Incorporating Consciousness into Sexual Relationships with Zahava Griss

Today on The Better Sex Podcast, we have Zahava Griss, Founder of Embody More Love, a spiritual kinky dance community for personal and cultural liberation. For over 22 years, Z has been guiding dance, embodiment, and eros as the source of healing, creativity, building community, and shifting our culture. Z's love coaching focuses on secure attachment, kink, gender, expression, polyamory, and the erotic arts.

In this episode, Z will unravel how they grew up with a lot of energy and was socialized as a white girl, which gave them the opportunity to understand how white supremacy culture is conditioned in the body. Z talks about how they recovered from ballet, “being a bun head.” Z also highlights the importance of growing in relationships especially when an erotic charge is involved.

Experience better sex by tuning in to this episode!

Highlights:

(03:27) What is the Grief Ritual Lineage?

(04:10) Getting to know Z’s story

(11:46) What is the social locator in Z’s leadership program?

(12:35) Z’s leadership program and how capacity is being incorporated into it

(16:01) ​​What makes the difference between someone just surviving the trauma versus someone growing from that? 

(18:07) Understanding conscious breathing through yoga

(25:54) What happens to your presence if you feel at capacity and where does it go? 

(33:00) What are some of the stories that interrupt our sex life?

(41:35) The idea of growing in relation

(45:25) The healing power of conscious kink 

(47:04) Dominance as a form of leadership

Links:

Book a schedule here:  Embody More Love

Deborah’s Links:

Send your sex and relationship questions to DeborahTantraKat@Gmail.com

For a free Truth and Clarity Session Appointments 3 — Deborah Kat Coaching

Website: https://www.deborahkat.com/

Email: deborahtantrakat@gmail.com

Facebook: Events Near Me | Facebook

Twitter: Deborah Kat (@TantraKat) / Twitter

In our commitment accessibility, help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts. The transcription is far from perfect, and in some cases quite amusing. As we grow edited transcripts are on the list in the meantime please enjoy.

So that feels yeah. 

Okay. Well, I would love like I said, I trust that this is going to be amazing and that we're going to go wherever we go in the right place. I am going to be reading a few things here, so, yeah. Let's start with hello and welcome. This is Deborah Cat and you are listening to the Better Sex podcast. This is the home of unfiltered conversations about sex and relationships and how to make them better. In these conversations, I sit down with all sorts of amazing humans and discuss ideas and strategies that you can try at home so that you can have better sex. I truly believe that better sex makes for a better world. So if you want to have a better world and help create a better world for all, please hit the like button subscribe and leave a comment. 

If you have any questions about sex or relationship for me or my guests, please email deborahtuntracat@gmail.com. The information is in the show notes below. So I am ridiculously. Like, so excited to welcome my guest. My guest today is Z. They are the founder of Embody More Love. This is a spiritual dance community for personal and cultural liberation. For over 22 years, Z has been guiding dance, embodiment and arrows as the source of healing, creativity, and building community and shifting our culture. Z's love coaching focuses on secure attachment, kink, gender, expression, polyamory, and the erotic arts. As a spiritual path, Z guides grief rituals that integrate the lineage from I am sorry, I am not going to pronounce that correctly, so I will ask them about that in a moment. 

Z is a choreographer and a dancer, creating erotic films that root our soul in the Earth's body, arouse our imaginations, nourish our heart and arrows of humanity and the whole human family. Z performs rituals, books, coaching, grief rituals, and workshops to invite a dismantling of oppression so we can create a more truthful, a more loving, empowering, and meaningful relationships. Welcome, Z. I am so excited to have you here with me. 

Oh, thank you. Yes. And the grief ritual lineage that you asked about a moment ago is Saban Fu Somi from the Dagara people of Britina Faso. And that is the lineage that I learned and practiced in and have the honor of caring forth. And I'm so happy to be here with you. Thank you for having me. 

Yeah, so I read the official bio and we just touched on your lineage. But please, I know you have an amazing story and I'd love to share. Like, how did you get here? 

