(00:02) we have been duped by feminism sexual Liberation and anti-depressants we have been told that we are powerful and free now as women but we feel tired wired and bitter we’re mostly eating right exercising and meditating wrangling to-do lists and arranging playdates and yet there’s a haunting hollowness beneath the huge complaint what if I told you that there is a huge Storehouse a reservoir of energy inside of you that has not been tapped that you could feel light and pulsing excited and alive in ways that a wellness lifestyle
(00:49) cannot deliver that you could trust yourself that the world could feel safe and that unexpected and expected Delights could start to illuminate your path no coach therapist doctor or Guru required just you learning to get real present and attentive with you I feel like I’m here to matchmake your inner parts for the greatest love affair ever written I want to help you learn first where you’re buying eggs from the hardware store which is the source of all pain I want to help you master entering through the upset which is the
(01:27) only spiritual practice You’ll Ever Need and to get real comfortable putting on your villain Crown which is in my opinion the key to True power and then you’ll attune to your inner yes so you can live the life defined by the specific pleasure of who you are I am so excited to announce my latest book called The reclaimed woman which is available for pre-order now so if you head to the link in show notes you can learn more about bonuses events and companion offerings and I cannot wait to see your gorgeous face on the
(02:07) [Music] path I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pole dancer or honorary member of the disinformation dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and
(02:44) your expression so that you can finally truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and I want to take a moment to just celebrate the fact that I have apparently broken through some
(03:24) censorship walls in this endeavor because this podcast was recently identified as being in the top 1% of podcasts internationally so thank you so much for trusting and interesting yourself in my Magic Carpet Ride so where my process has led me to recently is the realm of BDSM and conscious Kink which is a somewhat unwieldy acronym for bondage discipline dominance submission and sadism masochism and I certainly do not count myself an expert in fact I have been celibate for some time however I recognize patterns I am a train
(04:16) psychiatrist after all and that is essentially what we do in the absence of any verifiable clinical testing we pattern recognize and I feel that there is a Zeitgeist around the culture of erotic connection through consensual domination and so I want to talk a bit today about what I have learned as far as the promise for BDSM not only as a sexual practice if you will but really as a Consciousness and as an orientation towards power in this world so I have been interested in what the hell’s been going on in the world over the past
(04:57) three years on a meta level and one of the Frameworks that I have found intriguing to consider is the possibility that as a collective we are maturing right we are moving through an initiatory process and that process is going to lead us to our Sovereign experience as human beings that we are coming collectively from a mentality that is you know could be described as Warfare Consciousness Warfare Consciousness is predicated on victim mentality and the illusion of helplessness that defines the experience of a child and as we
(05:43) self-initiate we have this opportunity to come into contact with not only our native and innate power that was always there but actually our Power of Choice which is in my opinion the defining feature of adult Consciousness and so as we recognize the opportunity to find ourselves to individuate to walk this Yan path home to ourselves we also can feel that there is a way that we can access harmony with those that we would otherwise be at war with and this is not only individuals it’s structures it’s you know ideas it’s of ourselves so the
(06:32) individuation process brings us into a non- oppositional non-referential comportment towards all that is so that we are interested primarily in self-discovery we are interested in the meaning that is being reflected on the outside of all that is going on inside and so as we individuate we come into the promise of complimentarity of this idea that even though it may seem there are irreconcilable differences right the maskers the non-m maskers the vaxers the non vaxers the black the white the gay the straight the man the woman right all
(07:08) these polarities may seem in unresolvable Conflict but what is possible when we move into the Embrace of differences when we begin to explore how the fullest expression of that polarity affords the opportunity for all of the needs to be be met in this new kind of Union which is complimentarity and that’s really only possible like we can actually only live in a functional Community when we have properly individuated so it requires that each of us understands not only who it is that we are to the best extent you know
