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Unleashing Your Wild Expression: A Journey from Shame to Liberation - with Nadine Hamilton | EP19
111 Plays1 year ago
You’re about to listen to my favorite podcast conversation I’ve had so far with Nadine Hamilton, ab Integrative Sexuality and Embodiment Coach, Somatic Intimacy Educator.
In this episode we cover:
- How to rewrite the narrative of what it means to be a sexual being
- Experiencing a dark night of the soul
- How to navigate life when it feels like everything is crumbling
- Reaching ecstasy and bliss in solo pleasure practice
- How shame works and how you’re subconsciously being taught to not trust yourself from a young age
- The work of David Broderick and a practice you can do to heal shame
- Why we’re always internally gaslighting ourselves
- A step by step practice to do when you’re feeling a sticky emotion like grief or frustration
- How to communicate with your partner
- The power of sacred sexuality
- And soo much more.
Nadine Hamilton is a professionally trained Integrative Sexuality and Embodiment Coach, Somatic Intimacy Educator, and Host of Soul Nectar Podcast.
She fiercely believes that soulful, embodied, connected, bliss-inducing pleasure and intimacy are everyone's birthright.
Through her potent classes, events, courses, and private coaching containers,Nadine passionately guides people of all backgrounds through their spiritual, sensual, and self-love evolution to unleash and un-shame their wildest expression, expand their capacity for pleasure and intimacy, fall in love with their erotic nature, and remember their innate worth, beauty, and divinity.
Connect with Nadine https://www.bloomwithnadine.com/links
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Transcript
Introduction to Unfiltered Femme Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Unfiltered Femme podcast. Your new world to get the lowdown on all things pleasure, sexuality, the mysterious female body, dating, relationships and everything you need to know to step into your most unfiltered, unapologetic, empowered and turned on self.
00:00:20
Speaker
The Unfiltered Femme podcast is all about breaking down those walls and celebrating what it means to be an unfiltered feminine being. I hope you're ready for a wild ride. Let's dive right in.
Guest Introduction: Nadine Hamilton
00:00:32
Speaker
You're about to listen to my favorite podcast guest episode that I have ever recorded. It is with Nadine Hamilton, who is a professionally trained integrative sexuality and embodiment coach and somatic intimacy educator. Nadine passionately guides people of all backgrounds through their spiritual, sensual, and self-love evolution to unleash and unshame their wildest expression, expand their capacity for pleasure and intimacy, fall in love with their erotic nature, and remember their innate worth
00:01:02
Speaker
beauty, and divinity. In this conversation, we dive into literally everything from experiencing a dark night of the soul, when it feels like life is crumbling around you, healing shame, step by step practice for when you're feeling emotions like grief or frustration, how to reach ecstasy and bliss in solo pleasure practice, and so much more. So let's get right into it.
00:01:25
Speaker
Welcome
Nadine's Journey to Sexuality Coaching
00:01:26
Speaker
back. I am so excited for my guest today. I have Nadine here with me. How are you doing today? I'm amazing. I'm happy to be here. It was so fun laughing with you about silliness before we started recording and thank you for having me.
00:01:42
Speaker
thank you for being here and yeah just a touch on that before we started i was a bit frazzled sorting the dogs and i was like i just need to take a deep breath and we did a little shake and it was like so nice when you find your people who just get that who understand that we've got to shake and stick our tongues out and be weird to get into the body
00:02:00
Speaker
before we are speaking and sharing so thanks for doing that with me and now we're ready we are always amazing so i would love to kick it off of course with hearing a little bit about your journey how did you get into the amazing work you do today around feminine sexuality pleasure intimacy where did you begin what really
00:02:24
Speaker
spark that fire inside of you to say, I want to do this work and share this with other humans I would love for you to share. Yeah, thank you for asking. And I feel like a lot of people in this industry that I talk to, they feel like it came out of nowhere and they never expected it. But it was actually this inner knowing that I had my entire life since I was a little girl. Even since I was little, I was a very
00:02:50
Speaker
sexually curious exploratory kid. I found out very young that if I moved my body in a certain way or I touched a certain area of my body that it felt really amazing. And even though I was so exploratory, I still really associated that pleasure and that exploration that was so innately innocent with this deep sense of shame and guilt and fear and
00:03:16
Speaker
Oh my God, no one can ever find out or else I'm the most disgusting human on the whole planet. So it was like my biggest secret in the whole world that, oh my God, I pleasured myself. And then growing up, I started to have some really disempowering sexual experiences as a lot of people tend to during their teenage years and early twenties.
00:03:36
Speaker
And then in college, I took a class in women's and gender studies and human sexuality and that just blasted open my perspective of whoa, this is something, this is a whole area of study that I could actually go deeper into. So I started taking more classes and I also had a college boyfriend who
00:03:59
Speaker
was the first person in my whole life that I finally felt safe and trusting and free enough around to really sexually explore. So we had this relationship that I felt so much freedom within.
00:04:15
Speaker
to really explore new areas of myself with another person.
Discovering Sacred Sexuality in Costa Rica
00:04:19
Speaker
And then after graduating college, I knew that I wanted to leave the US and explore the world and have adventures. So I moved to Costa Rica and it was there that I was introduced to sacred sexuality for the very first time.
00:04:36
Speaker
And I remember sitting front and center in that workshop about sacred sexuality just like jaw on the floor like holy shit. I knew there was something more to this and it was blowing my mind because up until that point I was studying sexuality. I was so fascinated by it, but it was very much
00:04:56
Speaker
I only knew about the physical realms. I only knew how incredible it felt when I was exploring. But then when I was introduced to energy and tantra and the fact that this thing that I've been so fascinated by is sacred and is a part of spirituality and is a part of what makes us human and what makes us whole.
