Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast, exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole.
On today's episode. We have Rahi join us for a conversation about the connection between. Erotic pleasure in our collective liberation. Together we talk about tuning in to the language of the body, rewriting our sexual patterns, and finding the pleasure of presence. 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, Oh, gosh. The power of the body. Wow. Dear listener, can you just take a moment to feel, just take a moment to notice, to tune in to your own body today and take that deep breath with me.
And release. Let go. I'm going to do another deep breath, inhaling,
and relax and let it go. Gosh, this time of year and just in general with our life and everything that's going on in the world, it can be so chaotic, so busy, moving at a hundred miles per hour. As a therapist, I am in my brain constantly and it is loud and fast, full of thoughts and. You know, so much of our day to day is really outside of our control.
These big systems, people, these dynamics, right? So much of it is outside of our control, but that ability to take that deep breath, right, that ability to give yourself that pleasure through that deep exhale, that's something that is always within your control. You know, when we get stressed out and activated and I'm there too, dear listener, it can be hard to remember how.
Powerful the breath is right to really allow that exhale to activate your parasympathetic nervous system to help you relax, right? It's like a body hack in some ways, you know, I I just I fall into a Hole really when I keep thinking that oh, I'll just cognitively think my way through this problem I'll cognitively think my way but to remember that we can actually work with bottom up processing right from the body up up to the mind.
And so I just hope that you can take that deep breath with me, your dear listener, and really allow yourself to relax and to be in the pleasure of presence. And you know, I am always talking about anarchy and anarchy is about releasing the power of these oppressive structures and Gosh, it is so deep within our unconscious and it is so Deep within our bodies we are fish in water that are just swimming in it, right and so Taking back some of that control with that deep Deep exhale, dear listener, relax, and allow that breath to give you some peace, and I know it's not going to change the whole world, right, there's such big systems going on, but gosh, when you can show up to that next event, that next situation, and be a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more in your body, a little bit more open.
Mm. There really is power in that. I trust in the ripples, right? Again, I'm gonna take that deep breath with you. Ah. And I hope you can feel that pleasure as I experience it in your body too, right? And trusting that the more you can tap into that for yourself. The ripples you will create in your own community, right, and ultimately the power of that large, large scale change when we are all in our bodies, and we are all in the presence of God.
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 want to say the biggest thank you to all of my Patreon supporters! You are supporting the long term sustainability of the podcast.
podcast, keeping this content free and accessible to all people, so thank you. If you want to join the Patreon community, get exclusive access into my research and personal exploration, then you can head on over to patreon. com slash modern anarchy podcast, also linked in the show notes below. And with that, dear listener, please know that I am sending you all love.
My love and Let's tune in to today's episode So then the first question I'm going to ask you is how would you introduce yourself to the listeners?
Rahi: Well, given that this podcast is about anarchy, the way I would introduce myself, the way I will introduce myself is I am an anarchist of the ways in which modern society creates structure and obstacles to our organic life force.
And I do this as a somatic practitioner involving sexual life force. Within the body. So I am a somatic sex educator, a sexological body worker. I've created a body of work called somatic sexual wholeness, which frees that life force that is held by childhood ruptures or adolescent ruptures. Um, so it's really resolving ruptures from our developmental years, from boundary repair, as well as Unconscious patterns that keep our life force contained or restrained or repressed, particularly in the realm of intimate connection.
So the easiest way to say this is I am a a servant to aliveness and connection.
Nicole: Beautiful. Wow. Endless opportunities to start exploring all of that, right? So I'm gonna pause before we dive in too deep and ask if you could Take some space to share your personal connection to these topics. How did you get here?
Rahi: Oh, man, that's really a beautiful jumping off point I cannot speak to whatever cosmological journey my soul has been on. However, when I came out of my mother's womb, I came out with crooked legs. They were mangled based on how I was positioned during gestation. So the doctors wanted to do surgery on my infant knees as doctors tend to do, but my mother being a nurse said, no way.
And she lotioned and massaged my legs every night. for three years until they grew out straight. So that's really where it started, you know, was just understanding the mysterious, and I think not fully understood powers of human touch, intentional touch, I would say. Yeah.
And so, um, you know, at the same time, I was the second child.
My older sister was a breech baby, which was so touch and go for my mom and my sister that the doctors came out to my dad and said, we can't save them both. One of them is going to, you know, perish. And then my younger brother who survived for three days, he was so weak in my mom's womb that at 10 months, they, the doctors pretty much manually forced him out.
And, uh, my mom had such shock and trauma from that loss. This was during the time she was massaging my legs every night. What I know now is I, I think I was probably picking up on her pelvic trauma. And that's probably also informed my journey. So, you know, those are kind of some of the early, Influences, I would say.
And then I was, you know, touch was my first language because it healed my body and I touched, I massaged my parents growing up. And when I got to college, I was really fascinated with different forms of meditation. And, yeah, I lived in Japan for a year. I lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, practicing Vipassana.
And somehow this combination of like presence and intentional touch. On the tissues and fascia of the body had like a, like an unraveling effect of armor and trauma and so, you know, I didn't know what was happening. I just saw the effects of it and it really fascinated me to learn everything I could about how present conscious intentional touch on parts of the body can unravel trauma.
Um, armor. And so I went down a tantric path of becoming a tantric teacher, healing the pelvic floor and our pelvic work. Um, it took me down a Taoist path. I spent time with a teacher in Thailand on different occasions, uh, learning how to circulate, you know, this life force energy consciously. And then, um, eventually I got a master's in psychology focusing on like how our initial touch imprints.