(07:50) available but also what our yeses are and what our NOS are so what our desires are what our limits are then and only then really can we come into non-strategic non-manipulative non fear-based trauma induced connection to others and the Greater Community so this idea of the Embrace of polarity runs counter to one of the more impactful scripts that’s been running and you can reference an earlier episode of reclamation radio where I talk about the Trap of feminism which is gender egalitarianism gender parity right so when we live in a world where I
(08:34) as a woman can do whatever a man can do bleeding right where I can have it all I can do it all and I can access exactly the same linear energies that a man can access there is a framework that suggests that I actually relinquish abandon and even malign the source of my greatest power which is my cyclical nature right so I could show show up to work every single day you know 365 available performing and ready to produce or I can work with the native energies of my menstrual cycle and recognize that there are ways that I can
(09:12) schedule and organize my life for optimal expression and also honoring an alignment with what it is that my body is offering at any given time you know I could as David daa would say I could ravish a man but what if what I actually want is to be ravished right then what is it to know that I can ravish a man and try to do that just so that it’s like you know you go first then I’ll go second and next time I’ll go first and you go second kind of egalitarianism when we disappear the differences between men and women
(09:47) specifically but you could argue this applies to any polarity there is a possibility that we lose the potential for True Harmony that does not require sacrifice and compromise so what I have referred to as the assault on Eros and the Strategic dismantling of the technology of erotic Union has led to a really desiccated landscape of manwoman relating where we have men who are cowering and apologizing and we have women who are controlling henpecking and micromanaging bitter resentful and disappointed right so in the Freudian you know sort of lens
(10:42) we have men who are castrated and we have women who are castrating and nobody is well [ __ ] under those circumstances and as a woman I have become very interested in what it is that we want as women and how it is that we are engaging in Gross interference with any possibility that we could secure what it is that we actually want so this is not about devotional service you know this is not about compassion this is not about altruism this is actually about recognizing and owning overtly rather than covertly and semi or subconsciously
(11:25) what it is that we want I was at Weston Price conference and you know this is a very mixed audience and mixed age group and I was giving like a PowerPoint talk and at the end someone was asking me a question about gender politics and I was answering the question and I just offhandedly made the statement that all of the women that I know you know the heterosexual women that I know deeply long to be well handled by a trustworthy the man and I I literally felt heard and witnessed this sensual sigh passed through the 2,000 people in the room and
(12:13) it was confirmation to me that we have been gaslighting ourselves as women and pretending that what we want is domination power and control over when what we really long for so many of us is true submission so if you know me you know that I’m not interested in making like 10,000 caveats about whether or not this applies to you and your sexual orientation and your personal identity and your life circumstances take this for what you want if it feels familiar like a remembrance of something that you have willfully forgotten then come with
(12:53) me because what I am recognizing is that we have an opportunity as women specifically but also across the seeming gender divide we have an opportunity to reclaim a technology a very very powerful like free energy level technology for Collective change and healing but it requires that we get into our own lanes and that we stop pretending that we are here to be an island unto ourselves right and so much of spirituality encourages you you know that we do it all be it all and you know take solace in our own you know selfhood and that is
(13:37) very real because until you organize these polarities inside of yourself you literally cannot access you won’t create the conditions to access and you won’t attract proper polarity on the outside however what is available through polarized erotic connection is a power for transformation and transmutation that I believe is unparalleled so when we look at the history of human suffering it is marked by non-consensual domination that is the defining feature of you know war and rape and every transgression that has
(14:21) ever occurred so what if we have the opportunity in dynamic in polarized Dynamic and again I’m going to focus on woman relating however you know the Eternal caveat is that these energies are embodied right so they certainly can and do embody in same-sex couples in fact culturally samesex couples really put everything that I’m about to talk about on the map so if I’m interested in working with BDSM as a technology for the healing of gender Warfare then that’s why I’m focusing on you know manom relation in and the opportunity
