Transcript:
Isha 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 a queer polyamorous twist, of course. I’m Isha Vela trauma psychologist somatic intimacy Alchemist shadow doula love at our guest, 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 lifeforce 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.
Unknown Speaker 0:50
I am so excited to share with you this episode of the Devotional Anarchy podcast where I interview Darshana Avila who is known for her appearance in the sex love and goop Netflix show. She is nurturing a culture of erotic wholeness. She is an internationally recognized speaker, coach and facilitator who supports women and couples in exploring and reshaping their relationships to intimacy, sex, and eroticism. She created the map of erotic wholeness as a path to personal liberation in service to our collective sexual liberation. And she believes we are all erotic by nature, and is dedicated to helping people feel truly at home in their bodies, at ease with their sexuality and in alignment with their hearts. Her unique style of somatic sex and intimacy coaching weaves together a trauma informed nature based justice oriented approach, inviting more presence, pleasure and passion into the lives and relationships of the people that she guides. And in this episode, we go into the skills that are required to create space for a deeply satisfying and connected sexual connection. And these are, you know, the skills of presence with self embodied knowing, being able to be connected to your needs, desires and boundaries. We talk about the intersection of Cymatics and social justice, and sex and social justice. So I’m really excited to share this with you. And I hope that you enjoy it. Hi, Darshna! Welcome to the Devotional Anarchy Podcast.
Darshana Avila 2:45
So excited to be here. Yeah. No, yeah. And I know that you’re really busy. So I’m so honored to have you here. And to be able to have this conversation with you in your living room and in my kitchen.
Unknown Speaker 3:01
Calm coming to you live from the fireplace, but yeah, yeah. So I am. I’ve recently in the last, what six months, came upon erotic blueprint.
Unknown Speaker 3:16
And it really opened up this,
Unknown Speaker 3:21
like this understanding of myself. And I’ve been doing work around like the erotic lifeforce for many, many years. But understanding myself sexually in this way really opened so many doors of like self knowledge, sexual self knowledge. And a lot of times what I have spoken with clients about and certainly I’ve explored it for myself is this idea of like, we’ve got different ways to express our eroticism, right, just in the way we hear it spoken out that there are different love languages or what have you. And, and it literally is like a language that we use. And so if your partner is into romance, for instance, as their primary like language that they’re speaking, or you could, like in it, even like a movie genre that they enjoy, you know, consuming, like if you they’re into romance and you’re into BDSM, like you’re not going to easily or readily understand one another. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t find an intersection between the two, and create experiences where you actually learn something about one another’s preferred movie genre or the language they’d like to speak aka the way they want to have sex be sexy play with erotic energy. And so even though I don’t necessarily work within the framework of gyros, erotic blueprints, I think fundamentally, many of us are kind of dancing around this same idea that there are many ways to express our eroticism. And none of its hierarchical like it’s not that one is better or one is worse, right is more sophisticated or less sophisticated, nothing of the sort. It really comes down to a
Unknown Speaker 5:00
A lot of our formative experiences, it comes down to personal preference, it certainly also does come down to cultural influence, you know, we see certain things depicted more often and more favorably than others. And that does for some people shape the way that they express and explore with their eroticism, perhaps though, to their detriment, because what I also find in diving deeper with folks is that they are following a culturally sanctioned script much of the time that actually has nothing to do with what they really truly like and want in their in their deep essence. And so my job which is honestly just a total frickin pleasure, is to help somebody tune into what that essential eroticism is really like what that authentic expression can be, and to shed the shame and give permission for that to emerge in a really full, beautiful, Integris. way. So that’s my answer. That one love that. Because, yes, because there’s like you said, Integris Yes, the integrity piece is like, yes, sometimes we’re not in truth about about our own sexuality, the expression of our sexuality, and how that gets expressed with a partner in particular. And we do follow scripts, right? We follow our conditioning, how do you see that showing up the most? Like, what is a common way that that happens? Well, you know what, I’ll bring in a personal anecdote, right? Because what better than that, I am recalling two different partners who I had years back who both of them were incredible lovers in my life, and really woke me up to