During our developmental years can create patterns of intimacy, touch, desire into our adult lives, and this is my kind of fascination because, you know, people when they're unconscious, we don't realize that these patterns are their patterns can be repatterned. And that's kind of my jam.
Nicole: Yeah. Thank you for sharing all of your personal journey with this.
I, even just that last piece right there. I, we've done a lot of work in somatics at my training site on birthing trauma, right? And I was like, yeah. And so, but my fear is always when we talk about that, this space of it, then being a disempowering to say, Oh, you know, this thing happens. So I appreciate you naming that.
You can re pattern and change these things, right, it's not this disempowering, you're stuck there, but it is important to name the location and how these things impact us, which was making me think of, uh, the book, The Boy Who Was Raised a Dog. I don't know that one. I had to read it for one of my trauma classes and it was just talking about how, you know, a child psychologist who was seeing a lot of, you know, interesting cases and pinning it back to, yeah, lack of touch, lack of caring, relational models, all the sort of pieces here that you're talking about.
For me, I'm, you know, still in my doctorate, finishing it up, uh, about to be out and free. And I just keep thinking, wow, I want to get out and study breath work and taunt from the body. And so it sounds like you went down that path and there's so much I can learn from you in this next hour of just what that means.
Cause obviously in the field of psychology, I've got none of this, none of the body.
Rahi: Um, well, yes. And what's going to be so exciting for you is so there's so many wonderful body based modalities that don't understand this, the psychology. So you, I mean, the, the blend is really where so much synergy and magic can happen.
But I want to jump off because when you said, Have you heard the book? I thought you were going to say the secret life of babies because this book, it was a PhD thesis by Nia. I don't, I think her last name starts with a K, but her studies examined how during the birth experience, there is an oxytocin release within the mother's body and the infant's body.
And this is nature creating a bonding between mother and child and infant. But when there is a predominant. Let's say emotion as part of that. Like I mentioned, my sister was a breach baby. So the emotion was desperation that oxytocin gets paired with desperation, right? And that can create a certain pattern in one's life.
So her book found I mean, it's fascinating. So her book focuses on how our birth experience and this oxytocin release can create really lifelong behavioral patterns. These imprints are really. Uh, impactful. And once again, I'm really fascinated with how this affects our sexual intimacy patterns. The other thing I'll say is, yes, it's really important to focus on the capacity and opportunity for repatterning.
And I, and I believe once something is repatterned, we, we get the benefit of the initial pattern. Because I feel like our souls come into these beings wanting to be challenged in order for the soul to really shining its cold into a diamond, you know, and that's that's the opportunity of patterns. And then the, Blessing of repatterns as we can let those go.
Nicole: Right. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I'm even starting to think just about the larger societal patterns that are so unconscious. Yeah, right. I'm just, yeah, you're already responding. Is there something you want to say to that?
Rahi: Well, my God, I know. Like talk about control and, you know, uh, wanting to be controlled or rebelling against control, like larger societal patterns.
I just feel like there's so much around control, rebelling against control, enjoying control, manipulating control, you know, whether it's through words in the media or, you know, politicians or, you know, whatever. I mean, like every dynamic has this. You know, Dom sub dynamic, which is fascinating and based on what pairing or association or wiring we had either beneficial and pleasurable or harmful in our upbringing, we're going to respond the same way to these Dom sub patterns as adults with society, societal structures.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Yeah, and I always take it even another step further of just like existentially, right? We all live in this void where we seemingly have Control, right? I'm gonna drive my car later to teach yoga, but who knows what's gonna happen on that drive, right? There's so many different ways that it takes It seems like we have control, but we don't.
And so then I think even that desire to want to play with power as part of our existential reality of existence, but right then it gets even deeper when you do have these systems that are influencing you in certain ways, right? And I think, you know, spinning it into my own perspective with early Christianity, right?
You're going to submit to the authority of your husband.
Rahi: Oh, yeah.
Nicole: What a power dynamic, right?
Rahi: Totally, totally.
Nicole: Oh, so I asked myself deep questions about that time of, did I have free will? Do we even have free will now, as we sit in this cultural context and I'm influenced, right? Deep questions. Hard to know.
Rahi: Yeah. Hard to know. I think, uh, that's where psychedelics can play a really wonderful role in really, Kind of seeing thing. Well, not even seeing it's like being being as we are. And I mean, in regards to control, because it really does require this surrender.
Nicole: Yes, yes. Absolutely. Which is why I don't know if I talked to you a little bit about the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy work that I do.
Rahi: No, you haven't. No, but I assumed based on listening to some of your episodes.
Nicole: Yeah, it's fascinating, right? Just the. Go ahead.
Rahi: Yeah, endlessly fascinating. I mean, I'm so excited about this new kind of realm of discovery of human consciousness and human healing and the potential of it based on psychedelic assisted therapy.
Nicole: Right. Yeah. And it's really interesting when, you know, We work with ketamine since currently that's the only legal psychedelic we can work with, but ketamine being more of a dissociative, right? Of course, you have the psychedelic experience before you get to that full state of dissociation, like we use it in surgeries, right?
But before you get there, there is that psychedelic space. And typically though you lose that connection to the body. So it's really fascinating when we have clients that feel feel more of that or go through that, right? Given how much of a dissociative it is compared to maybe something like MDMA and other drugs.
And then at that point, we're trying to work with them somatically of, you know, what is that energy? How do we want to, you know, move through that embrace and check in with that? So I'm curious, I'm sure you see a lot of that same sort of, you know, trapped energy in the body.
