top of page
Search

Ep 119: Erotic Wholeness with Darshana Avila


What if your sexuality wasn’t just a separate part of your life, but a vital expression of your life force? Aimee sits down with Darshana Avila, an Erotic Wholeness Guide and Somatic Experiencing practitioner, to explore the radical act of reclaiming pleasure. 


If you’re ready to come home to your body in a way that feels powerful, pleasurable, and safe, this episode is for you.


Darshana takes us through:

—Why we separate sexuality from the rest of our lives and how to bridge that gap

—The true definition of eroticism as your core life force and creative energy

—How releasing people-pleasing in the bedroom empowers you in every area of life

—How deep, consent-based healing can unlock grief, vulnerability, and authentic connection

—The difference between performative intimacy and true, embodied partnership

And so much more!


Darshana Avila is a trauma-informed somatic educator, practitioner, and international speaker who helps people reconnect with the most essential aspects of themselves — their truth, their desires, and their capacity for profound pleasure and power. 

Known for her grounded, candid, and relational approach, she bridges the worlds of embodiment, emotional intelligence, and personal agency with depth and accessibility.

Darshana’s work has been featured on Netflix’s Sex, Love & goop, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and numerous leading podcasts.


Connect with Darshana:


Connect with Aimee:

Instagram: @aimeetakaya 

Facebook: Aimee Takaya 

Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠www.freeyoursoma.com⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠


LISTEN WHILE READING!

A: Hey there, listener. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about something called erotic wholeness. What could that mean? How could we get there? And what might benefit in our lives or in our bodies or in our careers or in our relationships from this really powerful connection with ourselves and our sensuality? 


Today I have Darshana Avila, and we're going to go there. We're going to talk about some big things. We're going to talk about why we tend to separate sexuality from the rest of our lives and what it means to really come home to our bodies in a way that feels pleasurable, powerful, and safe. 


So stay tuned.  


A: Every day there is a forgetting, and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy and here is where you free your soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion and ultimately from fear to love. 


A: Hello Darshana. It's nice to meet you.


D: Thanks, Aimee. Glad to be here with you. 


A: Yeah, I mean, I was reading over the stuff you sent over before a podcast and this term that you're using erotic wholeness, I thought it was really kind of spoke to me in terms of what's missing for a lot of us on our somatic healing journey. You know, many people are working to heal their nervous system and they're working to overcome trauma and all these things and we forget about pleasure. We forget about joy. 


And we forget about sexuality being something that can be a big part of our healing journey as well. So I wanted to start with a question for you to maybe kind of orient our listeners to like what the discussion is going to be about today. You know, why do we as humans and as a society, right? It's a big question. Why do we make such a separation between sexuality and the rest of our lives? 


D: Yeah, oh my gosh, it's a great question. I mean, we could have a whole podcast episode about that alone. So we'll see where we go. You know, there's a reason why I call my body of work erotic wholeness. It would be accurate to say that what I do is that I'm a sex coach or a sex and intimacy coach. One of the certifications I hold is a sex illogical body worker. But what I found in the decades of my own personal experience, you know, the laboratory of my own life, and I've been in private practice for 11 years, is that we need to have a conversation about what eroticism is. 


And that is really integral to answering the question that you've put out there. Because what's happened in our culture, our dominant culture that is rooted in things like patriarchy and capitalism and systems that we, many of us nowadays are really recognizing, limit us in so many ways. In the suppression of our life force energy, which I hold eroticism as that, it's our vital energy, it's our creative animating force and the suppression of that. 


And the narrow, narrow definition of eros as sexuality, which is something that in our culture is put on a pedestal in certain contexts and then horrifically shamed and stigmatized and others. There's a lot of confusion. There's there's a lot of like a lack of coherence that many of us feel like, wait a minute, like I'm in a body that is designed to feel pleasure and sex feels good. And, you know, like, why am I being told that this is a bad thing or that there's a right or wrong way to be sexual. And I see that if I show an outward presentation of my sexuality that meets a certain standard. 


I get a particular reward in some instances or I might feel consequences and others like we have so much conditioning that this is the answer to your question. You know, we have so much conditioning that has made sex and erotic expression a really fraught and complicated thing that's been manipulated by culture and by powers that that be systems of oppression, as opposed to us really just being able to have this beautifully innocent. 


And I use that word with a lot of intention, innocent as in an adulterated innocent as in native essential like think about how we come out of the womb and how we develop as young children where everything that we do is sensual tactile, we put things in our mouths, we go to what feels good in our bodies, we seek joy and delight when something doesn't feel good, we let those emotions move through freely unimpeded, all of that is an expression of life force energy. And as adults in the westernized, you know, modern cultures, like, we are taught to shut that down and shut that down and shut that down. I often say that we exist in a culture of disembodiment. 


Right. We're taught to disconnect from our bodies to distrust the wisdom of our bodies to really separate ourselves from their cycles and rhythms and impulses. And so when looked at through that lens, it makes all the sense in the world that many of us are really distanced from our sexuality and it exists in a very specific silo that we do not see as being connected to other aspects of our lives. Yet, when we're speaking about eroticism in a broader context, sexuality is one expression of that life force energy, but so is activism. And so is artistry. So is any kind of creative process. So is you channeling your passion into your career or the way you're raising your children or showing up in your community. It's life force, it's vital energy. So that's, that's my little teeing up what this gets to be about. 


