How Your Unconscious Patterns Are Ruining Your Sex Life w— Darshana Avila 🍒

Before you experience your full erotic capacity, you have to heal your scripts about intimacy.

In this episode, grace is joined by Darshana Avila to discuss why so many adults feel disconnected from their bodies, their partners, and any sense of authentic pleasure.

Darshana is a trauma-informed somatic educator, practitioner and international speaker who helps people reconnect with the most essential aspects of themselves — their truth, their desires, and their capacity for profoundly satisfying and genuinely intimate relationships.

Inside —

• Why people pleasing is ruining your relationships — and your sex life
• Identifying your embodied protectors
• Simple practices for somatic orientation
• Why so many adults know so little about pleasure
• How to figure out what you actually enjoy
• Finding sensuality in nature
• Why consent requires genuine desire

If you enjoyed the episode, check out —

• R.I.P. Good Girl
• Initiation Deficit : Part 1
• Becoming a Lover: the Devotional work of Partnership

More about our guest —

• DarshanaAvila.com
• Deeper with Darshana podcast

Free resources —

Take grace’s free class EROS : INITIATOR ❤️‍🔥 — Learn what the Erotic actually is, why it's the answer to what's not healing in your life, and who it’s calling you to become — someone delighted and powerful

Stay Connected —

Subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your listens

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thanks for listening. peace, be well. 🙏

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the erotic devotion podcast. I'm your host, Grace Allardyce.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Erotic Devotion Podcast. Today I am joined by Darshana Avala, who is a trauma-informed somatic educator, practitioner, and international speaker who helps people reconnect with the most essential aspects of themselves, that is, their truth, their desires, and their capacity for profound pleasure and power. Known for her grounded, candid, and relational approach, she bridges the worlds of erotic embodiment, trauma healing, and self-actualization. Darshanna's work has been featured on Netflix's Sex, Love, and Goop, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and numerous leading podcasts. I'm really delighted to have you on the show today. As we were speaking before the recording, we're obsessed with a lot of the same things, even though our work is different. And I'm delighted that you're here.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I am so happy to be here as well, Grace. Thanks for the invitation.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

We were also speaking before the show about some really common relational topics that have been up lately in your work and things that you've been speaking a lot to. And I thought that would be a nice soft entry into our conversation today that I'm sure will take us a lot of places. But you were saying that your shorthand that you've been using is people pleasing is ruining your relationship. And I would love to start there because I know we have a lot of the way my shorthand is, is like you're a very good girl. And so it's the same embodiment pattern in a lot of respects. And so would you mind sharing more about your take and what you're seeing as far as like people pleasing, how it's showing up in our relational patterns and sort of how you would interpret the damage that can do to us on our own embodiment end? Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah, there's a lot to be said there as a people pleaser in recovery, as a perfectionist in recovery, as someone who loves alliteration. So you're gonna catch me doing that a bit too. But it's it's real, you know, like and and this is the thing I love to start out by saying is none of this is a personal failing. So, like straight out of the gate, like no pathologizing, no self-flagellating, like it, you know, we have been conditioned, we female born girl, women, acculturated folk, like we have been conditioned so heavily to people pleasing, perfectionism, and these other ways of being inside of our dominant culture. And the the greatest travesty of it all is how it disconnects us from what is genuine, true, authentic, naturally arising from within ourselves, anywhere and everywhere across the spectrum of what we might desire, of what gives us joy, of what we're truly passionate about. And so when I say that people pleasing is ruining your relationships, it's it's actually fact. If you are showing up in your relationships, doing everything you can to try to accommodate what it is that you think, and I'm gonna put the emphasis on the word think there, what you think the person on the other side wants from you, what script you believe they're following, what their cultural conditioning might might have, you know, instilled in them is the quote unquote right way to be. The travesty there is that you've got at least one, if not two, people who are relating from a place of falseness with one another. And so much of our aliveness gets shut down in that dynamic. So much opportunity for genuine intimacy is going missed. And we're just not going to be able to sustain it for the long haul. You know, some part of you or some significant part of you is dying inside as this is happening, being smothered, being suppressed, being told that it's wrong. And this is how shame builds. This is also how we start to see this cross over very readily into chronic pain, issues in the body. From a sexual standpoint, a lot of what are termed dysfunctions when in actuality it's a functional response to a really shit set of circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I like that you put the emphasis on the word think there. Like there's a way that we're projecting the way that we're used to feeling onto a situation. And I think, like when we're not in presence, it's not really possible to be an intimate relationship, whether that's with another person or just with what's happening. And I think when we're used to, and I'd say this as someone who's like definitely grew up doing this and was very programmed to do this, relating to a story about how we should be, what we think is happening, rather than relating to like a full sense of presence and desire and truth in our body. Intimacy is impossible, actually, as you're saying. Like we're relating through this like thick web of like story and shoulds. And I think that really starts to show up, as you know, through like when we start to get like really intimate with people, and then we cross into like a sexual or erotic expression with people, we're so disconnected from what it is that we want and who we are that all of the quote dysfunctions start to show up, and then we feel even more confused, even more ashamed. It starts to build this like feedback loop because now we have someone else's shit pattern mixed in with it as well. Could you speak a little bit to that on your end and how you relate to that and see that in your work?

