Transcript:

0:01

Welcome to Devotional Anarchy, a podcast about intimacy, attachment, sexuality, spirituality, self expression and other relational themes from a trauma responsive somatic energetic lens. And with the queer polyamorous twist, of course, I’m Isha Vela trauma, psychologist somatic intimacy alchemist shadow doula, intuitive channel and sovereignty coach. You’re here because you understand that integrating intimacy wounds build safety and trust within your body. And that safety and trust is what allows you to fully own and direct your erotic and creative life force in your relationships and purposeful work. My intention is for the conversations and tools shared in this podcast, to light a fire in your heart and under your magical ass while supporting you on your kinky human journey to owning all of yourself. Welcome to Season Two of the Devotional Anarchy Podcast, previously Revolutionary Rompereglas Podcast. I am so excited to embark on this journey with you. But before we kick off season two, I want to let you know that there are several ways to work with me right now. One of them is my one on one mentorship called Devotion that involves teaching you the foundations of radical embodied devotion to your lifeforce, so that you can heal intimacy wounds and become the sovereign author of your energy directing it in alignment with your heart and your sexuality, whether it’s in your life, love, or your purposeful work, or all three. I also am offering monthly events that with registration include one month free membership, in my online somatic healing, collective revolutionary, don’t take less. And in fact, on February 23, I’ll be offering a two hour workshop about finding that sovereign self inside of your own body that place in you before the world came at you with its own agenda conditions and limitations. And finding that sense of safety within yourself is easier than what you think it may be. It’s not like tons of meditation years of therapy or you know, shamanic journeys. It’s a simple and accessible inquiry process coupled with directed compassionate attention and body work that’s accessible to everyone and simple to do. So, the workshop is called sanctum. Uncovering the sovereign self, the workshop will provide you with a set of repeatable effective practices to access and hold your inherent wholeness and sovereignty. And that’s happening on Wednesday, February 23, from five to 7pm, PST and investment in these critical life tools are $55. The registration link is included in the show notes and the link to explore what’s inside of revolutionary don’t pay less is also in the show notes. Alright.

So on to episode one of season two, I started this podcast about it was December of 2020. And so I want to just say happy birthday to myself into the podcast. But um, you know, I’ve really enjoyed highlighting the work of so many powerful mostly brown and or queer lineage healers that I’ve have had the privilege of being or being connected to or working with. And I’ve also gotten to know some new people and have made friendships. And so I’m so so grateful for that. And in that season one I mostly took a backseat highlighting other people and that felt really right and good to do at the time. And it was about you know, it’s just my speed. And in season two, I’m taking a deeper step into our I’m stepping forward and sharing my perspectives on intimacy, attachment, and relationships from an energy based energy and body based and Arcus lens. And fuck if that isn’t super fucking vulnerable for me because it involves me talking about expense experiences and and perspectives that you know, I usually hold private. You know, I have I do talk about myself quite a bit and my experiences but this is just a level deeper and involves, like stepping forward in a different way. And I have been feeling my fear over the last two months as I prepare for this podcast and who I am breathing right now.

And it’s part of like, my, my, my two words for 2022 are — because I plan on having a lot of fun and being in a ton of pleasure. But it’s also truth. Truth is my other word. pleasure is part of my truth. But, but really what I’m trying to say here is that you know I am, I’m stepping forward. And it’s a, it’s a, it’s part of my vulnerability. My fear is with me right now I am modeling what I talk about in this moment of recording this. So here I am. So what I first want to say is that energy is how I interact with the world. I’m a feeler, a sensor, and you probably are twos, most of the people that I work with are the sensitive and deep feelers of the world. And love anarchy, is how I approach all of my relationships. And I’ll share more about that in the next episode, because it’s a lot, it’s a lot to get into. And, and because of how committed I am to it, I want to give it its own space, okay. But I do want to define what an intimacy wound is. So intimacy wounds are the ways we get hurt in our attachment relationships with our caregivers, typically between, you know, in utero to six years, those are the those build that’s the foundational groundwork for, like the templates that we create. And the ways we get hurt can be very subtle, or obvious if there’s trauma, obvious trauma, and really, no one is exempt from this process of getting hurt. Even in the healthiest families. It’s really a matter of degree. So you start out in the world, you’re born, this wide open energy blob absorbing the data, meaning the thoughts, feelings and behaviors, from the energy bodies that are around you, that are caring for you. And you’re making conclusions based on that data, you’re making conclusions about yourself, about relationships, about how the world works, right, you don’t have a healthy ego or a sense of boundaries, right? You’re wide open. So for example, the in utero piece, your mother may have felt ambivalent about being pregnant, having a child and energetically that is absorbed, and in your adult life, that can contribute to experiences and feelings of not wanting to be here not feeling like you matter. Or you may not have felt seen or heard in your family of origin, you might have experienced some form of rejection, a part of you may have been rejected, whether it’s your sexuality, or your exuberance, or even your heart, sometimes our our most beautiful qualities are not valued or appreciated. And maybe you experienced neglect, and you felt like you had to go it alone, and, and deal with some really overwhelming emotions by yourself. So that’s on the benign side of things. And obviously, it’s intensified when over to trauma is present. And I also have to say that these experiences don’t just happen in our families of origin, they happen in the expectations and norms that are taught to us collectively. In other words, our socialization and conditioning into systems of disempowerment. The point is, that because your need to belong, is so much more important than then, you know, it’s, it’s more important to your survival than your authentic expression, right? You cope with these injuries. And, and typically, they’re repeated these injuries. And you survived by manipulating your energy body to protect yourself from pain, and overwhelm. And rightfully so, right, you do it to survive. And that’s an ingenious strategy, right? We don’t want to ever make it that wrong. The problem is that because these injuries are repetitive, our coping strategies are repetitive as well. The way we hold our energy bodies becomes repetitive, it structures our bodies. And there’s sort of muscle tension that builds around that almost like like scar tissue around a wound, right. And we carry these into our adult relationships. And the problem is again, that the way that you protected yourself from pain and overwhelm also blocks intimacy and connection in those adult relationships. So

