The Embodied Relationship Experience – EP 28
0:00:00
(Speaker 3)
a woman’s main resource is pleasure. Not even just sexual pleasure to start. It’s just finding gentle, positive sensation in the body. And a woman’s nervous system regulates to oxytocin. So when she can activate the positive sensation, she’ll feel aligned in herself again. She’ll feel safe in herself again.
0:00:22
(Speaker 3)
She’ll feel anchored in herself again through positive sensation, which is so beautiful.
0:00:33
(Speaker 1)
Welcome to the Embodied Relationship Experience podcast. My name is Jon Weinland. Uh, here today, I am joined by Sarah Antrip and Kiana Reeves. Not Kiana Reeves, Kiana Reeves. Very important. And we’re gonna be talking about some of the problems that, uh, women are facing.
0:00:51
(Speaker 1)
Last month, I had Connor Beaton on, and we went deep into, you know, what’s the path forward for men, what are some of the problems that men are facing relationally, professionally, um, with their lives, with, um, their satisfaction. And I wanted to bring two women on who are, um, deep in the weeds, let’s say, in working with women, working in embodiment, working in relationship, working in sacred intimacy, sacred sexuality. And these are two women who are very deep in that. And I’m really excited to get into it. So before we start, just a couple of business pieces here. The Embodied Relationship Experience platform has tons of practices and tons of content on there.
0:01:34
(Speaker 1)
So if you wanna go deeper, into what we discuss here, maybe some of the practices that Sarah and Kiana are going to, you know, reference. We have a lot of information. We have a lot of practices on there. It’s a really beautiful platform to just dive deeper. And with that, let’s go. So just introduce yourself.
0:01:53
(Speaker 1)
I mean, I’ve known you guys for a while, but just introduce yourself to the audience. What do you do? What’s your, you know, a little three minute intro.
0:02:02
(Speaker 3)
So I’m Sarah Entrop, and I’ve been teaching tools of transformation. for a very long time.
0:02:10
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, 20 something years.
0:02:11
(Speaker 3)
Yeah. And when my marriage started to fail, I really dove into the world of intimacy and embodiment, because there is definitely a different level of doing transformational work and then doing relational work. And I’ve spent the last eight years with you in that world. And I have the pleasure of teaching, co -teaching with Kiana. And we have a women’s program, Wild Love.
0:02:40
(Speaker 1)
And yeah, I’m just deep in doing couples work and women’s work and really helping to liberate and evolve love in the collective right now. Before we go to Kiana, like, let’s just unpack that a little bit, like the difference between transformational work and embodiment work or sacred intimacy work, because a lot of people don’t quite understand that difference.
0:03:05
(Speaker 2)
So how would you describe that? You could do all of the transformational awakening work in the world and your relationships still not work. Right. And it’s a different set of wounds, I believe, you know, that really takes a conscious, intentional effort. it’s the relational field that has to really be worked in a very specific intentional way.
0:03:29
(Speaker 3)
And I think that’s what’s so beautiful about this time.
0:03:32
(Speaker 1)
It’s obvious that we’re all in a relational up -leveling collectively. So it’s, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would also, I would also posit that embodiment work, is sort of the transformational key, right?
0:03:50
(Speaker 3)
Like, like people can do, you know, nothing wrong with Tony Robbins or, you know, anybody else who does.
0:03:55
(Speaker 11)
you know, deep transformational work, but until we’re accessing our bodies, until we’re opening our bodies, until we’re sort of clearing from our bodies the things that get stuck, you know, it’s really hard to transform.
0:04:08
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, absolutely.
0:04:09
(Speaker 2)
I would agree. And Kiana? I’m Kiana Reeves, obviously. And I’ve been in the space, I came in through the space of women’s sexual health and the birth world, first as a doula, and then spent the last 10 years in the realms of somatic sex education and sexological body work. And so before I met you and started working with you, I had a hands -on practice where I was doing intravaginal pelvic work with women and scar tissue remediation and the universe of how the anatomy and the nervous system holds memory, holds emotion. And what’s been so cool about my journey in this world and in my teaching has been that’s so necessary and what it was missing for me was the love, the relational, the like, you can have the best sex ever, you can have a lot of pleasure.
0:05:07
(Speaker 2)
But the depth that love and presence and the more sacred and spiritual practices that you can fuse together with those more somatic practices sexually is what people are craving and seeking.
0:05:22
(Speaker 1)
And they just don’t have a roadmap.
0:05:24
(Speaker 2)
So that’s really where my work is the intersection of that.
0:05:27
(Speaker 9)
So you were getting in there.
0:05:29
(Speaker 1)
Oh yeah. Literally.
0:05:32
(Speaker 2)
And you know, we haven’t talked about that much on the podcast about, you know, really about Yoni mapping and about, you know, the kind of the potency of that work. Can you just get into that a little bit? Yeah, I think everyone has heard the term like the body keeps the score. But really, it means that your body is your memory. Your body is your subconscious. And the way that the subconscious works is that it doesn’t always reveal to you everything that you’re holding.
0:05:58
(Speaker 2)
And when you touch anatomy, when you’re doing body work, you’re touching parts of the body that might have memory that you don’t know about, or emotion that you don’t even know you’re feeling.
0:06:08
(Speaker 1)
And so when we approach the nervous system that way, it allows that material and that content that often has been for a very long time living in this nervous system as chronic activation or chronic freeze and it helps it repair and it helps it complete and it brings a lot of healing. And the foundation of that work is safety, nervous system safety. And I think this is a really beautiful connection to make between our genitals and the nervous system.
0:06:44
(Speaker 2)
Right, because, you know, in sacred sexuality work, which, you know, I don’t do in my workshops, but you’ve been, we’ve worked on this, and I know a lot of people in the tantric world work on this, that there is, it’s really hard to unlock stuff that’s stored in the nervous system if, you know, if you are tight. You know, we’ve heard of pelvic dearmoring, you know, in lots of different forms, and it’s really important as a part of a nervous system healing to address the way that our sexuality and the way that trauma and freeze and all kinds of other goodies get stuck in our genitals. I always had kind of suspected, but recently it was very much confirmed, is that different parts of the body can be in different parts of nervous system activation. For example, you could have a lot of freeze in parts of your vulva or your vagina or your cervix, and as you approach those areas, even if you yourself, your consciousness, your day -to -day life, you don’t experience freeze, when you approach that place, it’s gonna express the qualities. And you can have combination nervous system states, which I also didn’t know until recently is like blended states, having the experience of I’m both a bit frozen and activated and want to fight.
0:08:11
(Speaker 1)
to take in that, like, we’re far more complex than just like, this is my state. And, you know.
0:08:17
(Speaker 18)
Oh, that’s a really good point.
0:08:18
(Speaker 1)
Like, so, so you can be, you know, you can appear relatively happy and calm and peaceful, right? Absolutely.
0:08:25
(Speaker 9)
You know, from in one part of your nervous system, but the moment somebody reaches for your genitals, you know what I mean?
0:08:30
(Speaker 1)
Like.
0:08:31
(Speaker 7)
Everything.
0:08:32
(Speaker 1)
Exactly. Exactly. Things freeze up. And, yeah. And so I, I really wanted to make this episode about what you guys see are some of the issues that women are facing in relationship, professionally, moving forward.
0:08:49
(Speaker 3)
We’re, you know, I had Connor on, and there’s a lot of talk about the problems that men are facing, and they’re legitimate, right? There’s a lot of legitimate issues that men are up against, but, you know, we’re only half the population -ish, and I wanted to really get a sense of, you know, maybe we could, you know, parlay that into, where do you see the issues that women are facing in your programs and in your work? Like, a woman comes to you, Regular, you know, your avatar client comes to you. What is she up against? I just see again and again in our program and individual women, they put so much of the emphasis on their partner. And the discontentment in the relational dynamic.
0:09:34
(Speaker 3)
And I think part of the initiation for women is
0:09:40
(Speaker 1)
actually learning kind of we’re all kind of figuring out what to do with the discontentment in relationship right now. And I do think that this is right now a part of the collective female initiatory field where it’s like, okay, we we can’t keep focusing on what he’s not doing or what’s wrong over there. How can we help a woman untangle, not center him? And so that to me is the first process, how to help a woman find her own sovereignty, find her own center in her own happiness, in her own, her wellbeing, just in herself.
0:10:25
(Speaker 3)
What do you think the blockages to that are?
0:10:27
(Speaker 19)
Why isn’t she, you know, sovereign already, right?