A: Oh, yeah, no, I think it's, you know, I think you answered that very well in terms of and it helped it helped kind of define even more, you know, the term erotic wholeness, you know, to have you kind of go into it that way where it's like, oh, you know, this is our life force energy, this is the experience of being in a body it is a sensuous experience bodies are sensuous, you know, but I think that also what you're speaking to is the way that pleasure has been commodified, and also externalized. 


So, you know, and this was definitely true for me, like any early part of my life. I felt like how I had been conditioned was that my body was something that was meant to bring other people like men in particular, right, some kind of joy or satisfaction. And I didn't really know how to find that on my own in my own body. You know, and I attempted to at different times but the wires weren't built. 


They weren't built for that because they didn't have any models for that. You know, I had like lots of all the weird cultural crap that we have, you know, around like what I should look like and what my body is supposed to create, you know, an experience for other people like like all those things that I'm sure many women and even lots of men can relate to, right. Totally. 


D: I mean, you're, you're basically a beautiful like case study of most of my clients because my clients are primarily women. I work with couples and so some and sometimes individual men, but the vast majority of my clients are cis women, or they are non-binary people who were assigned female at birth and their formative years were acculturated as a girl in our society. And what are girls taught exactly what you described. We are taught that we are an object of another person's pleasure. 


We are taught that our worth is defined in our value in our attractiveness in our ability to be pleasing accommodating so on and so forth to others. That is called people pleasing. That is good girl syndrome. 


That is perfectionism. So many of our adaptive strategies, protective strategies that result from that, you know, it all like and that's, you know, a big place that we can go with this is why do we perpetuate these things, even when objectively as adults like we might the way you just described see the limitations of it. Yeah, it's such a deeply ingrained way that our young selves learned to create safety and belonging and power to get power to get involved. 


You know, so for many there's a complicated dynamic where it's like, yeah, this is to your point. Like, if I can be sexually pleasing and attractive, I get the goodies. I, you know, like, I mean, in the most basic sense, it wasn't all that long ago that a woman's ability to have all of her material needs met were only through her husband, right? Right, right. 


What she could be to a man. 


A: Yeah. Exactly. 


D: And so while that may not be the reality that we're living in in 2025, even if there's a group of people who would love to take us back to that time. And that is all the more reason that we that I want to talk about a radicalness and that I'm doing the work that I do because for me, you know, this is my activism and I am very, very clear and outspoken about that like this is culture building work here. The personal liberation that any individual like, you know, if it's you, for instance, who decides, okay, I want to come work with you, Darce, you know, like I want my erotic wholeness, like the personal liberation that you experience is a direct service to our collective liberation. So I do what I do to be able to hold that space and to offer that guidance because I know that this is what our world needs. 


And I'm using this as an example of what I mean when I say it's about life force energy. So yes, a lot of people come to me because they want to have a better orgasm. They want to learn more about their pleasure. They want to feel more confident in knowing that their likes their dislikes their boundaries their preferences and be able to communicate with a partner clearly. All of those things are beautiful reasons to want this. 


And everyone walks out of here with those skills then and those capacities, not only being something that shows up in the bedroom, but that's going to go with you that empowered sense of your own agency is going to go with you everywhere you go it's going to show up and channel into every aspect of your life so this really is wholeness then is a nod to how this influences absolutely everything. 


A: Did you know that your muscles are holding on to thoughts, memories and feelings. If you have a tight neck or back you're not just getting old, you're experiencing a build up of tension from the life you've lived. Most people don't know this, but there is a part of your brain that can reverse and prevent chronic tension. When you relax your muscles you not only move better and regulate your nervous system, but you also free yourself from the grip the past has over your body. So you can live with freedom, confidence and enjoy your life now. How does that sound. 


Join me Amy to kaya and discover what my clients are raving about at you can free your soma.com. Right, right. And I think the other side of that coin you know that kind of it's strange isn't it because in one way like what you're describing we discover some of us very young. I mean I think I was probably like eight or nine when you know now I understand oh that was a creepy pedophile in the store. Like I didn't get that when I was like eight or nine, which is like, Oh, this man is like being really nice to me. 


You know what I mean, like he likes how I look he's telling me how pretty I am. And then you feel this sense of like a little bit of power in what would otherwise be a very powerless situation so a lot of women or girls you know the Lolita thing it's like oh wow like I wheeled this my sensuality is some kind of power that I can wield. Well at the same time, we're in this dynamic where we feel so powerless because we like need the other person in some way to be reflecting right that that attractiveness or that value. 


Otherwise, you know we feel invisible or we feel like we're disconnected and there's such power to what you're speaking of where we get to take responsibility for the internal experience that we have that sexuality and eroticism isn't about, you know, the exchange like it is about the exchange but it's also about the inner exchange right like the internal thing that a person is going through their connection to themselves. 