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Absolutely. Yeah. It's it's like the worst possible case scenario for the compound effect to kick in, which is to say that, you know, if you understand, I'm not gonna give a lesson on finances in full, but like compound interest, you know, like you put $100 in a bank account and you leave it there and it keeps accruing, you know, 2% interest every month or whatever it is, like leave that in there long enough, like you're gonna end up with five figures, six figures, seven figures. Okay, so there's your little tiny economics lesson. The same holds true for how we show up in our relationships, because if what we begin with is a falsity, a performance, a people-pleasing perfectionism, I here I go with the alliteration again, right? Like all of these functionally are adaptive strategies. They are ways that we've learned how to protect ourselves, how to create safety, belonging, connection inside of less than perfect circumstances. And every single one of us has these. What our strategies are might differ. So I'm speaking a lot about the ones that tend toward a more hyper-aroused nervous system state where we go into the doing and and and let me let me overcompensate and let me try to take more on, let me show you how amazing I am, let me show myself by like the more, more, more-ness. There's also another side of the spectrum, which is to invisibilize yourself, or you know, to disappear, to be a doormat. So so I'm talking about one end of the spectrum, and I just want to at least name that the other exists. And in my ecosystem, I refer to these as the embodied protectors. And I actually have a quiz that you can take to learn a little bit about like, what is your primary strategy here? Whatever it is, let's take a moment to bless it. Like, let's take a moment to recognize that this is a wise part of you that when you were a little person or a younger person at least, and only have so many resources available, figured out, well, when I go along with what's expected of me, or when I exceed what's expected of me, I get the pats on the back. You mentioned it earlier. I'm a good girl, right? And and good girl as an adult can be super hot if you're into that thing and you want to play with it in the bedroom with a consenting lover and that dynamic works for you. I'm raising my hand. That is something I love to play with, because it's an intentional and healing way to actually be with this schism, because I'm also a grown-ass woman in her full power who has every right to identify what I truly need, what I truly want, my yes, my no, my pleasure, my boundary. And the more that I bring that into relationship with whomever I'm connecting with, certainly in a sexual context, certainly in an intimate context, but there's really nowhere in life that this doesn't apply. If I am instead of that authenticity showing up, you know, trying to be like, okay, who do I need to be to have this conversation with Grace right now? What is it that she wants to hear from me? Or that you, listener on the other side, like, who do you expect me to be? I'm gonna be so out of center. I mean, and even I'm just gonna track myself. The moment I even talked about that as a potential scenario, I felt my stomach clench. I felt my pelvic floor tighten. There, there's a discomfort in the, ooh, ouch, effort, strange stress. Now, the trouble for the vast majority of us, and I put myself in this category too, like that tracking that just happened there, I have access to it. It's a it's a capacity I've cultivated, and sometimes I override it. Sometimes I'm not paying attention. Most of the folks who are listening are probably hardly ever paying attention, not because it's a personal failing, but because you really have to make an effort to do that, to notice when your body's giving you signals that something is or is not in alignment for you. And we go in, and I'm just going to use the most common example, which is the heteronormative man-woman romantic relationship. So the script that we've all been handed is that he should initiate and he should be the one to drive and direct intimacy, also that he should know exactly what to do with her body if they really love each other, especially. Like, let's put the fairy tale into this too. Like, you know, when you meet the one, it all just clicks into place and she doesn't have to say a word. As long as she shows up and smiles and looks pretty and he gets his orgasm, then everybody's good. No. No, just end of sentence, no, that is not a realistic, that is not accurate, nor is that a mutually satisfying way to come to intimacy. So I've worked with a lot of cishet couples over my years. I've been in private practice for over a decade at this point. I've been in those relationships myself. I was married to a man, I'm divorced, I've dated across the gender spectrum, I've had lovers across the gender spectrum, you name it, I've tried it. And I can tell you that that script is not serving him or her. Because what's getting missed for both of them is a chance to really bring some curiosity and creativity, and the mutuality of our vulnerability creates intimacy. So if I come to my partner, and even if I'm just like trembling inside and I say, listen, there's this thing that I'm really like turned on by, and it feels edgy as hell to tell you about it. And I'm gonna do it anyway, if you're willing to hear it, because number one, this is important for me, like it is. It's important for me to own this, to claim this, to at least give myself a chance. And number two, it's important in the we space. I want to be honest with you, and I want to make space for your desires and your truths. And I want us to be able to hold these together and grow together. And best case scenario, have amazing sex where we're actually doing the things that turn us on. So the people pleasing and the performing, you would just stay mute. You would say, Oh, that was great, if you say anything at all. You would have the day on your calendar. It's like, oh, it's sex Saturday. All right, might as well, like, I'm gonna pop a pill. And listen, if that is you, again, I'm not shaming. I am reflecting. I have worked with many clients who had times in their past where they had to be drunk to have sex with their partners, where they never had sober sex until a certain stage of life. And they're coming to me for the very first time saying, I really want to get to know myself as a sexual being. I want to learn what I like in my body because that's the work that I do. I do very hands-on, hands-in, you know, arousal-focused work with my clients. And so, so maybe you've used substances and that's been part of how you've managed. Maybe you have dissociated during sex and you're thinking about a million other things other than what's going on in your body. Maybe you've liked it, but just that. Like liked it, but not like loved it, and never really felt like you could or should figure out how to love it. Whatever the particulars are, it all comes back to the same thing that nobody's really benefiting from that performance, from that protective strategy being in the lead. When we learn how to discern that from our truth or our truth from that, and actually bring authenticity and vulnerability into our relational dynamics, we're opening up a massive field of possibility. And that's just such a beautiful space to be in.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Totally. And that's what relation is, I think. And you know, you spoke to so many things there, including like ways that disempowered to use a Jungian word, like unconscious patterning, let's say, like unconscious people-pleasing good girl behavior, and then bringing it back from an when we inject healing and power and consciousness into that, it can be really like fun. And there's so many ways that we're used to overriding in bodies. I think is I mean, even as simple as in school, you know, having to like hold your pee when you're in class because you, you know, you don't have a hall pass or whatever it is. There's all these really small ways that we're used to overriding our system and our desires and our truth, even from just an embodied perspective, that by the time someone's 35 or 40, like it's become such a pattern that it's not noticed. What are some of the things that you find are really helpful when someone has been overriding for such a long time and then like beginning to come into this ability to track, which I call like being able to come into like presence, being like what actually is happening right now? How do you feel right now? Which for a lot of people is a really big jump. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