the reality that there might be more to my sexuality than I knew. And the dynamics that we were playing with were very power over oriented, meaning they were in dominant positions, and I was exploring, being more submissive in those relationships. That being said, there was zero skill, and it wasn’t an integrity, it was fun to play with it made for some really hot sex. But it also felt really unsafe. And me as a very strong, powerful woman, there was a rub in there of like, wait a second, like, I want to surrender to you, I want to submit, I like exploring these dynamics, but I need you to hold the space in a way that has integrity. And so that’s something that I see happen a lot is people have a very, almost like surface level idea of a way that they want to experiment with their sex they want they’re like, Okay, I want to have kinky sex, I want to bring BDSM in. But if you don’t actually know what it takes to create a really safe consent based container around that, nevermind, accumulate whatever skill, physical skills, you might need to enact certain things with a partner, if you’re going to be doing impact play, if you’re going to use rope or anything of that sort, like there’s a whole skill set around these things. But a lot of it has to do with how do you psychologically and emotionally create that integrity in the relationship so that when you explore these dynamics, it can become a safe thing. And so I feel like that’s, you know, that’s something that does come up a lot is, again, because we see certain things depicted in pop culture, in porn, so on and so forth. We have these real surface level ideas of what’s out there, that are not necessarily true to the lived experiences that people are having in their homes and the you know, with their partners, and we set about trying to, like, enact that, without really ever pausing to consider, like, what’s the deeper motivation here? What’s the deeper desire here and what what I need or what needs to be in place for this to unfold in a way that would genuinely feel good for both me and my partner? Because it’s not an either or it’s not that if one of you doesn’t get to feel good, while the other is suffering, that’s called rape.
Unknown Speaker 9:03
Like, you know, it’s not like there’s, there’s a meme that I’ve seen going around recently, and it’s accurate of like, there’s no such thing as consensual sex, or like non consensual sex. So either there’s sex and there’s rape, you know, and I’m using provocative terminology here, I realize and that might be triggering for some people, but I hope it drives the point home that it’s like, where we go awry. A lot of times even you know, let me switch to the other end of the spectrum, even in romance, you know, like you you might lavish your partner with the flowers and the chocolates and the love letters and the poems but it but if it’s coming from a place of like trying to perform something, yes, it’s not your truth, and it’s not really aligned with what your partner’s wanting. Who is this for and who is it serving? You know, so?
Unknown Speaker 9:53
Yeah, yes, thank you. And, like, what you’re what you’re
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Talking about I’m so glad that we’re talking about this because I do see this a lot, or I?
Unknown Speaker 10:07
Well, I don’t see it, I suspect it’s out there. Because, you know, my work is around creating the basis for that skill set, right, the capacity for deep embodied intimacy, for those conversations around consent, and consensual non consent to happen. And yeah, there is this sense of performance or sort of, like, let’s play around with this. But there’s, there’s so much more that can unfold when there are those, those intimacy skill sets or the other skill sets that you’re describing, you know, and when I lived in
Unknown Speaker 10:51
when I lived in San Francisco many, some decades ago, and I was like, very much sort of on the outside looking into the BDSM, and kink scene and sort of the queer community that I that I was in at the time. And I didn’t like I was looking at it from the outside and being like, wow, like people are just hurting each other, like people are just like, I had a lot of judgment around it. And now that I understand that I realized sort of the deep healing that can happen. When that foundation of intimacy, those skill sets are there. And I’d love for you to share. What are those skill sets? How do you develop them? Like, what is your approach? Yeah. Well, you said something just a few moments ago, in that of like, the difference I don’t want to emphasize like the difference between performing and let’s let’s play around with that, I think was a phrase you said. Yeah. So there’s a difference between performance and experimentation? Yeah. And I think experimentation is one of the most critical, valuable ways that we cultivate intimacy with ourselves. And with our lovers, partners, friends, whomever it is that we’re playing around with or exchanging in any way that is swift. Yes. And so I think experimentation, and it’s very close cousin curiosity. Yeah. Like, you know, so we need to create opportunities for ourselves to try different things on. And so when you ask me, like, how does somebody do this? Goodness, okay, we could talk all day, obviously.
Unknown Speaker 12:26
Not a small question.