0:10:31
(Speaker 1)
Or, you know, in her sovereignty already. What do you see?
0:10:35
(Speaker 4)
Trauma.
0:10:37
(Speaker 1)
Really? How would you define trauma? Because, you know, there’s such a wide spectrum of trauma.
0:10:42
(Speaker 2)
Yeah. Right? Everything from sexual abuse to, you know, emotional abuse to neglect.
0:10:47
(Speaker 1)
I mean, there’s, you know, there’s a wide swath of trauma. So is it basically all of that falls into the category of trauma?
0:10:54
(Speaker 2)
If we look at the collective, we’re all coming out of so many years, thousands of years of patriarchy.
0:11:01
(Speaker 11)
And that has really skewed a woman’s connection to herself so deeply, you know?
0:11:07
(Speaker 13)
And this is the thing, it’s like, patriarchy has definitely impacted men and women equally, you know?
0:11:15
(Speaker 2)
And so…
0:11:16
(Speaker 11)
Yeah, that’s an important point that I think gets missed, man.
0:11:18
(Speaker 19)
The men got fucked too, right?
0:11:20
(Speaker 3)
Absolutely. Everyone did. Yeah.
0:11:22
(Speaker 1)
Yeah.
0:11:22
(Speaker 3)
Yeah. Everyone is still in it. Yeah.
0:11:25
(Speaker 1)
Completely. Yeah.
0:11:26
(Speaker 29)
And to really, you know, a lot of what I do is kind of send the women to their own corner and the men to their own corner.
0:11:34
(Speaker 28)
to start when we’re in, especially when couples come to me, because we have to untangle the, well, what about them?
0:11:42
(Speaker 13)
And they’re kind of blaming each other and pointing at each other.
0:11:45
(Speaker 11)
There’s so much of that.
0:11:47
(Speaker 6)
There’s so much of that.
0:11:48
(Speaker 2)
And we have to really move from being adversaries on this path to allies. It’s such a big part of it. And would you say that, you know, as a woman finds her sovereignty, that her capacity to, as she finds her sovereignty, and I guess we’ll get into the path of what that means, right? But as she finds her sovereignty, as she finds her center, as she finds her own power, as she sort of plugs into the power of life and, you know, her own power, her capacity to impact her partner increases. A hundredfold. Absolutely.
0:12:27
(Speaker 2)
Infinitely. Yeah.
0:12:28
(Speaker 1)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, Kiana.
0:12:32
(Speaker 1)
I was going to say, and the why, right? Because I was likely all of our wounding, like our biggest wounding is relational, whether that’s through our parents and our childhood wounding and all of our survival strategies.
0:12:44
(Speaker 2)
were experiences we had in our life. And so when we get into these most intimate experiences with partners, all of the little trip wires are alive and well, and they get pulled on. And when we don’t have the awareness of how to step back and see that that’s running in us, no matter who’s in the room, no matter what they’re bringing out in you, we really don’t have the capacity to stop being the victim and making it about the other person. And it makes us not able to like, like the sovereignty you’re talking about to me is being able to stand in a room and really name what’s true, what’s happening, without fawning, without trying to people please, without being afraid of losing love, without like bending your ego. in a way that ultimately erases what’s true and erases intimacy. Intimacy is about what’s true.
0:13:38
(Speaker 2)
I think there is a conflation, and I wanna get back to this truth piece, but I think there is a conflation between the wounds of the patriarchy and the wounds of the family. And that oftentimes what I see in the relational field is women in particular, I mean, men have this problem too, but I really see it with women, have a hard time teasing apart the cultural wounds of the patriarchy and the wounds of their family system. And so they just kind of get lumped together and mixed together as this big wound that, you know, men are an easy target for.
0:14:11
(Speaker 1)
And so… How do we start to tease those apart and work with those and create a path of healing? I think what I really wanted to bring you guys in for is because you are right there on the front lines of what is the path to healing for women. And that is really, I think, what’s an important piece. What is the path to healing that you guys see? I think what you just said is so important, talking about the wounds of the patriarchy and the wounds of the family and how we do have to differentiate them.
0:14:45
(Speaker 1)
But the wounds of the family come from the wounds of the patriarchy. And so we have this, what happens in our relationship and our grief and our rage that is multi -generational and inherited from so many personal experiences and from our friends and from the things that the people we love go through is that we don’t really like have the chance to understand that like our interpersonal relationships are the microcosm of the macrocosm. And when you get to depersonalize the patriarchy a little bit as like the man standing in front of you isn’t the patriarchy.
0:15:25
(Speaker 2)
He’s the result also of the inheritance of what a forced masculinity looks like. And what the pain that his father carried, not having a father or having a father that wouldn’t let him cry. And so his capacity is directly a reflection of that. Then we get to have compassion.
0:15:45
(Speaker 3)
and be together, brother, sister, lovers, instead of… enemies or having the animosity be men versus women, which I think is what we’re looking at a little bit right now.
0:15:57
(Speaker 6)
And how do you take them into the truth, right?
0:16:03
(Speaker 1)
Because you mentioned that the truth, you know, I would like to think that the best embodiment work is the expression of truth, right? Whatever that truth is, right? Whether that truth is desire, whether that truth is grief or rage or fear, right?
0:16:15
(Speaker 17)
How do I let my body express that truth?
0:16:20
(Speaker 2)
And how do you guys see, how do you take them into that? How do you kind of let them touch that and access that versus pointing the finger out, right? Because it’s a real easy way to avoid the truth because the truth is often very painful. So yeah, just walk us through how you guys have been doing that. So I think it’s really important, Kiana touched on this a little bit, but getting current. is so important because of the cultural overlay of all the wounds so many of us just in our lineage and in our energetics and from utero and from everyone who came before us were carrying so much more than this moment.
0:17:06
(Speaker 2)
And so a lot of the work we do with the groups of women is help them have a space to process all of the history without making meaning out of it.
0:17:20
(Speaker 1)
of it.
0:17:20
(Speaker 2)
It’s so important to have the space to move it and embody it and feel it and clean out the pipes and empty out and air out again and again and again until they can actually feel themselves in the room So they’re not bringing their mother’s anger and all of history or their last relationship forward. Right, right. I think that’s such a crucial point. I had Mama Gina on here a few months ago and she’s famous for the swamping.
0:17:56
(Speaker 1)
Swamping, yeah. And this is another example of that, of getting current and getting everything clean because when that happens, then you can now be with the truth of the present moment. Yeah.
0:18:08
(Speaker 2)
Right. Yeah. And it’s interesting with big emotions, particularly rage, grief, the jealousy, the harder ones that we’re not really allowed to feel fully. When that gets activated in us, we often, especially women, because women have certain conditioning and socializing around anger, around revealing tears, that will kind of like, like try to like contain it while we talk about it.
0:18:36
(Speaker 1)
It’s very like an analytical awareness. And so what starts to happen when we open up these little pockets of where, you know, maybe you can go into a practice and just start to touch anger that’s been there a long time. Again, you get this depersonalization. for example, like in a relational moment. It’s just sort of this universal. Yeah, you realize that, you know, that fight with your partner wasn’t necessarily everything just about that moment.
0:19:05
(Speaker 1)
It was all of the history that got triggered and it feels, it really feels like that moment. Unless we are accurately tracking ourselves and know that something has stirred in me that isn’t just right here, right now. the issue that men run into, this sort of sense of like, I get you’re angry, I get you’re angry at me, I get you’re upset at me, but the amount of energy that’s coming at me feels a lot more than just me, right? And of course, we can’t say that to you successfully. So that’s why we need you know, women to be able to say that to each other.
0:19:48
(Speaker 3)
Yeah. There’s something that you taught me and us that I think is so valuable that I work with so many of our clients on, which is that when you are using the front of your body, when you are projecting rage and anger without a heart that’s open, it is just going to land as abusive. And no one will want to receive that, even if your partner loves you to the moon. But when you can feel your heart in it, And you do it wide, that wafting off of you just as if you’re showing them instead of blaming them. It really opens up the space for couples to be able to hold each other and it totally transforms the dynamic. I was just on with a woman named Emily Fletcher and we got into this subject.
