Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole. I tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside of me. I tried to keep her hiding, oh, shut up. I tried to keep her quiet, but she's a wild, wild woman. On today's episode, we have sexological body worker, Ellen.
Join us for a conversation about the expansive mind body connection. Together we talk about the neuroplasticity of erotic pleasure, scar tissue remediation, and grounding in the presence of our breath. Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. I am so delighted to have all of you pleasure activists from around the world tuning in for another episode each Wednesday.
My name is Nicole. I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training in psychedelic integration therapy, and I am also the founder of The Pleasure Practice, supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear listener, wow, what a special episode to be sharing with you.
I mean. Ellen and I talk about being just overwhelmed by the vast need for more sex education, for more pleasure liberation, and yeah, that is something I think about all the time, I mean, dear listener, you know I grew up in a very diverse community. Christian puritanical environment. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while and the whole purity ring thing, and I'll tell you what, I still get pamphlets in the mail from my old high school and they are still teaching the same things.
And it is just wild for me to know that there are people still going through that world. There are so many people out there that are still in that world. And. Yeah, when you think about it, it can be rather overwhelming to think about all of the work, the social justice, the liberation of pleasure and body ownership that is needed.
Whoa, uh, yeah. I'm gonna take a deep breath for that one.
Dear listener, I'm so excited to be in this space with you. I feel so devoted to the study of eroticism. I can promise you we are gonna be together. I'm for a long time in this space, exploring what it means, the power it has, the pleasure that we haven't even tapped into. And I just, I really hope that all beings can be free in their erotic power.
Truly, may all beings be free in their erotic power. And may I somehow contribute to the liberation of that pleasure, dear listener, that is my hope for the universe and I am just so, so delighted that you are here. I see you tuning in each week. I'm honored, so honored to be here in the space with you and to be growing and expanding in this space alongside you for many years to come.
Alright, dear listener, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and resources at modernanarchypodcast. com, linked in the show notes below. And I also want to say the biggest thank you to all of my Patreon supporters. You are supporting the long term sustainability of the podcast.
keeping this content free and accessible to all people. So thank you. If you want to get exclusive access into my research and personal exploration, then you can head on over to patreon. com slash modern anarchy podcasts also linked in the show notes below. And with that, dear listener, please know that I am sending you all my love and let's tune in to today's episode.
So then the first question I like to ask each guest is, how would you introduce yourself to the listeners?
Ellen: Oh, well, I am a, I'm the founder of STREAM, which stands for Scar Tissue Remediation Education and Management, and it's an educational program for people who are interested in approaching sex deeply holistically.
We leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of extraordinary human potential. So we look at the psyche, we look at the body, we look at the interchange between the psyche and the body. But we really, really dive into the body, into biomechanics, into biochemistry, into the emotional body, and also into the scar body.
And the scar body is fraught with a lot of habit stuckness. And so we don't just look at physical scars, which we do learn to remediate through all kinds of exotic methods, like coffee enemas. Thanks. But we also look at how emotional beliefs. Filter into postural habits, which filter into fibrotic arrangements where the jaw and the sternocleidomastoid meet.
For instance, you know, who knows what's who knows what lurks there? It's usually big. And then what keeps us jammed up? What keeps our sexual centers from communicating as well as they might?
Nicole: Good. Yeah. Welcome into the space. Sounds like we're going to have a lot to talk about in the next hour. Awesome.
Yeah. Before we get into any of that, I would love to hear about you and your journey. How did you get into this sort of work and this passion? Really take up the space to tell your story.
Ellen: Sure. Uh, it's a long story.
Nicole: I'm here for it. We got an hour.
Ellen: I know. I'd like an hour. Wow. And a therapist. So go. I love it.
Oh, so I was passionate about dancing. And my childhood and my teens and all the way into my mid twenties. And I'm also a person with EDS Ehlers Danlos syndrome. So I'm a very hypermobile. And after I dislocated my knee for the fourth time, it was time to think about something else like, okay, I can't be carried to the chiropractor one more time, so hard.
Yeah. Yeah. So. I kind of fell into a day job of working in electronics. My day job was managing an electronic synthesizer factory, a drum machine factory in the eighties, and it was fun. It was exciting to be in the music industry, but it wasn't exciting to run a factory. It wasn't my favorite thing. And I sort of dreamed about being a fashion designer, but my dreams come true at an alarming.
Alarming success, right?
Nicole: Yeah. Hell yeah. Love that.
Ellen: Within a year, I was working for a, uh, a sweater designer and I ended up inheriting her business because she basically Disappeared in the middle of the night with all the money out of the bank account, the front desk and the Rolodex, her partner, who wasn't the designer and he couldn't really carry on without her.
Meanwhile, because I was sort of running the, as I do, I ran the factory and I knew how to make all the sweaters. And I also had relationships with some of the stores and they're like, well, wait a minute, just because she's gone, doesn't mean you can't make a few more of these sweaters. Like, well, I actually do know how to do that.
And so again, within six months, I had my own sweater company and I was, uh, then it expanded and expanded. And I was in the garment business for 15 years, but I did all my own made all my own samples. And that means I was spending a lot of time behind a knitting machine and my back was starting to ache.
And I was in my. You know, my 30s and like, wait, there's got to be more to life than being stuck behind a knitting machine. And I started taking yoga. And as it happened, when I started doing something, I get into it, I jumped in. And then I did a yoga teacher training and I had a private with my yoga teacher.
She said, Oh, you're a sexual healer. I'm like, Huh? What? She just, I'm like, Ooh, my big private with Anna Forest. Who, what is she going to do? I'm going to learn some exotic poses. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And no, she had me walk around the room. She said, just walk. I'm going to watch you walk. And she said, Oh, I can tell by the way your sacrum moves, you're a sexual healer.
I'm like, okay, I don't know what that means. I don't know where this is going, but I'll take it. And then I pretty soon I was teaching anatomy for her teacher trainings. And that turned into. A half a career. The other half of my career was body work.