Rahi: Yeah. Yeah. So I have a particular fascination, you know, as a sexological body worker, uh, regarding what amounts of what psychedelics can really support a client's, uh, journey and really being at peace and celebrating their embodiment and their journey and their, you know, their, their vitality.
And, um, you know, I went to one training when, where one of my trainers, uh, recommended a very small dose of psilocybin, for example, you know, less than a gram, like 0. 5 to 0. 8. And what it often does is it just turns down the, the mental chatter. For people who are very mental and just allows their a deeper sensorial experience of their embodiment.
For example, I've known clients who have received body work with MDMA, for example, you know, there's, there's one client who realized. Actually, in a Bufo ceremony, he realized that the perpetrator of a sexual abuse was his mother. And he now like his life all made sense. You know, he went mute for a year when he was three.
And you know, like, it all made sense. But the MDMA allowed him to really get to feel some of the really distant emotions that were too overwhelming for him to feel. I think each aid, it has to be used consciously, intentionally, and by choice by the body's nervous system so that it is a in service of, you know, what wants to be healed or released.
And I think it's You know, I think it's really exciting because there's just a lot of possibilities.
Nicole: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Such a wide spectrum of opportunities. And I think it's tricky though, because some it's like so many questions here, right? Cause sometimes it does quiet that internal dialogue. Other times it's the non specific specific amplifier and turns it way.
Way up, right? And those thoughts are running. I've worked with a lot of clients who have explored psilocybin and we work with them, you know, not in the room, but in a harm reduction sort of way of how we work with them. And it completely amplifies those negative internal spaces. And then they get trapped there.
Or I'm thinking about my own experiences on other psychedelics, right? Where I've tried, you know, I experienced And I tried to work with my jealousy because I thought, Oh, you know, here's this drug that helps with unpacking things, you know, in terms of dismantling, uh, the fear and wow, a stimulant hits you.
Let me tell you, that was probably the most intense experience. experience of my feelings. Um, cause I was kind of curious, you know, if we use this process trauma, would it help to dismantle some jealousy? Okay. No, it turned it way up for me personally. Like way up. Wow. But that's where I'm like, Oh, this is so, it's so hard.
I didn't mean, I guess again, set and setting context of the mind. So many deep questions here with this one.
Rahi: Yeah, but after it kind of like, you know, it was full blown, like into the jealousy, like, like, did, did that, in what ways do you feel like that, that journey or that experience served your relationship with jealousy?
Nicole: Oh, totally. Right. Yeah. Every single time I'm stretched and, you know, that, that question. Concept of like, oh, I'm a bad trip, right? You know, no, there's so much insight. It might have been difficult. I mean, there's so many different ways we do that in life, right? We, we had this journey, we struggled, we made the mistake and we grow and we expand.
So I think that, yeah, I look back on that experience as a beautiful stretching and who knows if I would have tried to do it in an ordinary quote unquote state of consciousness, who knows could have been worse. I don't know, you know, it's hard to kind of compare, but I was just hoping that it would, dampen some of the effects and I think the stimulant effects really like heightened it. Turned it up.
Rahi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, yeah, I mean, to your point, maybe, maybe that's what was necessary to kind of like, get closer to the other side of it. I mean, coming back to You know, modern anarchy, I think, I mean, I'm a big fan of plant medicines because one, they're natural. They're from the earth.
We are from the earth. And we have that, you know, it's such a poignant reminder for me when I am with plant medicines, but in being reminded of our nature, our organic nature as a species. You know, organic vessels like plants, like all of that conditioning that is imposed onto us by society, by culture, by the norms, by all of this shoulds and shouldn'ts, kind of like evaporate or dissipate.
That's what I'm interested in, you know, for that life force to really like, you know, find its organic flow.
Nicole: Absolutely. It's that distancing, right? Where you start to look at the systems and go, Well, hold on. Who said that? Wait! You know, and just a little bit of that perspective to start asking those deeper questions.
And I imagine that You know, I'll be curious to see what future generations feel about this, because I think that older generations, given the war on drugs, right, had such a negative connotation about it in a way that when you experienced the love and capacity on these, you start to go, Oh, What else was I lied to about in ways that maybe future generations won't even, right?
It will just be like alcohol to them where they're like, ah, this is exciting, right? And not have this sort of radical, oh my gosh, I need to ask questions about everything that many of us have had.
Rahi: Yeah. I mean, it's so crazy to think how we've been indoctrinated in certain beliefs, you know, I mean, especially around psychedelics in the seventies.
But you're right. I think it's going to be exciting to see future generations where it's really prized and praised for the benefits it does bring. And I think it can, you know, I think it can be a whole new, frankly, effect on our societal trajectory.
Nicole: Absolutely. And I think in terms of somatics, you know, there's a lot of work that I do with psychedelics, where we're processing trauma, right?
And all that sort of stuff. And of course, there's a space with all of these beautiful drugs to explore pleasure, right? Both cognitively, but also somatically. I've had such beautiful experiences trying to do it. Stop the monkey brain from speaking at all to just feel and the amplification of your sensory experience.
Wow, you know, even just thinking about trauma, whether you've had that capital T or you exist under the systems that are actively disconnecting us from our bodies every single day, right? Having this sort of experience where The volume is turned up on your somatic, you know, you, you taste the grape and you can feel the, the grindiness of the, you know, outside layer and you feel content from that one grape.
Whoa. Compared to the world of, okay, let me shovel down my food while I'm watching Netflix, right?