0:20:35
(Speaker 3)
And one of the things that she brought forth is this, and I’ve sensed this in so many women and men really struggle with this because men want to like show up and be a healing force and hold space. I can’t tell you how many men like want to hold space for their women’s emotions and feelings and anger and grief and history and all that stuff. But the way that it was presented, and Emily, I’m like, I kind of got, we got heated about it, was that because men are sort of representative of the patriarchy, that we’re now obligated to stand in the
0:21:09
(Speaker 1)
firing line of that without, you know, heart connection or without some level of awareness of like, hey, this isn’t all you, but, you know, but if you’re okay with it, I want to show it to you because this is what I’ve been… Here’s the difference, like, this is what I’ve been carrying, right?
0:21:29
(Speaker 3)
Versus, like, just, you know, blah, you know, and you’re sort of at the center of this. And men are really confused as to like, what’s the appropriate way to deal with that? Like, I want to be here and hold space for her, but this feels inappropriate in some or abusive in some form or fashion. And so, how would you address that with women?
0:21:51
(Speaker 1)
That concept of like, hey, how can I responsibly enroll my partner in holding my big emotions.
0:22:01
(Speaker 2)
Men would very much appreciate that. Yeah, so I tell all the women I work with, if you’re triggered, go do your practice first.
0:22:12
(Speaker 27)
and work the emotion through your body first.
0:22:18
(Speaker 8)
And then once you’ve burned off probably 70 % of the energy of it and the intensity of it, you bring the 30 remaining percent to your partner.
0:22:30
(Speaker 3)
And by really Again, this is a piece of sovereignty.
0:22:33
(Speaker 1)
Can you take responsibility and be able to hold a structure for yourself that you so deeply want your partner to hold for you?
0:22:41
(Speaker 3)
And so them going and holding that structure for themselves and feeling and increasing awareness around what is actually happening in them, and then approaching partner, there’s so much more access to the heart.
0:22:57
(Speaker 2)
anger, that hot, hot anger that so many women are in, if they allow themselves to feel it,
0:23:04
(Speaker 1)
it turns to anguish so quickly. And anguish, as we’ve talked about so much, is so much more palatable for a man to be with than just that super hot anger. Let’s nerd out a little bit.
0:23:20
(Speaker 2)
So what would be a practice that you would, if a woman’s in that space, what would you have her do? Every woman that works with me gets a bat. They get a plastic bat because so many women are in a state of freeze and they need some way to activate their system go into sympathetic activation so that they can actually feel what’s true.
0:23:48
(Speaker 3)
And so the bat, you know, it really over the arms, it really opens the side body.
0:23:55
(Speaker 2)
And this is where so many women carry deep, deep grief. And their side ribs. Yeah. Yeah. Along the sides. Yeah.
0:24:03
(Speaker 2)
And so it’s not, it’s not like this. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a full blown embodied expression.
0:24:09
(Speaker 4)
Like you have a sword and you’re chopping him down in the middle kind of thing.
0:24:12
(Speaker 1)
Completely. And you do it till you’re breathless. Do it till you’re breathless, okay.
0:24:17
(Speaker 2)
So get a bat, get a bat, plastic bat on Amazon, very easy to get, three minutes, three to five minutes. Yeah, it’s not a lot. There’s this other layer of anger, which is that so many women, our nervous systems biologically are predisposed to freeze and fawn and fight. Fight is actually, even though there’s a lot of collective, rage right now, it’s actually very hard for us to access it in a way that where we feel like we can like be with it consciously or it doesn’t take us out. And so being able to consciously be with your anger so that you stay loving, you stay heart open, means that you do have to have a level of titration and familiarity with it. Because
0:24:59
(Speaker 2)
it’s like if you were told for five decades It’s not okay for you to get angry. Girls don’t get angry. You’re a bitch if you get angry. And then you’re in your 30s and 40s trying to rediscover this thing. You’re like a toddler trying to figure it out. And you’re going to look like a toddler.
0:25:17
(Speaker 1)
You’re going to be like, oh, this is how I do it. And you’re going to be blaming and it’s going to be ugly and nasty. So when you take it to your practice, you actually get to familiarize yourself with a texture of anger that feels safe. If you don’t feel safe in yourself feeling angry, it’s not safe for you to bring it to your partner because it’s going to be a little bit unhinged. Yeah, yeah.
0:25:37
(Speaker 3)
And so I guess the unhinged piece is like if you’re feeling like you’re going to be unhinged, go do it. by yourself, scream into a pillow, pound the bat, you know, stomp your feet, whatever you need to do to move the energy, clear the pipe, so to speak, so you can be current, as you talked about. And then, you know, ask, have a conversation and ask to have a, okay, that makes a lot of sense. And anger, like, specifically is a very strong sympathetic charge. And it has to actually physically move. It tells your body that something, some action must be taken.
0:26:14
(Speaker 3)
And when you don’t don’t take that action, it stays locked in the system as this kind of like vibrating, you know, that’s when you’re in the room with someone, you’re like, they’re fucking pissed and I don’t want to be around them. And so even if that practice, I think for some people we’ve realized like putting them straight into back practice too much blows them out, really blows them out. And then all of this fear and terror and it’s too much.
0:26:40
(Speaker 1)
But getting into your internal, predator. So, feeling the power and your viciousness and your growling and you know, on your haunches. And you can feel your power to move towards conflict without feeling scared.
0:27:00
(Speaker 2)
Yeah. That’s the cultivation. That’s the muscle that is really helpful. Let’s double click on that. Like, like really like, like helping women move what’s true in their power. Like what are some other ways you mentioned getting on your haunches, you know, like getting low to the ground and growling and kind of like letting it come through.
0:27:19
(Speaker 2)
But I think you said something that’s really crucial, which is to find your power while being angry or afraid or, you know what I mean? Anything else that you guys would recommend to help women to do that? So, helping a woman, it’s kind of the same lines Kiana was talking about, but resource. She has to resource in some way. A woman’s main resource is pleasure. Positive, not even just sexual pleasure to start.
0:27:49
(Speaker 1)
It’s just finding gentle, positive sensation in the body activates oxytocin.
0:27:57
(Speaker 26)
And a woman’s nervous system regulates to oxytocin.
0:28:02
(Speaker 25)
So when she can activate the positive sensation, she’ll feel aligned in herself again.
0:28:08
(Speaker 2)
She’ll feel safe in herself again. She’ll feel anchored in herself again through positive sensation, which is so beautiful because that overlaps so perfectly with the masculine, feminine energetics.
0:28:22
(Speaker 1)
Right, right, right. And so do you guys find that you can marry those things?
0:28:27
(Speaker 24)
Pleasure and anger, pleasure and, right, like you can, like there’s a way for women to work with that.
0:28:33
(Speaker 1)
Like, so yeah, so how does, you know, because they might not understand, you and I, you We get this because we live here, but how would you walk a woman through like moving anger with pleasure? You can substitute the word pleasure for feeling good. I think that helps. sometimes women are like, I don’t feel pleasure. But there are things that you can do that and pleasure. What’s cool about pleasure is that it’s just your senses.
0:29:02
(Speaker 1)
It’s the physical experience your body has when it feels good, which signals safety. And so We use pleasure, even simple things like self -touch, touching your face, using containment, moving in a way that really, where you’re like, oh, you get this feeling where you’re like, oh, I like that. And if you can orient towards that, there’s all of this nervous system, neural wiring that starts to just communicate to every part of your being that it’s okay to be feeling what you’re feeling. It actually widens your capacity to then come into a blended state of, okay, I feel good, and can I also hold in this other hand that I’m mad, that I am angry? And when you start to weave those two together, it takes time. Often these things live very far apart at first, and then they weave their way back.
0:29:56
(Speaker 1)
But you’ll start to find that eventually, there’s so much pleasure in anger.
0:30:03
(Speaker 2)
I’m seeing it as you’re talking about it. I’m seeing it as you’re talking about it.
0:30:08
(Speaker 9)
Yeah, like I want to fight.
0:30:12
(Speaker 2)
I’m always like, I want to fight. It’s a turn on. And men can metabolize that.
0:30:20
(Speaker 1)
They can metabolize that.
0:30:21
(Speaker 2)
You know what I mean? It’s like you need a little honey with the Poison, right? And so, yeah, that’s a really deep practice and very helpful for women too. Alright, so you guys have given us some really good practices and ways to look at anger, right? Pleasure, clearing the pipes, lots of different ways to work with anger. The other emotion that I see women, you know, bump up against a lot is fear, right?
0:30:50
(Speaker 1)
And like men, men have the same issue, like humans, this is a human condition of like, we will do almost anything to avoid being afraid and letting you know that I’m afraid, right? And so, Some of the ways that I see this come out are controlling behavior, right? And if you’re afraid and angry, man, that is really, really gnarly combination, which is much more prevalent, much more prevalent than, you know, most people want to admit.