And I went to school and studied body work and got good at it.
And then I did cranial sacral training. And then I did sexological body work training because my body work teacher said, somebody needs to address scar tissue in the pelvic floor because people are suffering and I can't do it. I'm a man it's inappropriate and it wouldn't be understood, but you can do it.
And I'm like, Oh, niche. There it is. And so I thought I better find something I could use for scope of practice in California. And that was sexological body work at the time. And I jumped into sexological body work. And pretty soon I was teaching anatomy for sexological body work. And Joe Kramer asked me to introduce Sexological bodywork as a profession in Australia, and we went to Australia and then we went to Canada and introduced it there and then I got a Ph.
D. in somatic. It was supposed to be somatic sexology, but the institute where I was getting my Ph. D. got pushback from international, the people who have to do with international recognition. And. Funding for even offering the program, oddly, the countries that have the biggest sex industries push back the hardest and they collapse the program while it was in the middle of it.
So I ended up in somatic and spiritual psychology, which I never would have chosen. It was, I was going to be the world's 1st. Somatic sexologist with a PhD in that subject,
but it didn't happen because the world wasn't ready. And that's so often the case. The world isn't ready when we start to talk about sex and making changes in the status quo.
Yeah. Yeah. So. You know, I felt anarchic and revolutionary, but also I had put, you know, I was halfway through my dissertation. What was I going to do? Just stop? I'm like, you know, all right, I can, I can live with a PhD in somatic and spiritual psychology. My dissertation is it's not going to change one bit.
They said, don't change a thing. Keep doing your research. Do what exactly what you're going to do. And, um, this is how we'll be. You know, you'll be a somatic sexologist in spirit, if not in academic nomenclature. So then I realized in the writing of my dissertation and the experience I had working with research subjects, cause I did hands on research with my subjects.
It took a long time to find an institute that would allow me to use that research because of IRBs and what you might expect, but I had already done the research by the time I entered the program. I had thought what I was going to be doing was taking scar tissue remediation as a self-help modality into the world, but the world was not ready in 2009 for having motherhood and scar tissue and sexuality in the same sentence.
I mean, it was crickets. I was working with Jaya, uh, who's. Uh, somatic sex educator as well. Right. And, um, I had had a spectacular success remediating her scar tissue and her pelvic floor. And I also worked with Kimberly Johnson had a spectacular success remediating scar tissue in her pelvic floor. And I could see this is something that needs to be taught.
I need to put it together as a training. And that's what I did. And so that's what I'm still doing is teaching people, but I'm interested in many things. Scar tissue remediation is really only one fourth, you know, kind of one quadrant in a holistic model that looks at biomechanics and biochemistry and the emotional body.
So I have an interest in holism. I would say, you know, overarching scar tissue needs the most immediate attention because it's an underserved population. There was a finally, you know, see, I feel so vindicated CNN comes out with this article about the needs of people postpartum who have given birth and how they're underserved and they're suffering and all over, you know, it's ubiquitous worldwide.
They go without the care they need. And I'm like, well, duh, I've been saying that
for 15 years, people.
Nicole: Jesus.
Ellen: So I'm training people and I'm saying. That we're getting remarkable results, remarkable because people are trained to look at the whole body, the whole system, and they have a deep tool bag of what they can use to, um, approach problems like infertility and HPV, cervical cancers, painful penetration during intercourse.
You know, neo vaginal surgery, the skin grafting involved with neo penis surgery. There's so much that it's a huge, huge, huge, huge area that goes under served the scar tissue piece because doctors can't and won't and don't talk about scars because guess what? They're making them. They don't want to hurt people, but they don't understand that connective tissue is living tissue and living tissue grows, changes, morphs in reaction to things like surgery, you know, remodeling is real.
But if there's a lot of inflammation in the body to start with that remodeling process keeps going and going and going, and the scar gets bigger and denser and you don't see it on the surface. Where it gets bigger and denser is inside the skin and before you know it, there's a loss of range of motion or an organ gets pulled out of place or there's a change in the gate or there's back pain or there's a bladder issue, you know, things change.
As a result of scar tissue, but medicine doesn't recognize that and they don't give people any tools to work with it. But that's why I created stream to give people tools to work with it because scars. That's why management is in the name because scars don't disappear when they do disappear. We can talk about that, but.
Structural scars that have embedded in fascia take time to work with, and that's where management comes in. People can learn to manage their scars in a way that is much less painful than if they didn't do that. So that's about me.
Nicole: Thank you for sharing your story and your journey to getting here. And I guess, you know, before we even get into anything more, I just want to pause and say, thank you.
Right? All the work that you were doing, like you said, the crickets, right? For future generations to have more space to have these conversations. So I really appreciate all of the time and energy that you put forward and, you know, advancing this movement, you know, and I'm showing up in my classes where when there's a free topic of presentation, I talk about pelvic floor therapy and everyone in my class giggles and looks at me like, what is this?
Wild woman who talks about sex all the time, trying to share with us. And, you know, it's just, uh, you know, but I
Ellen: they don't know what they don't know.
Nicole: Right. And I'm trying to educate my future therapists in the room, you know, but people like you who started this way before I even got into my training, we're really advancing the movement.
So I guess I just want to say thank you for the work that you've done.
Ellen: Oh my, it feels good to get recognized in that way. It's a sea, a sea change is happening in awareness around the reality of vulva sexuality. Yeah. And it's so important that this happened because until people with vulvas are free. In their genitalia, their nervous system, their pelvic nervous system, as Naomi Wolf, so beautifully pointed out in her book vagina until that is understood.
We're not in our power. And when we come into our power in our pelvis, there is no stopping us. So I see this as part of what used to be called women's live back when I was, you know. A teenager, that was a long time ago. It was the 70s and I was deeply influenced by the 2nd wave of feminism and was radicalized when I went to get a cervical cap in Los Angeles in the 70s.