Rahi: Yeah. I mean, I feel like our society is at an ever. Distracted state from our source, you know, like from that state of being within which everything is provided, you know, and I'm speaking in esoteric terms, but what I mean to say is, like, when we are very, very still in that infinite space of just being there is so much pleasure just in being.
And, you know, here we are chasing after it with, you know, all the different distractions that, you know, we have in modern society. So, yeah, I feel like the more we drop into that source, the more kind of natural anarchy. Will evolve because we're gonna, you know, we're gonna rebel against like these, you know, kind of these norms that Expand or multiply these these distractions.
Nicole: Mm hmm Yeah, it's it's funny, you know hot take I feel like just sitting with your thoughts for 10 minutes in modern Society is enough of a psychedelic experience.
Rahi: Yeah Yeah, yeah.
Nicole: Myself included. That's hard. When am I ever just sitting? No music. No stimulus. Right? I, I try to do that in my yoga, uh, teachings that I do the first 10 minutes, everyone's laying on the floor and I'm like, okay, we are breathing and just thinking about, you know, in those moments, the thoughts that come to people's minds, right?
Part of I think the psychedelic work is even just the fact that you're actually just sitting there just with your thoughts, or at least that's how we work. We're telling people to go inward during that experience. And so, you know, there's so many of us that don't even sit down for 10 minutes just to notice what sort of thoughts come out.
I've, I've heard about people who have done darkness meditations, right? Yeah. And just sitting with that. And where do you go? Right. What a trip in modern society.
Rahi: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I mean, the, the way this relates to my work is that it's so, so important for clients, uh, and for just people in general to have that, um, downregulated stillness in order to attune to what their authentic desire is.
Because I feel like in sexuality today, I mean, I'm going to generalize, but I just have a lot of clients who have been in these patterns. Of sexual intimacy with their, you know, spouse of 15 or 20 years or their, their lover of 15 or 20 years, and it's almost like default automatic, you know, and if, unfortunately, if there's been a lack of foreplay, they just kind of go through the routine and without really like, I mean, we can only really honor how that life force wants to flow when we are still and being present and attuning to it and listening for what it's, you know, You know, like what its truth is.
So this is all to say that like being still and being with your source, you know, it is not just some esoteric experience or exercise or suggestion. It is in order to really be true to what it is, to attune to what it is that your body wants to experience, wants to express, wants to explore, wants to receive.
And that's where, you know, sexual Armoring happens when we don't do that and we kind of Don't have the consent of our body and kind of do things in a rote way without really being conscious of it
Nicole: Absolutely. Yeah And there's so many ways that the systems are to blame for that, right? Of course, we have empowerment to react to those systems and choose how we want to respond but again going back to my earlier childhood of the ways I judged any sort of sexual liberation outside of a monogamous And by monogamous, I mean one person for life, not the serial monogamy that we all do.
I mean, one person for life, right? Straight, heteronormative sex, right? Anything beyond that was gross, and I judged it, right? So, even any of my, like, uh, bubbling queer desires was something that I judged. Really tried to suppress, right? So there's so many ways that whether it's even just sitting with the body or these systems that are telling us what's right wrong and otherwise it's disconnecting us from Our desires and i'm thinking about in terms of the body just the neuronal pathways, right?
It's It's like a muscle, you know, in terms of your brain. And if you haven't spoken this language, you know, maybe you learned it early on, but you haven't spoken it now in years. It's hard to kind of really pick that up again. It's possible, right? And I think that people forget how much of our body and feeling.
into sensation is the same thing, right? Are these neuronal pathways that we're practicing to feel into what it feels like to, you know, have my hands touch? Like, what does this feel like? Can I feel the tips of my toes? And again, if that's not a muscle I'm flexing, it's not going to be there. So when we're trying to have sex, right?
If that's not a thing that we're practicing, how in the world are you expecting to be fluent in a language that you don't? Speak in other areas of your life.
Rahi: Ooh, that is such a juicy and appropriate analogy. It's so true. It's like, if you were used to, uh, frying an egg in one way your whole life, come on.
There's like a billion different ways to enjoy that egg, right? I feel like the body is such an incredible access point for reconditioning. And so, you know, we're so neuroplastic and we're so somatically like re reconditionable. It's almost like this lab that we are gifted with. You know, so, you know, what you share about, like, having your toes stimulated, having your, your elbow stimulated, having your, the back of your knee stimulated, and you in different ways, like, we don't realize, I mean, I would assume it's going to elicit pleasure, but it's also creating new possibilities for the body to recognize, Oh, there's like another way to fry an egg.
And then imagine that. brought into lovemaking or into like in sexological bodywork. There's a practice we call genital mapping, right? I mean, it sounds very simple. It is a somatic education of the erogenous zones, but a felt sense. So you can have a distinct feeling of how the base of your clitoral shaft feels as opposed to the upper left quadrant of the glands or, you know, for, you know, the base of a penile shaft as opposed to the frenulum.
And this is very important for a body to know what is possible in the erogenous landscape of my genitalia, so I can actually give voice to what it is my body wants, right? And so, like, You know, like I have clients and they'll rather than just saying, yeah, my pussy wants attention or my cocks want, my cock wants stroking.
You can be very specific. And in that I think is, uh, empowerment is anarchy is like opening your neural pathways up to new, you know, new groove moves and grooves. I mean, there's just like a cornucopia of possibilities there. And I feel like, You know, I've seen workshops where they, you know, talk about, uh, eroticism as like social anarchy, you know, because I think, I feel like societies have, well, certainly religions.