And it is presence, and that is a really scary place for a lot of us to hang out. Again, these are protective strategies at their core. So this is why the last thing we want to do is shame them, blame them. We actually like really need to appreciate how hard these parts of ourselves have worked to create a sense of safety and belonging for us. And with that energy, that that's one place to begin. That's actually one big answer to your question, Grace. Like that part should not be skipped over because that changes the whole energetic of the way that you're relating with yourself. So if you're coming in like guns blazing, like, I gotta get rid of this tendency, like, ooh, that's not gonna go well. Whereas when you actually orient to yourself with some compassion and some gratitude, because you've gotten to this present moment thanks to those strategies, not in spite of them, but thanks to. They kept you safe. So let's begin, you know, with giving credit where credit is due. The next place we get to go is slowing down our experience, which really and truly can be a terrifying thing for a lot of people. So simplistic as it could be, it's not complicated. Like when I say slow down, I tend to talk quickly when I'm excited and passionate about something. So I could right now intentionally slow my speech down. That's a form of getting even more present with myself. In that slowing down and bringing my energy level down a notch, I can start to notice in my body on the most surface level of things, I'm standing up as I'm having this conversation at my standing desk. So it's like, what is my point of contact? It's my feet. So I can bring some attention to like, oh, feet touching floor. That's happening right now. I'm looking at you, Grace, you know, through the camera. And I can notice, like, the I can notice your adornments. I can notice your smile. I could start to focus in on that. Now I'm using the real-time example of my experience, but to anybody listening, you can do this wherever you are, whoever is or is not present. What we're doing is a practice called orienting, which is the most beginning, like builder's block in the world of somatics. And orienting simply means that we start to notice and locate ourselves in space and time, and locate ourselves in relationship is another way to describe that. We're always in relationship with our environment, with place, with other people, with ourselves. So taking just a few seconds, like this is not have to be lengthy, but taking a few seconds to slow down your breathing, slow down your speech, maybe come to silence and simply notice. And I'm turning my body now, looking around. And even though I'm in my office, which is super familiar to me, it's like, all right, oh, my plant's looking good over there. Oh, the light coming in through the window, cool. Like just being with what's going on is an invitation into presence. So that's a super simple practice. Anybody can do anywhere, whatever your ability, take that and apply that to when you are with a lover, with your partner, with a close friend or a family member, whoever it is that that's another person-to-person relationship. Could you imagine what possibility might open if we just widen that aperture ever so slightly that before I jump into conversation with you, or before I say yes to a request or no, or whatever the default is, like I actually slowed down. So this is actually the this is the first practice that I give people. Like it's like, pause, notice. That's what orienting is about. And this, like I said, it's the most foundational building block for all the wonderful, in-depth, juicy things that I support my clients in, that I explore for myself. It all begins here.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