We couldn't walk out of the clinic without doing a self exam. So they're in the waiting room of the clinic. Everyone's got their doors dropped and they've got flashlights and they've got speculums and they're all examining themselves. And I'm like, this is so cool. Yeah,
Nicole: absolutely.
Ellen: I live for a world where this is normal.
And that's what another kind of motivation that happened around the development of stream. I ran around the world for a while teaching something called. Sacred anatomy, women's anatomy, just teaching anatomy in yoga studios of the pelvic floor. I taught at yoga conferences. I went to Australia and I went to Europe and I went to Asia and I went all over the U S teaching, teaching, teaching.
Guess what? We have genitals way more than, you know, and, and it was really interesting to watch yoga. Studio owners kind of tweak when I told them what I wanted to do, but they wanted me to teach anatomy for their yoga teacher trainings. I'm like, not unless you let me teach all the anatomy.
And I didn't combine it in a single class.
I kept that kind of sequestered because the audience needs to self select. I don't want to be. Shocking anyone or traumatizing anybody who didn't think that's what they were coming for. Even though now I think it could happen, you know, you could just teach whole body anatomy. And I think it's something that really needs to happen.
Nicole: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I took a yoga teacher training as well and never got any of that conversation in it at all. Even though I was told that, uh, uh, yoga originally was about for men, right. And managing sexual desire.
Ellen: There's a lot of, um, There's a lot of poses. You like where you put your heel in your pelvic floor to basically deaden the nerves.
Yeah. And there's a lot of proscription, but the real yoga, the older yoga, the yoga that preceded that the, the Kali based worship yoga was about freeing the body. And that's. Certainly a parent. If you look at the art from that period, you know, people are freely engaged in all kinds of exotic positions, Kama Sutra wise, that are impossible unless you do some flexibility training.
So clearly it went both ways. We can turn it on and we can turn it off in terms of our availability for a sexual sensation. And you know, that's one of the things I'm really interested in is sex as a road to increasing neuroplasticity.
Nicole: Uh huh.
Ellen: Because we do have a whole pelvic brain, so to speak a nervous system.
And I think it's underappreciated for its capacity to shift our allegiance to the way our nerve, our entire autonomic nervous system works. I mean, I have a lot of really big ideas and I'm interested in pursuing them. And I'm so pleased to be training sexological body workers in anatomy to get them to ask bigger questions than just what's a new way to get off.
you know, like how can we change our entire nervous system and our allegiance to up regulation down regulation and manage our autonomic capacities, not manage in a let's make it smaller and get so stuck in a box of regular regulatory behaviors. But how can we extend, how can we expand, how can we become bigger, more flexible, emotionally.
People by expanding our sexual capacities for relaxation and for excitation. We can, I mean, it's right there in our genitals. We have the possibility of really going a much bigger, deeper, more. Outlandish places, and I, this is the one place I can really talk about that freely perhaps.
Nicole: Yes.
Ellen: So let's get into it.
Nicole: Absolutely. Where do we start that conversation for you? I was thinking about trust, letting go of shame, expanding the breath, but take me where your brain is going. What are you thinking?
Ellen: Well. I'm thinking that the minute we change hands, when we self pleasure, we're in a different neuroplastic space.
People are like, Oh, it would take forever. If I changed hands, it's awkward. It doesn't feel good. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly where you need to be in that space of awkward discomfort and exploring yourself anew and pay attention to the sensation that is available instead of the same old way. You've always quote done it.
unquote, to get to the same result you've always gotten. If it takes more time, what would happen? Maybe you'd actually have more time for arousal to build rather than bypassing a whole potential for sensation. That's just, you know, a tiny example. And I've had many people come to me who say, Oh, well, I could only get off if I straighten my right leg and turn it in and really, really tighten that leg.
I can't roll over into orgasm until I have that gesture, but my back hurts and my leg hurts and my, you know, it's ruining my pelvis. I have chronic pain as a result of this masturbation habit. I'm like, well, we can change that. You don't have to get stuck there. Right. Yeah. So getting people to do things in an unusual way.
Nicole: Yeah, which was making me just think about, you know, creating more space for the exploration of this under systems of capitalization, right? Where we're in such a productivity mode where it's like, I got to get this orgasm out. Cause I've got five, 10, 20 minutes. That's it. You know? So there's just no space mentally to even say, wow, what if we could explore, right.
And actually. Spend the time getting comfortable with that other hand, but it's part of that. Let's
Ellen: just, um, say sex and arousal begins at 45 minutes and there's nothing wrong with quickies. Don't get me wrong, but 45 minutes is actually what's required for all of the erectile tissue beds to come to the point of full engorgement for many people.
Not everyone. You can train your body doing gorge very quickly. I learned that with Jaya. She could in gorge and get to orgasm in 15 seconds. I watched her do it and she did it publicly as part of her early career. But that's. Not the point. The point is, how do we inhabit all of the potential along the way in terms of allowing our body to feel all the sensation we bypass so much, you know, the particular activating system at the back in the brainstem is like an aperture that opens and closes.
I think full aperture open for sexual sensation instead of full aperture, more data trying to squeeze through and that being the excitatory sensation. Impulse that drives one into orgasm is the pressure of too much sensation and too little time that keeps presenting the genital sneeze because that's all the body could actually manage instead of a full blown full body inclusive surfing waving squirting orgasm that rolls on for 90 minutes you know tantra points at this And some Tantra teaches this, but Tantra is so fraught and has such a bad rap in terms of the isolation of gender roles, unfortunately.
Right. It's unnecessary. We can take the learning for the autonomic nervous system and utilize it regardless of our gender allegiance. Right? I mean, slowing down is slowing down no matter what genitals you're wearing and how you identify, but slowing down is important in order to be inclusive of our entire nervous system.
Nicole: Right. Exactly. And so I'm curious then when you're helping people to expand to, you know, the different hand or seeing the space of 90 minutes, where do you start people? Because I imagine there's a lot of pushback on this.