00:05:21
Speaker
That set off a really deep dive, a really big deep dive into tantra and sacred sexuality and working with sexual energy. And then I found out about the certification program that you and I have both done, which was very intensive, very immersive and that really cracked me open to new levels of what is possible. Yeah, so it's been a deep journey of
00:05:49
Speaker
unraveling all of the layers of shame and limitation and contraction and conditioning and just bullshit narratives that we've been fed our entire lives to come back to the truth that our sexuality is such a core aspect of who we are. And it is beautiful. It is innocent. It is worthy. It is sacred.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah, that was the short version of a much longer story, but I'm so, so fucking passionate about guiding other people to experience that same level of reclamation within themselves.
00:06:26
Speaker
What a beautiful share. So many nuggets of wisdom already from that. And I think that's so cool to hear your journey from a young age, your child self knew that there was some magic there and pleasure there. And it's like going back to what you knew as a child once you've cleared through that shame. So that's really powerful. Very opposite. I'm in the other category of those stories of people who are, it's like,
00:06:49
Speaker
it's mind blowing that I'm doing this because I was the opposite of that very disconnected and would never touch myself or self like connect with my body sexually. So I always love hearing from people who've had a different experience. So thank you for sharing that.
Dark Night of the Soul and Career Shift
00:07:05
Speaker
I would love to know how did things change for you once you went from working with a shame and I want to touch on the shame piece and dive into that in a little bit, but how did things change for you? What did you feel differently? How did life change once you
00:07:19
Speaker
connected with this sacred sexuality piece? Yeah, so I did not at all grow up in a spiritual household or a religious household at all. Growing up, I don't know, I only believed in what you could physically, tangibly see. I thought that, I don't know, once you die, that's it. And there's no such thing as energy or anything.
00:07:41
Speaker
So then once I moved out of the country and I started exposing myself to lots and lots of new cultures and perspectives and ways of living and languages, it started to again catapult this unraveling
00:07:59
Speaker
process and I had so many attachments to how I thought reality worked, who I thought I was, what my identity was. And I had a really intense dark night of the soul in the beginning of 2020, which is a whole long story, but basically almost overnight I lost everything. Like I lost the community that I was living in and the job that I had and my sense of identity and my friends and my relationship and I had to
00:08:28
Speaker
fly back home to the US and it was this really intense chapter of like darkness and despair and hopelessness and I feel like I needed that at that time in order to fully let go of my sense of identity and sense of self
00:08:47
Speaker
and really get clear on, okay, right now I have the opportunity to start from scratch. I know I'm so passionate about sex education. And previously that wasn't something that I took seriously as a career path. Like I would joke to my friends, I want to be a sex educator. I want to be a sex educator, but I didn't really mean it.
00:09:06
Speaker
And then finally I was like, okay, it's time. Let's do this. So I started studying and training in sacred sexuality. And like, when you're in this chapter of your life where everything crumbles and you have to start from scratch,
00:09:25
Speaker
That's when I started to connect more deeply to subtle energy and what do I want at my core? What is my soul want? And it was also interesting because my sacred sexuality journey started as a solo journey.
00:09:41
Speaker
which really expanded my perspective of what's possible. I started to be able to reach these states of ecstasy and bliss and spiritual connection just through my solo self-pleasure practice that I was then able to share with partners. For me, it was an interesting journey of totally giving myself permission to let go
00:10:07
Speaker
of everything that I've been taught about life, about sex, about orgasm, about pleasure and relationships and what it means to be a sexual being and completely rewrite that narrative. Wow.
00:10:22
Speaker
had goosebumps as you were sharing that because everything that you're just describing, the dark night of the soul, feeling like life is crumbling. I've actually experienced something similar to that this year. So I have the certainty in terms of the work that I'm doing, but the way that's looked, relationship, crumbling and.
00:10:40
Speaker
seven year relationship coming to an end, living by myself now for the first time, basically in my adult life. But so many things that you were saying, I'm like, these are the thoughts that I had earlier this year of starting from scratch. And now I actually just had my final
Identity Shifts and Embracing True Desires
00:10:56
Speaker
therapy session of the year with my amazing therapist who I've been working with for six months. And it was such a celebration session. And I was listing off all of these insights that I've had about what I want for the rest of my life.
00:11:07
Speaker
these downloads I've been getting about the vision, the big visions that I have for my life, my business, the things that I want to share with other people. And I said to her, I have just realized I've got really big dreams. And this year, the gift from the darkness for me has been seeing that's actually what I want. And I was playing it too small. And
00:11:29
Speaker
looking back at this year of the darkness and the depth I just was like wow I had to go through all of this to have that clarity in myself and that confidence myself to really drive that vision forward and I'm so grateful for it
00:11:43
Speaker
And I think that's something that a lot of people really struggle to accept when they're going through these things. So as you've experienced something wild and painful and dark in that way, I'd love for you to touch on that a little bit if you're open to sharing. What did that look like? How did you get through that? Because I know so many people have experienced similar things of some part of their life or all parts of their life crumbling this year. And I think it's been that kind of like that shake up year, like the snow globe shaking up.
00:12:12
Speaker
So how can people navigate through all? How did you navigate through that? Like what really helps you move through that challenging time?
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my God, Steph. I'm like jumping on my seat. This might sound really weird, but like grief and darkness is actually one of my favorite topics in the entire world. And like also in regards to pleasure and sexuality because I don't believe they are disconnected. Ooh, where do I want to begin? So I'm someone who like one of my core
00:12:43
Speaker
belief systems and how I perceive the world is through animist perception, which is recognizing that, in my perspective, everything in existence has a consciousness. Everything in the natural world has an animacy, including your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, the weather, your physical environment, your body. Everything is conscious.
00:13:08
Speaker
So rather than thinking that if you're journeying through grief or depression or anxiety or really hard shit, which inevitably we all will, instead of thinking that means there's something wrong with you, or you need to be fixed, or you're broken, or you're never going to see the light of day again, literally
00:13:28
Speaker
Think of it as something you are in relationship with and also something that life is inviting you into, like moment to moment. Every single breath relate to it as an invitation from life. This, like more than anything, helped me so much. OK, in that moment in 2020 and moments after that, I was like, OK, I'm in the darkness. There were literally moments where I thought I would never smile or laugh again. It was really fucking hard.
