(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 holess 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 P dancer or honorary member of the disinformation doesn’t 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 your expression so that you can finally
(02:46) 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’m here today with Lori handlers I had the profound pleasure of spending almost a week with Lori a few months ago at a BDSM meets Tantra Retreat that she
(03:31) co-led with Omani and to say that it was a gamechanging experience would be a euphemistic and also insufficient term so I was very excited at the opportunity to sit down as we will today you know in conversation to go deeper into Lor’s expertise which is the tantric realm the intimacy realm and to my surprise because I did not formerly associate Shadow work and personal Reclamation work and personal empowerment work that I you know was able to witness Lor’s expertise and Mastery in I didn’t formerly associate that with Tantra and
(04:13) I think I am like so many Lori who it must be so annoying to you who think of Tantra as like you know some sort of just ecstatic sex practice that you learn you know you know little eye gazing a little energetic music in the background and then you just have multiple orgasms or something like that and you know I it was like two years ago that I remember thinking you know I had a very very intense erotic connection with my former partner and wonderful experiences deep experiences and I felt called to something more like something
(04:49) even deeper and I hired an erotic coach Whitney who I continued to work with for two years and I when I first talked to her I said you know I don’t know if I’m if I’m just I just maybe I need to learn more like tantric erotic practices and she’s like okay yeah yeah yeah and then we did six to nine months of like the deepest hardest darkest Shadow work I’ve ever done in my life so that was my you know not that she’s a specialist necessarily in Tantra at all but that was the my first understanding of like oh to move in the direction of you know
(05:22) deeper erotic Reclamation and intimacy I have to go even deeper into these recesses so I wanted to by way of Welcome Lori just start off with introducing like what is Tantra what do you mean by it you wrote a book I have here called sex and happiness the tantric laws of intimacy which I absolutely love and I don’t know how many of us are really aware of the nuances of what it means to you to practice a tantric lifestyle good great questions well let’s just say first of all thanks for having me on it’s wonderful to be here
(06:02) with you and to just reconnect you know Tantra when I was studying Tantra I was told that it meant expansion through awareness and I couldn’t relate to that I I was like expansion through awareness awareness of what you know like I didn’t get it at first like just kind of like you maybe you know just awareness of what expansion of what so I renamed the definition of Tantra to be transformation through pleasure and what I know is that when we focus on pleasure anything that isn’t pleasure comes up so it seems like some people go towards
(06:42) pleasure and then they become like pleasure junkies some people resist pleasure because they feel guilty ashamed of pursuing pleasure and all of that needs to be brought to the surface and looked at the other piece that I found in Tantra like I just I was searching for Tandra my whole life I didn’t know what it was called I didn’t know what it was but I felt like there was something way more to sex than this you know penis vagina friction but then when I found it it was like oh my God so what I discovered over the years is that
(07:18) sexuality is the portal to all the experiences that we’ve had in our lives pleasurable unpleasurable life affirming not affirming painful the place where it makes a mark in the body is in the second what they call the second chakra the place where Pleasure and Pain is stored and this like talking about it or talk therapy or understanding it only gives one dimension there’s a book out called the body keeps the score the body keeps the score of everything that happens so for example if you didn’t get a gift at Christmas time that you wanted
(07:59) you know your parents got do something else which I I have like a famous scientist friend whose parents got him a toy telescope and he wanted a real telescope and they gave him a toy when he was five and he was so disappointed and where that makes a take is in your sex in the place where there’s pain and pleasure and so later in therapy he could be talking about you know my parents didn’t take me seriously they bought me this the wrong thing but where it’s stored is in the pleasure Center and then when we go to have pleasure
(08:29) with someone ever have the experience of crying and you don’t know why and the partner says was it something I said and you go no doesn’t have anything to do with you that could be the toy you know what I mean that could be anything that could be anything that happened because that’s the place where memories and images and incidents is stored not only in this memory it’s in cellular memory rather than in conscious memory so I defined it as transformation through pleasure and then anything unpleasurable comes up