Such a big question and it's such a juicy opportunity. Well, I think something that's important to know about me is that even as an infant or probably two year old, I just loved to run and fly and jump at people and I would expect them to catch me. Okay, I've heard this story. Now as an adult in my family. And not a lot has changed because I still love play and full bodied joy and connection. What's different is that I'm better at discerning who to run at. Yeah, so, you know, I grew up with a lot of energy and I was socialized as white as a girl. And so one of the things in the US culture of what do we do with a young person who's socialized in those ways? How can that amount of energy not threaten us? 

Oh, yeah, send this person to ballet. That is an appropriate way for this amount of bounding, rambunctious energy and joy to be channeled. And so the next 20 years, I was in this rigorous ballet, which actually gave me the opportunity to really understand how we condition white supremacy culture in the body. And once I started recovering from being a buttonhead, I was also comparing notes with folks who were recovering from the military, and were having very similar experiences of the physical, emotional, mental rigor of this is the way you're supposed to be. And so I would say the heart of my journey has been a lot about how do I distinguish who I really am and the magic of that from the way I have been socially conditioned to be someone. 

And so that was the thread that then came forth around sex, race, money, gender, tank relationship styles. Like, all of these things became opportunities to be more authentically who we really are and to be in that courageous space of I don't need to blindly follow all of these visible and unvisible messages about who I'm supposed to be. That's often part of a larger system that I may not agree with. Yeah, so that's kind of like a short answer. 

I love that you started by saying that you like to run and throw yourself at people because that's kind of how I met you. We've crossed jobs over many different ways, but you are teaching a class at, I want to say Dark Odyssey. And it was about like I believe it was like, dance and power and bring all of those things together. And I vaguely not vaguely, I viscerally remember you jumping into somebody's arms and then that being the kind of that being the demo piece and kind of going like, wow, that's awesome. Oh, man. 

Yeah, you're reimagining that it was Dark Odyssey. There's surrender events and in the dungeon later I'm so freaking tickled by this. In the dungeon, there's like, on the first night, there's kind of all these little orders where you can go around and try new things and someone approached me and they were like, zee, I watched you run and jump into someone's arms like a year ago or two years ago, and it stayed with me, and I want to be able to do that with my partner. And it was the amount of trust that I felt you two have that so deeply moved me. And so I think on the physical level, it's like, yeah, I'm going to go out and just like leap into your arms. Right. And on the energy level, it's like, okay, I trust myself, I trust you. 

I trust how we know each other's timing and our ability to be present with each other that we could do this. And I'm interested in both the physical and the energetic. Like, what's the relational context that allows us to fly together. Yeah. 

So my experience of that was I actually worked with your partner who had caught you and it was and put on a blindfold to play with that energy and to play with that experience. And it was magic. 

Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. Yes. There's this body of work that's currently called playing with Power and Gender through Dance. And I've been teaching it and touring it across the US. And Europe, and it's essentially dance becomes the place that we're able to explore our desires, our sense of safety. We may have ideas around what we want or don't want, but how often do we get to have a lab where there's a curated and gently paced series of experiments and then you get to harvest in a pretty low pressure space? Right. It doesn't have to be with the person you're dating. It could be, but there it's just like a relational lab around what turns us on and what brings us in the presence.

And for many people, it's the first time that they start to understand the erotic charge that power dynamics can have when they're really conscious and the healing that can happen when they're really conscious. Because ultimately I see kink as an attunement culture and a radical way to heal a lineage of mistrust that has been about the abuse of power dynamics, the lack of choosing, the lack of consent. And so when we see that and we're like, okay, we are actually going to choose not just what makes sense for us on a personal level, but also we're going to deconstruct all of the social ranks that are in the culture around us so we can be more truthful with each other. And that's what I've been doing with my leadership program this week, is what I call the social locator. 

Like looking at all the ways we're marginalized and normalized and slowing down to be present with that because when we rush through those, sometimes that's where we have a lot of relational gaps or relational ruptures in our human family. 

Okay. Happy to be connected again. 

Me too. 

And before we started rolling, were talking a little bit about your leadership program and about capacity, and I'd love to hear more about how you're incorporating that. 