Unknown Speaker 12:28
But I’m gonna try, I’ll try really hard. I mean, I, what it boils down to is really learning how to be present with yourself, which is way easier said than done. Such that you can cultivate the intimacy with self that I just spoke of. And by that, I mean, a clear embodied knowing of what your needs, desires and boundaries are, because those with those well discerned with those articulated then you can show up for that experimentation. In integrity. It does not mean you need to like or love everything that you experiment with, it does not mean that that’s going to safeguard you against things possibly getting weird sometimes having to contend with the awkwardness, the vulnerability, that oh, gosh, you know what, I really did not like that. Having a hard conversation. Yeah, that’s gonna happen anyway. But at least it’s rooted and not that it’s at least what matters is that it’s rooted in a genuine, yes, I want to do this or a clear, no, I’m not available for that. And that makes all the difference in how we enter into Dynamics. You know, anytime there’s two or more people involved, yeah, but also with ourselves. You know, I talk to people a lot. You know, one of the things that at certain moments in the arc of my career, like, I’ve definitely had a bit of a reputation for my masturbation coaching, and that being a focus, and people I think, assume that I just spend my life masturbating, which I don’t, because I’m helping my clients and their students, but I like to masturbate and I like to teach people how to masturbate. But I’ve even seen a lot of performative masturbation and what I certainly see, and I know it myself, is very goal oriented approaches, because we, you know, we are taught that, oh, it’s all about the Get off. What’s the point of masturbating if I’m not having an orgasm, and so, we find our path to orgasm, and we just keep following it. On the one hand, it makes a lot of sense, right? We are neurologically wired to take the shortest route from A to B. And so once we have established that the route from A to B might be I put a vibrator on my clit I turn on my favorite porn video and off I go, or I get into the shower and I you know, I use this particular lotion or I want whatever the things are, it makes sense that we would repeat them because it’s a known entity, right?
Unknown Speaker 15:00
And we’re generally guaranteed a favorable result. But the problem there then is that we’re missing all the many beautiful scenic routes that we might otherwise be taking right to, to really being with ourselves inviting our entire bodies and our entire being into the experience. And instead of it being goal oriented toward the Get off, what what happens when our masturbation can become about getting in getting in touch with ourselves tuning into, like, what is really wanted in my body right now? How would I like to move? What happens if I’m not focused solely on a climax, but instead I want to focus on bringing the maximum amount of pleasure into my entire body? Right. So this is some of what’s possible, then, when when we really deepen into intimacy with ourselves. Yeah, I love that. I love the the, what you said about like, yes, we can go we can be that goal orientation, right? And that it makes sense, because it’s like, yes, orgasms feel good. But we miss so much along the way. We miss the subtleties, we miss the sensation. And, you know, the maximum amount of pleasure, right? Like, you know, you spoke earlier about like, that presents with self that embodied knowing of needs, desires and boundaries. When we experience trauma, there is a disruption of a lot of those basic factors that we need in order to have a satisfying sexual experience, whether it’s with ourselves or with a partner, or, you know, multiple partners. You know, and I, I feel like, you know, when you’ve, when one has experienced trauma, like our bodies are sort of, like wired for.
Unknown Speaker 16:55
I don’t know, for things being hard for scarcity, like we’re not wired for, you know, we are naturally wired for pleasure. But we learned that that’s not safe. Right? Well, we get rewired for vigilance. Exactly, exactly. I’d love for you to share some of the some of what you encounter as part of like, supporting people in this pathway to having the maximum amount of pleasure for stoking the fires of their erotic lifeforce and doing it in a way that is trauma informed, or that supports the healing of trauma. Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s hugely important. And this word, this word trauma, has become very buzzy, and people feel different ways about it. And yeah, and so it is,
Unknown Speaker 17:44
what it what for me is the most fundamental thing here is slow down, slow down, there’s pretty much never going to be a moment when that isn’t going to help. When it comes to someone who has trauma imprints in their body when your nervous system instead of having an easy time relaxing and receiving pleasure goes into a hyper vigilant mode, where we’re you’re bracing yourself or you’re dissociating, what we need to do is actually slow down because that very same presence that I spoke about in terms of what would let us be in that intimate space itself. The slowness allows us to get present with a wait, something’s happening. I’m having a reaction right now. Right. And now what I’m about to describe, I want to preface it by saying, by no means do I expect that everybody out there would do this instantaneously, I’m speaking to something that happens over over time when you really do the work of unwinding trauma in your body. So let me just put this in context. But when we do get the capacity to slow ourselves down enough to have access to let’s call it witness consciousness, right, where we can really see ourselves. There’s that moment then where the aperture widens, and we can say, oh, wait a second. I’m having a reaction right now.
