Ancient Sexual Wisdom with Leah Piper and Dr. Willow Brown

Erin: Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, and more satisfied in the second half of our lives. I'm your host, Erin Keating.

Welcome, welcome, welcome amazing Hotter Than Ever listeners, I'm so glad to be here with you today. I hope you are taking good care of yourselves this holiday season and finding time to do the things that you think are fun, getting together with friends and family. Or maybe you're taking a vacation to somewhere warm and beautiful or just enjoying whatever seasonal rituals you've created for yourself over the years. Please don't let it stress you out, that is not what this time of year is for. Even though in my experience that is often what happens. Don't let it happen to you.

Today's episode is a really interesting one and a different take on pleasure and sexuality and healing that is all about going deeper into ancient wisdom. Today we're fortunate to be talking to two very accomplished experts in the world of sexuality and intimacy, Leah Piper and Dr. Willow Brown. Leah Piper is an intimacy expert and the visionary behind More Love Works. She has over two decades of experience in tantra, yoga, positive psychology and somatic therapies, guiding people towards sexual healing and pleasure awakening. Gosh, I like the sound of that. Marvin Gaye would be proud.

Dr. Willow Brown is a Taoist sexology and tantra expert who holds a doctorate in Chinese medicine. Dr. Willow sees sexuality as the missing link to most people's happiness and we are going to get into that. She teaches her clients how to alchemize ancient wisdom into modern medicine to ignite their soul's true calling. Together, Leah and Dr. Willow are co founders of the Sex Reimagined podcast that brings a fresh, thoughtful perspective to the world of human sexuality. In this conversation, we get into some real ancient wisdom and dig into some things that you may have heard of, like tantra, but maybe don't know exactly what they are. That was certainly the case for me.

Tantra, I learned in this conversation, is the expansive weaving of union that elevates sex to an art form. Tantra is a conscious path and a spiritual practice. And tantric lovemaking, as I just learned, this shifts the focus from a goal oriented activity like penetration or orgasm to presence and awareness. And that sounds so intimate and like something that I would really like to experience with the right partner. Would you? Is that something that you are craving in your own life? Women's bodies are so incredible and we talk in this conversation about how orgasm can be experienced through the entire body, not just the genitals. Is this the first time you're hearing this idea? This is the most groundbreaking cosmic idea. It's about how you can use breath and visualization and awareness to spread arousal and pleasure through your whole system. We talk about breath control and how that can enhance sexual pleasure and also is, like, a really easy way to shift your emotional state. And then how sounding, which is making vocal sounds during sex. It sounds technical, it's not. Making sounds is a powerful tool to amplify your pleasure, and sounding also helps you release stored trauma. So interesting. This stuff is both fundamental and cosmic at the same time, and it really reinforced for me the deep connection between the mind, the body, and our capacity for connection and pleasure. You're in for a really heady, really deep conversation today. All right, let's get hot.

Leah and Dr. Willow, welcome to Hotter Than Ever.

Dr Willow: Oh, we're so happy to be here, Erin. Boy, we sound good.

Erin: You really do, you really do. You know, the two of you are so deeply educated in a range of healing modalities, half of which I do not really understand at all. So I am hoping you can educate me and our listeners around your expertise. Sort of taking us in through the shallow end. Is that an okay place to start?

Dr Willow: Yeah, let's start in the shallow end. I remember, you know, Erin and I were talking before we set this up, and I was like, yeah, we might talk about, you know, yoni massage or sacred spot or jade egg.

Erin: Like, I've heard of some of those things. I mean, maybe a good place to start is you hear this word tantra and tantric sexuality, tantra, yoga. For the listener who is sort of coming to this podcast as a place to think about what's possible for them in the next phase of their life over 40, I talk a lot about sexuality and relationships and intimacy, because I think it's sort of the missing piece for a lot of people. It certainly was for me. Maybe we start there at tantra.

Dr Willow: Let's start there.