Thank you. Yeah, well, the program is called Waking the Heart of our Human Family. And really it's about presence and the way that I'm many of us have a lot of trauma personally, collectively, historically. We're in a period of time where that is more pronounced right now and so it impacts our ability to cope presence. And a lot of this leadership used to do leadership trainings that were about actions. What are the programs we're building? How do we build our audience? And then in the last two years it was more about leading from presence and less from action. It was like being the presence of care with each other and the way that truth emerges differently in that. And so a lot of what we're doing is noticing. I've retitled the nervous system because who wants to have a nervous system? 

It's such a weird title to think that. I call it the present system. And we work with a Vegas nerve and our capacity to state shift, to move towards presence, to move towards more harmony instead of dish, harmony instead of thinking of the old languaging of regulating your nervous system. That's not very liberational language but we're accustomed to that, right? But to bring our present system into harmony is resourcing. When you go out into the woods and you're in the presence of trees, there's this way that our bodies are invited to come into presence with them. And it's not what they're doing, it's what they're being in a certain way. 

So a lot of what we're doing in this program is noticing what our capacity is noticing when we get dysregulated or when we kind of go into disharmony that could be around certain areas or topics in our life. It could be around certain times of day that we tend to get a little bit less present and starting to notice that and then building this accumulating this kind of baseline of presence through a daily practice. And one of the things we're starting to notice is our capacity. So for example, I had a brain injury recently last year and it was the biggest injury of my life. And I wanted to explore how can I heal in a way that builds my capacity. A lot of times we hear about trauma but we don't hear about posttraumatic growth. 

What makes the difference between someone just surviving the trauma versus someone growing from that? Because there was a capacity expansion to meet the intensity of the situation and that fascinated me. It was kind of an initiation. And so a lot of the tools that I'm teaching in the leadership immersion are the presence tools that basically kept me alive through the ten months of not having circulation in my brain. And these tools are about working with the vagus nerve and self touch and sound. And there are also mindset tools like being open to receiving that which brings us joy. 

There's a way I can look at a tree outside and not have a very big experience and then there's a way that I can shift the way my internal attention is to actually take in the beauty of that same tree and be moved by it. And the tree is doing the same thing, but I am now available to receive it, to let it move me. And we can do that with relationships. We can do that with an erotic sensation. What is that thing inside of us that allows us to now drink from something that is capacity expansion? 

Yeah, well, I was just going to say when we said before you talked about having the experience of doing yoga in your mind and at some point I believe it was a breath or that you realized you were able to take a breath consciously and yeah, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. 

Yeah. Thank you. Oh, wow. I've practiced yoga since middle school, and it's one of many tools that I thought I would always have. Right. And then I did it. In my injury, I was usually laying in the dark and I couldn't talk very well, I couldn't walk to the bathroom. And so I still missed. I wanted to still have that connection to my practice. And so I would listen to my teacher's voice on zoom, but I couldn't look at the screen. And I would practice with my yoga community of many years, but in my imagination, and I would remember the sensations of downward dog and I would remember the sensations of different poses. 

And it was a way that I could begin to bring some sense of agency and restoration to my body so that I didn't feel completely helpless laying in the dark and in a pretty still way of being. And one of the things I had shared with you was that at this stage in my healing, my brain needed to focus on repair. So it wasn't really available for cognitive functioning, which was really hard because you wouldn't believe how many times we try to do cognitive functioning and not even realize we're trying to do it. But suddenly I had this little internal feedback loop that was like, hey, ouch, that hurts. We don't have extra energy for that. 

And so I was not able to control my breath, meaning I was breathing, but if I tried to choose, I'm going to start an inhale now, or I'm going to start an exhale now, it would hurt because that was a cognitive thing and I was like, oh my God, for years. And all my yoga, meditation, body work, tantra, all these trainings, I always took for granted at a certain level that I'd be able to control my breath. And the breath is such an essential part of so many body mind. I will call it like magical arts, right? And I remember the exact moment, it was the week of Passover, and it was probably about six weeks into my healing journey with my brain that I finally had. 

It was in a yoga class that I had the ability to think, I'd like to inhale now, and my body could respond and inhale without pain. And I felt like spirit had given me the remote control back that I thought I would never have lost. I was like, oh, my God. The power of how much we can change our state is so deeply connected to the breath, and I think many of us don't even realize the amount of agency that we can cultivate with that. So since that time, which is now about a little under two years ago now, okay, we can really regenerate ourselves through breath. And that is a big part of observing our capacity and our connection. And breath can be a big part of that weaving. 