D: Right and so the other thing that contributes to the disempowerment is like even though yes on the outside it might feel like I'm attractive I'm like I'm getting the attention I'm getting the goodies. What you're not getting and what you're also not giving yourself and this is not about any kind of like victim shaming but but what you're not giving yourself is a chance to be vulnerable and to be known authentically. And so when when that performative layer is the basis that we are relating from and that's all we allow another person to see. So much of us is getting missed in that dynamic then we don't get to be vulnerable we don't get to be our beautifully messy cells. 


We fear that I mean and this takes the shape of everything from, you know, some of the common myths that we're telling ourselves and believing I take too long, I need too much. My pleasure doesn't matter as long as my partner satisfied it's all good. Oh I can't cry here I can't bring my real emotions in it'll ruin the mood if I say what I like. I mean I'm just off the cuff narrating some of the things that are going through most of our heads. When we are maintaining that performative layer of intimacy, which is not the same as real intimacy, and the way that it compounds over time. 


What happens then is it's not only that you're missing out on the chance for vulnerability and authenticity to be a shared experience between you and another. What builds up our layers of self abandonment. And, and we, we may not consciously feel this or articulated in the way that I'm about to but it's really this sense of your betraying yourself. And that accumulates and a lot of resentment can build a lot of numbness and dissociated tendencies arise from the fact that like we're super out of contact with our true needs. Something that happens a lot in my sessions and maybe I should offer a little context to the listeners. Sure. 


Yeah, yeah, yeah. I call myself an erotic wholeness guide that's my own self style title. Two of the main pillars of my practice that that are certifications that I am not the only person out there. One, many of you may know, given the podcast we're listening to is that I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner. And that is a trauma healing modality. And even though there's a lot of ways that one can work in that body of work. 


I do a lot of the SE based touch. I use a lot of the physical interventions that are part of that modality to work with my clients because many of them have very extensive trauma histories. Some it's simply the trauma of the culture that we live in. But the other piece of the other pillar is sex illogical body work and I want to introduce y'all to that because it's pretty fringy and not many people know what it is. It's an erotic therapeutic modality. So I do hands on hands in healing with my clients, a.k .a. I am a professional pussy stroker. And I love the like tongue in cheekness of that. 


And it's also the truth. You know, I take my clients on a journey that begins with nervous system regulation and embodiment practices, explorations of consent, building up vocabulary and communication skills and little by little we build up to them being able to have one directional sexual experiences in my session space. And what that means one directional is I do the touching, they receive the touch. 


It's not a reciprocal experience. And it's a fascinating thing because very, very few of us have ever had the opportunity to be fully given over to a sexual encounter to be in this expression of eroticism, only for ourselves, not worried about the partner, not worried about pleasing somebody else, not worried about am I taking too long or can I say what I want because all the work that we've done leading up to that is to build first and foremost a felt sense of safety in the client and you know, and also then an external sense of safety in the container that I provide that they know they have total confidence that that's available for them. 


And what happens a lot of times when I'm working with clients is they'll have a beautiful ecstatic experience perhaps a really powerful climax. And then on the other side of that crack open into this like well of undifferentiated grief. Tears just start moving their bodies racked with these sobs. And it's not even necessarily a bad thing. 


A: I mean, it's more this has been held in the body, every sexual encounter where the performance was leading. Every time there was that that invulnerability that that protective strategy of oh I can't be my full self here. 


Those tender parts got shoved further and further and further down. And for many of my clients it's in this session that is the first time they've actually felt safe enough to release that and to be witnessed to be that vulnerable. Now imagine what happens if we actually have the circumstances in our personal life for that. And some people listening might be like I do good for you. Amazing. And I know through you know the lens of my experience that many, many people don't. 


They don't it's true. So this is a big opportunity. It's amazing I feel like you know what was it like what 15 years ago there was this book vagina that came out by Naomi right. 


D: Yeah, and in that book she talks about Yoni massage, which it sounds like what you do is way more like holistic and you know because now they're calling Yoni massage like pelvic floor work which can be very deep personalized it seems because I have clients who get that work done and it's it can. While it's intimate it's not intimate in this psycho emotional way, depending on the practitioner I'll say. No, I mean the primary difference is that, like for instance if you're seeing a pelvic floor physical therapist, and that's obviously like a medicalized right right. It's not pleasure centric. 


Right. It's centered around relieving function function and exactly pelvic floor tone and things like that, whereas the space that I hold is very much pleasure centric. It is all about you getting to know the anatomy of your arousal, the different pathways that you can take to feel pleasure. It's a very intimate and thoughtful exploration of the ways you like to be touched the pace you want to move at sure that you get to learn about yourself. And that's what I was saying is the missed experience for most of us. 


Like, can you imagine 1415 1617 year olds coming into their sexuality and having a space to be initiated and introduced to themselves with this degree of intimacy before they start exploring with partners and coming into partnered intimacy then with knowledge about their own bodies. That's not just born of oh I saw this on porn or my my 


A: friend right right right this is a disembodied way. Yeah. Right. You know, so it's really, I mean at its foundation what I'm offering is a very profound sex education that that most of us needed once upon a time and absolutely didn't get, but it's never ever too late. And it's that integration of a trauma informed and very consent based dynamic that even you know back to the Pelted floorwork consent is a really big thing and I can't tell you how many of my clients are here seeing me because of medical trauma. Because, because of things done in a well intentioned supposedly safe environment that were not consent based that that felt like. 