Unknown Speaker 19:08
I look around and I say, am I in danger here? It is it really unsafe like and in that slowness, we can then make a choice, we can say, Okay, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to give myself some really tight squeezing, touch, give myself some containment, I’m going to take some really deep breaths, I’m going to feel my feet on the ground, I’m going to shake my body like crazy, you know, like whatever our somatic tools are that we’ve learned to use through that progression to help our bodies regulate, we’re going to put those to use right then and there. And then we’re going to see what happens on the other side. And if what happens is that instead of having a reaction, we find ourselves able to respond, because there’s a really big difference between a reaction and a response. How beautiful that’s when we actually get to create new imprints healthy imprint.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Is that are not about that trauma pattern repeating itself. But instead let us have the lived experience of something that was once triggering, becoming something that feels pleasurable, safe resourcing, you know, whatever the needed experience is on the other side. And again, this is something that can take a long time for some people. So I think it’s really important to mention that because I don’t want anybody listening to this, to walk away thinking that that’s like a snap your fingers and boom, you can do that. You know, some people, it’s it’s years and years and years of trauma informed somatic therapies or whatever it is that you’re doing to get support that would bring you to that point. For other people, the journey is shorter. And having a guide matters, because most of us would be hard pressed to do that for ourselves without some really high quality guidance. And that’s as it should be words, were not meant to hold all this alone. Yes, that’s right. You’re absolutely right. Yeah. And
Unknown Speaker 21:02
I would love to hear more about like, when you talk about somatic sex, what does that How do you define that for yourself, for your clients. So two of the main modalities that I’m certified in and utilize are sex illogical bodywork and the somatic method. And both of those in some to some extent or another refer to the work as somatic sex coaching, okay, you start somewhere somatic was actually born out of what the founders Celeste and Danielle saw as a gap in the work of sex illogical body work that was founded by Joseph Kramer. Joseph’s work sex illogical body work initially was a response to the HIV and AIDS crisis. And then Gail, excuse me, gay male community, and wanted to create a way that the erotic therapeutic healing power could be brought to these men who were suffering in such intense ways. And celestun. Danielle, you know, decades later met one another while training as in sex, illogical body work did that work, but then they started looking at all of the things that that did not include, like attachment based relating, and I, you know, and what happens when we actually, as a practitioner, get into a more reciprocal role with our clients to give them access to certain experiences, they might not be able to safely have otherwise. So so both of these modalities are in my toolkit, they’re wonderful, you can learn a ton about them easy to find information out there. And and what it all boils down to, though, is that it’s a way of approaching our sexuality. So everything that’s imprinted around our sex, our beliefs, the way we’re acting from a body based lens, because that’s what Cymatics is about, in case that is not widely understood. But knowing what you’re up to. I’m guessing many of your listeners would know that. But you know, we’re talking about the wisdom of the body, we’re talking about the experience of the body when we speak about something somatic. So on the one hand, it’s kind of like, well, how could sex not be that by default? And I think that there is, there’s an argument to be made that many people are having sex that is quite disembodied, does not honor the wisdom of their body, and that’s the dominant cultural norm right now. Right. What I appreciate about taking a somatic approach to sex and intimacy coaching is that it is fundamentally inviting us into intimate relationship with our bodies. My work as an erotic wholeness coach, so for many years, I refer to myself as a somatic sex and intimacy coach because I was like, Okay, well, that’s more widely understood kind of sorta depending on the circles you run in
Unknown Speaker 23:56
the circles that I ran it it was and and over time, my work moved from that to erotic wholeness, because erotic wholeness to me is a an even taking it out even wider because our sex is not our eroticism or eroticism includes our sex, but there’s a lot more to the picture. Yeah, right. So through my own lived experience, and through my work, I really saw that talking about what I was up to with people as sex and intimacy coaching alone was no longer an accurate description. eroticism includes, like I said, it includes your sexuality, but it’s also really fundamentally about the fact that we are sensuous and sensual beings. Yes, heart of a deeply sensuous world. And so when we include the whole of ourselves, it’s our sensuality or sexuality, our emotions get to be in there that show up in relationship, our dynamism, our activism, all of that’s in the mix.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