I find that the questions that people are wanting to get to, the goals, these like big, explosive, ecstatic states of being are like high on the desire list. And then people can get really disappointed when we're like, we need to back like all the way up here to be like, where are you right now? What can you see? Like tapping into this orienting practice that you're saying is like, no, we really do need to start here. And though I know it doesn't look glamorous, and I know you can't logically feel right now how that could potentially get you to squirting one day. But like, this is like where you got to get you, this is where you got to start. And it's so important.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Yeah. I mean, the so my my body of work, eroticfulness, when I'm working with my clients, there are four phases to that journey that we go through. And so to your point, it's like we've got like you might want squirting. You might want, you know, like here I am in my seductress, empowered energy, or you might want to access the fullness of your surrender with a lover, like whatever it is. I'll tell you where you're starting if you walk into my office, and that is laying on my table, fully clothed, in relative stillness, doing some really subtle energy body and nervous system tending and repatterning. And consistently, I mean, it's like a watching paint dry type of thing if you're looking at it from the outside, but consistently, I my clients are wowed by what can happen in that slowed-down space. And what's also going on is co-regulation. So if that's a term that someone listening isn't familiar with, what it means is that me as the practitioner, I'm using my well-regulated neurosystem. I'm using my capacity for presence in that moment to like support my clients in accessing a similar state. And for many of us, and again, I include myself. So this is something like I'm real big on please do not put any of us, no matter how amazing we may be. And I am amazing. I'm very good at what I do, you know, like, and I'm I'm good at what I do because I've been on this journey and gone so deep with my own healing and exploration. I have not mastered it. I will never be done. And that's an important thing for us to all know that this is a constant, emergent process. And yes, we do grow new capacities, and yes, we see transformations happen. And yes, there's still more. Nervous systems are in a far more fragile state. We might spend a lot of time there before we're getting in the direction of anything that most people identify as erotic in nature. I'm putting erotic in air quotes there. But the reality, as far as I know it, is all of this has to do with Eros, because Eros is life force. So again, back to cultural conditioning. Our cultural conditioning is that we hear the word erotic and we think about sex and we oftentimes think about an especially like salacious version of sex, like erotica, and it's like, it's it's like tawdry and taboo and all this stuff. When the uh eroticism, and I do believe this to be very in line with the the tantric understanding. This certainly, I draw a lot of influence from the black intersectional feminist movement, and I borrow heavily from Audre Laura's uses of the erotic, which really defines in such an expansive, beautiful way eroticism as life force, creativity, vitality, passion. It's there in our emotions, it's there in all of our relational tending, it's there in our art, in our activism. Yes, it is there in our sex. Yes, it is there in our intimacy. But what I mean when I say that a client laying on my table in relative stillness doing this subtle body energy work is erotic, it's because we're helping them to actually be in touch with their life force energy in a way that they're not able to do most of the time. So we have to begin there. If you want to then learn how to feel safe and confident and available for expressing and channeling that energy into all these phenomenal fantasies and crazy wonderful things that you want to do with your body or another person's body. Like, you gotta crawl before you can walk. You gotta walk before you can run. You gotta train for that marathon, right? No different when it comes to your eroticism.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