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. 

Yeah, thanks for asking. 

Just to take it back a moment to where you were talking about receiving the tree and the connection between being able to I imagine that this is part of where imagination takes us as, like the tree used to be in the tree, but we have to be receptive. We have to be open to that. We have to have some version of what does it mean? What does it feel like to receive a treat? 

Yeah, it's like I now live in a beautiful place. I'm surrounded by trees. I've learned so much from them, even our eyes. One of the things I learned in my healing process was how often I look at someone as if I have to go out of my eyes to see them. Like, maybe I'm looking at a beloved or a family member or friend. It's like, oh, I have to go out of myself to see them. And then there was this shift of what happens in the present system if they're like tiny little magnets in the back of my eyes. 

And I can let the image of my beloved or the image of the tree or the image of my community come in because it's trusting that at a certain level, our bodies are actually designed to experience love and connection and that we don't have to work as hard. And then that image can come into the back of the eyes and start to go down. We can even swallow and let that image go down the midline of our bodies, all the way down through the belly and into the pelvic floor. And there's a rooting of receiving the joy that tree or that being gives us. And this was one of the ways I was learning how we can deeply receive connection without abandoning our own sensing of self. Right. 

We're still in our midline, we're still in our own sensations, but we're also opening ourselves to be moved by the beauty of someone else. And as I started to teach that over the years in the leadership immersion, for many people, it was the first time they had tried that, because a lot of us no one ever teaches us how to receive. You'd be surprised how many of us are adults and we've never actually broken down that little internal drinking experience. Yeah. 

So I know we've been talking a lot about presence and the idea of being present and allowing presence and we talked a little bit about capacity. And I'm curious, when you start to feel at capacity or over capacity, what happens to your presence and where does it go?

That's such a great question. There's a few different things I want to orient to in this answer. And you'll notice the first thing I do is slow down. Even in orienting to the question, I'm like, okay. 

So what I noticed you do is you slow down and you went inside, right, or it appeared that's where your attention went was like, oh, where am I in space? 

Yeah, I'm kind of tracing a few different places to enter this question. And I think the first thing is as soon as you notice that you're nearing capacity, that is already a presencing thing because you're observing it. Right. So many times we don't even observe that. And then we go into a kind of survival. And the way that survival plays out is unique to each person. So if you were to ask someone, how do you do survival? It's kind of one of those moments of like, oh gosh, yeah, these are the behaviors I do when I'm at capacity. And a lot of that, especially these days, is things like compulsively looking at a screen or turning to a lot of extra stimulation or rushing or more muscular tension. 

Now, the specificity of what that is for you is part of the doorway to answer the question of how do we come back to presence. Because the more precisely we're able to notice how we go into that survival mode, the more we're able to and this is kind of from somatic experiencing, we can even increase it just 5%. Like, for me, there's a particular way that my left shoulder draws up in a kind of protective action, right? These kinds of things at the edge of our capacity are physical and mental, kind of more rigidity or strategies for protection come in. Because it's like the body saying, okay, enough stimulation, I need to catch up. And it's a wisdom response. It's not like, oh, this is bad. But then it's like, how can we turn towards capacity expansion?

What are the some of the things that I can do slowing down longer exhales sounds like even kind of right, like that deeper humming sound. I can turn my attention towards something that resources me. I can turn my attention towards something I'm grateful for. There's a number of things, but essentially I'm first just observing, oh, my system is starting to get a little fuzzy or urgent. And even if we're not physically in a circumstance where we need to fight for our lives internally, we can kind of be in that more disharmonious state in our present system. 

And if someone were to walk into the room or to reach to kiss us or to want to make love to us, they could feel that kind of agitation even without words, they can feel like, oh, this person system is not very harmonious and open right now. There's something going on. Right. And so I say this because part of this is there's a relational context inside of this too. Right? And so for us to slow down and begin to turn towards resource and take some more space and what I do with my coaching clients is to support them to more precisely observe what are their survival strategies that are happening on a physical level. But also what is the brain focusing on? 