Ellen: Oh, yeah, there's a lot of pushback there. I can't and I won't. I'm like, here, let me show you something because I'm a sexological body worker.
I also work with orgasmic meditations, you know, I'll just stroke the clitoris and say, there's no agenda here. I'm going to stroke for 15 minutes because this is new to many people. Just pure sensation. Pay attention. We start with that because it's a very good mindfulness practice when you do that with somebody and they go, wait, I already had an orgasm.
You're going to keep stroking. And I'm like, Uh huh. 15 minutes is 15 minutes. We're going to explore. We're going to explore what's on the other side of that. You're going to feel into the, I can't, I can't, I can't, I'm done. What happens on the other side? You will never know yourself unless you look beyond what you think your capacity is.
So we do. And that, I'm like, okay, now I want you to think about doing this for yourself. And people do, and then, and now I want you to try it with your other hand, right? So there's ways you can build a bridge from where somebody is. I meet people where they are, I meet them in their pushback, but I also will take care of that pain in that leg or their back or their pelvic floor or their tailbone because I'm a body worker and I know how to do that.
And I was like, okay, here's the option. You can keep doing what you're doing and getting what you're getting. And I'll show you what it's like not to have that. So you can remember what it is to be pain free. Okay, that was a neuroplastic shift that we made with your fascia and your nerves in the place they interface all over legs, low back, psoas, et cetera, et cetera.
Now that you see that pain isn't a necessary ingredient, what are you going to change the pattern? You know, people come to me saying, I've only been able to have an orgasm if I lay face down, because that's how they learn to self pleasure. So they wouldn't be seen.
I'm just sleeping mom. Yeah. So that's a tough one to break, but it is, people can accomplish that, but they have to go slow and they have to be willing to feel really awkward.
Nicole: Right. Yeah. I think sometimes a good metaphor thinking about neuroplasticity is, you know, when you're out in the wilderness and you've been walking that one path and walking that one path of your neuronal pathways, it clears, right? And how easy to just walk down this one path. And if you want to go out, you know, it's an uncleared path.
You're having to cut, you know, the branches out of the way and that discomfort then of creating those new neuronal pathways or it's uncomfortable. And like you said, yeah. You won't know what's on the other side until you actually push past that.
Ellen: Exactly. Push past it or explore inside of it. You know, there's those moments of panic, like, I don't know what happens next.
And that's really, it's the fear of the unknown that keeps people stuck in dysfunctional patterns or. Barely okay enough patterns. It's like, why can't we have extraordinary experiences instead of kind of, well, that was nice. Next, you know, time to do the laundry or I was thinking about the laundry instead of,
Nicole: right, right.
Absolutely. I know it's, it's interesting. Just the people who aren't as interested in sex. Of course, there's a sexual people, but the people who are just like, ah, I don't know about sex. I'm like. What are you doing? You know, what, what, there's a lot of pleasure over there. Like, what are you doing in that space?
Ellen: That's right. Well, what, what is the capacity of the human nervous system? What is the capacity for sex to change our nervous system and expand it so we become bigger, more interesting, more diverse internally? How about some internal diversity?
Nicole: Absolutely. And I, as you were saying that I was starting to think about trauma and the way that that impacts the body and the brain.
So many of us have experienced sexual trauma. It's so normal, unfortunately, in our world. And so just thinking about, you know, what capacities your body is able to go to when you're pregnant. Body is in that defense mode of squeezing and tight in that tent city, you know, yeah, I'm you're nodding. You want to speak to that?
Ellen: Absolutely. So I'm learning patterns of trauma which I have to do with hiding which have to do with shame We have to come back and look at the relationship between shame and sexuality and how shame and don't get me wrong shame and kink have exquisite relationship That's worthy of a deep exploration, but unconscious shame that turns into body patterning around hiding, hiding our genitals, hiding our pleasure, hiding our hand, giving ourselves pleasure that can be unlearned.
But we have to establish safety and there's so much work to do before we even get to sexuality. When we're unpacking shame in the body. You know, start with breathing, how does shame impact our breath if we can't breathe breathing is the way we open the channels that go from the brain into the pelvic floor and the genitals.
But if our breathing is constricted by unconscious shaming or feeling small or a hiding pattern that, you know, a rounded upper back a collapsed chest the sternum poking into. Restricting the diaphragm and it's excursion.
We can change that. I mean, having a background in yoga was so helpful because the yoga I studied was all about neuroplasticity.
That was Anna Forrest's whole point in the beginning when I was studying with her way back in the 90s around And We can shift. We can change. Devote your entire attention for this class to a spot. Pick a spot, any spot in your body. Devote every breath to that spot. Notice how you feel at the beginning.
Notice how you feel at the end. Doing that, you know, over years really proved to me how the focus of attention can shift awareness and physiology of it. Low back pain, or a bladder infection, or I think I'm getting a cold, or I think I'm, you know, I have this pain in my knee, giving it 90 minutes of intensive attention and breath would shift the pain again and again.
So I realized it's. An attentional matter how we organize our attention, and that's such a big, uh, subject these days with a DHD and a DD and all of the neurodiversity. It has to do with the ability or, you know, even addiction to our devices, our mobile phones, et cetera. They are capitalism and the diffusion of attention going hand in hand.
Don't get me started on what the political consequences. Yes, they're, they're big, but so are the physiologic consequences of that. And so I, I predict yoga has the potential for yet another deep resurgence. People are realizing that their attention is fractured. And a great way to learn to focus gently and include the body, bring the body along is yoga.
And I think that yoga is undergoing a morphogenesis to develop into something bigger and less, uh, dogmatic than the yoga, uh, that came here in the sixties and seventies and way before. I mean, yoga came to this country in the twenties and even in the late 1800s, people were coming from India and people were exploring these doing postures.
Yeah. But all the dogma and the religion and the sort of inherent wrong information needs to be examined in the light of what's physiologically possible. Yoga can be a great liberator. It is one of the most, I mean, Qi Gong, there are many practices that are about changing our autonomic allegiance. What I mean by that is, are we addicted to distraction and upregulation?