So simply just over the, you know, the course of things, as you know, like, I guess this is a moment of like when you know better you do better, right, and not to put anybody else’s work or focus down. But for me, erotic wholeness is taking a trauma informed, nature based and justice oriented approach to looking at somatic sex and intimacy. And to me, that’s where the wholeness piece comes in. And we need all of that there, if we really want to feel like we get to show up in full. And fundamentally, that’s what we all want
Unknown Speaker 25:34
to be our whole selves to be loved, and to know that we belong. So this is how I’m going about that. I love it. And I’m feeling really excited by your naming of the social justice oriented piece. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, very simply, it’s that the, the more embodied we become, and the more awake and aware to our sensations, our emotions, needs, wants, desires, boundaries, everything we’ve been speaking of here, you can’t help in my experience anyway, you can’t help but then widen your eyes a little bit, look around and feel more deeply the pain of the earth feel more deeply the grief, the the injustice, the atrocities that humanity is wreaking upon humanity, basically, like, yes, we’re living in a really I mean, for lack of a better word here. Like it’s just fucked up to be a human right now on levels and the dominant culture. And you know, where you and I live in America, the dominant culture is like, grief is grief is anathema. Like we don’t grieve like we don’t grieve well. And so we’re cut off from so much of our erotic aliveness by not attuning to these injustices by not knowing how to grieve well, and people wonder like, why they’re struggling in their sex. And so I want to I get curious, like, so what do you deal with your anger? And do you have space to process your sadness? Because if you’re struggling with your orgasm, it’s very possible that there’s a correlation between those two things. And if you want more pleasure, the reality is that you’re also opening up yourself to feel more pain, which I believe and I’m totally biased, and I’m happy to own my bias. I believe it’s a good thing. Yes, yes.
Unknown Speaker 27:32
It’s to have the full range of experience, just in parallel is like having the full range of sensation. Yes, precisely. And I see you, I see your Instagram videos, when you’re like wailing and raging and you’re moving your bodies like yeah, because if you want to have a really liberated experience during sex, if you want to feel free and unencumbered, and like you have access to all the ecstasy that that is your birthright to feel. And I want you to have that whoever you are, I want you to have that. And you need to then make yourself available to all of it. We don’t get to cherry pick and say, Okay, I’m gonna have this feeling, but not that one. Let me go with that emotion, but not that sensation. And it’s just not the way it works. Right? Yeah, feel it all feel. And you gotta feel it to heal. It is another
Unknown Speaker 28:24
phrase we can bring in here, which is that if we want to do the work, and your question was about justice, and so are social justice. So to me, this is part and parcel because the more we are in our capacity to really feel the hurts to feel where we have gone so far astray, from what I believe is like the highest potential of humans, you know, all of the isms, the system of oppression with all of its interlocking isms that have come to pass us so normal, you know, the white supremacy, the racism, ableism, the sexism, on and on and on and on.
Unknown Speaker 29:04
When you feel the wrongness of that, you’re going to start taking action, you’re gonna start making different choices. You’re going to use your erotic lifeforce energy with different purpose. So that’s how that has come to be an integral facet of my work, because it happened to me personally. And one of the primary ways that I’m taking action is the light that same fire and other people.
Unknown Speaker 29:34
I so love that this conversation is going here. I’ve often talked about intimacy as being sort of like accessing intimacy within ourselves accessing our shadows, all of those pieces like when when we have when we have access to ourselves fully our heart, our sex, our erotic lifeforce, as you say,
Unknown Speaker 29:57
we can’t help but feel the pain
Unknown Speaker 30:00
pain of others. And when we feel the pain of others, it’s really so much harder to judge them to, to harm them. They’re the them dissolves, right? Because we see ourselves and other people.