00:13:59
Speaker
And I asked myself, if I'm in relationship with this, what is it inviting me into? And it felt like deep reflection, taking inventory of my path and getting clear on, is this actually the path that's true to my soul and the path that I want to continue forward on? Or was it a path that
00:14:22
Speaker
I felt like someone or something else was choosing for me. We tend to think in colonized patriarchal society that we should always be feeling a certain way. And if we diverge from that, then something is wrong and all hell breaks loose.
00:14:38
Speaker
But as humans, just like nature, because we are a part of nature, we're constantly cycling through different seasons. And even in our sexuality, even in our relationships, even in our orgasms, we're cycling through different seasons. So what does it look like to hold yourself
00:14:55
Speaker
in so much love and so much gentleness and care and tenderness and compassion when you are inevitably going down into the underworld. Because there are so many gifts there. There are so many gifts there. And if we can't be with ourselves in the depths of our darkness and despair, it's going to be so much harder to also expand your capacity to be with pleasure and joy and ecstasy. Even if it feels like
00:15:24
Speaker
whatever you're going through right now, you're never going to get out of it. I guarantee you if you're able to meet this moment as dark as it is with loving presence and loving awareness, that is innately expanding your nervous system's capacity to be with all of life.
00:15:41
Speaker
For me, the healing and expansion and growth and personal development spiritual journey is not about eliminating the darkness, the anxiety, anything that makes you human. It's expanding your capacity to be with all of it. And that makes you a better lover and gives you better orgasms because again, it's expanding your capacity to be with the physical sensations of life.
00:16:06
Speaker
So beautifully said. That was literally perfection to my ears. The way that you worded that, I think it's so beautiful and so helpful for people because I think the biggest thing wrong with society is that people aren't talking about the darkness, that everybody is going through at some stage in their life. And like you said, people think there's something wrong with them. And when you shared that there were moments when you questioned, will I ever smile again?
00:16:31
Speaker
I can relate to that and I'm sure that many people can relate to that. When you're in the depths of it and it feels like so intense and so deep and so dark and so painful, you're like, how will I ever get out of this? Will this ever end? And it feels like eternity versus when you're in something like happiness and joy, those moments just feel so fleeting. They feel like they go by so quickly. When you're in those darker ones, right? It feels like this is never ending.
00:17:00
Speaker
And we're, this is a generalization, but most of us in society, we're taught from a very young age that when we're feeling big feelings, we have to rationalize it. We have to silence it. We have to push it down. It's too much. And I feel like especially people who were raised as girls and women, we have this deep fear of being seen as messy or hysterical or too much, too sensitive, too emotional to this, like just this too muchness.
00:17:28
Speaker
When that too muchness, when those waves of emotions inevitably come up, like when you can lean into it instead of running away from it, that's when so many things happen, including you feel, holy shit, I am not this emotion. And I have the ability and the strength and the resilience to
00:17:49
Speaker
navigate anything that life throws at me. So when we lean into it and we become intimate with the feelings and the emotions, that's when we feel so much more unstoppable. And we're like, okay, I trust myself. I trust life. No matter what comes up, I'm going to get through it. So beautiful. I wish that for everybody.
00:18:09
Speaker
Let's talk about the impact of
Connecting Dark Emotions and Pleasure
00:18:12
Speaker
when the connection, sorry, between darkness and grief and sadness with better orgasms and expanding your capacity to feel and pleasure. Can you just talk on that a little bit and that correlation that I'm sure most people probably aren't aware of? Absolutely. So I feel like for people, especially for all genders, but I work mostly with women. So that's the lens that I usually talk about.
00:18:39
Speaker
anyone with a womb, you are intrinsically connected to the cycles of life and death and rebirth. That literally lives within us, this portal of constant cycling through death and rebirth.
00:18:55
Speaker
it's happening every single month if you're someone who is currently menstruating. And even, for example, in French, like orgasm, don't make fun of me, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation, but le petite more is the little death, the small death. That's what they refer to orgasm. So when we view
00:19:18
Speaker
our sexuality as a part of nature. It makes us more accepting and embracing of the fact that it's going to fluctuate. And that means sometimes you're going to feel disconnected. Sometimes you're not going to want to do a pleasure practice or connect with your partner. And rather than making that mean that there's something wrong with you or that your sexuality is broken,
00:19:42
Speaker
Again, ask yourself that question of what is this inviting me into? Maybe this is inviting me into a new flavor of my sexuality. And what's coming up now as I'm saying this is that it's so normal for also big emotions.
00:19:59
Speaker
and grief to come up as we're connecting to our pleasure because our sexual energy is so fucking powerful. It's life force energy, creative energy. So when we're relaxed and open and present enough to allow that energy to not be so localized to the genitals but to flow through our whole body,
00:20:22
Speaker
inevitably, that's going to bring some shit up to the surface because it's literally clearing out stagnant energy and stagnant emotions and unfelt feelings. And again, we're taught that, oh, this is bad. Oh, I'm too afraid to
00:20:38
Speaker
feel this. I'm too afraid to express this. I don't want them to see me in my emotions. It's too exposed. It's too vulnerable. So it takes again like this deep tenderness and gentleness to be able to accept everything that you're feeling and experiencing even as you're having sex or pleasuring yourself. I've had so many experiences where during or after orgasm or just hurting myself on big emotions
00:21:05
Speaker
Came up that were really unexpected and I was like, whoa, I didn't even know that was still in there for me liberated sexuality and true sexuality like being true to yourself is Being unfiltered and
00:21:21
Speaker
not putting it in a box or thinking that your sexuality, your pleasure, your orgasm, your intimacy has to look a certain way. What if your pleasure practice or what if your sex with your partner or whoever was a container or a portal of truth and of aliveness? What if you gave yourself permission for your sexuality to be the living expression of life and of truth, which again includes all of your human emotions and your grief?
00:21:48
Speaker
So I believe a pleasure practice is such a beautiful place to feel your grief, feel your rage, feel your frustration, feel whatever comes up to the surface and recognize that it's coming to the surface because
00:22:04
Speaker
you created an environment where it finally feels safe enough to do so. We have a choice in that moment to either ride the wave and be like, OK, this is coming up, breathe through it, let myself feel it. Or we can keep suppressing, which takes a shit ton of energy to keep doing that. And we're just depleting our energy. So.