Leah: Okay. I'll give my two explanations of tantra briefly, and then, Willow, you just pick up where. Where I might dropped off. Yeah, yeah, you'll give yours. So, first and foremost, tantra is an ancient Sanskrit word, and it translates two Sanskrit syllables, Tan and Tra. Tan translates to expansive. Tra translates to weaving. It's also a yoga, and yoga translates to union. So it is the expansive weaving of union, that still doesn't quite describe what it is. So now move beyond what the words mean. And I would say just to drop it down to its essence, is that tantra is the great beautifier of sex. It is what makes sex an art form.

It's what takes intimacy and makes it into an exquisite soul to soul exploration. Whether that soul to soul with you and your God or whatever you believe that's bigger than you, or whether it's soul to soul with a lover or lovers. There's so many permutations that someone can really explore. And to me, it's one of those spiritual paths that's about self realization, is really finding who are you through the world of pleasure. So that would be my quick crash course.

Dr Willow: That's a good crash course.

Erin: So I think where I can anchor this for myself is like, I know what lovemaking is. So what does. How does tantra influence? Like, if we think about a normal married or unmarried coupled, whatever, lovemaking session with your partner. How does bringing tantra into that make that look and feel different?

Dr Willow: That's such a good question. I mean, so often when we think about heterosexual sex, it's like, okay, let's get it in. Let's both have an orgasm. That's a successful lovemaking session. You know, maybe we went longer than our usual 10 minutes. Okay, we were a real success that time.

Erin: Do you come?

Dr Willow: Yeah, yeah.

Leah: Get it out, get it in and get it off.

Dr Willow: You know, and I feel like tantra, it creates a container for more play and more exploration. So now the goal isn't necessarily even penetration, the goal isn't to have an orgasm. We take the goal part out and you're bringing more presence, you're bringing more awareness.

Is what can happen in a tantric lovemaking experience is your body can have these mini earthquakes, these little creatic releases, we call them Creas. Creas is like a wave or a rush that kind of jolts your tissues in your body into this kind of like opening. And it's a beautiful experience. So we can start to move orgasmic energy out of the genitals and into the rest of the body. Because so often when we have orgasm, Leah likes to say it's often just to sneeze in the genitals.

You know, we have quick little orgasm, but we can actually extend and elongate our orgasmic experience and run it through our entire bodies all the way into the brain. We can have what the Taoist's calls superior orgasms, where we have orgasms through the heart, orgasms through the pineal gland, through the different places in the body. And it's a fuller, longer, more fantastic experience. So bringing tantric practices to regular lovemaking can elongate the process, make it longer, stronger, and more fun.

Leah: Yeah, let me also just paint a picture for you of, like, what's the difference between lovemaking and then tantric lovemaking? It's really about making what's ordinary, extraordinary. It's about making it special for your partner. It's about cherishment, and it's about bringing something sacred to the table so that you feel like the lovemaking that you're making is actually a prayer between your two bodies. And how does one do that? What might that look like? Well, you might put candles everywhere. You might dress up in something special. You might have special sheets that you only put on the bed when you want to practice tantra. You might start with an intention, maybe a poem, maybe simply answering two questions such as, what do you want to bring into your life that would make your life better? And what do you want to release from your life that you're just done with? You might do a prayer with your partner. And so what you're connected to is this love in action has energy to it, and I want it to serve our life.

So how can we create an intention so that this love, this energy that's rippling through our system, especially through pleasure, goes out to the universe and can create something really amazing that even goes beyond you and I? And so people think about intentions. There's a beginning, there's a middle, and there's an end. There's a purposeful closing and wrapping up of our tantric lovemaking. And there's a way of being present that is unlike normal lovemaking. And what I mean by that is you are consciously with great awareness, choosing to be more aware of what you're experiencing in your system and what your partner is experiencing in their system. Your eyes are open more of the time so that you can connect with that soul to soul experience. You're aware of the closing and the opening of your body and when you feel yourself start to close, you choose vulnerability in that moment. You can trust that your partner's going to hold that for you.