(09:05) anything that we need to deal with what you were talking about Shadow work digging cleaning the basement that’s what Tantra is about and it starts gently through eye gazing you know like it starts like oh let’s have this ecstatic experience but then there’s so much more because people will start avoiding or start feeling like oh and then we have to learn boundaries and we have to learn all these things so Contra is pretty all inclusive and I want to touch on that because I really like how you first of all you illustrate and you live and you
(09:41) embody boundaries in a way that I respect and admire and I want to talk about that and what boundaries means because it’s such a you know it’s such a new age buzzword and I’m sure you could call [ __ ] on a lot of the ways that people are engaging that phrase the idea of Shadow work I want to read quick quote from your book because I really like this I think is again I want to elucidate more what that has to do with pleasure because I think the connection for most people is not clear right so what I hear you saying and what I’ve
(10:15) lived and experienced is that your capacity for pleasure requires the transformation or Alchemy let’s say of your shame your pain that they actually are you know intimately Bound in this polar CL it okay so you write until you feel true compassion and love and possibly even gratitude for the worst most damaging person in your life you will find yourself facing versions of that same person in the same mirror again and again and again for as long as you live dump your current partner or friend and you will find that no matter
(10:48) how you try your next partner or friend will do his or her own versions of exactly the things that are driving you to such despair now and I have found that judgment is one of the easiest to accessing so many dimensions of my shadow but I want to hear more about what that because I totally agree with that sentiment what does that have to do with pleasure and sex right like how does Tantra as a practice weave together you know this experience of othering of judging of living in you know anger resistance you know judgment just this
(11:26) this sort of like tense posture that we can have towards so many others in our lives what does that have to do with an experience of pleasure and how do you apply pleasure to bring yourself to a place of neutrality around that kind of resistance so good complicated isn’t it it is it is a crucible so first of all anything that I’m judging if I am judging it out there it means that somehow it resonates with me in here so if I see see something in you that I don’t like and I start to judge it I’m like one finger is pointing out but
(12:07) three fingers are pointing back at me and those three fingers are pointing to some resonance that I have inside myself that knows something or it wouldn’t be reacting so I must be judging it in myself or not aware of it yet in myself to see it in you and be critical that’s like the first thing like I have to have some resonance with it or else I would be neutral I would just be neutral to it second of all you know the Cartman drama triangle yeah so The Rescuer the perpetrator and the victim and when you transform those I don’t know the name of
(12:47) the psychologist who came up with a new formula but when you transform them you have the Challenger the Creator and you have the coach and the challenge is somebody who like I see something with them or I have a difficulty with them or what have you I had a in my life I was in a violent relationship when I was 22 and it was a man who he totally adored me I knew that he loved me beyond words and he he had a violent thing he he couldn’t not want to put his hands on me in a rough way when I finally left that relationship it took everything it
(13:25) took all my guts to say you’re leaving I need you to leave you can come in here and kill me I faced death and I would rather be dead than spend another minute with you I mean those were the most powerful words I ever said in my life probably even still and today I don’t know where this person is but today if I ran into this person I would thank him because the badass that everybody knows of me Lori Handler’s today is was formed on that day the day that I said those words to him I went up and in Consciousness I went up in communication
(14:03) I went up in guts I went up I it summoned everything that I had in me to say you have to leave I will face you you can come in here collect your things and go and today I would thank that person so he was the Challenger before that I was the victim but I became the Creator in that moment and so it’s necessary that we transform those experiences into seeing them as a challenge and seeing what we had to do to rise to the occasion and bring oursel forth in a powerful way I mean that’s that’s really what it is when you speak
(14:42) about boundaries I mean to me boundaries are the basis of intimacy if you don’t know the playing field that you’re playing on with me like you won’t know how to be with me you’ll just be guessing at best and guessing doesn’t cut it it means there’s so much room for error in guessing because I haven’t told you my truth because I’m afraid you won’t love me so I don’t tell you what I like or don’t like boundaries are are me saying like not this this is good not this this this this yes yes yes not this and then you get to play on a court with