And, you know, there are places in the world now, I know in Kenya and Egypt and other countries, like clitoral circumcision is a practice today. And it's specifically to disempower those bodies from feeling their power and pleasure. You know, so our erotic vortexes are incredible pathways to anarchy and personal liberation.
Nicole: Absolutely. It's ownership over our pleasure. Yes. And my thoughts are that. But to feel that level of pleasure requires, again, a level of presence, a level of embodiment. And when you're in that state, it is, in my opinion, much harder to look out at the world and not also cry.
Rahi: Yeah. I mean,
when we really inhabit these beautiful, magical vessels and open ourselves up to what it feels. Yeah, there's so much that we're just holding at bay. And so that makes me wonder as a somatic therapist, like, you know, we know that holding anything at bay or repressing any emotion, it, you know, creates some sort of guarding pattern in the body, you know, that desensitizes or create, create some sort of discomfort.
So we're all really walking around kind of in maximum management to survive. And it's so much more reason for Like massive societal anarchy. Yeah. Yeah, to happen.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Absolutely. That's the vision I see.
Rahi: It's a great vision. I'm with you.
Nicole: Mm hmm.
Rahi: Yeah.
Nicole: And I think part of that is remembering the practice nature of all this, right?
It's not like we're going to wake up and have that level of embodiment today, right? It starts with the, the two seconds, I don't know, 10 seconds. You try to feel before the thoughts creep in of what are you doing? What are we doing later? What is this? What is that? Right? And it starts there and you continue to stretch and expand and I'm sure you learned a lot of that in your various, you know, trainings that you did of what it means to be patient with the practice building of this embodiment.
Rahi: It's quite a journey. I mean, I remember when I was, it was, when I was at Buddhist monastery doing Vipassana, it was 21 days. And what's wonderful about a daily practice in a structure like that is you start to witness the mind. And the mind's patterns, uh, consciously, so you, you know that when you first sit for a 50 minute sitting meditation, the first 10 minutes going to be mind chatter until you fall into a zone and then you're going to kind of cruise for a while and then there's going to be discomfort in the body, which is going to wake up more mind chat.
You know, you kind of know, you kind of know, like what the patterns are and then you, you, you're not kind of swept up by them unconsciously. Okay. Like, they offer 10 day vipassana retreats all over the country. I think they're free. So, all over the world, I think, if you just Google it, the vipassana 10 day, that's the real beauty of it.
And then you kind of like, it's almost like, uh, oh, okay, there's the monkey mind. You know, it's like, you don't, you don't take it personally. You're not kind of helpless or powerless to it. And you can kind of play with it and kind of make fun of it.
Nicole: Right, exactly. Exactly. And then my brain goes, Oh, and here's the systems though, because who has 10 days to take off from capitalism, right?
Right, right, right, right, right. Hence the problems, right? I just, I'm sure you understand too, as a therapist, just this space where The messaging is always, Oh, we're the problem. We're the problem. We're the problem. And I, yes, to our empowerment to change, but also God damn it. We have to point the arrow upwards at the systems to understand that we are fighting this uphill battle that is actively against us.
Cause yes, 10 days to go on a retreat, right? Not everyone has that freedom to even go off and experience these things as much as I think everybody would, if we had the space in our society to do that.
Rahi: Right. Right, right. Yeah, totally. I mean, certainly, you know, there are certain cultures, you know, like I spent some time in the northern European, the Scandinavian cultures and, you know, like, paternal leave is, I don't know, 14 months or I mean, it's pretty amazing, you know, I mean, not only does everyone have, you know, access to medical and education and, you know, without having to worry about busting the bank, but, but maternal leave and paternal leave is quite generous as it should be.
Right. You know, if you want a healthy society, you want the baby to feel supported in their first year. You know, it's just, just makes total sense. But yeah, different societies definitely have different structures where that's, you know, that's more possible than others. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I think the Amer, the US society, you know, where both you and I reside is a real kind of lab and seeing how many things can go wrong when, when capitalism is Kind of the rule of the day, you know, we're the wealthiest country, but the highest unemployment, the highest homelessness, the highest incarceration, the highest everything, you know, when it comes to a total waste of human potential, you know, for the, you know, for the sake of money.
I mean, the way Yeah, so anyways, that's a whole soapbox.
Nicole: Right, well, and I think it's an important soapbox to talk about, right? The game of Monopoly. You know what happens as you start to get towards the end of the game? When someone starts to have all the money and starts to charge really high rents, right?
And you start to realize, oh, okay. There's no winning in, in this, right? This has an end point. And that game was made to be a political statement about the systems that we are actively living into in this country.
Rahi: Mm hmm. You know, I think I might've listened to a podcast of yours that talked about the relationship between money and receiving pleasure.
Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I do think there's a correlation there insofar as. The more spaciousness we open to receiving, whether that's receiving from our own life force or receiving pleasure from a lover or receiving pleasure from nature, it's just all energy, you know, and the more we can receive in, you know, monetary ways as well.
I see that a lot with clients. It's like the more they open up, but it requires feeling safe in the body to open up to receive, right? So it really goes back to whatever, you know, armor was there as a result of, you know. It feeling unsafe to receive or sometimes I'll have clients where as kids, they like there were strings attached to a gift, you know, so now they're, they're reluctant to receive and so they're reluctant to receive a promotion or whatever it is, you know, but I do find there to be a correlation between receiving pleasure and receiving any other kind of energy.
Nicole: Sure, absolutely feeling unworthy.