0:31:20
(Speaker 3)
But talk about how you take women through, you know, addressing their fear, tracking their fear, expressing their fear, being with the truth of their fear.
0:31:29
(Speaker 1)
And in talking about anger, one of the reasons why I think that’s so important to the point you brought up at the beginning, is that truth, right, if truth moves through the body and it’s the real truth, it’s like the raw truth, it’s the deep truth, that is so much more intimate, so much sexier, so much, you know, so much easier to be with in a relational moment for a man, for example.
0:31:56
(Speaker 4)
Not to mention other women, right?
0:31:59
(Speaker 7)
That, you know, it’s… creates intimacy, right, even though it’s anger, right?
0:32:05
(Speaker 1)
And so how do we do the same thing with fear?
0:32:08
(Speaker 23)
I’ve been in a fear hole for a year.
0:32:11
(Speaker 1)
I actually think fear is the hardest emotion to feel. Yeah. I agree.
0:32:16
(Speaker 3)
We really can intellectualize it.
0:32:18
(Speaker 1)
We can know it’s there. We get all kinds of anxieties and little control -y things. We look for a reason why we’re afraid, and yeah, we point outward.
0:32:25
(Speaker 2)
Yeah. Or we don’t know we’re afraid and we become hypervigilant. And there’s levels of fear. There’s like, I’m scared, but then there’s like, I’m panicked or I’m terrified. And the higher up that goes in terms of nervous system activation,
0:32:40
(Speaker 3)
it becomes so impossible to actually feel the feeling fully unless you have capacity.
0:32:47
(Speaker 11)
Again, you have to resource with containment, safety, and pleasure to even be able to start to metabolize some of those things that feel, because it feels like it’s gonna drown you and kill you, that level of fear.
0:32:59
(Speaker 3)
And women have a very, it’s legitimate why they’ve got so much fear in their bodies, right? Absolutely, yes. I mean, it’s legit, like, you know, the burnings and, you know, and all kinds of abuse and domination. I mean, it makes sense that it’d be so much fear in women’s bodies right now, right? Yeah, it’s really, the hierarchy of it, like Kiana said, so many women don’t, can’t name it as fear in their bodies because there’s so much freeze and then fawning, where we’re just acting out on top. Right.
0:33:29
(Speaker 3)
Well, fawning is a response to fear.
0:33:31
(Speaker 2)
Yeah.
0:33:31
(Speaker 22)
Right?
0:33:32
(Speaker 1)
I mean, you know, so if you’re fawning, the question to ask, I would imagine, is what am I afraid of?
0:33:37
(Speaker 19)
Right?
0:33:38
(Speaker 1)
What am I afraid of?
0:33:39
(Speaker 3)
And so, It’s different. Anger is so much easier to get at, right? It is. It’s showy. Yeah, but fear to me is the real issue for men too.
0:33:49
(Speaker 1)
It just shows up differently and it has different roots, I say. So how would you start to work with women on fear? I go from the top up, kind of like the fawning’s up here. And so really helping women, like, is that true? Are you dancing on top of something else?
0:34:07
(Speaker 2)
Are you acting on top of something else? And then below that, is the freeze, and freeze can be very slippery to work with. And so it’s a lot of, especially with freeze, it’s a lot of that titration of bringing more sensation and awareness to the body for women to even start to catch, you know, because the nature of freeze is I can’t feel anything. Yeah, I’m numb. Yeah, I’m numb. But there’s actually quite a bit of sensation and signaling in freeze, if you can start to recognize it in the body.
0:34:45
(Speaker 2)
And like, oh, oh, this is what freezes in my body. Oh, this is when it happens. And you know, and start to, oh, my breath starts to hold. And so a lot of it starts with the awareness. And then it’s the titration of starting to slowly bring sensation back to the body. And again, the positive sensation back.
0:35:07
(Speaker 1)
Mm -hmm. And then as you start to bring positive sensation back, is it, is it, does it occur like they can now slow down enough to feel like, oh, I’m afraid? Mm -hmm. Is that, is that how it works? Usually it’s slowly, slowly, slowly, little bits at a time.
0:35:24
(Speaker 2)
Yeah. Yeah, they start to thaw and then it’s like, oh, well, what’s real here? You know, what’s real here? And it’s like, I’m afraid, you know, and it’s such a vulnerable, it’s like the most vulnerable place. But it’s also such, like you were saying, it’s such a relational, fear can be highly intimate.
0:35:48
(Speaker 1)
Oh, it’s, yeah, I think it’s a portal to like, true emotional, true intimacy and emotional safety, right?
0:35:55
(Speaker 2)
Because if you can bring your fear to your partner and your partner is a safe place for your fear, right? Then it just kind of rewires the brain and the nervous system when you couldn’t bring your fear. You couldn’t be afraid. Do you have a… thought on how to do work with fear? Yeah, I think something you said so important, which is that so much of our healing, we approach like transformation and healing often individually. And one of the ways forward is co -relational healing.
0:36:29
(Speaker 2)
because we get to co -regulate, we get to re -pattern together. And so to give our partners so much compassion both ways, in all directions, that no one will ever be perfect. And then you make that commitment towards what tools can I offer when I notice my partner’s really afraid?
0:36:50
(Speaker 3)
Maybe she doesn’t even know she’s afraid, but I can see she’s acting all sorts of weird.
0:36:55
(Speaker 1)
My husband does this, you know?
0:36:58
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, he’s tracking me. And so when we have like, I have my toolkit for him, he has his toolkit for me, and I’m afraid, he can bring me containment, and he can bring me pleasure, Even if that’s, you know, he knows, like, I really love when he wraps around me and, like, squeezes my hips, and he hums really low. And all of a sudden, all of this, like, jittery, frantic, controlling thing that my body does when it’s afraid softens into safety. And safety is the foundation that is necessary to actually feel and know that an emotion is present, bring us into presence. And so I think that’s like a really beautiful way we can create connection instead of more disharmony and blame. This is an interesting point, and I don’t think men get this.
0:37:51
(Speaker 2)
It just sort of occurred to me when you said that, which is that do you think that women need to feel safe before they can be aware they’re afraid? It’s different for men.
0:38:03
(Speaker 1)
Men don’t have that. That’s a key difference.
0:38:07
(Speaker 21)
I think this is why, and we kind of always come back to lens of nervous system, because nervous system’s like your baseline.
0:38:14
(Speaker 1)
It’s your sunglasses.
0:38:16
(Speaker 3)
You see everything through.
0:38:17
(Speaker 20)
It’s your experience of the world.
0:38:19
(Speaker 1)
And there’s very biological differences in the way the male nervous system is wired and the female nervous system is wired. Unpack those a little bit. Generally.
0:38:27
(Speaker 2)
Yes. Men are much, males are much more likely to have access to fight. And the fight says, I can move towards threat. And so you guys have this access to conflict, you can stand in the room, you can move it. And when you have the capacity towards, I can, it doesn’t feel unsafe. It might feel threatening, but it doesn’t feel unsafe.
0:38:51
(Speaker 2)
The female nervous system is much more likely to need to flee, to run, get away. Fawn, which is a blended state, I believe, of freeze and the social engagement system. It’s like, I’m frozen, but I’m here, and this is how I’ll be safe. Functional freeze. I’ll be safe by pleasing the man. Yeah, and by the way, if you fawn, you really don’t know you’re fawning in the moment.
0:39:14
(Speaker 2)
It’s not something like, oh, I’m fawning. It’s a biological response. And then the freeze response, which is so slippery, and there’s a time delay. We see this all the time in workshops. the time delay between the trigger you know, he comes too close, and her ability to track herself. Because female body is so much more likely to experience a freeze state as a way to find safety and not, you know, experience a threat.
0:39:42
(Speaker 2)
And so, when we understand that women really, really need safety first in order to reveal and open, that becomes the orientation point. Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, yeah. And so what scares a woman?
0:39:59
(Speaker 1)
Everything. I think, again, I don’t think men really understand this. They really don’t. What scares a woman? We love you guys, but we don’t because you don’t have that experience. Yeah, we don’t.
0:40:10
(Speaker 1)
We don’t. So much scares women. I would say at a very like baseline, it would be, am I enough? Is he going to cheat on me? Is he going to like me? love someone else more than me?