Nicole: Yes, right. Yes. Most of us are right.
Ellen: Right. So we need to change that because we can't take time for our sexuality to blossom. If we're addicted to distraction and upregulation.
So we have to change that. That's what I'm talking about. The neuroplastic changes that sexuality can bring. I think it could absolutely reverse.
Distraction and chronic upregulation because in order to have those kinds of deep rolling 90 minute orgastic experiences can't happen until we change our minds. We really have to change our mind and we have to open up the Cartesian divide between the head and the body. That's part of it.
Nicole: Yeah, I feel like we are stepping towards a world where we're no longer seeing it like that.
Although, again, given maybe that's because your training and my specific training where I've gone kind of have led us here, but in my actual doctoral training for clinical psychology, there's been nothing on the body. So I don't want to get too. I know. I don't want to get too excited. I think it's because I've been working with psychedelic therapy.
So I've gotten a lot of somatic work there given just, you know, when you're in that nonspecific amplifier state, the amount of things that come up in the body, or even, you know, even on drugs like ketamine, which are that dissociative, like some clients with trauma will still have feelings in the body.
Right. And so given my yoga background, I do a lot of work with that. with clients there of how do we open up? How do we connect in that sort of space? But yeah, in my actual clinical training, there's been nothing about the body. So I don't want to get too excited, but I do think
Ellen: that's up to you. Isn't it really?
I mean, it's up to, it's up to us as people who are writing dissertations, be bold. To be bold and defend the fuck out of our ideas using the available literature because it's all there.
There was nothing on scar tissue in the pelvic floor until I wrote a dissertation about it. I'm like, how the hell am I going to do any research to support it?
Nicole: Yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah. My, uh, dissertation was on relationship anarchy. And there was nothing on it. So it was one of those like, okay, here we go. I guess I'll define it, you know, like start with the simple blocks of what this is. Um, but yeah, so now we're, we're moving forward past that, but I can so deeply hear the mind work of being present and feeling and how that level of pleasure in the body is so important.
so deeply connected to a political movement of awareness and actually feeling the systems that we're under and the pain of that so that we're actually moved to act rather than this distracted numbed out state of constant dopamine from social media, right?
Ellen: Right. That's right. It's hard. You know, I find myself running super hot and cold about social media.
Sometimes I get into it, get on it. And then I realized what it's doing to my brain. And I'm like, Oh my God, I can't conscience this. Goodbye. And I just walk away. And then I'm like, Oh, nobody knows who I am anymore. Oh my God, I gotta get back on social. It's like, it's like a selling your soul to the devil.
And trying to find a balanced, sane relationship with it is, uh, it's a struggle, at least for me.
Nicole: Yeah, I look at it like a drug, right? It's a very It is a drug. It's absolutely a drug. A complex relationship to it and I have to be careful when I start to use it and keep using it and then wanting to use it, you know, and I'm like, well, okay, maybe I need a tolerance break, you know?
We're going to take a step away and exactly friends and community and how all that pulls you into it, right? So I think that's really important and Yeah, I'm also curious to what your views are on impact and kink. I know that, you know, in my own exploration, a lot of my research, there's so much opening of sensation that you can do through that sort of play.
And I'm also curious about maybe the opposite side, right? Kink is beautiful, healthy, drugs, beautiful, healthy, but they always have that other side to it, right? Where it can get complex, complicated relationships.
Ellen: Yes. Yeah. There's nothing to put you into the parasympathetic of subspace like a good flogging, right?
And what's wrong with that? But not everyone goes there, you know, they have to be aware of who they are before they enter that space and they need to negotiate. And that's the beauty of kink is it is such an external externalized negotiation. When you drop a contract with a Dom and you're in subs, uh, the sub position, or if you are a Dom that be taking responsibility for the very deep specificity of those kinds of contracts about permission, permission, and the agreed upon boundaries of where you are, what you want, how do you want it.
Even having the conversation of what do I want and how do I want it? Um, meet it out over this period of time. Boundary, boundary, boundary, boundary. It is good training for relationships.
Nicole: I know. Yeah. Communication skills. I've learned so much from being in kink community just about, yeah, where my boundaries are and how to name those and even just know what those are, right?
That's a whole process. I guess my question too is, What are, I'm just going to speak from my lived experience, right? When you continue to go into that space of high intensity, not just flogging, but sexual contact, that is very high intensity. And wow, the orgasms that can come from that. Whoa. And then trying to slow back down to a more sensual space has been a little bit of a shift.
Ellen: Exactly. But that is the neuroplastic opportunity here is to be conscious about it and say, okay, I'm stepping away from the intent, the high intensity into the slow intensity.
And there's nothing wrong with slow intensity, but this is who we are and who we can be. We can choose where our allegiance lies and having our allegiance go back into deep parasympathetic.
As a legitimate sexual place to explore. I mean, deep subspace will certainly take you there and take you there. So it's like any dopamine alliance. You have to watch it carefully.
Nicole: Right.
Ellen: Becomes very addictive.
Nicole: Yeah. What does that balance look like? Do you have any. Recommendations.
Ellen: Well, it's just recognizing that you're there.
First of all, oh, gee, I can't even get off unless I have on my special stilettos or I have on my vinyl or, you know, whatever that thing is that signals I'm in sexual space now to oneself. Until and unless I have an other person who's managing the space for me, or for whom I am managing the space, like, wait a minute, whatever happened to the self with self relationship here, and that self self relationship can be tuned to the high intensity frequency, or it can be tuned to the broad intensity frequency, the broad, slow, deep intensity frequency.
I mean, we have to take responsibility for our. I call it the primacy of our ANS, our autonomic nervous system, where do we tune in? What channel do we tune into when we're only stuck on one channel that requires a good look? And what are our, you know, what's the payback for remaining allegiant to only 1 channel?