Violating and violating yeah no it's crazy. I spoke to someone recently about it was a women's clinic right and they were talking about their different practices at this clinic right and then the 2025 and the woman said, Oh yeah we practice like consent based. Pap smears, meaning that you insert the speculum and that my brain was just like, what, like I've never experienced that I would get to insert the speculum. Yeah, that you would just explain to me how to hold it and then I would get to do that. Instead of having somebody just shove this thing up in me and clamp down on my cervix. 


I was like, I literally was like this should have been how it was done the entire time. But you know the truth is is that there's level layers of readiness for this I think that they are important to talk about you know like, because of the trauma that people have and obviously like you are super experienced and learned on how to like hold space for this but there's a certain kind of person who's going to gravitate towards working with you going to say yes to that whole process. 


I mean I, I literally know women who won't even self insert a tampon. Like they will not touch down there, because they again have like a lot of layers of shame and discomfort. They have to use an applicator and when they borrow a tampon from me, they're irritated because I have those OB ones where you actually push it in and they're like, you know, and I'm like, this is all I've ever used because it's weird to me to not be connected to where this thing is going if I'm going to put something up there. I want to know where it's going. 


D: I mean that right there is the it's kind of at the beating heart of it the disconnect from our bodies yet again the fact that we're taught you touching my or putting a finger in my vagina is a source of it like, we like where where on earth did that come from by and it did not come from any of us arriving out of our birthing parents womb and having those beliefs hardwired that is cultural conditioning that is misogyny that is enforced in so many implicit and explicit ways to control to keep us pliable and cooperative inside of a culture that's built on all of the systemic oppression that really has hated women for a very long time and hated femininity and hated our humanity or messy humaneness of what it is to be in a body which you know as that you had mentioned earlier and I'm saying too it's like it's intrinsically a sensuous experience and it's not I really want to be mindful that like if someone listening is like oh shut up because I don't want to touch myself. This is not making you wrong inviting you dear listener to consider. Why do I feel so uncomfortable. 


Why am I afraid of my body why do I hold these negative beliefs and if you have a curiosity to answer those questions. That's a beautiful place to begin. You're 100% right Amy that like to do work with me. This is the deep end. 


A: I am not. 100% yeah. Most people's first stop. Most of my clients I've done a lot of therapy. Many of them have explored other forms of somatic healing or Tantra or something right. Yeah and I mean and Tantra which you know you mentioned Yoni massage you're mentioning Tantra now and what I'll say there is while there are some amazing people calling their work that it's not it's a realm I got into the work that I do now. Having moved through the Neo Tantra world. Oh yeah yeah the red Tantra. You know like what that is is the very westernized hyper sexualized version of Tantra that most people know about. I'm also trained in a classical Tantra lineage where it which is sex is like I don't know an eighth. I mean this is an off the cuff number like an eighth of the wisdom that is available there and then the rest has absolutely nothing to do with sex. 


And yet here you know in our culture is like ooh sex okay I'm gonna gaze into your eyes and I'm gonna have these like you know forever orgasms and it's like the amount of harm done in those spaces because they're not truly rooted in empowered embodied consent because there isn't clear there aren't clear rules of engagement between teachers and facilitators and coaches. Sure, you can go get a Yoni massage as a one off experience and in the early days of my private practice I offered that I offered people the option of a single session. Now, that is not anywhere remotely possible in my world, you know you you go through an arc to really build that foundation so that you can feel assured and I can feel assured as your practitioner. That you can speak for yourself and and you can integrate the experience well. And you know I want to be mindful like I'm not knocking other people's choices or other practitioners practices like without knowing them specifically. 


I simply want to invite anybody who's considering like maybe maybe there's something here maybe I want to explore this like really think about like what is going to happen inside of a 90 minute single session with someone who's there to like be like okay I'm going to give you a Yoni massage. As opposed to this being a possible opportunity for some very deep formative healing and repatterning and then opening up to a completely new level of what your erotic expression gets to be. Right, and I think that you know you're saying it well like this is a process and it's a relearning and an education that takes time and commitment because you know whatever we're holding down there didn't build in a day or 90 minutes. It built over our lifetimes and our bodies are miraculous and they really can process and heal things when given the time and space to do so. But we don't give our bodies the time and space to do so. 


You know, it can actually be re traumatizing, or it can be, you know, ineffective, just ineffective in terms of where we're actually trying to like arrive, you know, in terms of this erotic wholeness or this feeling that I'm actually connected to what I want real time and able to express it. 


D: Yeah, right. Because we know healing is not a linear process. Anyone who has taken a step on their own healing journey or who facilitates for others, we know that it's a fact. 


It's not a linear process. And when it comes to our sexuality in particular, what happens for a lot of people too is that we might move through a phase of feeling like really like the call it your slut era call it whatever you want where it's like, yeah, I'm super into sex. Sex is great. I want to have it all the time. And then when you find yourself somewhere down the line in circumstances, perhaps in a really secure and emotionally invested partnership, perhaps it's simply a facet of your own maturation process. 