So you're willing and able to be more emotional, you're feeling the depth of your emotional variety. People in tantric lovemaking, it's not uncommon for people to have hear-tgasms, as we like to say, or even a cry-gasm. The lovemaking can be so touching, so rich, so precious that it can move you to tears. Now some people listening might be like, oh God, gag me with a spoon, like, I don't wanna cry when I'm having sex and I get that too. It's not always like that, but as a result of being more present, cultivating trust for yourself and your partner and being more present, there's a phenomenon that starts to happen. You start having more transcendent experiences in your love making, whether that's feeling closer to your partner or whether that's having these cosmic, outrageous orgasms that just feel so big and overwhelming and so you feel closer to your lover.

Erin: I have so many spinning through my head. So many thoughts spinning through my head. Well, number one, I think a lot of the listeners are going, what do you mean orgasms all around your body? Like, what do you mean, a heart orgasm? What do you mean, pineal gland orgasm? Like, what are you talking about? So what does that mean? That means you're tremoring from your chest. That means you're experiencing some kind of release in a different part of your body? Or does it mean that you're feeling something in, you know, your elbow or your nipple or whatever, but then your hips are moving like you're having a vaginal orgasm or a clitoral orgasm? Like, what is it actually? Because I think this idea of your body as a set of sort of energetic circuitry and an orgasm is something that can flow through your body and move. I've done a little bit of work in this space myself, working on imagining orgasm is sort of a ball of energy and using my mind to shift it all around my body and, you know, having, trying to bring the orgasm down to the tips of my toes and, and that kind of stuff.

Dr Willow: And that what you're doing is a really beautiful way of, of spreading arousal, Wi or energy to all these little nooks and crannies of your body.

Erin: It sounds insane. Like when you're coming from like a--of course not for you guys, but like when you're coming from a conventional patriarchal, like, system of, of sort of dualistic sexuality where it's, you know, male and female and, and good and right, black and white. Like this sort of binary that we live in around gender, around sexuality and the fact that like men and women, if you're heterosexual, can even connect to make love like that seems miraculous to me. And then the idea that you could connect, set an intention, have a whole spiritual component be so present, bring so much consciousness to the bedroom, which I'm sure ripples out into the rest of your relationship. Like where are the partners who are open to this? How can the women listening to this show bring this kind of dialogue, even in the smallest way, into their intimate relationships where they can feel more connected, where they can experience more pleasure? Because I think we often live in this paradigm, you know, I mean, I was in a sexless marriage for a decade, so I come from all the way on the other end of the spectrum to my present day sexuality, which isn't even close to what you guys are talking about. But I like at least no kind of what you're talking about. So how do you help bridge the gap for women who are living in a more sort of conventional space and this might be the first time that they're hearing about any of these ideas?

Leah: Well, first I like to define what is orgasm? And I think of orgasm is energy and movement that's pleasurable. So a good laugh, a delicious dessert makes you moan more than most women moan in the bedroom. That is orgasmic.

Erin: A good a massage when they get right in that muscle. I feel my eyes roll back in my head, I'm like, am I coming or is this just a really good massage?

Leah: Yeah, right? Yes, a good sneeze is orgasmic, a good shit is orgasmic. So if we can start taking orgasm out of just the genitals, we will recognize that we are living way more pleasure than we give ourselves credit for. So first and foremost, I think we need to really anchor that in so that we can feel pleasure in a full bodied way. And so when I feel a tickle in my clit and I want to experience a full body orgasm, I need to build a relationship between my brain and that tingle in my clit, because your brain is the biggest sex organ. We gotta get it engaged. We need to be paying attention to sensuality.

What is sensuality? It is the five senses. So if you can connect the pleasure you feel in your genitals and think of it as like, let me breathe that up to another part of my body that doesn't normally feel very erotic. For some of us, that may be our nipples. Even though that's considered a primary rouginosome. Sometimes I imagine I can breathe that tingle from my clit and breathe it to the back of my throat or I can breathe it to my belly button. Or maybe I'll massage my fingertip and try to feel it in my fingertip too. I'll try to feel it in the follicles of my hair. So you're using breath and awareness and sensation to go, let me pull this sensation that I can trust can be amplified.

So sensations have sort of a pitch and a frequency. We can use our breath and even our sound to let me imagine with the power of visualization, let me see if I can feel that up somewhere else. So that's one of the things that we can do to rewire the nervous system and create new neuro-circuits from our genitals to our brain to other body parts. And that's how you start to feel full body pleasure versus just the same.