There's usually like one or two really strong beliefs or worries that we're thinking about that we don't even realize we're thinking about and we start to see our life through. That almost like we start to gather evidence that this horrible thing we're worried about is true and then we start to have a somatic response to thinking that I used to take all these trainings about resourcing the body and I realized there was a missing piece, which was that weren't addressing until I became a coach. We weren't addressing what the amygdala, what the brain was focused on that kept all of those survival responses happening. Somatically so just pausing the slow down your breath is not necessarily going to shift the pattern. It's going to help for a moment. 

But then getting in there and being a detective and kind of eavesdropping on the reality that your brain is so worried about is going to kind of unroute the whole loop that happens when someone gets caught in. And to make this very explicit, like, let's say I'm in a relationship and I'm worried that we're not doing well. And when my brain starts to focus on oh my God, I think my partner is going to leave me and we're not doing well, there's a whole series of things that happen in my body, even if I never say that out loud. But it's my pointing my focus towards that starts to get this disharmony in my system. 

And I would imagine that if that's where all your focus is going, you're missing the other 13 million things that your partner is doing that are like reassuring. 

Exactly. Yeah. 

It's like that's taking up a lot of space. So one of the things we do is learn how to even notice that and then gently pivot the attention to start to notice how much care there is between you all.

I'm curious, what might some of the stories sound like look like that interrupt our sex? 

There's so many of them and a lot of times they're about relationship trust. Right. Sometimes there I often find that when people are having challenges with their sexual connection. There's an insecurity in their relation and their bond that's often kind of the flavor of what's happening. So they might sound like, I'm not attracted. My person doesn't desire me anymore. I'm no longer attractive to them anymore. And that worry can just get so big. Or they might sound like scarcity thoughts, like, God, we don't even have time to invest in our relationship anymore. Or they might sound like, in my case, because I work with a lot of polyamorous folks, it might sound like, I think that my partner's new love is becoming more important. Right. These are, like, versions of, like, oh, s***, are we okay? 

Are we still in this together? Right. These are some of the kinds of beliefs that can take us out of the presence rate and is there something to look at together? Yeah. 

Could you take us through one of those scenarios and how you might unwind it? 

Yeah. Is there one that's particularly interesting to you or that you noticed in your people? Because I think it's.

Definitely I mean, all of those stories for sure, but it's interesting because I've had a couple of clients, a couple of couples come forward lately who are trying on polyamory. And what's fascinating to me is and we've talked about it a little bit, where is the resentment hanging out? I noticed they're trying to push through it into. Like they're very new. And so they're trying to push through into conversion. Or they're trying to conversion being where you find joy in your partner's pleasure with another person for those that aren't familiar with the terminology there. But. Like so it's. Like. Kind of. As you said. Slowing down and being like. There's no such thing as a good polyperson and a bad polyperson. There's the way you do polyperson. At least that's my take on it. 

Oh, I love this so much. Yeah. So I would say before Jessica Ferns book came out, Poly Secure, there was a very strong myth in many poly communities that to be that good polyperson in quotes. Right. Yeah. You're supposed to be compressive. You're supposed to if any of your insecurities come up, it's only for you to deal with. You shouldn't be bringing that to your person. And you're more spiritually enlightened if you don't have jealousy. Right. And, like, no, I was around people who thought like this. I even dated some of them. Right. 

I'd be that person for a while. 

Yeah. I mean, bless us. We didn't understand the attachment system the way that we do now. Right. And so inside of that, there was, like, this cultural pressure to bypass a lot of what was feeling uncomfortable as you just spoke to. Right. And so one of the things when I work with couples is that I give them a safe space to actually voice what those worries are. And a lot of times they're just like, oh, my God. It's not wrong or bad. There's nothing wrong with me that I actually am having. Some of these worries or emotions come up, and I'm like, yeah, well, you and every other human who's, like, tried this experiment, you know? 

And so a lot of times the disconnect is the way we abandon our own experience and create a really high pressure for ourselves to be having a different experience than the one we're having. And so creating that safe space where, okay, I can cough this up and let me start to distill now what is actually happening from the meaning I've been making around it, right? And that's slowing down, doing that together. I also want to say one of the big takeaways for me with Jessica Burns, poly Secure, which I highly recommend, I've been Poly for over 20 years, and that book just like, wow, I wish I had it earlier. And she has a new workbook coming out in November, by the way.