Rahi: Right. And once again, in a capitalist society, there's a pecking order that is designed to, you know, stimulate people to, you know, work harder. I mean, that's kind of, it's the system. You know, it's interesting. I was listening to this interview and, and it was a woman who lived in England, And she was saying that in America, there's just such a hierarchical pecking order.
Like when you go to events, there's a VIP section, but then there's a super VIP section and then an ultra VIP section, you know, and then I don't know, like I spent some time in Sweden and in Sweden in particular, there's such a like I was sitting around a dinner table and we were all having a conversation and they all wanted to make sure that everyone was heard in the conversation, you know, and I feel like here it's kind of like winner takes all type of thing.
Nicole: Absolutely. Planes. Right. Another great example. Who gets those big spaces on the right? Exactly. Right. And all these Jesus. Yeah. All the different things in that space that impact that. And yeah, I was thinking about even imposter syndrome. Right. Even, um, I know at the beginning you had mentioned just even enjoying my voice, right?
Rahi: Yes. Yes.
Nicole: What does it mean for women? To actually take that deep breath of embodiment, I know if you go back to the 60s, you hear women. Hi, I'm this person. Hi. And this is me. And I'm a woman. I'm a nice woman. This is what I do. Right. That like, do you feel the spaciousness to Take the deep breath, slow down enough to know I have power here, and I can take up all the space that I need with my voice right now.
That's a journey for so many women, myself included.
Rahi: Totally. It's like, I mean, it shouldn't be, but it's revolutionary, even today. You know, uh, particularly in certain male dominated fields, you know, I feel for the bodies that, you know, because I work with body armor and genital armor, I feel for the bodies that have to be armored.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard when you're having to protect yourself right from all of the societal messaging so much. So I. Sure. Wherever we're going to go with it. I think about, you know, like even puppies, right? You see puppies and they are so loving and kind and, and just want to, you know, run around how cute.
And of course, you know, as the puppy grows up and, and, you know, if it's abused, then you go to pet the dog and it. It bites, right? To keep itself safe, of course, right? But I, I view humans as inherently good. Yes. And I think that we have that same sort of experience, right? Where when you're going through the world with these attacks or these direct relational experiences, we body up with armor to protect ourselves.
Rahi: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great analogy. I mean, I, I think of children because I love children and they're just like, they're all tumbling over each other. They can't get enough of each other. One, they're so somatic. They're so touch based, you know, and they relate with touch. Yeah. Orally, you know, hands are like all of it.
Yeah. All it takes is a little shock to the heart for that guarding to start, you know, um, The life force wants to connect, it wants to feel aliveness, and these multiple shocks to the heart start creating obstructions to it.
Nicole: Right, right.
Rahi: Yeah.
Nicole: And so in terms of starting to open up the body more, of course, I'm just thinking about one, the power of taking a much deeper breath, right, and trying to actually fill up the belly with air when you take that breath and slowly let that go.
But, I'd be curious. How do you start to get people to have more of this embodiment and openness?
Rahi: Yeah, there's, there's many different ways based on the client's history, knowing what caused the armor and knowing during their traumatic periods of their life, you know, what were the areas that were safe zones for them.
Nicole: Right.
Rahi: So this can happen both psychologically. It could happen physiologically. So when someone is, uh, in a session or on my table, I'm always looking for the areas that feel good where the client feels agency. Yeah, right. So maybe their heart is guarded. Maybe their pelvis feels protected, but maybe they feel really good in their feet.
So, you know, that's a really good place we can titrate to when we're addressing some traumatic event from their past to bring them back to their feet or psychologically, maybe it was their aunt Martha, who was like the loving force in their life, or maybe it was their dog, you know, Charlie. So I'm always looking for.
areas of agency in one's life, because when we start to de armor the body, de armoring involves revisiting unintegrated emotions from past trauma, and there needs to be enough agency and resource in the person's psyche or somatic embodiment in order to feel like they got this, right?
So I'm there to support them, but I want them to feel that within their own.
Yeah. psyche and body.
And when we do genital de armoring, it's the same.
You know, it's like the intravaginal space, the urethral sponge might be numb. The perineal sponge may be, may have stinginess or burning, but you know, the base of the clitoral shaft, there's resource there because there's pleasure. So we titrate.
So we, we, we never want to overwhelm the client with, um, too much. challenge or difficulty. We want to go really gentle and then reminded of its agency and pleasure and then go back to discharging something that was really difficult and then come back to their resource and pleasure. I'm really big on approaching the de armoring, uh, experience both psychologically and somatically.
Sure. And it's really important to kind of take inventory of the ways you were taught to, uh, accept, reject, or deny the beauty of your genitalia, you know, I mean, like everything from, you know, like in the course, I, all these questions go all the way back to how you were potty trained, what names were you given for the genitalia, you know, how, you know, what was, were you ever caught self pleasuring?
What was the result of that? You know, and I've heard so many responses from. You know, what often happens is some, some sort of shaming, you know, towards, you know, I, there was one client where like her father opened her door, saw herself pleasuring self pleasuring and just like politely excused himself because he wanted to respect that, you know, this is her and her genitalia.
So, like, all of these things, you know, influence. How we relate to our genitalia as adults and so it's important like once you take inventory of it It kind of starts to make sense. It's like oh, this is why I never self pleasured you know as a teenager because I thought I was going to go to hell or I was told my You know genitalia was going to fall off or whatever.