these strategies are often distortions through which we relate to everything in our lives beginning with our relationship to ourselves, parts of ourselves, our partners, our business Spirituality, money, even life itself. So, if you’ve been around me for a while, you know that I did a lot of intimacy healing. In my four year somatic training, I was trained as a clinical counseling psychologist. And I took a break from things. I had some kids. And then I got into my somatics training when I had basically like a breakdown, a health breakdown, because of stress, and yeah, just just shit that happened. But before going into the training, even though I had been, you know, I was a PhD level psychologist, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t realize how many blocks I had to intimacy. I had no, I dia. I was incredibly disconnected from the experiences in my body. I had good enough relationships, I had long lasting friendships, but there was a much deeper disconnection that I was dealing with. For example, I had to pretend that I wasn’t scared, because I had to go through experience, I went through experiences in my childhood, where I wasn’t allowed to be scared, or I was scared, and there was nobody around to support me. So I had to hold that fear by myself. And I learned to burry my fear. So I went through life, like with this fearlessness, which is, you know, kind of nice, but in terms of like Courage, right, but there were ways that I wasn’t honoring my fear. And I was getting into situations and into relationships that weren’t serving me. There was codependency patterns that ran really, really deep there was, there was a dance of part of me that was codependent. And the other part of me that was hyper independent, it was like I had like a a crusty out of layer of hyper independence. But when you when you sort of pass that wall, when you jumped over that wall, it was like a codependent mush. And there was a lot of shadow that I worked through a lot of decisions that I had made about keeping people away, about withholding love. About not needing anyone worked through a lot of that. And I learned to meet myself intimately in those four years. And when I say intimately, I mean, learning to meet myself sexually learning to meet myself emotionally, energetically, spiritually, physically and mentally. And that’s mindset work that’s like, you know, feeding myself good food, moving my body, engaging in spiritual practices. You know, all of these things that I’ll that I’ll get to in a moment. But this process of meeting myself, is what I call devotion. This is a practice of self connection, and self commitment. And this practice, one that is deeply grounded in presence, and pleasure was formally initiated in November of 2018. When I ended my marriage, I also changed my name during that month. And I married myself, this is part of this commitment. And in December of 2022 years later, at the time that, you know, season one began of the podcast, two years after being in this practice, I had this experience of falling deeply and exquisitely in love with myself. And it was as well it wasn’t as though it was like the experience of a dreamy energy like the, you know, NRA new relationship energy coming over me and I had this feeling of being in love. But there was no one prominent in my life except me,