0:40:22
(Speaker 1)
Is he gonna keep secrets from me? Is he gonna hurt me? And those are very common experiences that we have. Then there’s the history that comes with our personal lives, our familial lives, and our intergenerational stuff. And I am gonna talk a little bit about sexual violence, so if you need to skip this part, skip it, because that does live in our systems. Like we are born knowing, you don’t go out walking at night as a woman.
0:40:50
(Speaker 1)
You’re more vulnerable to violence, whether that’s inside your relationship with domestic abuse, or you witnessed it in your home, or – You know somebody who was abused. Childhood sexual assault and sexual assault as an adult.
0:41:06
(Speaker 3)
It’s very prominent.
0:41:08
(Speaker 2)
And so we know, like statistically, one in two women is sexually assaulted in their life, and one in three or four has experienced rape or attempted rape.
0:41:19
(Speaker 1)
And what that does to our bodies is naturally, like, that’s in our consciousness, that we always have to guard a little bit against the movement towards us sexually, whether we know we’re doing that or not. There’s a little bit of like a, ooh, like, am I safe here?
0:41:35
(Speaker 2)
And that is a really, Experience really deep safety sexually in a relationship is such a gift. To be able to go at the pace of your own opening and reveal the pain that might be there and not have to perform and not have to like… please and do all of those things. That’s really like one of the biggest gifts our partners can offer us because you will touch grief there. I don’t think there’s a woman in the world if you go to a deep sexual space with her where there’s not massive grief.
0:42:07
(Speaker 1)
You know, one of the things that I’ve noticed in workshops that will trigger a woman’s nervous system into feeling unsafe
0:42:15
(Speaker 2)
is, I don’t wanna say it’s unfettered masculine desire, right?
0:42:20
(Speaker 1)
But sort of unconscious, right?
0:42:23
(Speaker 2)
Like my desire for you, and we see this all the time in workshops where women are opening and men, their eyes get all big and women then are like, oh shit, you know, like, what’s he gonna do to me, right? And so this, how to work with a man’s desire, right, from the place of feeling safe. Because I see this a lot, and I’m curious what you guys would say about this. You’re opening, you’re radiant, you’re beautiful in all the ways, and he has a response, and that response is like Frankenstein. And we see it all the time. And then all of a sudden there’s like this freeze.
0:43:08
(Speaker 2)
I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel safe.
0:43:09
(Speaker 1)
But he’s just having kind of a natural reaction to your radiance.
0:43:15
(Speaker 2)
I mean, of course, he needs to do his own work and learn what to do with his desire, but most men don’t have that skill set. So, how can a woman, you know, work with that while staying in her power? I mean, that to me feels like the big piece of work, right? How do I stay in my power with a man’s desire for me without just dropping into the I’m unsafe, I’m unsafe role, right?
0:43:42
(Speaker 11)
Because that does nothing.
0:43:44
(Speaker 1)
Then he feels like, oh my God, I did something wrong. My desire is bad, but you’re so beautiful and I just wanted to be close to you. I mean, we see this all the time.
0:43:52
(Speaker 3)
And so how would you guys work with women on how to navigate that? Responsiveness in art, baby.
0:43:59
(Speaker 1)
Responsiveness all day long. Thank you, David Data. Responsiveness, yeah. Authentic responsiveness is so powerful. And, you know, it’s a perfect progression from sovereignty to really having the greater awareness of what’s happening in ourselves than to be able to externally express it, you know, in a loving, wide way that’s current. You know, if he’s coming at you subtly, you don’t need to bring all the weight of everything, but it’s like, oh, you know, it’s just a subtle, like, oh.
0:44:33
(Speaker 19)
Yeah, just little cues.
0:44:37
(Speaker 1)
Or you can move his hand or you can put your hand on his chest and slow him down. To me, responsiveness is where our socialization as women to be nice, not hurt someone’s feelings. Responsiveness is so key. That like, yeah, our like kind of like protectiveness not to hurt someone’s feelings is actually what makes us feel unsafe because we don’t feel like we can be true about the experience we’re having. And so we’re in that moment, practicing with a partner, they start coming towards you and instead of being able to be like, oh, I don’t like that, even if they don’t feel like unsafe.
0:45:13
(Speaker 3)
So often I’m like, I just like really don’t like that. To be able to be like, and like push him away a little bit.
0:45:21
(Speaker 1)
most women have zero access to that.
0:45:23
(Speaker 14)
And then it becomes very unsafe because they feel stuck in a situation where someone’s coming towards them and they’re like, I’m supposed to be pleasing.
0:45:33
(Speaker 1)
And they’re just kind of like trying to give like little, they’re just backing up.
0:45:37
(Speaker 2)
But their center column is like closing. And what they need to do to restore what we’re talking about, like real present, I’m in this present moment recognizing I don’t like this and I need something to change, and I have a sovereignty to respond accordingly to what I’m viscerally feeling. Often that’s the exact thing that flips the moment to allow it to be super open and fun, you know, like shut up.
0:46:05
(Speaker 1)
and growl and be like, you know, I like put my feet on people and be like, get away from me, you fucker, you know?
0:46:11
(Speaker 2)
If I do it with love, and then it’s like, amazing. Yeah.
0:46:14
(Speaker 1)
Yeah. And of course, men need to be able to, you know, put their big boy pants on and understand like, oh, you know, not like that, right? Or, okay, again, I was too much. Too much. This is where the art piece comes in so much. It is an art, this response of giving and receiving of this.
0:46:34
(Speaker 1)
So responsiveness, I just wanna define it because people don’t really understand what it is. I would define responsiveness as the expression of truth through the body in the moment. It’s not 10 minutes later, it’s not an hour later, that’s not responsiveness. It’s like right now my body’s having this experience, the truth of my body is uh, right? And how do I artfully express that? Like you talked about putting your foot up, I’ve seen you do that. you know, do that in a way that also has love.
0:47:07
(Speaker 1)
Right? Recognizing that he’s having a reaction to your… beauty, your power, your magic. And of course, there is some probably untrained response. And I think a lot of women kind of suffer in relationships with this. We see it in workshops, but women are suffering in relationships with like, how do I handle my man’s desire for me? in a way that doesn’t totally castrate him.
0:47:36
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, and keep him open.
0:47:38
(Speaker 3)
How can I show it, but keep it? And teach him, and teach him. Yeah, teach him, absolutely. Men need to be taught these things, and y ‘all are like our best teachers for this. And this is one of the things I would put in the pot of what is part of women’s work, is stop enduring.
0:47:55
(Speaker 1)
Because enduring is what so many women do in their long -term relationships. and marriages, thinking that they’re, you know, having the sex that they have to contribute to have the relationship, but underneath they’re just enduring physical experiences or types of connection that don’t feel fulfilling. Unconsciousness, unconscious touch. And then they lose interest and they will become repulsed and disgusted and not attracted to their partner. And so the restoration of that is absolutely through responsiveness and that truth of the body in real time. Yeah.
0:48:32
(Speaker 1)
And I think we can’t say this enough.
0:48:35
(Speaker 2)
This is art. Like this is the kind of things that you guys teach is the kind of things that I teach. Like this, learning how to respond, and this is true for all humans, I think, like how do I give my truth in a way that is loving, right? That is not so connected, so tethered to my wounds that it comes out as an absolute attack. And it’s really, really hard, and especially hard for women, you know? For men, just to touch on men for a second, for men, where they struggle with this is, I don’t like that.
0:49:12
(Speaker 2)
Don’t do that. I don’t like that. Right? Just that.
0:49:15
(Speaker 11)
Yeah.
0:49:15
(Speaker 1)
I can’t tell you how hard it is for men to just say that about some behavior of yours that they don’t like or disrespect that they don’t like.
0:49:24
(Speaker 11)
And so responsiveness for men is really around creating a boundary, enforcing a boundary oftentimes, you know, kind of letting you know what I’m available for and what I’m not available for, you know, what behavior is okay and what’s not okay.
0:49:37
(Speaker 2)
It’s less sexual. You know what I mean? It’s really interesting for men. It’s less sexual. But for women, that is such a crucial piece, you know? Like, how do I let you into my body, near my body, you know, which has all of this stored stuff,
0:49:55
(Speaker 2)
a way that honors my truth, you know?
0:49:58
(Speaker 1)
So rich. It creates so much. When we can actually flip the relational context into this realm, it creates so much deepening and trust. When I know, when both parties know that each are being really honest. There’s so much freedom in that and liberation in that. Yeah.