(15:03) that this kind of orientation towards domination and submission holds for us as a collective so in the BDSM rubric there is a dominant a Dom and there is a submissive and you each have very delineated roles it is the character that you are choosing to play sometimes just in the bedroom sometimes in the 247 relationship and the conditions that are agreed upon mutually and that are engaged are the defining conditions of consensual domination and the submissive is in many ways the one who sets the terms for her own submission or his own
(15:54) submission right so in this exploration of you know what Martin would describe as want to and willing to’s the submissive has to develop sufficient familiarity with her own boundaries with her own limits and with her own preferences such that she can document communicate about and dictate those to Adam and as she focuses inward she has the opportunity to feel in the presence of this bigger energy field which many would argue is a very direct route to God energy Divine energy cosmic energy whatever you want to call it to feel
(16:41) held in belonging to feel that you can release and relinquish control to engage in an experience of your own flowing river of vital force energy this is what so many who I identify as submissives who feel this maybe secret Longing To Be Well handled by a trustworthy individual a trustworthy man this is what we want and when we pretend otherwise we are in this Gaslight of self- betrayal and it’s almost like we can’t help it because we feel so unsafe in so many dimensions of Our Lives that our own reflexes really
(17:24) interfere with the possibility of this unfolding right so when we are in mommying energy of our men this is not available when we imagine that we are in a better position to know than our man is what he needs to do at any given moment this is not available nor is the experience available for the Dom which is to enter into a flow state that is designed and created and administered by his own competence and his own Attunement right so this superpower that a dominant man has again as data would describe it like a masculine Essence man
(18:05) this cannot be accessed through egalitarian relating and the most readily available analogy for me is is water in a river bank right so if I am in my feminine Essence a watery entity without a riverbank I cannot go anywhere you know I’ve become a stagnant poor and I don’t need to micromanage the River Bank I don’t need to know the topography I don’t need to like assess every little bit of soil Rock and nook and cranny I know that it’s there and I’m going right so this experience that
(18:44) is available through this organization of energies into intentional consensual and conscious polarity can afford the opportunity for True Transcendence and all of the integration that becomes possible when you transmute what would otherwise be trauma space into the expansive realm of bliss and embodied ecstasy and I would argue as does Carolyn Elliott who is the author of existential Kink and one of the esteemed interviews in my faces of FS femininity collection that we either engage in Kink Dynamics consciously or subconsciously right so
(19:35) for example if I am a woman who has a submissive orientation you might not think that because of my big mouth and so many of the aspects of my Persona that I have cultivated that seem very dominant right very instructional you know leadership oriented and I have also shared many times that the entirety of the you that you interact with as you know a listening member of the public this is all compensatory right so people tell me all the time you know how courageous I am to do the work that I am doing and I’m like I have to do that to
(20:13) feel safe in the world that’s actually part of my elaborate defense mechanism to you know make sure that I am in a power position relative to you know the aggressor which is you know industry or government or whatever it is and as I have worked on that you may have noticed over the years you know recently that my energy has shifted what I have shared with you all has shifted and the experience of me becomes a bit more confusing right becomes a bit less apparent you know what it is that I’m about and who it is that I’m for against
(20:45) and fighting so all of that is to say that an easy example of how it is that I might subconsciously interact with my submissive nature my desire to be in the energy of a guiding leading organizing trustworthy masculine field is my relationship to like being a naughty provocator my relationship to being punished by you know the bad daddy of the you know government media insert institution here so you know when I was named one of the disinformation Dozen I unlike many of the other folks named I actually was at a point in my own
(21:35) personal integration where I could recognize that I really enjoyed that I didn’t find it threatening I didn’t have any inclination to participate in a lawsuit or to fight it or to even comment on it I liked it I like attention pretty much any attention but I like attention for being a bad girl when my first book was blacklisted a mind of your own I enjoyed that actually right and I think at that point I can look back and see how there were elements of my experience where I was like thinly veiling that enjoyment and I
(22:10) was in a bit of a like a poor me but what you know carollyn Elliot would suggest is we engage in these dynamics of constriction and Punishment in our life like I will create the conditions like I will injure my ribs three times in a row in the first two months of my pole dancing Journey so that I create the construction of no don’t do that don’t be you you know you don’t get to be you you see I will co-create these conditions and I will feel victimized by them until I recognize that I actually want it that way and I feel safer that