Erin: I love that. And breath has everything to do with that. And sort of in my limited experimentation in this space, the way that I've been able to keep that sort of that glowing orb of orgasm moving through my body is to--or if I'm having a really great orgasm and I want to keep it going, then breathing through it, breathing in, breathing out, like, allows it to sort of continue to vibrate in a way that I never, I never knew was even possible before I started this kind of exploration.

Leah: Exactly. People don't even know that breath control is one of the most important techniques you can learn in order to have better sex and more intense pleasure. And remember, tantras is a yoga. These yogis knew a thing or two. And if you ever take a yoga class, one of the first things they tell you is you're going to start breathing differently. So when you slow down the length of your inhale and the length of your exhale, you are halfway home. So I tell people as soon as you lay down to start the process of an erotic experience. Slow down your breath. Concentrate on your breath. And when you are slowing down your breath, something really interesting happens. You begin to expand the diaphragm. And when you expand the diaphragm, you naturally calm the adrenals, which means you're going to shift your cortisol levels and your adrenaline levels. Those things are gonna help you reach a climax where if you don't settle into your system or if you're in your head the whole time, climax becomes elusive.

Erin: Right. I think like, just when you talk about cortisol and adrenals, like women carry so much pressure, responsibility, obligation, and shifting gears to get into a space where, you know, they can go from this, like, intensity of, like, responsibility and, and managing everything and, and dealing with like, the nuts and bolts of life into a more sensual mode, into a more embodied mode. Like, I love that breath is a key to that, that is such a simple thing for people listening to. Remember that, like, if you get in touch with your breathing, you can start yourself on a path through that transition.

Dr Willow: Yeah, you know, these days there's so much looking for a state change. Like I'm going to get on social media so I can find a state change. I can have this glass of wine so I can have a state change. Smoke the sweets, state change. You know, do whatever we need to do to get out of the state we're in into a new state. And breath is one of the most phenomenal, powerful, ancient ways and well researched and like so, so available, you know, ways to change your state.

Leah: And it's free.

Erin: And it's free. It's not bad for you, right.

Dr Willow: And so when we start to move ourselves, as you're talking about Erin, from this young state, from this place in our nervous system that's running on a sympathetic dominant state where it's like, I have to do, I have to go, I got to make it happen. Now we're breathing up here, we're breathing shallowly, and all we have to do is exhale all the way down to the very, very bottom of the lungs until there's no more air out and hold it out, right? And that is yin, that's dropping your breath into the most yin place, total emptiness. We went from full expansion, we were up here breathing like this, and now we're all the way empty into yin. And that simple exhale, just even half of a breath, just the exhale, is how we can start to move from that sympathetic dominant to that parasympathetic rest and digest place where we can receive, you know, and the feminine's greatest superpower is to be able to receive.

And most of us are not taught how to receive. We're not taught the value of receiving. Someone gives us a compliment, we give them one back, then make sure we're reciprocal, you know, and it's like we can't just receive the simplicity of even our own breath to change our state. So it's a practice and it's a worthy one, too.

Erin: You said the word sounding again, and I would love to dig into what that is.

Dr Willow: There's something about making sound that brings more vibration, more frequency, more energy to these places in your body when you. We've got primary erogenous zones that we all know and love: the genitals, the nipples, the anus, the tongue, you know, and then we've got these secondary erogenous zones which could be the Chakras or the places where your glands reside in your body could even be like inner wrists or anywhere there's a flexible joint in your body: back of the knee, behind the ears. And then we've got all these like acupuncture points all over your body. And I'm always saying we've got yonis all over our body, no matter what our gender is.

Leah: People might not know what a yoni is.

Dr Willow: Yoni is a Sanskrit word for sacred space. So it's the vulva, the vagina, the womb, the ovaries. The whole pelvic creative center in your body is the yoni. And so we've got these like sensitive centers all over our body. And when we start to ignite them and touch them and tickle and scratch and bite and nibble and play with them in different ways, it's brings so much more arousal to the entire system.

