Let's imagine you as the woman who's single. What are you doing over there that you're not doing now? Odds are, you're actually pouring energy back into yourself quite a bit more. Through things that interest you. And make you excited to be alive. Could be dance. That could be painting. That could be being in nature more. That can be getting more involved with your church or your temple or the mosque. Like it can be all kinds of different things that you're not doing right now. And usually blaming on him. But the truth is that I've seen when women do become single, they come up with new excuses for why they're not doing the things. And it's not actually about him. So my personal opinion that might be a little shocking to a lot of people when they come in this is like, I don't care whether you're with somebody or you're not with somebody. I don't care if you stay married. I don't care if you divorce. What matters is is like removing him as the barrier and the thing that you're projecting onto and blaming him for why you don't have a great life when in actuality the only person that's ever kept you from having a good life is yourself. Like I don't I don't care about all these other programs and the rules and the scripts and the techniques. What I care about is what's your vision for your most beautiful life and how can we start to microdose and titrate you into that life so that you can live it now. And then sometimes guys step up in ways that women they'll tell me because of course long term relationships, someone who've been in long term relationships can tell you what their husband is and isn't gonna do and they're wrong all a lot of the time, you know. But they know. They know what he's gonna do. So don't sell him short and just focus on you. Focus on becoming you because it's not actually his fault that you're unhappy. A lot of that rests on your shoulders. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. I mean, this is something that we've touched on in our conversations like personally. Right? The partner gives us a sense of containment in the bigger picture of our lives. Right? When we partner with someone, when we get married, or we make a long term commitment to someone, it feels like it limits the options in our world, which is actually kind of calming to the system, to our system. I'll speak for myself. It's calming to my system. I said, the world is my oyster. And now with this relationship, this marriage, I have, like, a fraction of the options and, like, life makes a little more sense. Right? And so it would be unfair to to know that that's true for me and then start to blame the other person for the reason that I'm not in my full expression. Right? But I do think that that is, those are programs that we're running on many times as women, and we don't realize it. You know, we want the containment, and we want the structure, and we want to be led. And then we become resentful and kind of bratty because we're not living into the fullness of, you know, who we really are and what we really want. And so that's something that I've that I've reflected on personally and then also, you know, ask my my students and my community to reflect on. And then it just goes back to that, like, what life would you be living if you were alone? And how do you, you know, within reason maybe, get closer to that while you're in the partnership? And the same would go for men because I have heard, you know, some of my clients when I work with couples. And this is why I love birth work because in the type of way that I approach it, like, we birth and the conversation of birth is really just the vehicle for getting to the deeper like you said, the bedroom is is the arena for, you know, kind of like sniffing out these dynamics that are deep in the relationship. And so birth is kinda the same. And, yeah, the men will say, like, you know, I just I do this and I do that all for the family, all for her. I'm not, you know, I'm not happy because this marriage, and I'm not happy because of the responsibility, and I'm burdened. And I asked him, like, what would you like, what is a what does life look like if you didn't have to do all this? And often, he'll kinda circle back to being like, well, I want a companion. I do want purpose. I do want so it's like, okay. It's not that you don't want the responsibility or the companion. It's that you haven't found balance in feeding your sacred fire within and doing all the other stuff. Right? And we we don't realize how much, I mean, I'm sure you're so familiar with this with your clients, but it's like we don't realize how much energy we're offloading into things that do not actually feed us. Right? There's so many energy leaks. And rather than taking inventory of the energy leaks and the way that we're being drained, we'd rather, like, blame the companion than take accountability for, like, kind of having a messy messy environment, let's say. You know? So what are those energy leaks? Right? It's like spending time over giving to people that we don't really have commitment to or, you know, not having boundaries. You know, staying later after work and not getting paid overtime. Like, there's so many energy leaks and then it just ends up kinda coming back to the marriage or the responsibility of, you know, husbandhood being the issue. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. And I would say being more mindful maybe of quality versus quantity. So you may be around your partner a lot, but a lot of that time share might be a bit unconscious, where you're on your phone, they're watching TV. You're kind of having habitual conversations that aren't all that stimulating or connecting. And so you can you could both take some time away from that for you to go to the gym, find some people you really like to lift weights with. You know, go walk with someone that you really love spending time with on a nature trail. Like, you could take time away from that relationship. It's tricky for some people to see the correlation between giving the relationship less time and nurturing the relationship, you know. But it's absolutely necessary for you to tend to your to your inner sacred fire, let's call it, add to your own sense of aliveness outside of the relationship because you have hobbies and interests and things that delight you and fascinate you where your sense of time disappears that your partner just doesn't really share in. And you need to kinda go do those things and take care of those things. And then when you come back to the relationship, you're energized and you have new stories to tell each other and new updates. And it feels more like when you were dating and that dynamic was built in. Because you lived here, he lived here. You know, you had more separate lives. And that's when people tend to be more attracted to one another. The we call it the spark is there. The spark is just someone's inner sense of aliveness. They're radiating aliveness because they're taking care of themselves. But then when we get with each other, it's so easy to funnel all of that energy into taking care of our business and taking care of our family. And so little of it is left over for ourselves. And a lot of the time, even the relationship, we're not giving the relationship our best energy. So how do we kinda come back into balance with all of these things? 