Maybe you find a therapist or a healer of some other sort that you're working with. And what happens is you're in a space where, oh my goodness, I can be vulnerable. Oh my goodness, I can explore all these layers that have gone untouched that have just been compartmentalized. So sometimes it can almost seem like you're regressing with this. 


A: Right, right. But it's not it's an uncovering of things that were already there. 


D: It's very much the same. It's very similar. And, you know, the work I do is body work as well as like, you know, movement practice that I guide people through. And it's a very similar process to what you're saying. I mean, I'm not focusing on the erotic side of it in my sessions, but I absolutely do believe that people need to be committed to a process. And I, you know, I see that you've developed retreats. And I would love to hear about how that works in a retreat setting. Like, you know, are the people who come to your retreats new to this, or is there kind of like. you know, a, do they need to have some kind of experience with you already to join in, you know, a retreat experience with others? Yeah, well, it's just so the word retreat gets used two ways in my business. And I mostly facilitate a lot of private retreats. 


And what that means is I'm based in Oakland, California, and I have clients come to work with me from different parts of the country from different parts of the world. And so that means we have to do things in a condensed timeline. And I refer to that as a personal retreat or an immersion where we spend three to four days together moving through the same process, the same arc that a local client who might come and see me for a two hour session every other week for a minimum of three months. Like, we're going through the same experiences just at a different cadence. A different rate. Yeah. 


Right. As of this moment, I have never facilitated a group retreat that matches what goes on in the private work. My group retreats will definitely focus on the same material thematically and there's an experiential component. But because I can't give hands on experiences to a group all at once, you know, what I sometimes facilitate our experiences that center on solo sex and self pleasure, pelvic floor mapping things that we can do within for ourselves. And I can guide you into that in a really beautiful way. Sometimes the practices are not sexual and it's more embodiment focused, and it's opening up to somatic and more intellectual inquiry and conversations about these themes and where we're getting stuck in ourselves and those protective strategies we talked about earlier like where are those coming online. 


How is that blocking me. So there's a lot of different ways that it gets shaped but at this moment in time private practice is really where I take people on on the deep journeys. 


A: Yeah, that makes sense. It's very much intimate work and people, you know, when they're in that like purity of a facilitator who's just being that mirror for them of their needs, so they can learn about themselves and know themselves. 


It's really huge. And so like that they don't have any other person there to kind of, I don't want to say like muddy it but you know like kind of get too much interference is really important that they feel that sense total sense of belongingness and that in that moment. 


D: Yeah, and a perfect example is that even though I work with couples, a lot of my clients who see me individually are partnered, you know, like some of them are single but a lot of them are partnered and still choosing this for themselves as a solo exploration, then they take it home to their partnership. They bring their newfound empowerment and sense of agency. They bring this new horizon of like, ooh, I'm curious about all of these things sexually like I want to try it. They bring their vocabulary about consent and their confidence to communicate home to their partners. And in the best case scenario, it revolutionizes the culture of their relationship. 


Sometimes people work with me individually and then they're like, okay, time for my partner to come in now too. You know, so it can take different shapes but your point of how meaningful and profound a transformation can happen when someone holds a space for us with such high integrity and individualized focus. You know, we're all deserving of that and that's definitely another piece worth mentioning is a lot of us whether we know it or not we have worth issues or we have self esteem issues. 


Is it okay for me to get this much attention. Is it okay for me to have this amount of time and energy poured into me. Is it okay for me to express myself in such a big way like many of us if we really tuned into ourselves around those questions. We'll find that parts of us are like, no, I don't I don't feel like I'm worthy of that or it doesn't feel safe to me. It feels like I have to earn it right. 


A: I have to give something in order to receive and so it's a pretty profound thing to just let yourself receive. 


D: It's huge. It's huge and and it's also a very important part of the healing because you are worthy. I don't need to know who you are to know that you are worthy like we all are worthy of this degree of care of this opportunity to know ourselves with such a profound level of intimacy to access our sense of power and pleasure. So it's really the question is not are you worthy. It's like, what do you need to do to really trust your worthiness. What do you need to do to be able to open up to that. 


And when I say what do you need to do. It might be that you need to find a great therapist or a trusted friend or a coach or someone who can help you really believe that what I'm saying is true before you go to work with Amy or you go to work with me right. Like, it's, you know, we can only begin where we're at, and we deserve to be met exactly where we're at. And so like I said, I'm, I'm very clear that I'm a deep end practitioner. And for the people who are ready. 


It's a beautiful place to be and for those who are more in the shallows. Great. Take your time. And if you want to swim this way. Circle back. Circle back when you're ready. 


A: Yeah, absolutely. So kind of going back to, you know, some of these fundamental questions and I think this is going to, you know, kind of tie in with what we're just talking about. 


For people who are going, yes, I am ready. Right. What are some of the things that start shifting in their lives outside of sexuality like that realm if there is such a separate realm. You know, like, what are some of the things like, is this something that disrupts the other patterns in their life? Like you mentioned, you know, relationships or their job or like what they're spending their time doing. Like, can you give us like some, maybe some case studies or stories of like, you know, the different ways that people transform through this particular type of work. Absolutely. 