That's so true. And I mean, like, and step one is like the end is also the beginning, which is the end. Like the beginning is also the end. It's like coming back to that beautiful hum of like, do you hear that? Do you feel that? You're alive right now. Like that's the erotic, like that beautiful, like, and really trying to like help people get like, do you feel the wind prickling all the hairs on your arm? Like, that's it. Like, that's her. That's you. Like, and that's like I'm trying to get to where like that, I'm just getting off on that, you know, like it was like full orgasm just from like the wind blowing. And I think the way that you stacked that was so like helpful for the listeners to understand. And I think that especially when it comes to like sex and intimacy, there it's so easy to form these grooves and habits and patterns for how we relate to people. I know for me, for instance, I didn't have sex until I was like in my early 20s. I grew up super like evangelical Christian. Like, you're not supposed to have sex, so you get married. And so I was in a quote, adult body, but I wasn't a sexual adult. And even though that's sort of a unique circumstance sometimes, I think the outcome of it is not unique because there's a lot of performing and pretending and like that non-vulnerability. And it perfor it creates these really deep grooves and patterns when it comes to how we express and relate to ourselves in those ways that we then have to undo. And even just like really small ways that even if you're not necessarily like traumatized by something, like you've learned to numb out to a certain extent, like that full pussy yes or no, for instance, like if you don't know what that feels like or what that sounds like, and you're just used to like letting people in because you think that's what you're supposed to do, that creates a pattern. That's a script. That that's a that's a oh, I think this is what's expected of me. So I'm just and like no one's necessarily doing anything wrong. It's so that there's a lack of authenticity and vulnerability and presence and awareness. And if people have been transgressing the pussy yes or no, is something that we've been talking about a lot in my world. How do you recommend people start to restore that boundary and pattern disrupt with themselves, with a partner? Because if someone's used to having sex with you in one particular way and like disrupting the pattern, like there's usually disorder before there is creation, if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

I I'm gonna answer that question and I want to back up to to reflect on two things that I just heard you say. One, while your background and lived experience growing up in an evangelical Christian community and culture is unique, the experience of being in an adult body, but effectively being a child or an adolescent on the inside, and particularly where sex and intimacy is concerned, that's most adults. It's universal almost. That's most and look again, so no, no self-flagellating, no pathologizing, but look at this, please. Like, look at this. If you are listening to this conversation, like I want you to consider, let's say, between the ages, well, life, but especially like, what did you learn between your teenage years and your mid-20s, mid-30s, whatever it is? Like, what did you really learn about sex and intimacy in all of those years that equipped you to be more mature?

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Literally nothing.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