 

Speaker 0

 

It's a great exploration and so valuable. I mean, especially when people are preparing to start a family. Right? They haven't even gotten that down, you know, and I think it's so important before we bring a a third party into the mix. And and I talked about this a while ago, I think about a year and a half ago, and that, so many, relationships and marriages suffer after birth simply because these dynamics have not been fully explored. And so rather than stoking that inner sacred fire of, you know, and and striking that balance and nurturing the relationship with quality over quantity, all of these things, and having conversations around consent, noticing where, you know, how and why we're giving and receiving and all of that. And then we bring a third person in and try to raise them up. It becomes really, becomes really complicated or it can feel quite complicated. And relationships will, you know, I've had clients, you know, where the the the birth kind of brought all of that to the surface and without resources weren't able to to make it. So I'm really always pleased to have you as a resource out there in the world that is really doing what I think to be incredible work for the individual and for the sanctity of relationship, you know, and ultimately family. Because when the woman is embodied, understands all of these principles, can put them into practice, can be aware of this. She can also provide this for her child, you know, she can she can model this for her child. And I am the mom that I am. But one thing that that feels really good to me lately is having an eight year old daughter. She's gone to the point now where she can vocalize, when she's overstimulated. And she'll, you know, she'll come in and say like, if there's people around or something social is happening, she'll say, I've reached my limit. I feel overstimulated. What can I do? So then I ask her, I'm like, I don't I'm like, I don't know. Let's get out of here. You know? And now I'm like I'm like, what would feel good to you? And so then she says, well, like to actually go sit alone with something fuzzy. And I'm like, okay. Would like do you wanna just think of a spot that would feel good and go? And, like, you don't have any obligation to anyone. Like, you don't at all. As a child, you don't have any obligations to anybody, to me, to anyone. So go. And then, like, you know, I'll see her sitting out in the distance, you know, staring at the sky, you know, on a blanket. And she'll come back twenty minutes later, and she's, like, completely reenergized. And I don't wanna say pleasant because I don't want that to be like a barometer for how much I accept her presence in my life, but like I feel pleasure that she is in a pleasant energy for herself, you know. And that's like a gift that I feel, you know, every child should be given by their parents, you know. And I say mother particularly because the child, you know, the first seven years of life really does get so much modeled to her by the mother, to them by the mother. And so if the mother can can step into this, can really work with embodiment and and start to rebuild trust with her own system, rebuild trust with her own body, this is, like, really one of the best things we can give our children to succeed in life, to get to their forties and know where their boundaries are, know how to communicate that, know how to ask for the things that feel good. Right? Know what, you know, know what gives them that aliveness. You know, what gives them the sovereignty. And that was one of the words that I that you and I were chatting about. You know, what are the things? And I feel that everything we've talked about today is is gives us a greater access to sovereignty. But what would you say being sovereign is? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. I think when most people are using that word, they're referring to a sense of freedom. But when I hear it, I think about what people really are intending because, of course, if you look in the into the etymology of it, it it's it's about ruling over other people. Being the supreme leader, you know, the monarchy, the royalty, the chief, depending on the on the system. But it's about power over others. But I think that how we're using it now is really to to mean more power over ourselves, which if you take that down even further is just feeling at choice in the moment. And cause I like to just make things really practical. I think I grew up in like a Southern Baptist over culture and a lot of the things didn't quite make sense to me. I was going through a lot as a child. My family has struggled a lot with drugs and kinda being ostracized from the community, and I was in foster care for a little bit. And so I would go into church and people would be talking about forgiveness and these big concepts. And I'm like, okay, cool, but what do I do with all this rage inside of me? You know? And no one could really ever give me the tools. And that's what I think somatics actually provides and and embodiment exercises is now we actually have some of the tools to apply to our different religions, you know, our different spiritual beliefs, where we can actually start to live these things in practice. Because if it's not practical to me, I just I don't think it really matters, you know. So if if you're someone who's saying sovereignty, sovereignty, like be a woman in her power, What does that mean when you're cooking dinner and you're tired because you worked all day? And your husband comes in and then he walks through the kitchen to go take a shower and the kids are, like, doing the kid thing and you feel exhausted and he's kinda checked out a bit and you're both at capacity already. What does it mean to be sovereign? You know, if you don't have the tools to feel like coming back into choice, So noticing all the charge that you feel as he walks through the kitchen, noticing a charge that you feel with the kids. Noticing is great, but if you don't have choice that follows your ability to notice you're just gonna get swept up in your rage, swept up in your sadness, whatever the emotion is. And you're not gonna really be able to do anything with it. So okay, I'm noticing all the emotions that I I might have five different emotions that are coming through me at that point. Because really I'm just tired. And when we're tired, anger comes right in behind it. You know? Because it's like the body's like enough. Enough. Please can we lie down? We're like a kid at the end of a beach day. You've seen those kids where their parents are just like dragging them and they're just like, ah, like crying and kinda like flopping just exhausted. That's what we are on the inside, but we've been socialized, you know and we're adults now so we're supposed to be civilized. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Girl I just have an adult body I don't know what you're talking about. So we're 