D: And then I'll ground it in saying that if one of the outcomes of working with me is that you let go of your people pleasing tendencies or you begin to loosen the grip on your perfectionism. That's not only going to happen in your sex life, right? 


That's going to impact others. So I just want to offer that framing so you can like come into this with a context like here is how it applies elsewhere because it's not just about the sex. The sex is like the delicious cherry whipped cream sprinkles on top like, like, and it's good. 


It's tasty. But this is really about like a deep unwinding and unlearning of patterns and limiting beliefs and conditioned behaviors that were never who you truly authentically are. You were never that you were just conditioned to that. And so that authenticity carries into every aspect of your life. Things that I've seen happen for my clients. One amazing person who I worked with, we started working together in 2019. And she came to me with her husband, and they had been together since their late teen, early 20s. They were each other's first. 


Both had very religious backgrounds, had three kids, everything looked great on the outside, and they had a lot of sex actually, and she had orgasms pretty reliably. So you might ask, well, what the hell are they doing working with me? But what they were doing working with me is that she was noticing that she was really having a psych herself up for sex. And that it was very, very rare that she would initiate or feel desire of her own accord. It had become a maintenance thing. I'll do this for you to keep the peace kind of thing, weekly sex date so that they're not having fights about it. 


And they really wanted to figure out if they could enhance their sex life together. Now I'm going to give you a case. I'm giving you a case study that is not going to be everybody's reality because I'm going to fast forward you to 2025. So we started in 2019. We had multiple chapters of our work together. 


The most recent was last year doing a personal immersion for her, who is now them. And what was uncovered over the arc of their relationship was that she was queer. And then, oh, not only am I queer, like, I'm really not attracted to males. I want to be in a relationship with a female. It's time for me to leave this marriage that was all I thought was ever possible for myself as a good religious girl was to get married young, make babies, stay in this relationship. 


And so fast forward to now. And they are fully in their non binary queerness. They're in a loving partnership with a woman, their kids, one of whom is trans is thriving. New job, new home, new life, a circle of friends that when we were initially started there was this deep longing for community, and she felt so disconnected and struggled to like find a real sense of intimacy in friendship. 


And now has an incredible circle. I was invited to their housewarming party. It's just like this amazing, like, people surrounding them with like so much love. And so that's an example of someone who had a very radical transformation. And like I said, not everyone who comes to work with me is going to be questioning their gender, their sexual orientation, whether or not to stay in their marriage, should the career change, like, they really upended the apple cart in every regard, but it shows you the potential. Other clients who I've worked with, you know, what's happened is, and you see this so so my work was showcased on a Netflix show, Sex, Love and Goop that came out in late 2021 and it's how a lot of people still know me and find me now. 


And I'll use the couple that I worked with on the show as an example. Camille and Chandra. Chandra also had a more conservative religious upbringing and the way that that was manifesting in her body was vaginismus. She could not be penetrated. Her body locked down and braced. And so even though she's in this loving partnership and in her mind wants to be available, like, she was able to do a heal, we went on a healing journey together where she could be penetrated, where her body can soften where those defensive patterns release, and she could open up to pleasure with her partner. And her partner, who Camille's history was more around the performing for another person, the people pleasing, the, okay, it doesn't really matter what I want. 


I don't really know what I want as long as you're happy. And the work that we did together was to help her track when she was getting into that really dissociated state of performance and abandoning herself and give her permission to press the pause button and come into her body and actually adjust. Maybe that meant deescalate, maybe that meant change something going on in the moment of their intimacy together so that she could get present and really connect with her own desires and boundaries, and her orgasmic capacity like completely skyrocketed on the other side of that because she wasn't braced the whole time. 


A couple of examples off the cuff, there are so very many. But what it really boils down to is that you're connected to your body's wisdom. That's it, you know, I mean, it's not more complicated than that. That doesn't mean it's an easy thing to get to when you've been so disconnected, but when you're connected to your body's wisdom when you can really discern, I want to go left, I want to go right. It's a yes, it's a no. 


Not now, maybe later, like when we have our body giving us the clear signals and we have the capacity to listen and take that direction. There's no aspect of our life where we're not going to show up with that intact. Presently, for me, it's really exciting is many of us are doing a lot of work to keep our nervous systems regulated in the face of our socio political climate, so much instability, so much chaos, so much cruelty, and a well regulated nervous system as you know as a somatic practitioner like it's not just about oh, I'm chill all the time. Right. 


It actually made I can activate and engage and really assert my will with intention when I want to, and then I can back it off and settle and relax and become receptive when I want to it's that responsiveness. Exactly. Yeah. And so it's you know it's my practice right now and it's what I've been talking to a lot of people about is like how do we do that while you're scrolling your Instagram, full of snap benefits being cut or genocides or you know like we're living in a time with we're constantly bombarded with things that would very understandably dysregulate us. But when you do this work, your foundation is so solid, the resilience and the capacity that you build within yourself runs so deep that you can meet those aspects of life and feel powerful and feel at that choice that's what agency is about. 


A: So that's how I mean, I love it I think it's it's very needed, you know, in this day and age for people to have a professional, you know, skilled container facilitation, where these things because people sometimes find ways like you mentioned with Tantra or with these other, you know, any other kind of like addictive behavior, where it's actually you know what they're trying to do is something that they might not even know exists like work with you. But they're doing it in these ways that are causing more, more pain. 