Oh, right. 

Take a look. Like you can preorder it. But I thought when I learned from Poly Secure, there was a group of us who many of us were lovers and peers and all sexuality educators. And were reading the book together, and we would do authentic movement sessions around it. And we did multiple rounds of this. It was so juicy and so delicious, and we needed it. I know it's so good. Yes, you can do that with your people. It was about bearing witness to all the things we had tried to just slide over as if that would make us better people or better lovers of stronger community, all of which was not true. So this radical compassion and curiosity and inside of that I realized, oh, the attachment system is really wise. 

Every other system in the body, I've learned about my endocrine system, my digestive system, my cardiovascular system. I learned to have awe for them. I learned, like, what is the beauty of being designed like this as a human? But the attachment system was until I read Polysecure, it was the only system in the body that I had been introduced to as a pathology. It's the one that keeps getting in the way if you showing up as that generous, loving, compressive human. And I thought, wait a minute. Jessica was pointing to the wisdom. So if something is coming up and we're starting to get that little twist in our stomach or we're starting to feel like, I don't know if this is so stable anymore, right? 

But what if were to consider maybe there's some wisdom here, maybe there's actually something that wants to be looked at more authentically together? And often it can help to have another person present, but often there is something to look at. And that's where we come back to present skills and capacity, as were talking about earlier. So I now understand secure attachment as. The ability to regulate your nervous system or harmonize your present system through the transitions of solo time and connection time and solo time and connection time. And can we continue to resource ourselves through those transitions? And that is a skill set that we can build and we can practice and we can cheer each other on with and a skill set that every human is capable of continuing to grow those skills. 

Yeah, I just want to come back to what you said about what I heard and what I'm taking away is the idea of growing in relation. Right? 

Yes. 

And as you mentioned back in the day when the thing was about we needed to go off and deal with ourselves. 

Right. 

And then come back and be, you know, and it's very important. I don't want to underestimate the importance of, you know, having a good solid sense of who you are, having a good solid sense of autonomy and realizing that they call it a relationship because there's relation going on. Like there's interpersonal relationship. And I think for a while went so far into the like, we don't want to be codependent and everything and everybody is codependent. If you need any kind of relational support and I'm happy to see there's more acceptance and more importance on the co regulation. On the cocreation of relationships and of supporting each other in healing some of the pieces that. You know. Changing some of the stories. It's like. 

You know. 

I talk about one of my biggest learnings was when my partner and I were very new to each other. We've been together for 22 years. 

Yay. 

We played with restraint. 

And. 

I'd gone to a class, so I'd always had a lot of resistance to being tied up. I was like, no f****** way. No one's going to do that. They're going to poke me and it's going to be terrible. And I went to a class of Midori's where she was actually it was about using your voice, an RL sex class. And she talked to me, I'm like, I'm going to tie you up and it's going to be safe and I'm going to be there with you. And I was like, oh my f****** God, I want that. And so I went back to my partner and I was like, you know that thing you've been wanting to do for a while? Well, if we do it this way, I'm open to it. And so we did. It was comfy, it was cozy. Yes. 

I couldn't go anywhere. 

Yes. 

One place I got to go through this cycle of, you know, being and we agreed it's like, I want to explore pushing up against something or someone and I want to explore my anger and be compelled. Our conversations probably weren't quite that advanced. Like, I was probably just like, okay, don't let me up until, you know, I say for it or whatever. But it was like, he literally sat there with me and watched me through my process, then was there to hold me when I was done. And I did. I went through this whole like three year old temper tantrum and screaming and yelling and just like all of this stuff that had nowhere to go until we created this space. And I couldn't have done it by myself. Certainly regular therapy wasn't going to get me there. 

Wow. Yes. 

I just want to really underline what you were talking about. Like the healing power of conscious kink and the healing power of like, you know, what we've been talking about with like holding space and changing stories. 

So oh my gosh, I love this. I love that you shared that. And that's an example of capacity expansion, right? Because there's a companion each other through the edges of our fear and at the edges of what we think we're able to do or not do with grace. And that's part of a scene, that's part of doing playing at the space where there's a reshold of the present system. And then because we're being seen and witnessed and cherished and worshiped and like yummed up, our capacity interesting, starts to expand. And that's such a powerful way to build a bond with someone. My definition of kink is sexual behaviors, identities and desires that challenge social approval, giving you the opportunity to experience your shame, courage, pleasure and liberation. 