 

Speaker 1

 

we're not supposed to be having those feelings and that's so unless we know how to how to be with them and dance with them we get we lash out and take it out. So that doesn't feel very sovereign to me, you know, feeling kind of at the whim of my emotions. 

 

Speaker 0

 

At the whim of your emotions. Yeah. It's a self created prison. Say? 

 

Speaker 1

 

So then I need to, like, learn how to work with that. Okay. What's going on in my body right now? I'm gonna feel my feet again. I'm gonna feel the back of my body. I'm gonna do a little shaking. Let that out. What's gonna help move me from point a to point b? You know, like how can I I wanna feel more calm? I wanna feel grounded. I wanna feel more at ease. What's gonna get me there? What can I do in my body to get me there? And that might be like a whole series of steps and tools that I go through. And then it's, okay, noticing as I cook, how can I be with my body more? What would make this moment five percent more pleasurable? Ten seconds later, what would make this moment five percent more pleasurable? I do that. I feel that adjustment. I feel my body respond. Great. Again, what would make this moment five percent more pleasurable? And that's my practice. So when he's showering and taking care of himself, instead of me in the kitchen stewing and being angry that he has the audacity to need to come home and take a shower and decompress from his day. Instead of doing that, what would make this moment five percent more pleasurable? I'm gonna take care of myself. I'm just gonna keep doing that over and over and over and over again. And I'm going to be with my body. Everybody has different tools that they might reach for in that moment. But I feel like if you don't know how to practically apply sovereignty in the moment, in your everyday life, Not as how life's going to look when everything's perfect, but in your life this week, with all of its inconveniences, if you don't know how to apply that, then you can't embody it because embodiment is the enfleshment of a concept and a word. So sovereignty embodied, what does that look like in this moment? As a sovereign woman, how do I be in my body with my body in this moment? You know, how does she walk around this space? How does she stand here and cook? How does she interact with her children? It's an important distinction, I think. 