0:50:18
(Speaker 1)
This is different, because what I see women do, I’m sure you guys run into this as well, is what they’ll do is they’ll interpret this and they’ll say, well, I just need to tell him what to do. which is different.
0:50:32
(Speaker 3)
You can express the truth.
0:50:34
(Speaker 1)
Like, okay, so I need you to touch me this way. And then when you do this, like move your fingers this way. And you know what I mean? And like, and so how, how, how might you, you know, help a woman navigate that, you know, the, the, the directness that is really, you know, important in the world with the art, which is more impactful in relationship. It’s a great question. Cause I was just going to talk about this.
0:50:59
(Speaker 3)
I actually think there’s a real generosity to taking some of the guesswork out of it. Because we obviously have to learn how to feel each other. But we had a practice once, which I really like, it totally changed the way that I approach polarity, which is before we went into the feeling and like the kind of like no talking space. I was able to say, like, I really don’t like when you, it was the boundaries one where I was able to tell him all my boundaries and needs. And what I ended up doing was like, okay, here’s what freaks me out. And here’s what really kind of like makes me like just bleh.
0:51:44
(Speaker 1)
And I got two minutes to say, you know, when you like lean over and breathe with your mouth open, I’m just, it freaks me out.
0:51:52
(Speaker 4)
I don’t like it.
0:51:53
(Speaker 1)
And my whole body goes.
0:51:54
(Speaker 4)
Yeah.
0:51:54
(Speaker 1)
And then I, but also what I love, I love when, when you touch my hips and you squeeze my hips, I’m, I’m done. Like that, that’s it for me. That’s literally all you have to do is just breathe and look in my eyes and feel my hips. And I, am done for. In that practice, because I knew that he knew, and that I didn’t have to guard the whole time from a leaning in, mouth breathing, you know, whatever, I had the best time of all time. Because We had the information we needed.
0:52:27
(Speaker 1)
And I think there’s generosity to like stage two and then go into the art. Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. Yeah, I think we’ll do a bit of that this weekend. Yeah, we’ll do a bit of that this weekend because we got a lot of new people coming. We have a workshop this weekend. So this is perfect.
0:52:42
(Speaker 1)
Thank you for reminding me. Yeah. Anything else in that? Like such a big topic. It’s so big. It translates into, how do I feel safe?
0:52:52
(Speaker 1)
How do I express my truth? Like, I mean, it’s in those moments of, you know, the relational collapses. It’s in those moments that either intimacy is fostered or, you know, or repulsion and disconnection is created, right? And so… I’m thinking, so let’s go back to the safety piece and to fear. Can I actually say, I feel like there’s one other tier to that, which is archetypes.
0:53:22
(Speaker 4)
And the expression of art once the once the conversation’s had and once there’s natural responsiveness flowing between everyone and there’s truth happening, then that’s where the art can actually come in.
0:53:39
(Speaker 1)
And each person, especially the women, we work with the women a lot in Wild Love With Us where we help them feel and tether into that primordial magic inside of them. And as a practice, to be able to really bring the truth with an open heart, with the magic that’s naturally in them. And so working with archetypes really helps women really get that feeling sense in the body.
0:54:09
(Speaker 6)
Yeah.
0:54:09
(Speaker 18)
Yeah.
0:54:10
(Speaker 1)
Well, I think I haven’t really gone into archetypes here, but I think it’s really important to discuss the difference between, you know, our archetypes, you know, we have the sorceress, we have the queen, we have the seductress, you know, and there’s many, many, many other archetypes that we work with in our work. But the difference, I think it’s important to say, is that the archetype isn’t, and you just referenced it, the archetype is an internal remembrance of something that’s already within you. Absolutely. Not something that you’re performing. Yeah. Right?
0:54:41
(Speaker 1)
And that is such a huge difference. And that is so empowering for women, right? To find your internal magic versus like, you know, kind of perform it or define your internal sovereignty. rather than perform it. And, and, you know, because like you guys have said, women are so trained to perform and please, we see this all the time. We see this all the time.
0:55:05
(Speaker 1)
And I, okay. So if we were going to flip from women, you know, working with their own fear, right. And, and being responsive to their own fear, being, um, revealing of their own fear, like, speaking their own fear to this concept of safety. Like, and how… I think I’m starting to see safety in two ways, right? There’s the relational safety, meaning, you know, you guys agree, you know, you and Chris agree, like, you have tools to help each other feel safe, right?
0:55:35
(Speaker 2)
And it’s this culture of safety that you guys are working with together.
0:55:40
(Speaker 1)
And that is beautiful. Stan Tatkin talks about it.
0:55:43
(Speaker 3)
We talk about it. I talk about it a lot. But there’s also this idea that There will be moments when you have to find your own safety. You have to be able to find the part of you that is beneath the fear, beyond the fear, deeper than the fear, and really connect to your own safety.
0:56:07
(Speaker 2)
how, you know, you can talk about either one of those, either some tools for the relational landscape or some tools on how to find, you know, your own safety.
0:56:17
(Speaker 1)
You mentioned some earlier, like, you know, pleasure is a way to feel safe.
0:56:21
(Speaker 3)
But what else would you recommend to women?
0:56:23
(Speaker 1)
Because this is, I think, the issue.
0:56:27
(Speaker 3)
Absolutely. The relational issue. I can’t tell you how many times I hear this.
0:56:30
(Speaker 2)
I’m sure you guys hear it.
0:56:31
(Speaker 17)
I don’t feel safe with him.
0:56:32
(Speaker 3)
I don’t feel… Mm -hmm. I just want to say one more thing. I believe that whenever, and this is true for men too, because men actually feel unsafe a lot. They just don’t talk about it. They don’t know what to do with it.
0:56:46
(Speaker 3)
But for all humans, when we feel unsafe in a relational moment, it’s because somebody is doing something more than likely, that happened to us normally in our childhood, maybe culturally with the past or some trauma that we experienced, that reminds us of that time. right, that points to that time.
0:57:09
(Speaker 1)
I think with women, it might be a little different, though. Like, that there’s something sort of so, you know, lodged in the body, that it’s not even really nameable. But when we feel unsafe in a moment, more often than not, it’s not because somebody’s really gonna hurt you, it’s because it’s pointing to something in the past, or something internally or in your body. And so, you know, just being able to slow it down and say, okay, I’m safe. unsafe, this is probably old.
0:57:38
(Speaker 2)
Most of it is probably old. Like the mouth breather is not really gonna hurt me, right? I just don’t like it. He’s not really unsafe, he’s just unskilled. He’s not unsafe, he’s unskilled. And so how do you help women find that safety?
0:57:56
(Speaker 2)
And also, teach their men, you know, to help them feel safe. It’s such a big, I feel like it’s a huge topic. It’s huge. It’s so crucial. It’s so foundational. It’s so, I mean, this is where I really go in with my women and we do in the group too, but helping a woman understand and start to resource in herself and find that sovereign connection to herself is just essential for any relational dynamic.
0:58:25
(Speaker 2)
And for everyone to understand that the nervous system keeps the score. And the nervous system will prioritize sameness above our joy or our happiness every single time. And so it’s really important for us to be working with safety at the nervous system level. So are you saying that you kind of have, that women have to sort of override their nervous systems?
0:58:50
(Speaker 1)
No.
0:58:51
(Speaker 5)
A little bit or no?
0:58:51
(Speaker 2)
We have to, be with what is true and meet, like find and meet the places that actually don’t feel safe in us and then bring the resourcing there slowly, slowly over time. And I call it your inner coach. Like we have to coach ourselves about what safety feels like, what it, you know, from moment to moment and how do you resource safety in every moment.
0:59:22
(Speaker 1)
and working with, there’s the external world in which we have to find safety and then the internal
0:59:30
(Speaker 16)
world.
0:59:30
(Speaker 3)
And those are, there’s different tools, like just scanning the room for what is beautiful in the room and resourcing from that, like receiving from that.
0:59:42
(Speaker 2)
It’s a slowing down of the nervous system, slowing down of the mind and body to start to track, again, positive sensation.
0:59:50
(Speaker 15)
And then, so there’s the external experience and then there’s the internal experience of internally resourcing safety.
0:59:58
(Speaker 2)
And I work a lot with meditative practices and energetic practices and also embodied practices to help a woman really start to bring online her inner safety coach. And even just tap it in like, okay. I am safe. It is safe to be in my body. It is safe to be here and to feel the, feel it sensationally, but also have the awareness of it and to really be orienting towards finding safety. So what would be, the way I’m interpreting that is that women need to find something that’s more potent than their fear.