And just like you said in your beautiful example, so often that charge of anger and discomfort is part of the turn on, is part of the thing that allows the capacity to expand when we have enough safety and relational trust that our system becomes interested in a little bit of elasticity and the support of the relation can get alchemized into expanding the capacity. Yes. My favorite. 

As you were saying, that one of the things that I heard recently, somebody was explaining dominance as leadership. And I really love that's one flavor of dominance. There's a s*** ton of flavors. But I really like the idea of that flavor of dominance being leadership and being able to expand your leadership skills by holding that space, by doing the interaction piece. I mean, that to me sounds like what you're up to. 

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean in my eyes, the archetype of the dominant is so deeply misunderstood and part of the medicine of the dominant is a leader that is trustworthy. A leader that has its followers well being in heart. And we need that. We need that. That is medicine for our times. Right now. So many of us have become so afraid of authority, have so much doubt about how this country is being run. And so to see the model, to see someone embody authority in a way that's trustworthy, in a way that is deeply companioning us and honoring us even through the places where we feel afraid, that is literally how we come back into belonging to our own experience, as Brene Brown would say, that's build shame, resilience. It's like, oh yeah, I am really who I am. 

And here's this being who is honoring that and is anchor so that I don't get lost in all of the social approval and conditioning of who I thought I should be. To be desired, to be loved, to be in a secure bond. I actually get to be really who I am. And this moment of intimacy is a way of affirming that for each other and there's a deep freedom in that. Yeah. 

Man. As I knew this would be. This is an amazing conversation. So many different places. I feel like we only touched in on the amazing work that you're doing in the world. And so I'm wondering, what is it you're up to in this moment? How can people reach you? And so I'll pause there for a moment. 

Awesome. Well, the main thing that I'm offering right now is love coaching for individuals and couples and specifically around relationship as a spiritual path. And I work a lot with kinky and polyamorous and gender expansive or trans folks because that is me and my life in my community. And I'm currently guiding my leadership immersion, but it is a closed group so that it is in process. I do it once a year. So the main way people can come explore this magic is to come for coaching. And I offer free interest chat conversations with folks. And I'm in the process of building a library of recorded tools so that people can go in and some of these tools that I'm offering my clients can be more accessible to folks. Yeah. And then I recently relocated to Gernville. 

I live on the Russian River, 90 minutes north of the bay. It's rigging gorgeous and delicious. And I will be offering in person dance series on playing with power and gender. And those dates, it's going to be a few months out, those dates will be revealed. But if you want to know more about what I'm up to, you can join my newsletter by coming to my website, which is embodymorelove.com. 

And of course all of those links are going to be in the show notes and awesome. 

Yeah. 

So, last question. If there's one thing that you would like, I mean, in this rich and lovely conversation, if there's one thing that you just like, oh, please, I want to make sure that you get this piece, what might it be? 

Wow. I think what's most important is this idea that the places that feel overstimulating or like the edges of our capacity to get curious about how they might be, opportunities for compassion and connection, they're not necessarily our obstacles. There's some fertile ground for a deep honoring of who we really are. Yeah. 

Wow. 

Yeah. We're so often in this place I need to work harder and you know, there's something wrong with me and it's like, okay, yeah, we can grow. And also, what if these were part of how we deeply moved each other? 

What I'm really hearing is it's like the places that we might want to shut down and push into the dark. You're suggesting that there are places that we get curious about and we embrace. 

Yeah. And we even let someone see us in them. I know there's a lot of charge, and some of that is erotic charge, and that's interesting too. Right? So, yeah, that's kind of the little nugget there. Thank you so much for having me. This has been delicious. 

Oh, my goodness. Thank you for an amazing conversation. 

Yeah. 

And for those of you who are listening, if you want more of this glorious creature, please check out the show notes and feel free to ask questions. Please, like subscribe and leave a comment. Because, as I said before, better sex leads to a better world. I will see you next time. Thank you so much for joining us.