Unknown Speaker 30:15
And those those boundaries between us dissolve. So yes, I love that you’re naming this that like, intimacy is sort of this pathway into social justice into sort of dissolving these isms, the things that separate us there is such a strong connection there. And, you know, often when I talk about pleasure, like there is still part of my brain that is telling me like, this is frivolous, this is frivolous, right, because I didn’t grow up it, you know, with with, with pleasure as sort of like a on my top five list of priorities, you know.
Unknown Speaker 30:50
And I have to remind myself, like, the work is the intimacy is the connection to self so that we can then be more connected to other people. Absolutely. And I would add another related dynamic is how Cymatics and activism come together. Yes. Which, you know, you’ve got people like Adrian Marie Brown, Prentice Hemphill, Rasma, Manickam, who are these phenomenal, all people of color, who are massive leaders and teachers to me in the wider, you know, activism movement, if that’s such a thing, that’s way general. But you know, Adrian Marie Brown is one of her seminal books is is pleasure activism. And, and, and there is an understanding, I think, and I’m speaking in kind of third person here, because I do not have a background in organizing, I have not come up through the justice movements in a you know, in a deeply involved way. But what I hear from people who have is the, the burnout, the fatigue, yeah, so the way that because it’s such a passionate, purpose driven work that was not rooted in a genuinely capacious embodiment, people are burning themselves out, blowing themselves out all over the place. So there’s a way in which it’s also essential that we bring this somatic intelligence, the wisdom of our bodies, caring for our bodies, growing capacity to handle charge and intensity in a good way to our activism as well. And so it’s just like, different, different ways that these threads all weave together, you know, and there, I am not going to get whatever me and my sayings that I keep trying to pull in here, like, there’s something like, you know, this is just like a Gumby thing. The past are many, but the truth is one like I remember chanting that in a at an ashram years ago, but it’s the truth. You know, what I’m seeing here is it’s like, we’ve got Cymatics, we’ve got activism, we’ve got sex and intimacy, we’ve got erotic we’ve got this stuff, the other that ultimately, to me, what it comes down to, is there threads that weave together around this notion of wholeness. And another way that we could speak about wholeness would also be belonging. You know, fundamentally, I mentioned earlier when talking about eroticism that we’re a part of, of this sensuous world, that this earth that that we do belong to, but a silly humans, we’ve, we’ve forgotten that
Unknown Speaker 33:24
way. And beyond, you know, like, so there’s this hunger, this yearning, this melancholy that most of us are walking around with, without being able to name it, which is that we, we don’t necessarily feel that intrinsic sense of belonging, you don’t feel like our whole self is welcome. We’re so accustomed to having to fragment off certain pieces of ourselves, oh, I don’t wear this with this person. And I don’t say that with that person. I can’t show up here as you know, like, it’s so it’s become so second nature, that we have forgotten our true nature or first nature is that we are these fabulous, wild erotic beings, part of this wildly erotic, fabulous world. Yeah, and we want to have that affirmed. But we’ve really fucked that up for ourselves as a collective. And so now the work of people like yourself, like me, like everybody who’s listening and taking this path for themselves. What we’re doing is actually setting about like correcting that. And that’s important work and we need it all on board. We need the activism, we need the embodiment. We need the facts, all of it.
Unknown Speaker 34:37
I like you know, fascinating how it all sort of like, each one feeds the other. Yes. They can
Unknown Speaker 34:44
feed each other. Yes. I love it. Yeah. So let’s spend like maybe five minutes talking about sex, love and goop? Sure. Yeah. So how did this How does this opportunity come to you? What was your experience in
Unknown Speaker 35:00
that? Ah, I mean, it was it was actually very funny because when I got the very first email about it, I was like a joke.