You and most people. So this we it's a it's pathoadolescence. And we move around the world in adult bodies when the reality is we have not been initiated, we have not been educated, we have not been mentored. So I do these things with my clients now, but I'm I'm mentoring and and guiding and supporting people in their 40s, in their 50s, in their 60s, you know, like when could you imagine the world that we would be living in if this was actually the education that we got during our adolescence, during our formative years? So that's a whole tangent. I'm gonna not actually go down, but I just wanted to kind of reflect that that's not unique. You're you the circumstances of your upbringing have a particular flavor. And I've worked with a lot of clients with religious trauma, and that is a form of trauma for many people. Let's make no mistake about that. And yet the experience is more common than you might think. The other is you use the description of like a groove, and that's actually real, which is to say, in your brain, the neural pathways that get wired into our brain around sex, there is, it's it's our brains are and aren't very complicated. I mean, they are like the most like magnificent machine that ever there was. So in that regard, absolutely complicated. But in this particular instance, we're we're wired for efficiency and familiarity, which is to say that if you have six routes that you could take between your home and your office, but you always take the same one, you're gonna keep taking the same one if you're doing it like unconsciously or by default because it's familiar, it's efficient. You don't have to think about do I make a left here or oh, well, there might be that detour there. No, I'm just gonna go the way that I know. Our brains do this about sex. So the way we have sex, it literally does get woven down into our brain or trodden down into our brain. I like to use the metaphor that those neural pathways are like going into a beautifully maintained national park, although God knows what's happening in our current political climate to our national parks. But like you go and they've got like this beautiful boardwalk and the guardrails and the signage and everything's neat and clean and orderly, and you just walk down that path. That is the familiar route. Let's say you want to try something new. You want to have a different position, you want to bring a vibrator in, you want to role play, you want to figure out if you're masturbating, oh, I've always lain on my back. What if I lay on my belly? Anything novel, you're getting out your machete and you are bushwhacking through the jungle as far as your brain is concerned, because that neural pathway is not laid down. So it's real. Like I taught, I use the metaphor of scripts. I'm using this one of the pathway. These are good ways to understand what's going on here because that wiring for familiarity and efficiency is working against us when it comes to having a more authentic, creative, robust experience of our own aliveness, of pleasure, of partnered sex, of soloed sex. It's working against us, but it doesn't have to. Because by having this very basic understanding of how it works and being on the lookout for that, knowing, okay, yeah. So if I try a new position with myself, this one comes up a lot in masturbation. Like, be forewarned. It's probably not gonna turn you on and give you the orgasm that you're used to in the beginning. You've got to give yourself a chance to get acclimated to it. So this is another place where people kind of go off the rails because they'll try something new once and to be like, oh, well, I didn't like that as much. So I'm gonna go back to the old standard. But you're missing out. So you got to put a little bit of willpower in. Sometimes willpower is the worst, and sometimes it's the best. This is a great use of your willpower, a little bit of willpower to say, okay, I am gonna keep trying this. And you don't have to be on a steady diet of whatever is new. You can kind of volley back and forth. If if you masturbate with your hands on your back, and what you want to try is using a vibrator or being on your knees or whatever, like, you know, one time one way, one time the other way. Like change it up a little bit. Give yourself a chance to actually figure out once this has become familiar enough for me to have the ability to fairly assess yes or no. Do I like this or not? Then you make your decision. And much of the time, what we're gonna find is that it's not always even a black and white, I like it, I don't like it. It's more nuanced than that. So maybe I like this element or this aspect. And so you keep modifying, you keep iterating. You take a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and you put it all together. And little by little, what you're doing is expanding the library, if you will, or the menu, if you will, of the things that you know you can reach for for pleasure. This applies to solo sex, this applies to partner sex. And again, it really is just about creating more expansiveness, more possibility for authenticity to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Yeah, and gives you so much more range. Like one way that I not range for the sake of range, but a range through which you can experience aliveness and pleasure. Like one way I talk about it is sort of like if you were a tree and you had just one root that goes down, and that's the only way that you can get nourished, it's much more limited and less resilient and less connected than if you have a lot of different roots that can go a lot of different ways and talk a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

It's like there are plants that have cat roots. That's what you're describing, like a turnip. So we know a turnip doesn't grow very tall. I, I mean, I'm a redwood tree lover, some of the most giant beings on the earth. Redwoods send their roots out wide. These 300, 400-foot trees do not have deep roots, they have wide roots. And look what comes of that. Like, just to kind of stick with that metaphor a little bit, because it's real, and and drawing inspiration and seeking wisdom and guidance from the natural world, what you mentioned a little while ago about being able to access your ecstasy from the breeze on your skin. Yes, because we're made for that, because we are not separate from. And and the natural world, the wild world has so much to offer us and so much to teach us and is so sensual. Oh, so sensual.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Deeply. Yeah. And like it's not, it's more than coincidence that like our nerves literally look like tree roots. It's more than coincidence. And yeah, you used this image of like something, you know, if our brain has uncharted territory, so to speak, and you like get the machete out and you're blazing the trail, it's like, and also if you were just to start hacking away, you'd probably be like, ha, you know, especially if you were in like a traumatized, more traumatized like frame of work. And so it's just so coming back to again being like often like the initial steps towards widening this, especially if there is a deep groove or a deep, like a very like limited set of craving, is something that doesn't look dramatic. Like the aerial view on your jungle is not gonna look as impressive on your pathway at the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