It was whatever the messaging was So yeah, really taking inventory and then I would say You know, for someone who wants to start, I really encourage people to journal with their genitalia, giving their genitalia a voice, and you can do that by, if you're a journaler, write in your journal with your dominant hand, and then answer with your non dominant hand.
just to start a dialogue, just to start a connection, like, you know, a communication so that your genitalia really feels honored and heard and seen and listened to. Yeah.
Nicole: God, I would love for people to write out, you know, how are you doing this? What feels good? Because, you know, when people are in partner dynamics, it is almost as if we lack the language of how to communicate to other people.
To bring pleasure to our bodies. And so I just can imagine the space of journaling, okay, this is what I'm doing. This is how it feels. This is what my genitalia are saying, right? Wow. That is actively creating language that when, and if you want to be with another person, you could actively say, this is how I experience pleasure.
Can you do this for me?
Rahi: Yes. Isn't that brilliant? It's like, yeah. And which makes so much sense because we really need to develop that self intimacy with her own body before we can give voice to it and experience intimacy with another. And, you know, like, I mean, I think it's very common for lovers and especially in the courtship, like we focus on, on making sure that our partner is pleasured and we kind of like don't even attune to what it is our body wants, you know, um, And what's dangerous is that can become a pattern pretty quickly in, you know, in an interrelational dynamic.
Nicole: Right. Particularly for women, right? Who have been taught that you're not sexual. You are here to give this to the sexual man, right? Again, in this heteronormative world, right? Yeah. So that's how we get things like the orgasm gap, all these larger spaces. You know, pieces that are directly impacting us. So I'm just thinking about what the power it would be for women to really be able to name this in their dynamics and say, this is what I want.
And this is what feels good for me. And just the beauty of sharing that with someone, right? Maybe you're taking turns of who's focusing on receiving rather than this constant, having to feel like you're giving to each other, right? There's a lot of power in allowing someone to relax and receive. Have those expectations At the same time.
Rahi: Totally. with most clients who are in relationships because most clients who are in Relationships Dude, a couple of things. One, they really lack proper foreplay right before penetration. They also are not really well practiced as you're pointing out and asking for what they want. So the three minute game is a really great structured and you know the point of it isn't just to give and receive but to see like what is going on in your conditioning that you you have difficulty asking for what you want.
Nicole: Absolutely. Yeah. I had her on the podcast and we talked about that. Yeah. It was really exciting. The listeners could go and listen to that episode with buddy. And the more, if we talked about that there, because there's so much tied up with consent and touch and giving and receiving, which we're kind of talking about here.
And we got into a little bit deeper there of what comes up for people when you start to unpack this again, it's a psychedelic experience in my opinion. Right.
Rahi: Totally. Totally. Given the context. Yes, there's so many messages.
Nicole: Yeah, exactly. For us to unpack with our body that are impacting this and what pleasure is on the other side.
You know what I mean?
Rahi: Yeah. Yeah. And what's really exciting is when I start to see clients. Naming what it is that their body wants, you know, it's it's almost it is it's giving their body a whole language It's a whole way of communicating and and then it opens up realms of like intimacy dynamics
Nicole: Yeah, it reminds me of the uh Emotionality wheel that we have as therapists right where you're, you know wouldn't When people come into the room and they're experiencing emotions that we don't have words for, AKA somatic experiences, right?
Lots of somatic experiences without words for our sexuality and even more expansively, our, our sensuality, right? Is a whole thing of the same caliber, right? My body's experiencing all of these emotions, but I don't have the words to point to my pleasure. And so what power, you know, then to explore the words on that wheel so that we can have more.
Ownership and autonomy and the ability to express that to the people in our lives. It's truly a language.
Rahi: It's a language. And you know, you're speaking to the, you know, it's like the education of intimacy. It's like, you know, like nobody gets it. I mean, we don't even get a proper sexual education, much less intimacy education, but, you know, developing that language and that ability to tune to our emotions, express them, and really dance.
In that dance of intimacy, you know, that's all I mean, these are things that every society needs to have a healthy society. And it is absent. It's really absent. We're learning by default and by making mistakes.
Nicole: Right. And when you're getting in that argument with, uh, partner, a coworker, a friend, you know what happens?
Your voice goes up, that chest starts to tighten, you know, like, Oh, what an embodied experience to be able to stay connected to. So I could realize, okay, I'm starting to react. I need to go take that walk. I need to go take a breath before we continue to do this. I mean, So much of the intimacy. Sure. The psychology, right?
That's all of what we've been taught. But God damn it, the body, like, how are we missing this crucial component of intimacy and connection and everything we know about mirror neurons and co regulation, right? As your partner starts to get in that space. space. If you are looking at them, you're going to feel in your body because of the mirror neurons, what they're starting to feel and your voice is going to start to feel that same lifting as their, you know, voice starts to come up.
And so one of you. Needs to be able to ground right and pause and I just it's mind boggling to me that we have all this psychological research but the body is still such a lacking component and it's so deeply connected to our pleasure and all of our intimacy.
Rahi: All of our intimacy and I would say so much of our intuition you know it's like it's all body based and yeah you know I'm a big fan of Uh, it's a, there's a somatic modality called neuro effective touch, and it was developed by Dr. Aileen Lapierre, who was a senior, um, somatic experiencing trainer. She often says that, um, in the same ways plant gravitates towards the sun for nourishment, like we human beings, we gravitate towards human connection and aliveness. And You know, it always stays with me because this is what, you know, this is what brings vibrancy and health and pleasure and joy and all the things that, that we are really designed to experience and explore here.