Leah: Especially if you make the sound of the sensation. So another way of sounding. And we harp and harp and harp on people all the time. Sound, sound, sound, sound, sound. I'm sorry, you can't get away from it, no one wants to do it, we all feel embarrassed. Like, oh my God, what if the children hear, what if the grandparents hear, what if the neighbors hear? We're like, there's this real weird shame monster connected to having a sexual voice. We don't mind saying fuck you when we're pissed off. And who, who cares about the neighbors then? But for some reason we feel humiliated if someone hears the sound of lovemaking. So there's a perspective shift, number one that we want to start to make. Number two, we want to get connected to the oohs, the ahhs the yummy, yummy, yummy, Oh God, oh God, oh God. Moans, groans, sighs, grunts. I don't care what the sound is, just make them. Why would we want you to make them? Because it's the amplification of the sound that is connected to the sensation that makes the pleasure five times bigger, five times more intense. It's your intensity dial. Now if you are more comfortable, grab a pillow and muffle it into a pillow.

Erin: You're still making the sounds.

Leah: You're making sound.

Dr Willow: You want to get the vibration out of you. And then another thing for me is like, you know, sometimes you're in a, let's say you've been in a long term marriage and you're not really that aroused. You know, maybe I'm at like a two, that feels nice, but whatever, I'm not that aroused. You can use sound to draw your own arousal to higher levels, especially when it's coupled with breath. So breath and sound are the best friends in Tantra camp, and they always go together. So let's say I am with a partner and I'm like, what am I going to do tomorrow? You know? And I'm starting to think about other things. I can just pay attention to the sensation that I'm feeling, even if it's not like, crazy arousal, pleasure. But it's like, oh, that feels nice. You know, it's relaxing. I like it.

Leah: It's pleasant.

Dr Willow: It's okay, you know? And I can inhale and bring my breath all the way up. Hold the breath in, connect to the sensation. Hold the breath, connect to the sensation. Hold the breath, connect to the sensation, and then exhale the sound that matches what I'm feeling. And if I do that over and over and over again, pretty soon my sound might start out as like, ah. But then the next sound is going to be like, 'ah'. You know, the next sound is going to be like 'Ah'. And the next sound is going to be 'AH'. And now I've pulled my own arousal to higher levels.

Leah: Yeah, think about that breath. That breath, that inhale is pulling the sensation that you're connected to up to the brain. You're giving your brain a bath of the sensation that you feel. Remember, that brain is the biggest sex organ. How do we get it engaged? We use the breath. I feel the tingle, I pull it up to the brain, I give the brain a bath. Then on the exhale, it's like a waterfall from the brain back down to that yummy feeling. Let's make it more intense. So it's like a 'Mmmmmm.' And then the next thing you know, you are in a climax, all connecting to your breath. So it can be a little, like, vulnerable at first. So it does help. Ask your partner, hey, I feel kind of vulnerable, ike, make the sound with me, just go with it. Just go with it. And the next thing you know, you're kind of making the same grunts, and it becomes very joyous.

Dr Willow: And it can also, when you first start, it can feel inauthentic, like, oh, my God. I'm just try. I'm just trying something different, I'm trying to make a sound, this is so weird, I'm so uncomfortable, I don't really want to be doing this. But the more that you can connect to what you're actually feeling and actually feel, even if it's not a good feeling, because a lot of us store a lot of old traumas, societal construct, religious upbringing. We store that stuff in our genitals, in the tissues, hold on to our issues. And so if we connect to a sensation that feels like, well, that feels like a fucking sharp needle in my vajayjay, you know, then make that sound of a sharp needle. What does that sound like? And you make that sound sound, and that moves the sensation along. So we can really transform the stuff that's stuck in our somatic bodies through breath and sound. And this goes beyond sexuality, like if you're going through deep heartbreak or you're going through, you know, even like some kind of divorce, cancer, physical stuff, emotional stuff, psychological, financial stress. Breath and sound can be the only medicine that you need to potentially completely heal.