And you asked, I think the question that maybe I haven't fully gotten to was about like, if you're not used to identifying what you like and what's a yes or no, it's like, how do you even start with that? And that fits really well with what you describe. We start small, we start simple. So, yes, for the sake of this conversation, I'm panning out wide into like all the amazing things that you might, you know, grow toward over time. But in somatics, which is, you know, the word that gets used for body-based healing, body-based wisdom, trauma healing, you see the word somatics associated with all of that. So in somatics, we've stolen a word from the world of chemistry, and that word is titration. It's a concept that means that we go toward the experimental or the growth edge or where the charge is, and then we back away from it into where we know what's going on here. Like it's so in chemistry, it's like this is the control, and and then we're dropping a little something, like a little new variable in and seeing what happens. In somatics, what that might look like is we do a small experiment of something new, like we move toward that edge, and then we back it up. So that could be, again, like I, and I'm gonna just use some of the same examples I've already used. If you're used to having sex in one position, solo sex, partnered sex, you might do an experiment during a love-making session with your partner, during a masturbation session with yourself, where for a few moments you try a new position. It could be that small, you know, and maybe not even the entire time, but just like, oh, well, if we always have sex missionary, what if we try doggy style? Or what if we try like side by side? Or, or what if, you know, like I whatever it is that you are, what if I get on top, right? And listen, to someone who's hearing this, and that's like, that is so beyond what I'm comfortable doing. Okay, that tells you something about where you're at. So you get to figure out an experiment that does not freak you out. None of this is about busting through your growth edges. None of this is about, okay, I gotta have a catharsis. No. To the contrary, we want small, gentle experiments that can be repeated over time. Because what happens with the repetition is if your growth edge, if the space that you've got between where you are and your growth as is an inch, just to kind of put this into something that could be, you know, a visual for someone who's listening. So you've got an inch between where you stand and where the edge is right now. And you keep doing that small experiment of new sex position, new sex position. And maybe the first time you stay in that position for 30 seconds, and then you go back to what's familiar and comfortable. And then maybe the next time you're in that new position for 35 seconds. And so that inch has just become an inch and a quarter. And so 35 seconds becomes a minute, and now that inch is an inch and a half. You know, like these little incremental bits of growth is how we create a sustainable transformation. So when I work with my clients and we do all that nervous system tending stuff up front, that never stops. It never goes away. We're always including elements of that, even when I'm stroking their pussies and they're having the most mind-blowing cosmic orgasm of their life at a level they never knew was possible. That is not session one. That is not session two, that is not session three. Maybe it's session four or five. And so it's to say, like, we've done that titrating, we've done that little bit of growth and grounding and resourcing, little bit of growth, grounding and resourcing, a little bit of growth, grounding and resourcing. And then all of a sudden you look around and you're like, whoa, I'm feeling things I've never felt before. Did I that is that me? Did those sounds just come out of my body? Did I just let myself get that unself-conscious and actually give myself over to my pleasure? Yes, yes, that was you. And and again, it's like we did not jump to that. We took our time, we were thoughtful and intentional in getting there.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Totally. And I think a lot of what is like in the room is where like you're like talking about this journey, is that like approaching what is right now from this place of like being an explorer rather than like an identity. Like, oh, I like this, and this is just like who I am. It's like, well, it could be, but it could also just be a groove. It could just be you craving what you're used to it rather than, and I think having this just whole orientation to it as an explorer, as an experimenter or a chemist is something that's really important. And I love that you you're bringing in just like this anything with the body is going to be something cumulative. And it's like I always use the image of a garden. It's like you don't go out and pull weeds once. You don't go out and just like you know, it's like it's something that it's your role is to just always tend, always tend. It takes this sort of thing, you can tell the garden where someone doesn't look at it, and the one where someone's out there every day, even if it's just looking and saying hello. And it's it's there's never like a one and done thing with the body. And that's also like the gift of the erotic. Like as long as we're alive, like this is part of our role and our experience, and we'll what we get to eat from our garden kind of reflects back to us like how we're tending or what we have access to, or how well fertilized fertilized the soil is, et cetera. Yes. We've just got so many great nature metaphors to use. I know. We're just hitting all the metaphors are doing really well.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