Right. And I think you know I want to ask because everybody has a different point of view about this. And I've had a few other like sex educators and somatic people on the show who had their points of view. You know how do you feel about like things like vibrators or people using tools versus using their hands like what's what's your take on that in terms of how well is their nervous system going to respond if they need like a power tool basically to feel anything. 


D: Yeah, I have absolutely no judgment about the use of vibrators and toys, I celebrate people finding what works for them, and accessing their pleasure by any means necessary so long as it's consensual and not causing harm. So I think it's fantastic if you find a tool or a toy that works for you and it gives you more pleasure. And so when you're, yay, what's also true is that are it's not a lie when that if you've ever heard it said that you're the biggest sexual organ exists between your ears, right, it's your brain. And so, let's talk about what happens in our brains, which is that when you are used to achieving your climax a certain way when you're used to getting stimulated a certain way. There's a neural pathway that is now a very, very well worn one the metaphor I often use is like, imagine that you're going through like a gorgeously maintained park on a beautifully paved pathway. There's no litter. 


It's just it's pristine. And if that is okay, I pull out my vibrator, I wiggle my body around a little bit or maybe like I rub my chest and my belly and then I put my vibrator on my clit, and I think about my fantasies and boom, orgasm. If that's your pathway that you have really, really, really established your brain is responding the moment you think about your vibrator, the moment you reach for your vibrator, the moment you know any q that oh I'm going to have that experience that I've now had so many times that it's like I could do this with my eyes closed and my hands behind my back. 


That pathway is so well established it's a really easy one to travel. Let's say now you want to go vibrator less. And that is the equivalent of bushwhacking through a jungle with a machete. As far as your neural pathway goes, you're going to have a much it's going to take a different effort. So, some people are like, Oh, am I going to like go numb? Am I going to break my clit like none of that is true. 


What is true is that if you are conditioned if there is a habit of a certain intensity of sensation that you are accustomed to, you might find that it's a lot harder to achieve the same experience with less sensation. So, you want to use vibrators more power to you. I use them. I love my vibrator. I can't imagine a world in which I ever let my vibrators go. Also, it's, you know, you want to get to know what's possible with just manual simulation or all stimulation or have you, you're going to have to go on a vibrator diet, and you're going to have to go into it knowing that it's probably not going to get you that peak release at all or maybe not at the same intensity initially. You've got to give your body a chance. 


You got to give your brain a chance to get used to this different degree of intensity, this different quality of stimulation and recreate or newly create a pathway that right now just doesn't exist. So that's my take on that. 


A: Thank you. Yeah, that sounds very thorough. I mean, like I said, there's people that have a lot of different opinions and views and I always kind of when I listen to people share their opinion or view where I'm listening to, you know, people kind of explain to me, like, you know, exploring this, I think we're also different neuro-physiologically. It's going to actually be different for different people in terms of, you know, and I feel like how you explained it with the well-worn pathway of this is, you know, how it goes for me, and maybe it would be beneficial to explore building another way, building another pathway, right, that could also be a way that you might experience things. Like I've had one woman friend of mine, she's like, I can't use vibrators. It all happens too fast. It's like a drive by orgasm. 


D: Yeah, you know, it's not a personal preference. Like, no, there's no objective right or wrong. It's the beautiful subjective experience. Like what feels good to you? I am never going to shame another person for how they choose to access their pleasure. Like I said, as long as it's consensual, you do you. And I think it's a really helpful thing because many people who use vibrators, who watch porn, who bring sex toys in, who dabble across the BDSM spectrum, even if it's just like the lightest little bit, like, there, what the common denominator there is, is a willingness to be curious, a willingness to experiment with some novel ingredients, if you will, to figure out, like, what does it for me? 


And that's a beautiful place to be. We want curiosity. We want experimentation to be part of our sex lives, because that's how we get to evolve and keep them dynamic and novel. So, and I want to make a little like an inclusion of like what I said about the whole neural pathway thing. This applies to not just like vibrator, no vibrator. It applies to the position you put your body in when you masturbate, for instance, which most of us, we've laid down a neural pathway. Whatever way we first started exploring our bodies and realized that we could touch ourselves and it would feel good. Like I have clients, for instance, who were like, well, when I was a little kid, I used to lay on my belly on top of a pillow and kind of like ride it between my legs. 


And so they can't come when they're laying on their back, because they haven't cultivated that pathway, right? So anything that has become really a deeply ingrained habit in your sex, you got to recognize that varying that habit may mean a slower build or a less satisfactory experience for a while, because you're laying down something new. But it doesn't mean that you can't open yourself up to new possibilities and really make a choice to like be, be in a concerted practice of what happens if I choose a different position. 


What happens if I'm a habitual porn watcher, if I stop, what happens if I use an insertable as opposed to a vibrator, not that those are mutually exclusive because there's vibrating insertables too, but you know, like, you know, like anything at any of the elements of your sexual experience that you want to vary just to see like, oh, what's this experiment like. And I really do believe that this experimenting or experimenting quality that you're speaking of, this is what starts happening when a person feels more calm and relaxed. Totally. 