Nicole: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Again, if we maybe think about it like substances, right? There's a lot of beauty and going into that, um, you know, with psychedelics going into that space of nonspecific amplifier of feeling the joy of that and the intensity of that. But does that then cause your ordinary consciousness to feel dull and boring?
And if that's where we are.
Ellen: I think so. Here's what I think. I think it lays a template. No matter what substance we're taking, the reason we respond to it is because we already know how. What I've discovered was that body work could take me any place that ayahuasca or DMT or ketamine or opiates, especially opiates, could take me.
I had a little issue. I mean, I know I could speak to this very from personal And so it was, it did to opium. I had a, we grew mushrooms for a long time and, uh, had a beautiful trade going with a lovely Persian man who this exquisitely like tastes like smoking tootsie rolls, delicious opium. And I am by frequently because we have plenty of it.
And then I realized, oh, I have a little problem because I got sick when I stopped. And I'm like, wait a minute. Okay. And then I gave it up because I didn't want to be reliant on anything, even though I was, you know, a deep psychedelic warrior in again, back in the nineties doing. Ayahuasca and, you know, following Terrence McKenna around and befriending ultimately, and going to Hawaii and noticing the plants and finding out, Oh, look, you didn't think you could grow psychotria viridis.
It's coming up all around your feet. Look at those, you know, those little pieces of leaves that you've been putting, they're all turning into plants.
That was sort of an amazing moment. It was astonishing actually. But I turned away from it when I discovered yoga and because I was finding that I could approximate some of those states doing pranayama.
And I thought, well, this is really interesting. I didn't know I could go here on the natch. And then I met the man who became my teacher who stuck his thumb under my shoulder blade. And it was a full on opiate experience. I'm like, Oh, my God. Okay. I'm not stopping until I learn how to do this because everyone needs to know that they don't need the substance that's already within them.
The substance just opens the door, forms a template for what our nervous systems already know how to do. Provided we don't have a lot of blockage in the way, you know, if you're on 3 antidepressants and, you know, pain medication and a blood pressure med and a statin not going to happen. Right? Exactly.
They've already hijacked your sensitivity, but if you're pretty open, pretty clean in your blood, we have no idea who we are in terms of what we can self generate in terms of state change. We just need the right inputs, and that's what kink provides so exquisitely if we're not, uh, blocked by substances of other kinds.
Nicole: Right, right. Powerful story for you. And I'm just thinking then, knowing everything that you do know and your journey with all this, how do you play with pleasure currently? I'm, I'm sure your brain has so much that is going through it, you know, the books, the ideas as you are in that space. So how do you get there?
Ellen: I play with autonomic states. I do a lot of enema play. That's fun for me. That's really a very interesting edge. I play with masturbation while retaining enemas and I train my body to squirt and retain at the same time. Like I can keep coffee in and expel. I mean, these are weird little, very particular and odd.
I don't know. You could call it kink, I suppose. Self with self kink. It's a, it's just a curiosity. It's like, can, is this even possible? I don't know. I'm going to try it. Oh yeah, it's possible. And not only that, it feels kind of wild and good. Okay. What's next?
Nicole: Exactly. That continual exploration then for you.
Ellen: Right. And to be completely honest, my sexual appetite basically evaporated when I had a hysterectomy. Um, and that's not true of everybody, but it was true for me. And I had to think long and hard about getting a hysterectomy. I had,
um, so, uh, endometrial cancer, not very much, a tiny, tiny, tiny amount, but I could not find in California a doctor who would allow me to watch it and see if I could reverse it.
The minute cancer is present, the standard of care says you must get a hysterectomy. There was no surge. There was no choice. There was no surgeon who would allow any other outcome. And so I thought, well, I could just, you know, Not go to doctors because of the doctor knows you have cancer and you're not getting, they'll just drop you as a patient.
They won't even watch you. And, um, so, uh, I said, okay, I have more important things to do than play the, gee, I don't know. I have cancer. How big is it game of going from imaging house to imaging house from doctor to doctor? I didn't want to do that. I'm like, okay. I want to start stream. That's what I'm going to do.
So I'm going to just get the hysterectomy zip. You know, my sexuality just, uh, evaporated, but I explore in many other ways. And maybe my sexuality will come back online at some point. I don't know, but I've been pretty, uh, busy making Stream. It's been an all consuming process since I rebooted it in 2020.
It's, you know, making media and learning to edit and learning to animate and learning to use all the channels and all the things that you do when you run an online business, uh, you know, I say. Boomer generation person. It doesn't come naturally to me. So it's a lot of, um, always new, always new, always new.
So I wouldn't say I sacrificed my sexuality on the altar of stream. That's not the point. The point is the two things happen concurrently. I got really busy with one thing and I actually think a lot of the sexual exploration I do. I did provided the diving board for me to take flight with stream.
It funded me energetically and my creativity. It's like somebody opened the tap on my creativity and it has never closed.
Nicole: Sure. Absolutely. So yeah, thank you for that work. And I'm sure that. You know, that was a shift in your identity. Um, I can imagine, right, going from all the work that you were doing then to having that change and your connection, but then to redirect it and the meaning of that, right?
Ellen: It has to do with meaning. That's really the word. That's the key word here is making meaning. The meaning I'm making of the work I'm doing is my life's work. And it feels like a unique contribution. And that's what I came here to do. I have no doubt.
You know, ever since 1997, when Anna said, Oh, you're a sexual healer.
I'm like, yeah, not just for me, for everybody. And until we understand the role of scars in sexual expression, my work is not done.
Nicole: Right. Right. And how would you describe that role?
Ellen: I think it has to do with teaching. There's so much information that people don't have, and it gets easy to get overwhelmed by it, but the only way you start is.
To start so every person who comes to me, who's got a question about scar tissue. I asked them if they've been genitally mapped and the answer is rarely. Yes. So we start there, you know, I'm working with people 1 on 1 and I'm teaching now students to do genital mapping. And now. I wrote the scripts for genital mapping for sexological body work back in 2010.