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah, that was a long winded answer, but it comes back to like radical fucking permission and acceptance to be with whatever is there without making it wrong. That is what I want to shout from the rooftops.
00:22:37
Speaker
Keep shouting it. I love it. Full permission for all of it.
Communicating Desires in Relationships
00:22:40
Speaker
I have so many, I was making notes here because I have so many threads to go down from what you shared. I'm obsessed. Let's talk about actually something that was coming up as you were sharing that was I think back to my pre sacred sexuality days before I experienced my first sexual awakening, which really changed everything for me and got me onto the path I'm on today.
00:23:03
Speaker
I used to think about, I spent a lot of mental energy back in the day thinking about how much sex I should be having, how much sex is the right amount to be having, whether self-pleasuring is okay, how much self-pleasuring. And as you were talking, I thought, oh my gosh, I never have to think about that anymore. And can we just talk about this? Because I have so many conversations with women and they always ask, how much sex should I be having? How much should I be self-pleasuring? And I think it's something that a lot of people are spending a lot of energy
00:23:33
Speaker
thinking about and there are other places like you said where they can be using and channeling that energy for the good.
00:23:42
Speaker
Oh, I love this question so much. Thank you for bringing this up. And like you and like probably everyone in the entire world who is a human, like I resonate very deeply with that. And also as a sex coach and someone who teaches this work, I don't know if you resonate with this, but sometimes I put pressure on myself of, oh my God, I'm not doing enough pleasure practices. I'm not doing my rituals enough.
00:24:06
Speaker
always this undertone of should or shaming ourselves or thinking we're too much or never enough in comparison. I would say if someone is feeling like they're unsure of how much sex they quote unquote should be having or how many pleasure practices they should be doing a week,
00:24:25
Speaker
Rather than putting that pressure on yourself, I would like a practical thing you could do is to schedule a love appointment or intimacy appointment or pleasure appointment, whatever you want to call it. You can put that on your schedule, set up a sacred space, and instead of pressuring it to look a certain way or think that something should happen, allow it to be a space where you literally just feel into what is true within me, what wants to be explored, and what does my body need right now.
00:24:56
Speaker
practice not shaming yourself if that looks like just putting your hand on your heart and breathing and that's what your body wants right now. Maybe you want a wild full-body tantric energy orgasm and that's your truth but sometimes it looks like
00:25:11
Speaker
feeling your feelings, being with what's here, if you're doing it with a partner, maybe it looks like just needing to express something or share something or just cuddle and touch each other. But I think intimacy does not have to look a certain way, whether it's with yourself or with someone else. So moment to moment, come back to asking your own body, what do you need right now?
00:25:37
Speaker
And if you are doing a pleasure practice something really incredible that I invite people to do is before you ever enter yourself internally. Always take a moment to just like cup your vulva breathe into that area and ask her directly. Do you want to be entered right now and if it's a no.
00:25:58
Speaker
honor that or if you're with a partner, like really ask yourself moment to moment, do I want this? Am I a yes to this? And can I honor myself enough to express that and communicate it? That's so important and so powerful. I think a struggle for a lot of women to feel like they, first of all, a lot of women aren't connected to their bodies, yes and no. But then second of all, to have that permission that they get to say no to a partner.
00:26:25
Speaker
If it feels like a no in their body, how is there a good way of approaching that? If someone's okay, I can feel it's a no, but I don't want to offend my partner. I don't want him to him or her to feel rejected. What's a good way of approaching that? And does that start in the moment? Is that in the moment thing? Is this a pre conversation that needs to be had?
00:26:44
Speaker
incredible question and yeah I just want to empathize with people with the fact that it's not easy relating is messy relating is confusing when another person is in the picture a lot of things come up including deep feelings of guilt and shoulds and oh I don't want to hurt their feelings and people pleasing and all of those things come to the surface so let's normalize that for sure and I would love to encourage people to
00:27:13
Speaker
openly and regularly have conversations about sex and intimacy in your relationships so that
00:27:21
Speaker
the only time you are interacting with your sex life isn't just during sex or isn't just in the bedroom. So even if it's scary, even if it's cringy, set a time to openly have these conversations. And a way that you can immediately establish deeper intimacy is to start that conversation by expressing exactly what you feel. So if you feel nervous and cringy and shy, say that.
00:27:49
Speaker
say, Hey, I want to talk to you about this desire that I have, or I want to talk to you about the fact that I want to start practicing radically honoring my body's yes and no. And I want to tell you that expressing this right now feels a little awkward, or I feel shy, or I feel shame around this. And just owning your humanness, owning your emotions,
00:28:11
Speaker
And then when you are in the bedroom, there's going to be this deeper compassion and understanding, hopefully, that you saying no or saying my body doesn't want this right now doesn't necessarily mean anything about the other person.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah, and also expressing that you want your sex with this person to be like a training ground of how you both get to honor the truth of your body. How beautiful is that? Instead of just unconsciously going through the motions or having expectations of what it should look like,
00:28:49
Speaker
If what you want is a relationship where both of you can openly and actively explore all the nuances of your sexuality, have that conversation. And I think that takes almost like an audacity and a boldness to claim if you have that desire, because we're not taught to have these conversations. So go easy on yourself. It's going to be messy. But yeah, it takes courage and it's going to build deeper intimacy to have those challenging conversations.
00:29:18
Speaker
And they get easier with time eventually. And also it doesn't have to be so serious. I think also being playful with it is a huge element.
00:29:28
Speaker
Hmm. That's really powerful and really beautifully explained. I think that's super helpful for people to realize. And it just got me thinking back to previous relationships I've had where literally we would never talk about sex. Like it was never a part of the relationships that I had in the past of pre doing this work post getting into this work.