(22:43) way so either I can create conscious conditions for my own submission and for the play of punishment for example or constriction whether that’s literal or whether it’s you know psychological with a partner or I can play out these energies on the world stage for you all and you know the acknowledgment that we actually get off on our greatest struggles is something that I think you know Carolyn Elliot’s Work has helped me to helped legitimize what I was already suspecting to be true you know she talks
(23:22) about how one of the things we can do to soothe ourselves when it comes to wealth expansion and making money is to assure ourselves that we can still what does she say like work hard and struggle like don’t worry don’t worry Kelly you can still work hard and struggle even after you’ve made a million dollars right so we not only it’s not only it’s more than familiar it’s actually eroticized and these transgressions these struggles when we recognize that they have been infused with erotic energy in our lifespace that
(23:51) literally what it feels like in the pursuit of that kind of experience is erotic in nature we have the opportunity to properly place these Dynamics in the space of our sexual relationships and primary Partnerships I’m going to pause here for a quick second if you are into the topic of manom relating polarity and what the Reclamation of Eros has to do with holistic health then I invite you to check out and download my free ebook on the subject at the link below and to also check out a Blog I wrote that goes
(24:29) deeper into the subject of BDSM some of the science supporting it and why these reframes and tools may be exactly what the world needs to move out of confusion resentment and victimhood and into personal empowerment and pleasure hope that helps so if there is a way for us to serve our essential Natures heal the trauma at the root of victim Consciousness and to experience Transcendent embodiment all at the same time I don’t know sign me up and that’s what I have found through BDSM and conscious Kink so I just came back from
(25:13) an intensive in Mexico with my teacher om Rani and you can enjoy my Reclamation Radio podcast interview with him and Lori handlers who is a tantra teacher and it was one of the more challenging and of course also then transformational experiences that I have had and while we learned a lot of techniques around impact play like spanking and also shabari rope tie the real expansion for me was in engaging the growth edge of my yes and my no so the specifics of consent and really owning that I have more work to do when
(26:07) it comes to exercising my no and specifically exercising no without a context of anger or adversarial energy right so this is in my experience what is most challenging for women is to access your no in a friendly environment right without the Bedrock of [ __ ] you underneath it with just sort of like no this doesn’t work for me and how to articulate that right so it requires that we resolve the appeasement impulse at the root of it so I want to share with you what I have come to understand are the five ways and I’m sure there are
(26:54) many more that BDSM can heal trauma so number one is bolder self expression an essential aspect of self-actualization is self-approval so it goes beyond self-acceptance and I learned a phrase from Omani that I love and I pretty much use every day now which is permission field right he talks about how what women want is and arguably people but I heard it as a woman is a huge permission field and that’s specifically what so many women have experienced in Dysfunctional and toxic relationships in their history is
(27:43) a restricted permission field to be their full selves right which includes all their dark feminine all their wild crazy right to be who it is like what happens when your man sees all of you does he still want to hang can he still handle you or is he running for the hills or withdrawing or you know withholding love affection and attention so in this concept of a permission field is the freedom that is afforded to relax and release our old habits of trauma based relating right so in this permission field we can focus on being who it is
(28:28) that we are but who it is in our totality right so it’s almost like in in the parts Work World of there being no bad parts how can it be okay for any weird taboo desire that you have semi or subconsciously eroticized right how can it be okay to bring that to the four How can any that you express be welcome and how can that containment that grounding present attuned and energy of the Dom be unwaveringly offered right so in these conditions you know men can relax the nice guy persona right because that’s
(29:11) not what’s on order here right connecting to their Predator connecting to their aggressor connecting to their dark masculine energy is essential to doming well and women can relax their you know sort of caretaking like oh I wonder if he’s bored I wonder if he needs this I wonder how it feels for him because your role is actually to liberate the direct spontaneous and authentic expression of your energy without running it through that filter of your old trauma based reflexes and what I experienced even in