 

Speaker 0

 

It really is. No. That's that's so that's so spot on. And and I think, one of the challenges is is understanding spaciousness, right, and slowness. That's a whole other, rabbit hole to go down, but we've been rushed our our whole lives for whatever reason. And eventually into adulthood, we just are self rushing. You know, it's not like anyone's even standing there. Like, I used to be alone in my house and be like, oh, I can't lay down in the middle of the day to close my eyes for fifteen minutes. How dare I? You know? Like like, as if someone is watching me. Right? It's like I'm like, it's just me and God. God doesn't want me, like, sitting at my computer half asleep, you know, writing something for my classes that sounds incoherent and, like, I'm suffering through. Like, that's not what this is about. So even the, you know, even the practice of slowing down enough to say, this fifteen minutes is actually so much more valuable than anything else I could be doing because it's creating a spaciousness and a pleasure, and it's giving me the freedom of choice. This is actually more sovereign, let's say, the self mastery, the mastery of enlisting my choices, you know. And that is how I started to get into the practice of of exercising more choice in day to day life was in these small ways of giving myself the things while not feeling rushed. Right? And really recognizing that I was the one creating the time constraints. You know, there is no master with a whip standing up for me, you know, and like we all feel that there is, you know, and and then we teach our children that there is and then, you know, so on and so forth. 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. To go back to what you were saying, we never really closed the loop earlier of, okay, well, what happens if you're receiving the thing that you want, but you can't take it in? Slowing down is absolutely part of that. And the reason for that is your body needs to be able to process sensory information. So if I'm circling my hips, there's how it feels when I circle my hips like this, fast. And then how it feels when I slow it down. When I slow it down, my body is able to process more sensory information. And I can feel this at the top of my feet pressing into the floor, my knees pressing into the floor. I can feel what's happening in my thigh muscles and my pelvic floor muscles. What's going on around my hip joints. I can feel my lower back. I can feel the spiraling in my spine. I can notice what I'm doing in my face. I can notice how my arms are involved in this hip circle. It becomes a much more full bodied experience because I'm slowing it down enough to be able to process the sensory information. So when we're talking about receiving, slowing down is a large part of that, whether it's through movement or touch or something else. If you're moving too fast to process the sensory information, that's what a lot of people do to stay numb and to to stay in a flight response, to stay pretty checked out from the experience. It's like, I need to get through this to get to something else. Like, I I just need to, like, get through this because I've got other stuff to do. Even when they're receiving something that they want to receive. Someone brushing their hair, someone giving them a massage on their neck, giving them a scalp massage for something. There's still this, like, rushing and wanting to and kind of bracing against it and not wanting to feel it. So slowing down, titrating into slowing down, it can be slowing down as you walk. That's one of my favorite pleasure practices for a lot of people is just walking out in front of your house or when you walk to work, noticing how often you push yourself. You'll you'll notice it constantly of like the speed up speed up speed up and then you'll catch yourself like woah woah woah but actually when I walk for my pleasure I look like I'm high or something because I look like I'm barely even moving. It's so slow. Yeah. I'm like a sloth. I look like I'm barely even moving because it feels so good on my hips and and my feet when I walk like that. And anything faster, I take on these kind of compensatory actions where I'm compensating to hold that speed in ways that don't actually feel that great to my body. So it's just noticing walking for your pleasure can be a really simple pleasure practice by which you titrate into slowing down dancing, putting on a song and dancing slower. A lot of people are not comfortable at all slowing down because staying fast and rushing is how they survive life. And so then it's like just slow it down a little bit. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. Just Yeah. See see how many notches you can turn it down at a time. I mean, the main problem that I see that I've even noticed in my own body is that when I slow down, when you were talking about moving, you know, kind of circling, right, in your hips, you started noticing your thighs and your feet and your low back and even your chest and your face. The problem with this practice is that as you start to feel the different parts of your body, what's being stored there comes alive. And unfortunately, what's stored in many, most of our bodies are memories and experiences that we'd rather not notice. And so I think, I mean, I feel, I'll speak from my personal experience, that's why the slowness was scary. Even lying down and taking a nap in the middle of the day, slowing down enough to do that, and feeling like, okay, my chest. And I I would I'd I'd lie down and I'd feel my chest open and my breathing slow and I would weep. And I was like, oh, this is why I've been avoiding a nap in the middle of the day because I don't want to remember. You know, and so there's a lot of grief. Let's just call it grief as like a general currency for what's being stored in the body. And so I I just wanted to add that because we have to be aware that slowness we avoid slowness not because we're trying to be more productive, let's say. I think we avoid slowness because we are avoiding all of the unprocessed grief. And so part of this practice of getting into more pleasure, I would say, and, of course, Whitney add whatever you feel here, like, for me, getting into more pleasure meant expanding my capacity for feeling more pain and grief. So as I was expanding my capacity to feel more delicious things, I had to slow down. And because I had to slow down, I had to also allow the grief to pass. So many of us have events that happen in life, and we're not given the opportunity to grieve them because everybody's really grossed out by emotions. And so the people around us probably didn't really give us a stage to feel the things we felt after the event. And so I had to also create a space to allow the grief to move through my body. And in a sense, the grief and the pleasure started to kind of, you know, as I as I kind of pendulated, and that's in their practice, and I'm gonna link all of your information here, Wendy. But as I started to pendulate, I started to not really feel scared of the grief and overwhelmed by the pleasure. It all kind of started to feel like one thing that I was just holding in my body, and it really helped me, supported me, let's say. So I don't know. Do you think that's why people are scared of slowness? It's because of what's hiding in the tissues? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. And a lot of that, it could be memories, but it it could also be and this is also relevant to memories, but negative associations that you have with rest, with slowing down, with what that might mean about you. Again, coming back to this field of punishment. So that could be something as when we're titrating into, I wanna be able to take a nap on a Tuesday afternoon, if that's what my body needs. Then it might just start with sitting down and putting a cushion. Let's say you work at the computer all day long. A lot of people, I just start them with putting a cushion behind their back as they sit and just leaning into that support a little bit more. And seeing if you can get a chair that has a neck support. So that every now and then throughout the day, you can just lean back and let your neck be supported for just the span of two or three breaths. So you might feel that support for the span of two or three breaths, several times a day. And we start there. And then we slowly add in building up to lying down and feeling the support at the back of your body for a few moments, maybe two minutes. Just feeling the support, doing a body scan along the back of your body to feel the support. And then we titrate a little bit from there. So it's just like meeting yourself where you're at and knowing that, yeah, you might not be able to slow down to a sloth pace, but can you slow down three percent? Because what your body needs to learn is that going slow is safe. And you can only teach your body that through repetition. Repetition is absolutely required for rewiring a lot of these things. So if you want to change a story, if you want to change your experience of going slow, resting, being in pleasure, you need to reduce it down to something that feels easy and doable for for you, meeting yourself where you're at, and something that feels enjoyable for you. Because if there's no pleasure in the process, it just becomes another should. It come it becomes another supposed to, you know? So for some people, the cushion thing might not be all that interesting, so we find another way that they could practice rest, you know? It's about meeting people where they're at and then also finding their preferences and what's pleasurable to their body because it is so easy for pleasure to become another chore. For pleasure just become more work that they've got to do. And again, that it opens up another rabbit hole, but pleasure and performance can also be really braided together and they need to be unbraided over time. 