00:29:49
Speaker
It's a very present part of the relationship dynamic and it is not always even sexual, like talking about sex doesn't have to actually be sexual in nature. Like the conversation can, like you said, be playful, but it is wild to think about how many people are going through life in relationships and not having any forms of these conversations and then engaging in
00:30:13
Speaker
the act of sex, but without, it's almost like going on a plane and not getting the security briefing or going on a holiday or a vacation, but you've had no information about where you're going or what you've signed up to or any details. It's like you're just thrown on this random.
00:30:33
Speaker
plane somewhere and you don't have any information and you just have to figure out. It's actually a little bit mind blowing to me to think about. It makes no sense, absolutely no sense and we're expected to automatically just have it all figured out and just get it right and love sex and relationships but we don't talk about it. It's the most complex, it is the most complex part of being a human for sure so I love these conversations. So do you believe that there is
00:31:02
Speaker
I say these words lightly, a right or wrong amount to be having sex in relationship or for a person to be, or a woman to be self pleasuring for optimal connection with her sexuality or not. Oh, good question. For the most part, I try to veer away from right and wrong and good and bad or anything that's prescriptive because everyone is different. What's coming up for me as you ask that question is that
00:31:33
Speaker
For most people, I'm not going to say for everyone because I don't know everyone, but I will say for most people, I believe sex is vital for a healthy, thriving, long-term, sustainable relationship. Sex is literally, even physiologically, medicine and nourishment. And I think we really don't
00:31:56
Speaker
take that seriously per se and people can go months and months or even years or decades without being sexually intimate or without really getting their desires and their needs met sexually. So I would say if you want a thriving connected relationship really make it a priority and have that conversation with your partner of hey I want to feel connected to you
00:32:22
Speaker
I want to feel juicy and activated and explore these different desires that I have and I really want to pour more time, more energy and effort into this. And that's another thing especially with long-term relationships is we get really comfortable with each other and we stop putting in the effort. And again, we just prioritize other things and we think the relationship will just work itself out.
00:32:47
Speaker
So I can't emphasize enough like the power of having those love appointments or intimacy dates, whatever you want to call it. Put it on your schedule and be ruthless about it. It's going to be easy to have resistance or to want to do something else, but really make it happen. Really prioritize your connection and your intimacy.
Intimacy Practices for Connection
00:33:10
Speaker
And as I mentioned, like when you both show up to that, take the pressure and the expectations off the table and you can start with some eye gazing. You can start with touch. You can start by meditating together or breathing together and seeing what naturally unfolds. But if you make it a priority to just have that
00:33:32
Speaker
dedicated time and space to be connected, to be intimate, to feel into, wow, what do I want right now? If I'm being really real with myself, that's going to give you the environment where deeper intimacy can take place and you're gonna feel more connected whether that looks like having sex or not having sex. But I think sex is incredibly important.
00:33:57
Speaker
And if you're really struggling with that with your partner, there's also so many things that you can do on your own and that your partner can do on their own. And then you can come together because you're going to feel reconnected to your inner erotic aliveness and your sensuality.
00:34:14
Speaker
So rather than putting pressure on your partner to make you feel turned on or make you feel a certain way, cultivate that within yourself and then you can show up to intimacy with your partner already feeling juicy and overflowing and connected to your desire.
00:34:31
Speaker
And it's like a practical thing that you can do if you're unsure like how to go about an intimacy date with your partner is something that one of our teachers Layla Martin teaches a lot is asking each other, what do you desire right now? And each person shares and be really real with yourself. What do you fear? And also what do you love about the other person? And this is really powerful because sometimes we don't have
00:34:58
Speaker
dedicated spaces where we have the permission to claim the bigness and the truth of our desires or to express what we're afraid of, which will also create this atmosphere of connection, intimacy, and vulnerability because you'll see like the tenderness of their heart. And then ending that with what do you love about each other because we could all really use that reminder. I love that practice so much. And I remember when I did that for the first time with my ex, actually,
00:35:28
Speaker
learning it from Layla, obviously. I cried so much during the fear question. I was like, where did this come from? I was not expecting it at all. And my partner had just held such great space for me. And it was such a beautiful experience that we would never
00:35:46
Speaker
have done by ourselves. And when we did that as well, we really made the time to create the space, dim the lights, have candles, have beautiful music, sensual music playing, even if it was only for that, the three, the fears, loves and desires question.
00:36:02
Speaker
to create the sacredness of the space. And it's wild when you have the full presence of your partner and you ask these questions, what that can turn into. And that's how you create the amazing sex and intimacy that is in those moments. So I really love that you shared that. It's such a powerful, powerful practice.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah and that like when your intimacy date or session that you're about to have is founded on that deeper authenticity and emotional connection which like when your partner is expressing to you what they fear that most likely is going to open your heart and it's going to allow you to see them in another light it's going to allow you to see them as a human with fears and emotions and all of their humanness
00:36:49
Speaker
So then if you do go into lovemaking after that, it's going to most likely come from this place of a more open heart. And many of us have been having sex for most of our lives from this place that is so disconnected from the heart and disembodied. And that's a whole other journey and a whole other flavor of lovemaking in itself when your heart is wide open. And when you feel that connection between your sex center and your heart, it's a whole other level.
00:37:19
Speaker
I love that and I really believe what you shared earlier for women especially I really believe that it begins with them reclaiming their own sexuality first and going on that individual journey before trying to take it into partnership
Exploring Self-Pleasure for Healing
00:37:36
Speaker
because otherwise I think they can fall into that same trap that they might already be living in which is
00:37:40
Speaker
my part, my pleasure is for someone else or my pleasure is sourced from this other person or it's only accessible when I'm with someone else, it's external. And in fact, when we can come into ourselves and really connect with ourselves and our own sacred self-pleasure practice, that's where it becomes magic, right? Like how do you encourage women to start on that journey if maybe they've only ever
00:38:03
Speaker
self-pleasure in a disconnected way, perhaps, or maybe have never even explored that practice. Where would you advise them to begin? The very first thing that comes up is safety. A lot of us associate our sexual expression, our pleasure, our wildness, our desires with, even unconsciously, this fear of being ostracized, this fear of being shamed.