Nicole: Yeah. It reminds me of in the work with psychedelics. We talk a lot of the metaphor of inner healing wisdom, and that is exactly one of the metaphors we use, right? Just like a plant knows how to turn towards the light, just like our body, you know, when you have a cut. The scars form. It's not like we have to think about that, right?
And what if our psyches were similar, right? We have these experiences and we know where to go, right? That's the content that's coming up in the psychedelic experience, the peace to be healed, right? And so I think starting to, like we were saying, right, this sub. Somatic body pieces of that. You know, what does it mean to listen to your gut?
Rahi: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely You know, I so I've done the somatic the the neuro effective touch training and I've assisted for several years after and you know, it's mostly comprised of marriage and family therapists and They're all so foreign to touch. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's kind of ironic.
I mean, it kind of makes sense on the one hand, like all the education that's necessary to become, you know, licensed as a, as a psychotherapist. And on the other hand, you know, we've like the body is our home and it is where our intuition stems from. And it's holding all these memories and it's a gold mine, you know, of wisdom, of, memories of knowing like what needs to be healed.
Nicole: Absolutely. So we're a part of changing the paradigms on that, right? Yes. Through these conversations and, uh, sexological body workers, particularly because it's not in this framework of disease model, like more of a pelvic floor therapist, right? Okay. We're going to go through this and work on a disease model of this is what's going on versus, Hey, let's reconnect with pleasure and feeling that.
So I just want to say, you know, thank you for all of the work that you're doing in this space to bring more of that energy into the world. We, we need that.
Rahi: Hmm. Well, thank you for creating this platform, you know, and just the very, you're, you're demonstrating. Through this structure of having every guest invite the next guest, like, I mean, you're demonstrating what possibilities of life force flow can happen organically when we let go of control and we trust, you know, the energy of creativity and connection.
Nicole: Mm hmm. I appreciate you seeing me in that and the journey that it's been over the last couple of years and I would not be the person that I am if it wasn't for all these recordings each week that are shifting me, right? This conversation shifts me. I do the next one. And so I'm really, really. Thankful for all the guests and the journey that it's been.
Rahi: Oh, super cool. Super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Very exciting.
Nicole: I want to hold some space as we come towards the end of our time. I always check in with the guests and, you know, ask them to take that deep breath and see if there's anything else on their heart that they're still wanting to share with the listeners.
Rahi: Well, you know, the thing I want to impart is. You know, I think personal power and even that word power is a little kind of aggressive. It's really personal attunement and personal intimacy is such an empowering enlivening force that brings aliveness and self connection. And I feel I feel like so much of that.
revolves around our relationship with our own genitalia. And we live in a society that shames sexuality. It's very schizophrenic, especially here in the States, where it's glorified in media, and yet it's shamed in the home and the church. And, you know, it's, it's almost like you can't live in the society and not have armor form around the pelvis, because it's like, you know, and then you've got, you know, You know, a cat calling culture and, uh, uh, I mean, young women who are developing need to protect their body, like all this kind of stuff.
And I just want to encourage people to check in with your genitalia, with your pelvis and attuned to what it needs, what it wants from you, you know, what, what, what does it want to experience? And just checking in. You know, for a few minutes every night or however, however, it works for you can really be a game shifting practice.
So that's what I want to impart.
Nicole: Yeah, no goals,
Rahi: right?
Nicole: No productivity that needs to be met here, right? Just inviting more of that curiosity of yeah, like we were talking earlier. What does my genitalia need?
Rahi: Mm hmm. Simple.
Nicole: Right, exactly. Just curiosity. Powerful practice.
Rahi: Yes.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Well, if it feels good to you, I'll guide us towards our closing question.
Rahi: Sure.
Nicole: Okay. So the one question that I ask every guest is what is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?
Rahi: Oh my gosh. So, as a semantic sex educator, I've done, I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of intakes, probably thousands at this point. Sure. Everybody thinks that their sexual, you know, ink or desire or fantasy is so weird and fucked up and, you know, whatever, and it's so common, you know.
Like, first of all, I ask every Client like what was their first introduction to their sexual pleasure and people are so embarrassed and it's so common that it's like You know, of course, it's going to be the shower head from the jacuzzi or their you know, or their teddy bear, you know Whatever it was, you know, like and it's so common, but everyone thinks they're the only person and they're so, you know, there's such a You know, shame about it.
And so the one thing I want to make normal is like sexuality and all the ways that sexuality gets explored and expressed and, you know, out of a curiosity of an innocent child is absolutely normal.
Nicole: Exactly. What a world it would be if we could open up our chest a little bit wider, take a deep breath and to let that go.
Rahi: Totally.
Nicole: Mm.
Rahi: Totally.
Nicole: I hope to see it in my lifetime, and if not, we know that future generations will be there more than we could have ever dreamed of.
Rahi: Absolutely. I believe that. Absolutely.
Nicole: Well, it was such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for joining us.
Rahi: Oh, it was, it was a great, it was, it was a great experience and thank you for the invitation.
Nicole: Of course. Where do you want to plug for people who are interested in learning more about your work and want to connect with you?
Rahi: Oh, sure. Thanks for that invitation. Um, so the body of work I offer is called Somatic Sexual Wholeness. And if you go to somaticsexualwholeness. com, uh, you will see courses, retreats, I have a podcast of my own called Organic Sexuality, you can reach out to me, it's all on that site.
Nicole: Great. I'll have all of that linked below and so thank you for joining me and all of the listeners today.
Rahi: You're so welcome, Nicole. Great to, great to connect with you.
Nicole: If you enjoyed today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast and head on over 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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