And there's something else that just bubbled up for me that that I want to speak to, which is another thing that might be going on for you out of habit is believing you don't like sex or you're not interested in it. Because you're in the habit, the that familiar groove that's gotten so well worn is sex that you don't actually want to be having, sex that is not worth having, sex that you don't like having, but you've been going along to get along. You've been going along because that's the script that was handed to you. And so it's especially prevalent in women who are in their middle years and have been in longer-term relationships and sex becomes a duty. I mean, we we speak about that, and I am not someone with a religious background, but the fact that the term conjugal duty, like ew, fucking ew, that like what like fucking patriarchy, like that it that is anyone's duty to offer their body to another person non-consensually, just because you signed like a marriage license and put a ring on a finger, doesn't actually mean you're consenting to the sex that you're having. And this is where religion can really work that. But consensual sex means that both people are actually in that exploration together, that experimentation together that we've both spoken to of figuring out where do our desires and boundaries truly overlap with each other. And if one or both parties is not being authentic and honest, there's literally no way to establish consent. So if you, well-intentioned wife, are having sex with your husband once a week, once a month, once a quarter, whatever it is, just to kind of like keep the edge off for him, but you hate what's going on. I want to tell you something. You're not having consensual sex. And that people like really have a hard time with what I'm saying sometimes, because it's like, does that mean it's rape? And no, I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is it's not truly consensual because you're not representing your desires and your boundaries authentically. So there's no way to truly establish consent without that. So a lot of women in particular, although this isn't exclusively gendered, might have a lived experience that leaves them thinking, like, oh, who cares? I don't need sex, uh, whatever. It's just like so over it, are we done yet? And that is an indicator, not that point blank, you don't enjoy sex and there's no merit from sex. What it means is that you have not been having the kind of fulfilling, satisfying, juicy, delightful, attuned. Experience that might actually allow you to say, Oh, I do like this. And I have a client who had a lot of religious trauma and physical trauma. And what the arc of work that we did, she came in basically being in such a heightened nervous system state that her husband, like touching her on the shoulder, would send her into like intense reactivity. And yet in her brain, she wanted to have sex with him. She she loves him, he's kind, she feels safe with him. It was, in fact, that safety that really let the trauma come far closer to the surface than it ever had. We've worked together over a long arc, and she got to a point I will never forget. It will stay with me forever. Like she's laying on the table and she's like, and we were, I was touching her genitals, not even in a like aggressive, well, aggressive, not the word, but like it wasn't like like, ooh, like, like we really got to get the arousal going. It was just like really gentle and exploratory. And she's like, you know, I think I like this for myself. I mean, her whole paradigm had turned on its head in that moment because her motivation was, I love my husband enough to want to figure out how to not be in this dynamic in our marriage. But she didn't believe she could enjoy sex for herself. And that is no longer her reality.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

Yeah, and I see this show up for people who even have no religious background whatsoever. It's sort of like sex becomes this like gesture to show appreciation and love for your partner, which is like deep and authentic. But in trying to show deep appreciation and love and affection, you're bypassing some things, you're overriding some things in your own body that are like not serving you. They're like making your backpack patterning like much heavier and denser. And yeah, I think that's so common. And I mean, and under that, even like beyond the level of well, it's not beyond the level of embodiment, but like even not necessarily in the embodiment conversation, is that you have a transaction ledger, you have a scorecard that you're keeping with reality and with your relationship, and you've got this as a part of that. And it's like a whole part of this is that like that transaction ledger has to go. Right.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

I mean, and if that is not an example of people pleasing, of perfectionism, of performance, of these strategies playing out. Also the dissociative ones, the, the, the invisibilizing, like all of that could be plugged into, and it doesn't, you don't only have to pick one. Many of us have a whole host of these protective strategies playing out at any given time. And there's usually one that's a little bit more of the dominant, right? So it's like that's what I mean. This brings us full circle in our conversation. When I say that those strategies, like people pleasing are ruining your relationship, it's because you just are completely blocking yourself from ever knowing what your true potential is. And that means the gifts of that potential are being withheld. That means the love and the connection and the depth and the intimacy and the joy, the supportedness, the connectedness, all these things that as humans, we very, very rightly seek, yearn for, want to feel with another person. Like the reason they're not there isn't only because your partner doesn't know how to touch you or is only in it for themselves. It's you're colluding in this. And the only thing you can actually control is you. So maybe you want to go take my quiz or something and like figure out like what do these protectors am I playing with right now? So that you can start to unwind that for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

Thank you so much for coming on today. And I know that the listeners are going to get so much out of all the things that you shared. And we're gonna have the links to your work, your quiz, anything else that you would like people to know or easily reference in the show notes below the episode. So if you're listening or watching this, make sure you check those out. And while I still have you on, is there anything in particular that you would like listeners or viewers to know about you or your work or anything that you have coming up before we wrap up for today? Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

It's been such a pleasure. I mean, the the quiz that's been mentioned is just a great way to kind of get a little insight into yourself and brings you into my world. I have a podcast as well, Deeper with Darshana. And my website is a wonderful way to learn about all the offerings. I see clients from all over the world, literally. So I do work in person a lot, but people travel from different places. I travel. So depending upon what you're seeking, working together directly might be an option. So reach out. And I genuinely love when people are like, I heard you on such and such podcasts. So please tell me that you heard this conversation that Grace and I had. I really delight in forming connections in this way.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Darshanna, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure to have you. And I hope to see you again in the future.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Thank you, Grace.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to subscribe to the show, leave us a review, or share the episode with someone who would enjoy it. Check out the show notes below for more about our guests, plus links to gifts and other resources to take you deeper. Our podcast music was produced by Santiago Paramo, our podcast art graphically designed by Sarah Mendoza, and photography by Charlie Watts. Thank you for being here, and we'll see you next time. Be well. Peace.