00:38:29
Speaker
My recommendation would be to, even as you're starting to pleasure yourself and turn yourself on and touch your body or even just hold yourself, you can say the word out loud, safety. I am safe. It's safe to be in my pleasure. It's safe to be turned on. It's safe to be a sexual woman, whatever you need to hear and literally say it out loud. I know it's going to feel weird and cringy maybe and awkward, but let your own body and your own physical ears
00:38:58
Speaker
hear those words, and you can even write a love letter to your body or to your pussy or to your sexuality. And in that letter, express everything that has been left unfelt or unsaid about your sexuality. What parts of yourself are needing forgiveness? What parts of yourself are needing to be seen and heard and witnessed? What parts of yourself are needing healing?
00:39:23
Speaker
That is also part of the journey of rewriting the narrative about your sexuality. So asking yourself, and you can journal on this, what was I told that it means to be a sexual human? What was I told it means to be surrendered in orgasmic pleasure or to be sexually hungry?
00:39:45
Speaker
And just get curious without making it right or wrong or thinking you need to fix yourself. What was I taught that it means? That it means. And slowly you can start to rewrite that narrative and reclaim the truth of your desires. Thank you for sharing all of that. I'd love to know how
00:40:06
Speaker
Can women unshame themselves so they can unleash that wild expression? I know that's something that you're passionate about sharing and teaching women, guiding women into. Shame is such a present thing for so many women if they're doing these questions and realizing, wow, I feel shame and contraction in my body even thinking about being a sexual being. How do you start to unravel that so you can unleash that true self-expression?
00:40:33
Speaker
Beautiful question. So I really resonate with the work of David Bedrick. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he is a total expert on working with shame in a somatic way. And he teaches that shame is not necessarily a feeling or an emotion. It can have emotions that are associated with it.
00:40:54
Speaker
But it's a witness. It's an internalized witness. And he also emphasizes that in the past, when we have certain traumatic experiences,
00:41:07
Speaker
We tend to focus a lot on the experience itself and the perpetrator, which yes, absolutely that deserves our attention and our healing around. But what we forget is the witness. So if we're a little kid and something happens, let's say there was an abusive situation.
00:41:27
Speaker
Who was the witness or the lack of a witness in that situation? So let's say you went to a mom or you went to one of your parents and you told them what happened and they said, oh, that's not what happened or oh, it's not a big deal. You're making that up or oh, don't talk about that. Like then you're so young and developmentally, you are just absorbing everything that your parents tell you as truth.
00:41:52
Speaker
So that shaming witness that's in front of you, that's bypassing and gaslighting your experience, that's internalized. And then you have this inner witness that is erasing your inner experience. So in that moment you are subconsciously being taught
00:42:08
Speaker
Oh, I can't trust my experience. I can't trust my intuition. I can't trust my sense of this is right and this is wrong or this is a boundary, this isn't a boundary. Then we grow up and we enter these relationships and we wonder why we struggle so much to stand up for ourselves, to speak our truth, to recognize our truth and why we're always internally gaslighting ourselves and erasing our own inner experience.
00:42:35
Speaker
So there's so many different ways that you can work with this, but one way, one method that I love to work with is, and it's really, it's a lot easier to do this with someone facilitating it, but you can do it by yourself, is to
00:42:52
Speaker
Put a chair or a cushion or a pillow in front of you and project outside of you this shaming witness, this witness that is erasing your inner experience. And just noticing, okay, when this shaming witness is in front of me, what naturally arises within me?
00:43:11
Speaker
what feelings or emotions or sensations or anything that's been left unfelt or unsaid. Give yourself full permission to go there, dramatize it, really let yourself act it out and lean into it and just notice
00:43:26
Speaker
In this moment, if I give myself full permission to express everything that I've been stuffing down for my entire life, what is finally going to come out? And when that inner shaming witness has been within us for so long, we identify as it and we think we are it. So the power of projecting it in front of you and feeling it outside of yourself gives you some spaciousness to be able to see it.
00:43:55
Speaker
And to feel how you operate and how you feel without that thing inside of you. And you can even switch perspectives. So imagine yourself going on the pillow, looking back at yourself, looking into your eyes. And what does that shaming witness want to say back to you?
00:44:11
Speaker
and going back and forth and it gives you such a more holistic perspective of this internalized being and this conditioning that was never yours to begin with. And when you're speaking it out loud,
00:44:26
Speaker
you can hear your words and be like, whoa, I actually don't feel that way. This thing that I've been thinking is wrong with me my entire life. That's not coming from my true perspective. It's coming from this absorbed conditioning that was never mine to begin with. Wow. Isn't that wild to think how
00:44:45
Speaker
Because with that experience that you, the story that you shared or the insight there, that can be from large experiences, like abusive situations as a child, but also from those smaller situations, right? Where there's someone who's young who has big feelings and they're being not like given that time to feel their feelings will be acknowledged or be witnessed in those. So it's so wild to even think going back, what memories do people have around those experiences as a child? Like maybe.
00:45:14
Speaker
in your adult brain, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but that could have had such an impact and could have, and has shaped you into the person you are today. And perhaps the people piece or lacking trust within yourself. It's just mind blowing to think about those experiences and how they've shaped us into who we are today. And those pieces, the shame that we can be living with, that isn't really us. So beautifully explained, so pow wow. Thank you.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's so powerful to just think about what would happen if I recognized that all of my belief systems about reality most likely did not come from me. It came from culture and conditioning and parents, including about sexuality and pleasure. This word keeps coming up, permission. Give yourself permission to rewrite your entire fucking narrative about everything.
00:46:04
Speaker
And to get clear on what have I made things mean? If something happened in my life in the past or currently, what am I making that mean about me? And can I stop making it so personal or creating these stories and narratives about it? I love that question so much. What am I making it mean? Such a good one to question on.
00:46:25
Speaker
Let's talk for a moment about how we can use self pleasure in those moments of darkness and in grief, because I think this is such a probably unknown thing that we can experience and actually use this as a powerful practice to help us navigate.