 

Speaker 0

 

I could keep dogging with you, like all day for the rest of my life. Same. Same. But this has been like incredibly enlightening for me and and reaffirming. And I know that this is this is just something that has enhanced these practices, these concepts. The way you deliver them, it's just really enhanced my life and has made my journey as a mother more pleasurable as, you know, a wife more pleasurable, as like a human being walking like a sloth in the world. It's made it's made it more pleasurable. And so thank you for being here and sharing all of your wisdom. Thank you 

 

Speaker 1

 

for having me on here. It's always such a joy to hang out with you. 

 

Speaker 0

 

Yeah. It is. Is there any there isn't. It's fine. But do you have any do you have a parting gift? Is there anything that you'd like to share? Is there something that you'd like to sprinkle on top of this beautiful cake we've baked? 

 

Speaker 1

 

Yeah. I'm gonna be putting together some moving meditations here soon, so I'll send you those if you want any of those to share with people. But it's just another way to practice being at choice and sensing your body and finding your way into how to do this work by taking little breaks with your body throughout the day that are very bite sized. But other than that, I would say, you know, just notice right now in your body what would make this moment three percent, five percent more pleasurable. And then tend to that discomfort, take care of that discomfort that might exist or move around a little bit, and then practice receiving that. If you have a problem with receiving, practice receiving that tiny little adjustment and just breathing and feeling that for the span of a breath or two. And that's that's literally it. That's that's this work, you know, that's how easy it can be. We don't really need to make it more complicated than that. Absolutely. Alright. 

 

Speaker 0

 

I love you, and I will talk to you soon. I love you.