So now thousands and thousands and thousands of people are, I mean, I introduced anatomy as an important aspect of sexuality, because if we're, how do we know what we're talking about, whether it would, you know, that little thing that, like, Goes over your clitoris. It's called a hood. It has a function. It has a place.
We have to have a common language of sexological body workers as an organization and as an entity. So we all know what we're talking about. Therefore, anatomy is critical. Right? So that's what I mean by. You teach, you teach and you teach and you teach. So the collective can start to have a discourse that is set on a commonly held language.
Without that there's a problem. And I'm not saying people, people can use whatever language they want, but we also need to understand there's common meanings for a vestibular bulb or perineal sponge or a, you know, the way the periurethral ducts have sphincters that open and close, you know.
Nicole: Right.
Ellen: We're going to build a bread, a bridge ever to conventional medicine.
We've got to start on their side of the, of the language barrier.
Nicole: Sure. Absolutely. And how are you supposed to describe what you want when you don't even know the word for the part that you want to be touched, right? Like what are you,
Ellen: or you don't even know that you have the part more tragically, and this is often the case.
Right. People know they have a clitoris, but they didn't know they had, I didn't know I had a hood on my clitoris until I was fucking 47. Whoa!
Nicole: or even where it's located in, in, in terms of below or above the urethra. Some people just don't know that. I'm like, whoa.
Ellen: That's right. They don't know. And they're and plus people's urethras in so many locations, sometimes it's inside, sometimes it's outside their introitus.
And so how do you talk about it when there's so much variation because you can't say there's, there's no such thing as a landmark. The only thing we have that we can reliably identify our bones, all the soft tissue can be in any configuration because you know, somebody's intersex or somebody this, the variation is infinite.
So trying to talk about where things are, it's only experiential, and that's why people need to be mapped individually because their own confirmation is special to them, specific to them, and it's all normal. It's all normal. Variation and genetic diversity is the way our species got here. So we need to embrace it.
Nicole: Yeah, and we see it out in nature all the time, right? The leaves all look different, and we look at each leaf and we're like, wow, it's so beautiful. And they're not these cookie cutter examples of the same thing. But so many of us have such deep shame the second we feel like we're not the norm, right?
Ellen: There is no norm, our norm is constructed by pornography, excuse me, and how many porn stars have had their labial lips clipped? Lots of them is the answer. And so what we're considering normal is surgically created. So okay.
Nicole: Right. Which. Is making my brain just already think about how we have AI coming out with images.
And so I, I think we both know a future of AI pornography where you can type in, Hey, I want to see this.
Ellen: Oh, it's already happening. And it's not just AI, it's happening in 3d sex robots. You can get them any confirmation, any configuration, any, you know, shape of eye and color of skin and probably accent eventually because they talk.
And so right. AI and sexuality is hilarious because AI will never understand sexuality, never, ever, ever, because it will not. I mean, this is where I feel sort of. In one way, a little desolate about our future, because if AI is moving the way it does, things will be concentrated and normalized more and more because that's what computers do.
Individual quirkiness and variation will separate us from AI, will keep us and allow us to maintain our integrity as humans. Creative beings, there's a difference between creativity via iteration and creativity through our own internal spark and my allegiances with the ladder. Of course.
Nicole: Yeah, I know. I'm definitely afraid of the world of AI therapist here, right?
Coming from my profession and stuff, but I think there's so much, at least for me, when I think about that world, there's so much beauty and knowing that. If, you know, the difference being that my consciousness, my experience would be in the soul of another human being, and that is not recouplable right with AI.
And so even in terms of sexuality and play in this, to know that I'm doing that with another conscious human being, who's going to hold my story and hold all the unique, like you said, edges and, you know, little quirks of my being, that is the beauty for me. So I'm going to hold on to hope that that is going to hold us through, but you know, we're about to go through some rocky waters.
It'll be very interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And. You know, for the person who has heard you talk a little bit about scar tissue and this experience, uh, is there anything that you'd want to say to them directly? Who's maybe wondering if this is something they should explore or learn more about?
Ellen: You mean people who are interested in learning how to remediate scar tissue?
Nicole: Yeah, or if they have it, or if they even have it, what if
Ellen: some people come to scars through Direct experience or indirect experience people who have scars end up wanting to study them because they want to understand what they can do and their own experience is so dramatic when they start to remediate their scars are like, oh, I don't have to.
live with breath restrictions for having had top surgery. Oh, I don't have to have chronic pain. Oh, I can have pleasurable penetration with this neo vagina. And it doesn't have to be with a dilator. And if there are erectile tissue pieces inside of this beautiful constructed new anatomy that still talk to the pleasure centers in my brain.
How do I find them? So yes, people who learn about this often get fascinated and want to study it. And I'm here to teach that I'm here to teach people can reach out to me, uh, via my website, scar tissue remediation. com. I'm eager to help. But not just physical scars also scars in the realm of the unseen scar tissues that have to do with shame or beliefs or meaning making that's Limited that wants to expand.
I mean, people know there's more, but they don't know how to get there, but I respect holistic inclusion incredibly deeply. It is sort of my MO. And so when you teach people holistic inclusion, they start to discover new worlds. I don't know a single student. I've had about 50, 60 people come through my program now.
And they are different people at the end than they were at the beginning. It changes them because they are actively working on scar tissue through conditioning and scar tissue in their body and even scar tissue inside their intestines, how their gut flora operates. You don't come out of this holistic inclusion approach to study without understanding where the blockages and what you can do about it in terms of embodied autonomy.
In terms of inner authority, you need to actually believe that that's valuable and that those are pillars of what I teach is, how can we do, how can we take responsibility for our health at the deepest level?
Nicole: So, so powerful, the work that you're doing to really change the world and our access to pleasure.
Ellen: Well, begin self with self, right?
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Which, thinking about self, you know, if you were to look back on your younger self, is there anything that you would want to say to her before she started this journey, before she knew all the wisdom that you do now? I know, right?