Navigating Grief Through Self-Pleasure
00:46:44
Speaker
And I'm just going to share from my own experience of the craziness of life this summer, it was mind blowing to me to be able to tap into the power of pleasure.
00:46:53
Speaker
through moments of grief and of sadness and of pain. And I was using the pleasure pendulation tool.
00:47:01
Speaker
in those experiences to feel my sadness and then come back into pleasure. And so many times I was like, I'm so proud of myself for actually following through and embracing these tools because it did make it a little bit easier, a little bit in those moments and just remind myself that I can hold it all and I can't experience it all. So can you share a little bit about that? How can people weave together both of those if they're going through this darker time?
00:47:25
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my God. You asked such good questions and also, and thank you for sharing that about your personal experience. I could not resonate more. So again, like many of us were taught to think about pleasure and sexuality and orgasm in a very specific way. And we think, oh, in order to feel turned on, I have to look like this and feel like this and act like this and perform like this and make these sounds or whatever you learned from porn, most likely.
00:47:53
Speaker
And some of the most achingly beautiful, meaningful, expansive, awakening, erotic experiences that I've had have been in a dance with grief. So when we start to realize that pleasure and grief or pleasure and rage, pleasure and whatever fucking emotion you're going through, like those don't have to be separate things. They can be in the room together.
00:48:20
Speaker
So a little meditative practice that I could invite listeners into is if a feeling comes up for you and you have a space where you won't be disturbed, I would invite you to place your hands on your body wherever you physically feel the sensations the most of that emotion. So let's say you're going through grief and you feel this aching, painful,
00:48:48
Speaker
emptiness feeling in your heart. So place your hand on your heart, bring in the breath, breathe into that emotion, and notice how at the core of your emotions are sensations. They are physical sensations in the body. And if we want to go a layer deeper, it's energy moving through you.
00:49:07
Speaker
So if you can be with the physical sensations, the energetic activation of that emotion without making it mean anything, without creating a whole story or even labeling it as grief or rage, and you can literally just be in a meditative way with the sensations and the energy of that emotion, then you start to realize that
00:49:29
Speaker
It's life force. That's what it is. It is literally the intelligence and aliveness of life moving through you in a way that we have been culturally taught to label a certain emotion or a certain experience or, oh, this is grief. When you can start to be with the raw life force of it, that's when it becomes a lot easier to
00:49:54
Speaker
translate that into turn on because energy can alchemize into any other type of energy. And I would encourage people, it's like a fine line because I wouldn't advise you to like necessarily think you have to alchemize your grief into pleasure or into something else, but it can naturally happen through breath, sound, movement, touch, and awareness.
00:50:18
Speaker
Again, the practical invitation I would give people are to feel where in your body do you feel the sensations of that emotion. Place your hand on that body part. Breathe directly into it. See if when you invite in the breath, if those sensations change or shift or dissolve or expand, which they most likely will because they're passing through you.
00:50:42
Speaker
and then bring in movement and sound. Maybe you can start to undulate your hips a little bit and literally make love to your grief, make love to your frustration or your resentment or your jealousy or whatever emotion that we've been taught to shame and suppress.
00:50:58
Speaker
And I guarantee you, you can have some of the most hottest, sexiest, erotic, pleasurable experiences with your grief. It very much can happen with pleasure. They don't have to be separate.
00:51:15
Speaker
Damn, that got me like a little bit excited. I'm like, I want to go meet my grief again. I want to go cry a little bit. Like you made it sound really fun. I love crying. I do too. I really do. It feels so good. Hang on. Let me backtrack. I wouldn't say I love crying. I love the feeling after crying. I love the feeling after crying. I feel...
00:51:39
Speaker
the lightness, the spaciousness. Something that's interesting about crying is that my crying this year has become so
00:51:47
Speaker
Like it's almost painful for me to cry because it's my eyes like really scrunch up. It's a full body cry. Those cries where it's like shaking, crying. That is what my cries have been all year. So I'm ready to hopefully move into a lighter style of crying where it's the tears rolling down the face and it feels nice and it's more gentle. I haven't had those kinds of crying recently. It's just been so visceral and intense that that would be why I'm saying I don't love crying right now because it has actually been quite painful to cry.
00:52:16
Speaker
though the after effect of the crying, so powerful. And I know I'm going to feel amazing, like a ton of bricks have been lifted. So even crying, there's different flavors of crying I would have known.
00:52:27
Speaker
God, I love just like openly having these conversations about crying and emotions and grief. It's just, it feels so important to normalize. So important. Yeah. It's too many people are feeling alone going through the hardest shit in life and that just piles on and makes it even worse when you're like, no one else is experiencing this. Everyone else is living their best life.
Cultural Conditioning and Expressive Freedom
00:52:49
Speaker
And it's not true. It's really not true. And I love having these conversations as well. It's really necessary. Yeah.
00:52:56
Speaker
A couple of questions for you. What is your favorite self pleasure style practice? Whether that's like a specific tool that you use or like a mood that you set or a flavor, what is yours?
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah, so if anyone is familiar with the erotic blueprints by Jaya, like I lean very heavily on sensual and energetic. So I love the senses and activating all of my senses. I love playing with energy. So for me, it's really important to set the space.
00:53:33
Speaker
And for a lot of women, not all women, but for a lot, this tends to be the case. What would it look like to relate to your pleasure practice as like a sacred temple? And if it doesn't feel genuine or true or authentic for you to do this, you don't have to. You get to do whatever feels good for you. But I like to
00:53:54
Speaker
light candles. I have these like beautiful fairy lights. I have this beautiful soft waterproof blanket that I put on top of my bed. I have all my special toys and crystals and an altar and I like really set the mood and I put on like this sensual playlist and I love again to activate all of my senses so I feel into
00:54:20
Speaker
What is true and alive in my body right now? And bringing my awareness to that place and similar to the practice I just described about grief is just getting so curious about what would it look like to make love to whatever is alive within me right now. So, ooh, I feel a little bit of tension or contraction over there. Okay, can I lean into it? Can I see how that wants to move through me?