(29:48) this week-long you know intensive was a huge permission field to basically let any freak flag fly you know that was interesting to explore and I would say that the capacity for this approach to erotic relationship and dynamic to transform specific sexual traumas and abuse traumas in one’s history including physical and psychological abuse is arguably unmatched by other trauma-based Therapeutics and that is because you can go back and say yes to experiences that you’ve had right whether you are hit as
(30:37) a child or molested you can go back and set a scene that embodies the experience of your victimization and you can say yes to what was a no and probably lives in your body as a no holding immense amounts of Shame so the shame Alchemy potential that becomes available when you construct a scene that visits with the complex energetics and power dynamics of a history of abuse and you either you know through that scene you express that no you know you kick you punch you push or you acknowledge that there is you know latent pleasure and
(31:26) you know attention that is afforded through abuse I mean there’s so much complexity in there that’s why most of the time it could never be resolved through talk therapy and through any therapeutic that is not somatically based but to blend the psychology the emotional safety conditions of security and also the physical embodiment and experience of sensation and pleasure it’s Alchemy it’s true Alchemy so the opportunity for bolder self-expression can come from this permission field and also from the experience of containment
(32:04) that is at the root of proper doming okay so number two is communication and boundaries so as I alluded to you know I’ve thought of myself as a good communicator as somebody who’s pretty clear on what it is that she wants to say however the emotional layers of communic around boundaries like for example I had like immense discomfort in the early days of this intensive until I realized that there’s like no actual problem if I’m just comfortable with my no right so that’s why there are safe words in BDSM
(32:45) play is so that you don’t have to do the socially conventional thing of like explaining why your no is a no and maybe it’s a no can you help me see if it’s a no a safe word right so let say yellow or red you just say it and the boundary is set right so when we have boundaries and we know how to exercise them every social situation is then comfortable like literally every and anyone because we recognize that we are imp possession of our power of choice and there’s not a problem here right so we don’t actually
(33:20) need to play that game of like resenting other people or feeling disappointed or having high hopes that are then dashed when we recognize is that we are the ones in a position of control and there’s not a problem with transgressing our boundaries because we have our boundaries in check right so most couples don’t communicate about sexuality about their preferences about their want to their willing to and their WS until there is like a seeming conflict or inflammation in the dynamic and BDSM affirms the power of proactive
(33:58) engaging in that kind of communication as the foundation to consent and the co-creation of safe conditions that allow for truly expansive play and connection and that leads me to number three which is that it is an opportunity to get high on your own Supply and to experience true Transcendence so we spend so much of our lives in Vigilant avoidance of our experience of embodied Humanity like literally if you look at your day so much of your day is an experience of running from what it is to be with yourself and so you know so we do the
(34:47) yoga and we do the meditation because there is this sense that being with ourselves holds a key to an experience of coming outside of ourselves right it’s this Paradox right that you can enter through yourself to expand Beyond yourself and in the Dynamics that can be created through conscious Kink and BDSM you know in the submissives experience it is even you know psychom medically called hypofrontality so you can enter into this experience of fading out of your normal vigilance State and into what has often been associated with the
(35:31) ecstatic experiences in plant medicine research or in meditation and other sorts of practices that offer this opportunity and then for the Dom it’s often called a flow state right so how can you be embodied in such a way that you are in your Mastery right you are in your experience of your own like zone of genius and that together you can you know as David data would say like find God through sex and this is one of the reasons why pain play impact play so things like spanking for example or flogging have a role is that many
(36:11) submissives describe their capacity to quiet their mind as being so much more readily available when their attention is focused on specific points of impact and even Sensations that would be described as pain but that they are directing right so there’s maybe a a t scale and they are deciding what zone of impact like let’s say six to eight that they’re interested in and then it is the Dom’s responsibility not only to stay within that zone pre- consented Zone but also to actually enjoy it himself right