Leah: Yeah, like, that's really different. If we look at, okay, here's sexual ecstasy. What is sexual healing? How do we apply the same principles that amplify sexual ecstasy and use those principles to now unburden our system of the traumas, the crisises, the stories, the burdens, the conditioning, all the things that Willow just described. And so you can go to the same places, the same aches and pains, because we have a lot of reasons as women to feel numb, to feel shut down.

So many times one of our practices that we teach people is a practice called sacred spot massage or a G spot massage, where you're going into the tissues. And the most common thing women report the first time they try it is, I feel numb or I feel nothing, or I just feel pressure, like, this really isn't all that sexy. Well, it makes sense, we've got lots of reasons to feel numbed out in our life. Just look news, for instance. So we can move that, though quite elegantly, if we can just come down deep inside and go, what's the sound of numb? Because the truth is, your yoni has wanted a voice your whole entire life. And what some of these practices do is we start to give her a voice. And it's not about telling the story of woe. It's about, let me feel any sensation that is authentic and true. And that may be you think, Leah, nothing has a sound. Yes, it does. And you just try a vowel on hard or soft until you find the right pitch and frequency that matches that sensation, that's how you move the sensation out.

You want to get rid of numb, you want to get rid of nothing? We got the answer. Make the sound and you'll see there's a layer underneath the numbness. What Is that? Oh my God, it's grief, you're sitting on so many tears. There's this place inside every woman that feels the grief of every hungry child. And again, the story doesn't matter, just let yourself have that nourishing, cleansing, purifying sob that in and of itself is as good as an orgasm. And the relief that you feel afterward, you feel clean again. But then there's another layer you discover what's underneath the tears. It's that suppressed rage, the outrage you feel that you haven't had a chance to give a voice to. So give it a primal scream and a pillow. And then what's underneath that? Oh, my God, we've got a new layer.

We had the courage to make the sound of numbness, to make the sound of grief. Grief to make the sound of outrage. Now you might have the biggest, most profound release of orgasm and pleasure that bathes you in a white light and you're going, oh my God, was that? Well, sister, that's been waiting for you the whole damn time, but you've had layers upon layers upon layers on top of it. And you just freed yourself. And all it took with some courage to make a sound, to have a deep breath and to feel, to finally feel.

Erin: It's so scary though. It's so scary. There's so much at stake in women's lives. We carry the world, we carry so much responsibility. We shove so much under the rug just to get through, like, and to make the space for this kind of work to make, to grant ourselves the permission to have a voice and then to express the things, the issues are in the tissues, I love that. Like to be able to release and unpack and let go of all the stuff we are physically, literally carrying in our cells, like that is huge and I imagine that you see transformative healing through this work.

Dr Willow: Phenomenal transformative healing. I mean, one thing I would say too is like, it can be really scary to do this kind of work with your long term partner or even the guy that you're super into.

Erin: Right, unless he's a particular guy. Right, exactly.

Dr Willow: With the person that you're feeling romantic with, it can be hard to allow these screams and these emotions and these, you know, these intense sounds to come out of you because it's like you want that person to like you and to see you a certain way. And if they see you in that way, then they might not. It is very vulnerable. So it can be really valuable to seek out a practitioner who does you know, pelvic floor work more therapeutically. Leah and I both work with women and you know, help them to access these places inside of their yonis, their sacred spaces, their vaginas, you know, so that there's no, you know, they don't have to be a certain person for us. They can be, they can be messy, they can be wild, they can, they can have the ugly.

Leah: They're not being performative.

Dr Willow: Yeah. And then that can allow them to sort of reach a certain level of comfort in sounding and breathing that then they can take home to partnership.

Leah: Yeah, I wanna piggyback on that and I want to really put a strong. It can be simple in the way that we describe it, but it's a real journey. And it's just like any trauma we've had, it's an inflection point. So, you know, when we go through a tragedy, it shapes the rest of our life. It's like turning right when you meant to turn left and it changes you forevermore. And what we're describing in how we're talking about the sounding and the feeling and the breathing, it's in a ritual.