D: In their body that it goes hand in hand like I see that with, you know, my clients to you know, we're not doing sexuality work all the time occasionally that shows up but like, you know, as their nervous system becomes more responsive, a.k .a. 


regulated, right? Yeah, they around it's like month two or month three, they're getting curious. They're getting curious about what their body can do now that they're not, you know, with me it's a lot of coming out of pain and things like this, you know, so they're not in pain anymore they're like curious about what their body can do. There's not this, there's not this like life or death, you know, fight or flight kind of dynamic that they're living anymore it's not black and white anymore. And so, you know, it again the product of like this kind of work that you're doing is fundamental because it's helping people to become in a state where they're curious again where they're where they're not like, Oh, I have to have an orgasm because if I don't there's something wrong with me, you know what I mean, versus like, well if I didn't have an orgasm today maybe it's okay it was fun. 


I'll try again tomorrow or I'll try again next time, you know, and be more relaxed about it. Yeah, I mean there's some you yeah yes yes yes to everything you just said, including that our ability to be curious to experiment to bring play and novelty into our experience whether we are in a sexual context or any other. That is a direct result of feeling safe and empowered. And so again, sex, work, art, how you raise your kids, your activism like this will apply this will carry over there. And also you just spoke at the end to the beauty of being non goal oriented to not feeling attached to a particular outcome. 


And we have been taught taught emphasis on that word to put orgasm on a pedestal and to define a quote unquote successful sexual experience by whether or not we have one. And there's actually a number of studies that show that really sexual satisfaction is not rooted in orgasm for the vast majority of women, it's not only women but for women that it's more about sensuality and emotional intimacy. So whether or not you achieve that peak moment of climax is not the only thing that can determine your sense of feeling really satisfied, lit up and in your pleasure, heart opened, relaxed in your body, all these other things. 


You know, I'll speak to my own experience there it's like, I can reliably give myself an orgasm me and my vibrator we got our rhythms like I know how to do that. What I find in my partnered sex is the deliciousness of co creating in real time attuning to each other's bodies shape shifting in a literal way what do I mean by that, taking different positions, engaging in different acts together all the energy that flows through my body the aliveness. That is so intoxicating or delicious that most of the time, I could care less if I come, because I could do that alone. 


A: You know, and again, this is my personal story, like, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to want an orgasm. What I am saying is that if that's the only thing that is giving you a sense of satisfaction, you have an opportunity to really expand your perspective, and get a lot more creative and curious about like what is possible for you in your sex life. 


What do you define as sex, is it only a penis in a vagina, is it only a climax, or would you like to consider a far more expansive inclusive definition of what sex is for you that includes sensuality and playfulness and that delicious co creation that I was just speaking to. So there's a lot of possibility there. Thank you. Yes, I agree 100%. It's like, we, again, going back to the first thing we talked about here, our conditioning keeps us so small, and it keeps the, you know, path so narrow and really so much of what you're doing is inviting people to really expand and widen what's possible for them. 


You know, again, from expanding from just sex and sexual sexuality to this whole erotic wholeness, right, who am I when I'm fully alive in my body, and I'm feeling and sensing and thriving and, you know, feeling everything in the moment, right, allowing that to like be part of me part of my response to life so this has been such a valuable conversation. I'm so grateful for, you know, you were listening to this and you've got a question or you've got a comment. 


I always invite listeners to engage. You can message me on Instagram. You can, you know, yeah, where do you tell people where they can find you actually? Are you on Instagram or where where people find you? 


D: I am. In Instagram took my account down a couple of years ago, but I came back recently. So you can find me on Instagram. My website, which is my name, darshana avala is a wonderful place to connect as well. I have a free community called Galgasm that really is just a repository of a lot of resources, including ebooks and guided meditations and prompts and embodiment practices and things that can kind of spark your journey, you know, wherever you are, right. 


I'm here right now. So I love also like you, I love hearing from people. So let me know that you heard this podcast and reach out with what resonated and certainly if you're interested in working with me then we should have a conversation about that and figure out what's right together if this is truly the aligned thing for you. So I very much look forward to hearing from from the listeners. Absolutely. 


A: Yeah, thank you so much. Do you have any last words of wisdom anything that's coming through through that you would like to say before we close? 


D: What I want to say is like you're good babe wherever you are, you're good. You deserve to be met where you are doesn't mean you can't want growth for yourself doesn't mean you can't want transformation for yourself. But this is an opportunity everything we've spoken about today is an opportunity it's a choice. It's a path that you can decide to walk down for yourself and and I really just want you to know like wherever you are is perfect you can only begin there and and if it's going to lead in my direction or you know some other practitioners direction like trust your instincts trust your intuition around that and go where you're led. 


A: I love that yeah inviting people to start from a place of acceptance and yeah, yeah, beautiful. Thank you again for this incredible conversation. I look forward to learning more and you know as you said about your experiences especially I have some people in the Bay Area that I'm thinking of particularly who might be interested so. I love that. 


D: Thank you again. You're welcome. Thanks Aimee. 


A: Hey there friends. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram @ Aimee Takaya and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of the somatic revolution and if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics consider leaving a review or a rating. And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now. 


 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page