(36:48) so as you engage in this shared experience of focusing attention and probably releasing this inner pharmacopia of you know chemistry if you want to call it that energetics that is known it’s well known I mean one of the exercises that we did and practices in the Intensive that I attended was to have someone just manipulate with like a knuckle the angle of the jaw and we would call out you know 6789 and so we’re instructed to keep it sort of like in the I think seven to n range and after minutes it was like quite painful
(37:28) and then the release of that all of the people described feeling you could feel it in the room it was like this quiet came over the room and everyone was in an experience of pleasure and it’s not just that it’s over right it’s it’s directly related to and maybe even in proportion to the experience of so-called pain so number four is increased intimacy so when we look at so many of the habits of dysfunctional relating we recognize that intimacy was actually never available in those spaces when
(38:07) there are appeasement strategies and control-based strategies and there is the you know anxious avoidant dance the performance pressure that both parties experience makes it impossible for either person to actually be in their embodied Humanity to attune to their own needs to read their own compass and to express authentically when you’re in your performer and you’re trying to manipulate the dynamic by showing up in a certain way and ignoring and betraying yourself in the process you’re in this I don’t know dynamic that
(38:46) is preclusive of actual intimacy and the vulnerability that is required the trust that is established when you show up your whole mitigated self in huge permission field that the culture of BDSM affords let alone the dynamic specifically the conditions for intimacy are set and you have an opportunity to actually relate without all of these you know old habits you know cowering men and henpecking women you know with all of that is relaxed and you just show up in complimentarity and the Fulfillment of each other’s needs as you’re
(39:28) fulfilling your own there is a beautiful experience that you know becomes available and number five is simply improved well-being right so if you followed my journey you know that I have moved from the chopping wood and carrying water of Lifestyle Reclamation and self-care as the initiation to one’s power of choice but then what do you do with that choice right so once you’re your body has been sent a signal of safety and your experience of your narrative as being somebody who is chronically ill right once all of that
(40:06) is behind you then what are you gonna do with all this Freedom right and all this power well your inner Compass will lead you exactly where it is that you need to go and it’s a very archetypal Journey the one that I’ve been on which is that the Reclamation of one’s sexuality from the caverns of you know societal and familial shame is an essential developmental process you know I’ve discussed Alexander Lohan’s work and fear of Life a book that he wrote where he talks about how it is that we
(40:43) are you know really positioned in an adversarial Dynamic toward our own vital force energy and our own Sexual Energy that begins to emerge in these very non-genital ways right so just the way that we and laugh and jump on the couch the way that we are smalled into a box and controlled behaviorally by our caregivers to suit their needs and then the conditional access to love approval and acceptance is offered when we are fundamentally in violation of our own impulses in service of theirs so the origins are rather
(41:21) commonplace and what it is that we most struggle with often as adults is reclaiming our alive having an honest assessment of our own arousal and coming into the full Embrace of ourselves as sexual beings and how do we integrate that energy into the rest of our lives outside of the bedroom this process is one of the only ways that true well-being can be accessed and so if you are somebody who looks at your history and you see wow like there’s ‘s a lot of trauma in my history there’s abuse in my history and I have struggled
(42:03) to feel my whole self in my experience of sexuality then BDSM offers this immense playground of safe opportunities and structures to re-engage and reframe and re-experience that which was you know fodder for your own self-judgment and self-recrimination and self ection now as opportunities to really delight and play and expand into these Transcendent spaces so it really does offer the specific conditions of the transition from non-consensual domination to the Reclamation of consensual domination so given all of this it is no
(42:54) surprise that aspects of BDSM are literally in the dsm5 the psychiatric Bible of you know diagnosis and pathology as paraphilia and so wouldn’t it be funny if the age-old technology of consensual erotic relationship that has this inbuilt capacity to actualize and support the well-being of the participants would be so maligned and that the intentional exploration would be in so many ways inverted as something that only like sick weird people do when this is actually a path forward for so many of us the system
(43:47) would love to remain in charge of determining who’s been a bad girl and who hasn’t and who gets what punishment but wouldn’t it be better to empower your man to do that for you so I hope you’ve enjoyed this I hope it’s brought you close to some edges of your comfort so that you can continue to expand into the specific pleasure of who it is that you are see you next time