So how would I explain a ritual? A ritual very similar to a trauma or a crisis that you endured. It has the same inflection point. A ritual, it's a ritual of great power, but it's of a positive power that ends up shaping the rest of your life. And what's interesting about rituals is that it can go in underneath a trauma, shake it up so you can be emburdened by that earlier inflection point. So that's what we mean when we talk about practices and we use tantra as this intentional container that is ritualistic so that you have the space to go to these deeper places inside of your system and to do the purification process and the unburdening. And with my journey, I was sexually abused as a child, had all sorts of self worth issues, had to go through a whole portal of exploration to free myself. I learned three really important things when doing this work.

One is there are some places in these practices that I can only go by myself. I'm the only one that has the key to unlock a part of my essential healing. Then there's some practices that it's like another sister has the key. If she can witness me and witness these sounds and witness this movement of blocked energy as that frees myself, as she brings the love and the presence that unlocks a part of my essential self that I now have access to. And then there's some things that I have found only the masculine can hold for me. It's like having a man stand for all the men in my past that I have felt used, abused, and misused by and there they are standing in their love for me and wanting the best for me, that opens another part of my psyche, and then I can move that sort of current through.

And what this all does is it makes more space for me to feel love in my system because I've gotten rid of some of the gunk. So what Willow and I do is we hold space for both men and women, couples, individuals, to take themselves on that kind of ride where they have someone that is trustworthy, present, who's done their work, so that they, too, can trust, that they can let some of this up and out of their system so that they can magnetize the kind of love that they most desire, or they can have a breakthrough in the relationship that they're in. So we actually have a retreat that we do this with all women, because a lot of women, it's like they need to do this work first with a woman before they feel like they can do it with a man, because the other participants, they don't want anything from her. They're not interested in her being impressive or somehow sexually attractive, like, they're there so that this woman can have a rebirth and they can hold it.

Dr Willow: It's also really useful to somatically heal by getting your body next to other bodies who have gone on the journey already. You know, and so that part of what we bring and. And to bring and to have a whole group of women who are on the journey, you know, many of whom have done the work and are somewhere along the path. You know, for a woman who's like, that sounds interesting, I know I need that, but I'm super scared to even step onto the path, this is an opportunity to be held in so much love and so much safety. There's nowhere to get, there's nowhere to be. You come as you are, you bring all of your traumas, you bring all of yourself, you bring all of the constructs, and we just be with them, we be present with them, you know, as a group, as a collective, until it releases or until you have a different relationship with it.

So often when we go through traumas or pains or, you know, hard experiences in life, we just want to get away from it. We just want shove it under the rug. Throw it in the basement, don't look at that anymore. And that is what we want. We actually want to do the opposite. After a certain period of time, we want to, like, turn toward that wound, that pain, that trauma, and find out what's there for us, because there's medicine for us in those places that we shun and make shameful and bad. And that's where we get to then step into more wholeness of ourselves, and bring, like a forgiveness to ourselves, to our transgressors. It's like when we can let go at that deep level, we can free ourselves up.

Leah: Yeah, we're less triggered going forward. We up level in what we attract in our life, both from partners to friendships to careers, to how we perceive money, to how we are more healthy, how we treat our bodies, our entire perspective starts to shift. So even though we're working with one of what we call a chakra, which would be the chakras, there happens to be one in your genitals. It's one of the more powerful chakras. But we're not only working on your sexuality, this is a full body experience.

It's a different type of a therapeutic approach. Many of us are in therapy because we recognize something from our past is kind of screwing us up and we're afraid it's gonna screw up our future. But we're very limited in the progress we can make because it's only working with the mind and if you're lucky, a little bit of the throat. But like we've repeated, the issues are in the tissues. It's the body that's holding onto the memories that create the triggers that create the safety strategies. So this is one of the fastest, most effective therapeutic processes that oh, by the way, rewards you with some great pressure.

And we've been given such a crappy sex education, and we haven't normalized female sexuality to the degree that we have with men. And so we really want to make a correction for those people who are going, yeah, deep down, I know there's something more to sex. I know there and know there is. Well, this answers that question.

Dr Willow: And it starts with you. So, you know, finding that relationship to spirituality and how it ties together with sexuality, then you can bring that to partnerships once you have a sense of what that means for you, because each person is so unique and so individual, and so they're just going to have their own, you know, journey along that path of where do sexuality and spirituality and healing of the psyche merge. And how do I bring that to not just partnership, but everything in my life? All relationships change when we start to awaken in this way.