00:54:46
Speaker
Can I bring in the breath and sound and movement, which are literally are built in tools for expansion and moving energy and alchemy. So for me, I love to incorporate all of the senses. And I also really love massage. A lot of us, like through porn, we have this expectation that we should go straight for the genitals and just
00:55:14
Speaker
enter ourselves right away and for the majority of women we need at least 20 to 40 minutes of foreplay and warming up our bodies and opening relaxing feeling safe before penetration. So if you have the time and the space definitely take your time and be patient.
00:55:35
Speaker
I would recommend starting from the outside in, starting from the edges before going into the bullseye, per se. And no matter how slowly you're starting to touch or caress your skin, ask yourself, what would it look like to go 50% slower right now? And a lot of times, that might bring up resistance. That might bring up discomfort because we live in this world of instant gratification and going really fast and getting to the point, getting to the destination.
00:56:04
Speaker
Another thing I love to encourage is to drop all destinations and outcomes and goals. Don't even think that you have to have an orgasm per se and just be with the raw sensations of your body. And when we can incorporate slow pleasure, that's when we start to really re-sensitize ourselves to energy and turn on and pleasure, and then we won't need
00:56:30
Speaker
so much overstimulation in order to feel anything. So this is also a really amazing practice for people who feel numb is to go really slow and bring your awareness to the sensations that you're feeling under your fingertips and then bring your awareness into your fingertips itself. Yeah. And just reattuning yourself to sensation.
00:56:56
Speaker
That sounds delicious. And I love the weaving of the senses. You've inspired me to, as I'm planning out my next 12 months, and I'm definitely going to add on there a regular love appointment with self into my schedule, because that's something that I've lost a little bit of connection with the last couple of months. The longer pleasure sessions that I used to have, I've been more into like quick, I've been exploring with more like quick, more regular pleasure sessions, which I don't feel are serving me as much as
00:57:26
Speaker
my previous really slow, I'd rather have fewer per month, really deeply long sensual intimate with self sessions than more regular short pleasure sessions. That was the experiment, the phase that I was in to play with that. And I'm like, no, I definitely prefer fewer and really powerful, beautiful sessions where I'm taking the time to set the space.
00:57:52
Speaker
do the lighting, the candles, have the chocolate, have the oils, have everything. So love appointments coming up for me. I'm excited for that. So to close this out, I have three questions that I'm going to ask you. The first one, I ask every guest this, and I always love to hear the answers, especially from women who work in this field.
Closing Reflections and Affirmations
00:58:14
Speaker
What are you celebrating right now?
00:58:17
Speaker
Ooh, what am I? So right when you ask that, if I had more time to think maybe this isn't what I would say, but I'm going to go with the first thing that came up is I just ordered a brand new crystal pleasure wand. It's Indian Jade and she is delicious and we've been having so much fun together.
00:58:38
Speaker
And actually, surprisingly, before I bought this one, I've only been, I've only had glass toys that I've been exploring with. And this is my first crystal and whoa, it's been really powerful. So I'm celebrating.
00:58:53
Speaker
the pleasure and connection and new energies that I've been experiencing with my beautiful Indian Jade Pleasure Wand. Wow, I love that. I want to see what this wand looks like. I love it. So this second question, I feel like you answered it, but you can give a same or different answer, but what is bringing you pleasure right now?
00:59:14
Speaker
What's bringing me pleasure right now? Candles. I have this really deep connection with the fire element. I love connecting with different elements. And I don't know, the moment I light a candle, I don't know, I just feel my whole nervous system relax and it feels like this ancient ancestral connection. Maybe I'm thinking too deep into this, but I like feel myself. I don't know.
00:59:41
Speaker
sitting around a fire under their full moon or something. So candles bring me a lot of pleasure. I love that. And I deeply feel that too. I actually just started to do candle meditations where you light the candle and you just stare at the candle as I love it so much. I only I've done it before in the past and lost touch with it. And then a week or so ago, I was like, I'm going to start this as a daily practice because it's so powerful.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's a whole thing like candle divination. And yeah, it's really good for lucid dreaming to candle meditations. Oh, is it before bed? Yeah, before bed. Okay. Gonna try that. I'm gonna try that one out. See if I can tap into that skill. Haven't got that yet. My final question for you is what is something that you wish every woman on the planet could know or experience if there were one thing? Hmm.
01:00:35
Speaker
You are so fucking beautiful and divine and loved. That loved part feels really important because we have so much subconscious conditioning of I'm unlovable, I'm unworthy or I did this thing so no one's gonna love me, no one's gonna accept me.
01:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, you're so fucking loved and the love that you're grasping for, the love that you're seeking is already fucking here. It's all around you. It's all within you and you have the capability, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter your background and what you've been through, you have the ability to tap into it. I guarantee it. It's available to you.
01:01:20
Speaker
Wow. I received that. I feel like you were giving this message to me. I needed it too. I was like, ooh. I'm like, I'm soaking that all in. So I hope everyone listening, go back and replay that and place your hands over your heart and allow that message to be fully received in your body because so on point, so beautiful. So thank you for
01:01:43
Speaker
sharing that with all of us, that medicine. And thank you for this conversation. I've loved this conversation so much. Let everyone know where they can find you and anything that you want to share. Yeah, thank you. I would say you can find me on my website, bloomwithnadine.com.
01:02:02
Speaker
I have lots of really high value, epic, juicy freebies on there. I have a free seven day course. I have different masterclasses and I'm also at Bloom With Me Dean on Instagram and TikTok. Yeah, I would say those are the best places to find me. I also have a podcast called Soul Nectar with a ton of episodes.
01:02:24
Speaker
And I currently have some spots available for coaching, maybe one or two spots open currently. And then I'll have more in early 2024. And the next round of my group program is going to be coming up within the next couple of months. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, if you go to my website, you can find all the good stuff there. Amazing. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom and your magic.
01:02:51
Speaker
Yeah. Again, I want to say you're such an incredible question asker and interviewer and I feel so safe and open and turned on around you. So thank you for this podcast and this space that you've created. It's really beautiful. Thank you so much. So beautiful.