1:00:41
(Speaker 1)
or their thought loop or their story about being unsafe. So you mentioned pleasure as one of those things.
1:00:47
(Speaker 4)
You mentioned finding their own sovereignty.
1:00:50
(Speaker 3)
What else would you describe as greater than the fear that they can touch? If we zoom out a little bit and look at the female body as an expression of the feminine, which is receptive, a lot of the fear comes because there’s been boundary violation. And not even just physically or emotionally. It’s just I haven’t been able to speak my needs. I haven’t had these things honored. And so those things, it’s almost like the body has become permeable.
1:01:20
(Speaker 3)
And so to me, safety, almost always for women,
1:01:24
(Speaker 2)
and the female body in particular, comes first through containment.
1:01:28
(Speaker 1)
Because when we can give ourselves containment, it’s almost like putting ourselves back together and going, no. Nothing can come in here. I mean, like our sex, like we are penetrated. People come inside of our bodies. And so to really be able to say, like, firmly, my skin, my bones, my muscles, my experience is mine, and I’m allowed to have the experience I’m having, that containment actually allows us to feel ourselves a lot more, and then to feel safe feeling what we’re feeling. Because we are primed for oxytocin, Oxytocin is a relational compound that our body produces, and so we will often prioritize relationality over our own safety.
1:02:14
(Speaker 3)
And when we start to reorient towards inner self -relationality and the cultivation of pleasure, which is the oxytocin, we naturally create safety and spaciousness because we can feel ourselves.
1:02:28
(Speaker 2)
We know this is this is a sovereign place. I get to choose what happens. Yeah. Can you just describe, because I think this will be misinterpreted, the difference between containment, self -containment and closure? Yes, yes, yes. And sometimes Containment might look like closure.
1:02:43
(Speaker 2)
Closure I think is more like the harsh guarding and shutting down. It’s a body posture too. But you can contain. It’s tight. You can contain. But it’s tightness.
1:02:54
(Speaker 1)
It’s restriction.
1:02:55
(Speaker 2)
And you’ll feel it in your body as like a tension. Containment actually feels really pleasurable.
1:03:00
(Speaker 1)
And there’s a few things like This is a great containment when you put your hands on your head, arms around. Any type of containment that’s physical actually orients you towards those boundaries in a really healthy way and gives you way more spaciousness and it doesn’t feel like tension.
1:03:20
(Speaker 3)
relief. And so I think you can use those two things. That is really, really important, right?
1:03:26
(Speaker 1)
Because of all of the things that we talked about at the beginning, all of the trauma that women have experienced, that the knee -jerk reaction to tighten as a way to feel safe versus to contain as a way to feel safe, that feels like a really important distinction. Yeah.
1:03:45
(Speaker 2)
And the hardest part is helping women orient because Helping a woman orient to positive sensation and feeling contained and safe in the body, it’s actually, and pleasure.
1:03:56
(Speaker 1)
Helping a woman value pleasure is like the hardest part of our jobs, you know?
1:04:03
(Speaker 14)
Because they don’t get it.
1:04:05
(Speaker 13)
We don’t collectively understand the importance of slowing down and the simplicity of just feeling the body to feel safe.
1:04:15
(Speaker 2)
And our skin is made up of the same tissues as our nervous system.
1:04:19
(Speaker 1)
And so just by doing this, it’s not some big, huge, effortful thing.
1:04:25
(Speaker 2)
It’s like just slowing down and simplifying. It’s really, that’s part of the work is to get the woman to understand that. The way you guys are laying it out, which I think is so important for women to hear, is that Pleasure is a way to feel safe in your body. Like, learning the thousand ways to create pleasure in your body is a way to feel safe in your body. That’s fucking revolutionary, really, you know? And I think the women, you know, of the past really knew that, you know?
1:04:55
(Speaker 2)
The witches that danced in the woods and really, you know, but it’s been kind of beaten out of women in the puritanical era, right? Up until, you know, today really, right? And science has completely confirmed it. Well, and it’s that freedom of sovereignty, right? I’m free to experience my body in a way that feels good to me. which has not historically always been our experience.
1:05:18
(Speaker 2)
But I think something’s really important here because pleasure is sensation. Pleasure is just positive sensation in the body.
1:05:24
(Speaker 4)
And sensation is one of our channels of perception.
1:05:28
(Speaker 2)
But sensation, especially for someone who’s been over -oriented towards their mind and their intellect and hasn’t lived through the experience of their body, can be very hard to experience sensation.
1:05:41
(Speaker 1)
Because sensation is communicating emotion. And when it starts to come online, being in the body and being in the experience of like, wow, I have so much sensation, it can actually be quite uncomfortable and terrifying.
1:05:55
(Speaker 2)
If you’re coming out of freeze, you almost always go through terror and sensation arising. I think we see this a lot in workshops, is that we’re in pleasure, we’re in a co -relational experience, all of this sensation starts coming up and she’s naturally thawing out of freeze because of the pleasure and safety. And when you come out of freeze, you go through terror. Yeah, there’s a layer of unfelt feeling. Yeah, and so there’s this wafting of like, how do I be with all of these things stirring when I haven’t had the capacity before? And that is where like even just, you know, like the containment that we can offer each other, the containment you can offer yourself, the slowness will help to metabolize it and not blow you out and make you automatically like shut it down.
1:06:45
(Speaker 1)
Yeah.
1:06:46
(Speaker 2)
Yeah.
1:06:47
(Speaker 1)
So, all right, let’s, let’s just, let’s sort of wrap this up in the next few minutes with this, like how, like a regular woman comes to you with the list of like, what would be the list of problems that, that, that a woman comes to you with?
1:07:02
(Speaker 2)
Like, just give us like the top three, four, five, 10, 20 of them, whatever, whatever feels like it’s. I’ll just go through people I’ve worked with. Yeah. She can’t feel a lot sensationally through sex. Another is she can’t, she can’t bring the truth of her experience in sex.
1:07:27
(Speaker 1)
To, to, or relationship to her man.
1:07:29
(Speaker 3)
Yeah. To a partner. Yeah.
1:07:31
(Speaker 1)
And she also to the attunement piece where she’s struggling feeling the connection of the heart.
1:07:41
(Speaker 12)
So she suffers because she doesn’t feel his attunement?
1:07:44
(Speaker 11)
Yes.
1:07:45
(Speaker 1)
Numb.
1:07:47
(Speaker 3)
Angry, I think a lot of us carry a lot. That’s a beautiful combination.
1:07:52
(Speaker 10)
Hypervigilance, which looks like we really are in a culture that is oriented towards how the male nervous system works.
1:07:59
(Speaker 3)
You have a 24 hour cycle, you’re pumping testosterone all the time. That’s like a go hormone. And we are very rhythmic and very different. And so we’re forced, especially because we’re career oriented, doing all these things that we’re having to contort a lot. And that creates so much just implicit stress in our systems that has to unwind for there to be any level of availability for connection. Pumping cortisol all the time.
1:08:30
(Speaker 1)
Over -stressed, overworked, over -caretaking. Because a lot of times there’s like, the unseen labor of women is real, especially if you’re mothering and working and running a household. Because we’re always externally orienting towards home, towards cleaning, towards kids, towards partner.
1:08:49
(Speaker 6)
And that’s that’s part of how our brains wired.
1:08:52
(Speaker 2)
We get to do many things at once. But it’s overstimulating. Yeah. And so it makes it hard to be relational just with the flip of a switch. Yeah. Because there is a decompression that needs to happen.
1:09:05
(Speaker 2)
So women are showing up numb, angry, hypervigilant, overstimulated, disconnected from their pleasure, right? Okay, and then I think, I mean, you may have gotten into this already, but just kind of lay out the path to healing for a woman like that. I think one of the things, and this is like a question It has to be a collective cultural piece is honoring the rhythmic nature of our bodies and honoring that we’re always in fluctuation hormonally, not just in our menstrual cycle, moving from, you know, menses towards ovulation and feeling amazing and then into a luteal phase where we have like no energy, lots of emotion and need to rest.
1:09:55
(Speaker 1)
That’s happening for us.
1:09:56
(Speaker 3)
And then we have the whole life spectrum, which is the menses, motherhood, and menopause arc, which in every phase we’re very different.
1:10:07
(Speaker 1)
And if we really want to be able to orient to safety, relationality, pleasure, connection, love, we have to be able to go slower.