Ellen: I think I would tell her not to worry.
Nicole: Mmm, yeah, same. It's gonna be fine. Was there a lot of worry about pleasure and access to that
Ellen: was a lot of worry about what I would do if I lost my identity as a dancer, because that was my identity. It was my entire identity, and so I never considered being a fashion designer and identity. It's just something I happen to be able I was good at, and it paid the bills.
And it was working for myself doing that. Sure. Be, you know, making drum machines. Sure. Sure. But when I discovered health healing and the potential to human nervous system, I mean, I wouldn't have started without ayahuasca. Ayahuasca took me on a guided tour of my intestines and hyperspace along, you know, back in the mid nineties.
And I'm like, whoa, Okay, I think I can learn anatomy because it's already showing it to me in excruciating exquisite psychedelic detail. You know, I can do something with this and it was a beautiful teacher, beautiful teacher. So I started worrying less when I started taking psychedelics, I mean, I worried about certain things like, you know, getting busted, but, you know, now I live in Oregon where psychedelic therapy is legal and that blows my mind every time I think about it.
It just is amazing to me. It's like I have lived through an amazing transformation of what's available and possible for human consciousness, and it's a beautiful doorway, and we need to bring the body along.
Nicole: Absolutely, which is why I'm so thankful for your work and all that you're doing to bring that paradigm and to bring those two things together for our pleasure and our healing.
Ellen: Thank you for having me. Yeah. Well, what a delightful conversation.
Nicole: Yeah, it was so good. I'm curious to before we close anything. I always like to, you know, like, take a deep breath and feel into if maybe there's anything else that you wanted to share with the listeners. Otherwise, I have a closing question, but I like to create that space too.
Ellen: Scar tissue remediation is important, and it's a unique window to look into the psyche, the body, and the mind body interface and ask that question. Is there anything here that's creating blockage? If there is, what can I do to dissolve it? There are always ways.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. And I know you named a couple of different people, but even I'm correct me if I'm wrong too, but like scar tissue from birth, right.
From sexual traumas, from just not being ready enough and experiencing penetration, right. It's a really expansive space. Yeah.
Ellen: Scar tissue from that time you fell off your skateboard, scar tissue from the time you slipped and hit your pubic bone on the diving board on the way off, you know, all of those sports injuries or gymnastics, or, you know, it goes on and on.
The scars happen in, I've heard thousands, thousands and thousands of stories now about how people attain scars from hernia surgery, three days after birth, right? Bodies respond to scar remediation. And if we think about the scar as at least as important as what we eat, what our psyche contains and how flexible we are, or how able our bodies are, or how disabled our bodies are.
Scars are huge. They are just as important. And that was my training, and people don't think about it that way. People think, oh, scars are just a thing on my skin. It's much bigger than that.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Yes, absolutely. I'm so thankful for your work. I feel this need to bow like this just level of, you know, just like so much knowledge that you have in this area.
And so I'm really thankful to have you on the show and that people got, you know, a little bit into your world of this powerful work that you're doing for humanity.
Ellen: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share. I'm curious to hear your closing question. Yeah.
Nicole: What is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?
Ellen: What I wish was more normal was that people We're eager to cross the Cartesian divide. I wish that were normal. I wish people were willing to take the journey into their body and explore every atom in the space between the atoms of their body. That's what I wish was more normal. Instead of living in the constructed reality of the universe.
What's pointed at them from a screen.
Nicole: Absolutely. And I think as a psychotherapist myself, I'm trying to let that sink in because for the last five years, I've been taught to think about the mind, the mind, the mind, the mind, the mind, the mind work with your client on the mind.
Ellen: Yes, but the mind conscious and unconscious, right?
Guess what the unconscious mind is. It's called the body. The body is the unconscious mind. It's part of us. The mind lives in the body. It's the it's. It's the subcortical nervous system. That is the mind and the body.
Nicole: I know. I was in like a neuropsychology class and we're talking about cortisol, adrenaline, you know, and it's like, but we never talk about how would you work with clients in that?
No, it's just like, think CBT, CBT. And I'm just like,
Ellen: Oh, no, no, no. Oh, Lord. Oh, that's so sad.
Nicole: I know, it is, it is, it is. And so for me, every time I'm in a client session of therapy, I, you know, the tendency is to want to process all things so, uh, cognitively, but I'm trying to remember the importance of just even
Ellen: Okay, so let's just replace the C, CBT, with B, body behavioral therapy.
What would that look like?
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think there's so much power in even just asking, you know, my clients when they tell me something, um, of a difficult experience. Okay, let's pause. Where are you feeling this in the body? Just even life changing right to get that neural pathway going for them for so many people that are so drastically disconnected to their bodies.
And I know we have a lot of therapists that listen to this podcast. So I just hope that I can invite them even to incorporate even that small question into the work right to start to change the sort of movement so we can get to it. Cognitive body therapy, right? Well, yes.
Ellen: Cognitive body therapy or body inclusive therapy.
Yeah.
Nicole: Something.
Ellen: Yeah. We, we need it dearly.
Nicole: Absolutely. So thank you for joining us today and thank you for sharing all of your wisdom with me and all of the listeners. What a pleasure. Thank you so much for anyone who wants to find you work with you connect with you. Where do you want to plug so that they can find your stuff?
Ellen: Okay. Uh, you can go to the website, website, scar tissue remediation. com. I have a personal website. Ellen, he. com that talks about my approach to health holistic, very holistic inclusion based. And then you can find me on Instagram and you can find me on Facebook, but, uh, better to find me. You'll get an answer sooner because I am very spotty in my social media engagement.
But I always get my, I attend to my inbox daily. So scar tissue remediation. com will take you to my inbox.
Nicole: Well, thank you, Ellen, for joining us again.
Ellen: Oh, deep pleasure.
Nicole: If you enjoyed today's episode, then leave us a five star review podcast and head on over to. to modernanarchypodcast. com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode.
I want to thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.
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