14:07
just me. And I couldn’t believe it because

14:11
I had struggled for all of my life, to accept myself to accept my queerness my exuberant energy, right, the part of me that had once felt like too much, or maybe even my sensitivity, my leadership, but the feeling was real, and I wanted nothing more at that time to spend time with me and make love to me and enjoy me. And I felt sensual. I felt complete and I felt fulfilled. In a way I had never before I essentially became like, the most devoted lover I’d longed to know in my life, while at the same time, being clear that one of the desires that I had was to create spiritual Sexual partnerships with people. So in that space, I held myself radically responsible for my own energy, responsible for stoking the fire of my own sexuality, owning it, enjoying it, and having it for myself before sharing it with other people. And the practice of devotion was my pathway to embodying my power on all dimensions of being sexual, spiritual, physical, energetic, mental, emotional. And again, like, I want to be really clear that this isn’t for everyone. Right, this path of, of enjoying it for yourself before sharing it with others, isn’t for everyone. That’s not the way that you have to do it. But it was the path that life chose and unfolded for me. And learning to embody that power, is what I call sovereignty, and directing it in alignment with your desires, his energetic authority. So as it turns out, owning my energy in this way contributed to much healthier partnerships based on mutual acceptance and healthy interdependence, which is mostly what this podcast is about. But it was important for me to first outline the pathway and the process that got me here. So what does this process look like on a daily basis. So before I share it with you, I want to emphasize that the level at which I was practicing devotion, for those two years was very focused, almost obsessive. And, and it was because of circumstances that were happening in my life related to the ending of my marriage, but also like a tree fell on my house, and I had to like, move from place to place before landing in the place I am now. But so I had to construct, I had to create a lot of structure around these practices. And you know, it was also pandemic based, so. And I’m a body nerd, right, myself, work is part of my job. And I’m so committed to it, and I love it. So mostly, I kept a routine of daily morning walks. Sometimes I was able to get to a gym or do yoga was just some sort of movement practice. There was a daily Tarot poll, and mindset work focused on aligning with thoughts and feelings that were congruent with my higher self aims and desires. So it was like a spiritual mindset devotion. I also engaged in daily, daily prayer to planetary deities and ancestors. That was spiritual devotion. And mostly the ancestors was just about like, gratitude. And planetary deities were about like, calling in my desires. And then it was, you know, a clean diet, honoring my physical body and eating foods that were going to support my nervous system health, and have a very, very sensitive body, I have a liver condition that resulted from from my full body breakdown. That got me into the four year Cymatics program. So I have to take care of myself that way, it’s kind of a must. So the other part is emotional self attunement, asking what I needed in every moment and responding to those needs, both within myself and in relationships with other people. So this emotional self attunement was very, very much connected to boundaries, which is absolutely foundational for sovereignty. So another part of my, my devotional practice was daily sensual selfies to connect with my erotic radiance.

And I have more to say about that. Just because it’s like, you know, our culture has such strong ideas about what’s beautiful and what’s not. And I grew up feeling a lot like the ugly duckling. And so that was a really important part of my practice is to feel my like to really define what beauty is for me to become the beholder of beauty. So it was also you know, connecting with my erotic radiance was also dancing. It was a self pleasure practice. And it was also writing online sharing on Instagram every day, sharing my vulnerability, sharing my truth as a way to show up in my courage and my vulnerability. So that was an energetic devotion. So that that commitment that those devotional practices as those unfolded It became more and more difficult to self betray, which has been so my norm in the past. A lot of it having to do with growing up in the culture of colonialism, which is all is like the foundation of which is self betrayal. So the embodied sovereignty and energetic authority that resulted from this practice of devotion was a reclaiming of my energy that had been usurped, or that I had disconnected from in the conditioning into systems of colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, right. So I just want to pause there for a moment, reclamation of energy, because when you are a sensitive, being a deep feeler, you are often much more attuned to what’s happening outside of yourself. And so there’s a way that in being so aware of what’s happening outside of yourself, you leave your experience, you leave your experience. So the reclamation was about coming back in and grounding into what is happening in my body right now. And what does my body need in that happening? So I want to add that even though during those two years between November of 2018, and December of 2020, even though I wasn’t in a sexual partnership, during those two years, I had tremendous support from friends and several online groups, both paid and free, that I was able to be witnessed. And that was critical. So relationships are still so much part of this experiences. This is not about like doing it alone. So that’s the process of devotion that I wanted to share with you. And I am so excited

21:57
to enter into the season and scared shitless

22:01
I want to add I’m still still breathing, still scared. And there’s going to be a lot of entertaining storytelling, relationship storytelling, as well as interviews with some really fascinating people offering revolutionary and healing perspectives on intimacy, sexuality and spirituality, and erotic lifeforce energy. As part of season two, I plan on doing a series where I outline in more detail, the five typical strategies that we use to block intimacy and that we use them unconsciously but hoping that in doing the series that will help you become more aware of how that’s playing out in your relationships and in your work, because that shit shows up everywhere. And I have Yeah, I just plan to offer you the as much value as possible. So I’m so excited for that.

22:58
Stay tuned sovereigns.

23:01
Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Remember to hit the subscribe button to get notified of new episodes dropping on the new and full moons of each month. And if you haven’t already, leave us a five star review on iTunes to make sure that everyone who needs this transmission receives it. Until the next episode, I’m sending you fierce, fierce love.