Unknown Speaker 35:10
But yeah, I, you know, I was approached by by boardwalk pictures, the production company who I shout them out and Shawna NAT to you in particular, like, such a wonderful team to work with who really had a very, like, clear, strong sense of purpose around this, of the importance of showing something in the public eye that hasn’t been seen, which is that attending to our sexuality can actually be a deeply healing, high integrity, beautiful journey. It’s not CD, it’s not, it doesn’t have to be taboo. It you know, like, and so, all throughout, there was so much care in the process.
Unknown Speaker 35:56
And gosh, I mean, there are a million things I could say, is there something in particular you’d like to know about? Experience? I guess, you know, like, yeah, you’re, I’m hearing you talk about unraveling shame around the sexuality. Yeah, yeah. Which is very much you know, it’s so all of us who were part of that production with, you know, there’s hours and hours and hours and days of things that were filmed that would get whittled down to minutes on a screen. And then particular storylines that that are crafted are from that raw material. And I had the very wonderful pleasure of working with Chandra and Camille a beautiful young lesbian couple who each had their own individual journey that relates to shame in some way or other with with Shandra, it was very much about religious shame. And with Camille there was a lot of shame around, not fundamentally for her, I think to try to put it simply, it was the fact of of recognizing where the cognitive dissonance was that she wasn’t actually as three and liberated in her body as she might have wanted to be, because she was seeing that depicted as the way she should be. And so what we got to do together, and what you saw on the show huddle was really about inviting each of them into a new intimacy with themselves so that they could feel more safe and available and feel their true belonging in the intimacy that they share with one another as a couple. So it was it was so fantastic. I love the two of them, like I truly, truly, and it was it was a pleasure to be trusted by them to take this deep journey together with cameras in the room and everything.
Unknown Speaker 37:49
Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s a service, that’s a service, right? They’re really they did us all a huge solid by letting that be seen. No, I mean, the impact of the show all of the couples, all of the professionals who are part of it, I mean, there’s so much wisdom and beauty there. And, and then just the impact that people are having, I’m still you know, the show has been out for almost two months now. And I’m still getting messages on a regular basis about how touched people are by it and what possibilities it’s opened them up to, you know, you mentioned earlier dancing around the periphery of the Bay Area, BDSM community, I live in the Bay Area, not everybody does.
Unknown Speaker 38:31
I’ve got to remember the bubble that I exist in where for me, I am surrounded by sex positive community. And these are constant topics of conversation, given what I do with my life and who I associate with, and that’s by no means the norm. So the fact of goop and one of Paltrow and boardwalk pictures and Netflix saying yes to this show, that it’s really a big deal. I mean, it’s it’s a culture changing moment for me, because there there’s this, this possibly the seed of possibility that gets planted when when somebody realizes Wait a second, maybe my sex could be different. Maybe I don’t have to feel ashamed, maybe I don’t have to perform. Maybe I don’t have to hold the burden of constantly feeling like my partner and I are a mismatch. And, you know, so it opens up this beautiful scope of possibility for healing. And and we need that in the world. So the thing Yes, I love it. I love that it’s out there in the world. I love that you’re doing this work. And it was it’s been such a joy to have this conversation with you. I feel so honored. Yes. It’s been a pleasure for me as well.
Unknown Speaker 39:49
Darshana. Now how do people get in touch with you? What? Yeah, yeah, the main places that you can find me or my website and Instagram
Unknown Speaker 40:00
My website is my name Darshanaavila.com. And then erotic wholeness is my instagram handle one of these days there might be more social media platforms. But for now that’s it. And yeah, I you know, I don’t know exactly when this this episode is going to be airing but people are often like how do I work with you now especially now that the show comes out and exact I do have some sporadic occasional workshops that are run, but the primary ways are through my group journeys. We’ve got a new round of woman wise wild and hold that will be beginning mid January of 2022. And that’s a five month deep dive into this material. I’ve got some self guided journeys that you can grab off of my website. So there are opportunities and, and I always love hearing from people so you can reach out and if you don’t know quite where to go, but you want to go somewhere on your journey of erotic wholeness, someone from my team is going to give you an answer you can be assured of that.
Unknown Speaker 41:00
Wonderful.
Unknown Speaker 41:03
Thank you again for this deeply nourishing and enlightening conversation. Thank you so much Darshna. You’re very welcome. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 41:14
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