1:10:18
(Speaker 10)
We have to be able to orient to those inner rhythms and decline so much over working in our systems that it literally eliminates all of the production of sex hormones and capacity for relationality.
1:10:35
(Speaker 2)
So I think that that’s the first piece. So slowing down? Yeah, honor your biology. Slowing down and I think what I’m hearing you reference is sort of slow down and actually start to feel the rhythm of the mother of nature, of earth, of that kind of thing, right? Yeah.
1:10:53
(Speaker 3)
And then I think that there’s a piece too here, because within that, that’s the physiology and the nervous system. is really being able to cultivate expression, heartfelt expression, not analytical explaining of your emotions, but your capacity to cry, grieve, Get angry, clear the rage, be with the rage that you are feeling, that we’re all feeling. The joy, like being able to connect with your desire and your joy and your yearning for love. All of that gives you this roundness and permission to feel that I think we kind of cap off.
1:11:31
(Speaker 1)
all of those things a little bit.
1:11:33
(Speaker 9)
What would you add to that?
1:11:35
(Speaker 8)
Same, same.
1:11:36
(Speaker 3)
Really, but really valuing pleasure, slowing down, valuing rest, the revolution of rest, I think is so important for women.
1:11:46
(Speaker 1)
And then the co -regulation of women. Yeah, like women with women. Women together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s where oxytocin and all the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it’s so important.
1:11:56
(Speaker 1)
I’m really, It’s so important that I think it’s more like 70 % women with women and 30 % women with men.
1:12:04
(Speaker 3)
That’s what I used to be, I’m down with red tint, white tint.
1:12:09
(Speaker 1)
It makes so much more sense and things click.
1:12:12
(Speaker 3)
I really think we go to our partners way too much to resource what they aren’t designed just biologically to give us. They’re just not. we are designed to give that to each other. And I think that is, that’s why we do all the women’s work that we do. It’s like just us being together is that in and of itself is such a huge healing. Yeah.
1:12:38
(Speaker 3)
And you know, we talked about it a lot about men finding men’s groups to be with, but it’s just as important for women, right?
1:12:44
(Speaker 1)
To find women that they, you know, that you can dance with and, you know, clear with and express with and all of those things, find pleasure with, right? And yeah, it’s very, very crucial.
1:12:57
(Speaker 2)
Very, very crucial. And to digress just a bit, but I think it’s so valuable, is when we understand the differences in the way that male body and female body just naturally have different hormones, different capacities, different orientations, often different socialization, we stop putting a blame on like a deficiency in them. Like when I learned that we create so much oxytocin together as women, like when we talk and when we’re together and we get a chit chat and we get a, like, and I have a need for that. And when I bring that to my husband, he’s like looking at me like, what’s happening, right? Like, do you, like, are you trying to get me to fix something? Like he’s, it’s not in him.
1:13:45
(Speaker 2)
And so before, being in this work and understanding that there’s just some fundamental differences. Not all people are going to be like that, but like I used to, I would have taken that so personally and been like, he doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t want to listen to me. You know? I think a lot of women, yeah. We take it personally.
1:14:02
(Speaker 2)
Alison Armstrong talks about this, like you want him to be a hairy woman kind of thing. Yeah.
1:14:06
(Speaker 1)
And he really is not. He often wants just quiet.
1:14:11
(Speaker 5)
Yeah.
1:14:11
(Speaker 7)
And I love that.
1:14:13
(Speaker 6)
It actually makes him deeper.
1:14:14
(Speaker 1)
And then I call you or, you know, You know, all of our friends, I will call out my friends like 35 times a day just to tell them what I’m snacking on.
1:14:23
(Speaker 3)
And it really like, I’m like, I’m getting my, the needs met in the right places. This is so important because then relationship can start to, there can be the space of what relationship is really about, which is love, like the connection of love. When we’re not trying to get all of our needs met through the primary relational dynamic, then the can elevate. Your cup is full. Yes.
1:14:52
(Speaker 3)
Your cup is full. Absolutely.
1:14:54
(Speaker 1)
That makes perfect sense. Yeah.
1:14:56
(Speaker 5)
Okay, so the last thing here is I would love you guys to speak to the men.
1:15:03
(Speaker 1)
Like, if you could say anything to the men, you know, like, how can we help?
1:15:09
(Speaker 4)
You know, how can we meet you?
1:15:10
(Speaker 1)
How can we understand you? How can we, you know, work with what you are up against or what is it that you need? You’ve spoken a lot to it, but if you could speak to the men, what would you say? I think a lot of hugs from behind. Containment. Containment.
1:15:29
(Speaker 2)
Helping her slow down.
1:15:31
(Speaker 1)
Helping her feel her body.
1:15:33
(Speaker 2)
I think if men could really… hug their women, massage their women, and give their women orgasms a lot. Really, really to help flood the system. And it takes, everything we’ve talked about, a lot of women, that’s the practice, to get to be able to be in your pleasure. But that is such a, I think women would be so happy in relationship if they understood that oxytocin was their medicine and the men understood that oxytocin is her medicine and help to keep that going, I think we’d have a lot of happy couples. Okay, that’s very practical. Hug her, get her off, love her.
1:16:18
(Speaker 2)
I wanna go a little bit more meta, because we’re in a real hard cultural purging of a lot of pain.
1:16:30
(Speaker 1)
what I’m noticing myself is that I do feel angry at men. And what I would want to say is I’m not angry at you personally. I’m angry at what’s been done and what is still happening and that this shouldn’t be our burden alone to carry. And you guys have a real capacity to hold us and protect us and help us heal that which has happened by doing all the things we talked about, like being a safe, loving place to help us feel the things we’ve never been able to share. And there are things still currently that we’re working through that are so super painful.
1:17:14
(Speaker 1)
And to feel you guys rising up and being a stand for our emotions and our softness and our hearts and wanting that, giving us permission to be like, yeah, I want your heart. I want the fullness. I want to protect you.
1:17:28
(Speaker 3)
I want to speak to other men about behavior. Like that to me feels like so necessary because You guys are like, the goodness of men is so vast and so infinite and your guys’ beauty is, like your nobility is so deep and true.
1:17:48
(Speaker 1)
And to feel that, you holding that and you holding that while you hold us and for us is like, I think would completely change the world. In the same way that our devotion to your goodness And seeing that in you guys as a whole is what’s needed. Yeah. So feeling our protector, feeling the part of us that is a stand for your full expression, right? Feeling the part of us that is, you didn’t use the term justice, but just like, you know, like, like, you know, standing for what’s right in the world to the best of our beliefs. Right.
1:18:25
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. I have another really important practice. I feel like Every couple I work with this comes up.
1:18:35
But if the men could just offer their woman. a tight container, hey babe, can I hold space for you for three minutes to show me, not tell me, but to show me through your body what it feels like inside of you right now? Hold it tight at three minutes, like, okay. And then it’s complete, it creates so much, Yeah. Love and trust and intimacy. Yeah.
1:19:08
I think it’s a really valuable. I love that practice. And I cannot tell you how many women resist that practice. Of course. Yeah. It’s really sad.
1:19:16
Yeah. You know, I mean, I’ve had that experience in my relationships where like, you know, I can tell something’s up, you know, just like, I’ll just sit here and hold space for it. So I guess that would be my response back to women. Get in a women’s group so you can learn how to do it. Yeah, get in a women’s group, learn these things. I mean, it’s pretty simple what y ‘all laid out, which is like, you know, connect to the earth, slow down, find your pleasure, express your truth, you know, be responsive.
1:19:42
Like it’s a pretty simple, but not easy path forward for women. I wanna say too, like speaking to the women, that men are carrying so much pain and repression. They are. So much. And there aren’t as many spaces where they are given permission to share that. So if you have a partner or a man you love, offering the same.
1:20:05
Like, really, like, show me the burden that you’re carrying. Show me the fear. The fear about providing, the fear about the stress on your shoulders. Like, show me, because that gives us Again, this place of real meeting the intimacy and not the socialized ways that we’re supposed to behave. That would go so far for men. I cannot tell you how many men feel like I can’t, like she has no idea what I’m carrying.
1:20:32
She has no interest in hearing about what I’m carrying. And there’s a big, it’s a big pain point for men as well. I think this is to be continued because, you know, we’re just kind of touching the surface of all this, but I really, really appreciate this. This was really helpful. I learned a lot. I learned a lot.
1:20:47
So this is really helpful and thank you both for coming. Thanks for having us. So much. All right. All right. That’s it for this month.
1:20:55
We’ll see you again next month.