Erin: You know, it sounds like for women who are on a journey of self exploration and reawakening and discovering themselves, a lot of women listening to the podcast might be, you know, headed into menopause or headed out of a long marriage or at some sort of pivotal transition point in their lives, which happens to a lot of us. Hotter Than Ever is all about giving women permission and ideas for how to do things differently in the second half of their lives. And so I wanted to ask you a final question, which is, what do you want our listeners to take away from this conversation about what is possible in their own lives and their sexuality and intimate relationships today and in the future?

Leah: I'll go first. Curiosity. Curiosity suffocates judgment. And so if you find yourself being critical to yourself and the way you talk to yourself, if you find yourselves in judgment of others, get curious. That's interesting that I just had that thought. That's interesting I just put myself down. That's interesting I'm just judging how that woman's dreams.

Erin: Wonder what that's about, huh?

Leah: And just see if you can't just switch that judgment, that critical thought into curiosity. That is such an important part of shifting your perspective and having a positive life.

Dr Willow: So good, yeah. And I would say, you know, just, you're worth it. You're so worth it. This is the one of the biggest, deepest, core wounds in the feminine is, am I worthy? I'm not worthy. But you are. And so finding that place inside of you that knows that you are and having a conversation, maybe the place inside of you that says, oh, yeah, I'm worthy. I deserve that. I need a pattern interrupt in my life. I need to explore this side of my sexuality. Like, this is going to change my life, I'm ready for this up leveling. Where's that place inside of you? It might be in your heart. And there might also be another place in the same area, like in the same heart area that's like, nope, you're not worthy. You can't have it. Who do you think you are? You think you can be like them? No way. Da, da, da, da, da. Whatever. All this stuff. And what I would encourage you to do is have a conversation. Find the places in your soma where those places live, the one who says, you are worth it, you are worthy of it. And the one who says, no, you're not. And just sit down with your journal and just converse back and forth between these two places in your body until they're on the same page. And that can be just such an incredible, miraculous practice that will lead you to saying yes to the things that you've been saying no to your whole life.

Erin: I feel like we've just scratched the surface of the ancient wisdom that the two of you have been studying and sort of bringing into your current practice, like, for the last 20 years. But I'm so grateful to have had this conversation, to have opened these doors of inquiry for the audience. And thank you for the work you do, it's really profound.

Leah: Thank you, Erin. And can we leave your listeners to the free kit?

Erin: One hundred percent. Everybody loves a free kit.

Leah: All right, so if you go to sexreimagine.com/adventure we have three categories of trainings, and you can choose one of them, and you'll get different tutorials having to do with different tantric themes. One of them is sexual obstacles, you know, having to do with performance. Another one is intimacy obstacles. And another one is communication obstacles. And we give you at least three different trainings in each one of those modules for you to learn some tools that you can even try tonight.

Erin: That is so great. That is so great. I hope the listeners will take advantage of that. Thank you.

Leah: Thanks again for having us.

Dr Willow: Thanks, Erin.

Erin: Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. I hope you enjoyed this conversation about the ancient wisdom around sexuality. It makes sense, right, that there are thousands of years of learning and practice from different cultures that we can benefit from. And it also makes sense that this is probably the first time that a lot of us are hearing about it because of the culture of shame and secrecy around our pleasure that exists in our society.

Is there someone in your life who needs to hear this conversation? Someone who's like, really into yoga, maybe? Everyone has that friend who's really into yoga. Tell her to take it to the next level, take it to Tantra. By listening to this episode, you can share it with her directly from the podcast app where you are listening to it right now. Go ahead, share it. Yep. Put it in her email address. No, you text it to her. Okay. Text it to her, that's better. Okay. Great job.

Hotter Than Ever is produced by Eric Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating with vocals by Issa Fernandez.

The one mystery that this episode did not solve for me is where are the men who are open to this kind of exploration and deep connection? If anyone has someone like that that they want to introduce me to, you know where to find me.