(15:19) me like you understand the game and then we form intimacy but if we don’t have that if I hold back on those because I’m afraid because I I’m afraid you won’t like me then we don’t have a chance I mean that’s how I see boundaries yeah and when you’re talking about the falseness of the sort of the new age way of seeing boundaries that’s because when I tell you my boundaries you are not expected to enforce them I get to enforce my boundaries day after day after day after day that’s what my life is about and I tell you that’s my boundary I have no
(15:55) recourse you don’t get to reinforce my boundaries I do mind yeah you have different ones and I I respect yours or I don’t respect them if I trespass your boundary it’s up to you to tell me you if you roll your eyes and then make me wrong then we got a different kind of a situation right right that boundaries are not about controlling somebody else’s Behavior it’s yeah that that kind of self assertion is it’s part of the you know the the immature end of the spectrum of personal empowerment is to finally right discover this is actually
(16:29) what I like and don’t like and and you find just the beginnings of your voice but sometimes you imagine in the beginning that your role is to tell somebody how they are to behave towards you and insist in command and and demand you know but that’s so much of what I took away from the experience that I had with you and M was about boundaries you know I I certainly didn’t go there with that expectation and I remember you knew the first couple of days I was experiencing so much discomfort and anxiety and the moment I recognized that
(17:07) I have choices you know I have choices here and I can express you know what works for me and what doesn’t which is actually what the shared culture that you and M represent is founded on I would say consent you know and the the practice of of choice and boundaries once I I owned that everything was totally fine everything was great actually and so the kind of experience of of anxiety and fear and all of these compensatory behaviors including judgment right so when we are not standing in our boundaries as you’re
(17:45) saying we need to make the other person bad and wrong in order to justify what we’re experiencing and when you describe that story with your ex partner I thought of something I say all the time I know you agree with this because you’re right about it that when you exercise your power of choice without needing to make somebody else bad and wrong you come into that empowered place you step out of that victim triangle so like what do you think is our problem with boundaries like why was it so difficult in those early days for me to
(18:16) just own what it is that would work for me I was in an environment that was totally supportive of that why do we have so much trouble you know speaking Our Truth speaking our mind getting in touch with what it is that we is our yes and our no to begin with yeah I just feel like people didn’t have permission you know like it’s just it’s a it’s a socialization I think it’s a cultural socialization problem it could be gender based you know it even could be decade based you know who has more permission to speak their truth like I I had
(18:53) permission in my life to speak my anger in my family growing up but I didn’t have permission to go against education or whatever I mean there were certain values that I wasn’t allowed to go against and literally I mean the fact that I travel the world teaching about sex that all happened after my mother was dead that didn’t happen while my mother was alive my father on the other hand became my student my father actually took a Tanto class from me after my mother died so he could figure out how to relate to women
(19:26) no but permission to speak permission to speak about whatever I think it’s cultural and I you know I don’t think I went into this tiate during that course but you know I feel that for many people being liked and loved is so tantamount to their truth that the first thing to do is like be sort of victimized and not like something and object to it and then find out oh I could speak about it and I’m still loved and respected matter of fact I’m respected more I think that’s a second I mean depends on your family of
(20:07) origin but like for me that was that’s secondary I wanted I wanted to be popular you know like I wanted to be liked by everyone and it took me a while to realize that I’m also the one that people come to when they want something straight no chaser just say the truth like if you were wearing a dress that I didn’t think looked good on you I actually would tell you and most people would not they would think it maybe but they wouldn’t say but my friends know that they can count on me for saying things but that took a while to develop
(20:38) the fear of rejection is tremendous so I don’t know but that’s the Paradox right like I I often think that if we could live in a world where everybody knew what they wanted you know knew what they needed and wanted and was aware of what didn’t work for them and was willing to express that just imagine how how safe that world would feel right like all of the mind reading and the manipulation and the strategy that attends not owning our you know basic preferences and being willing to fearlessly express them I
(21:13) mean it creates this web of deception you know that is is really a source of like great suffering and I know that the sort of tacit consent the micro consent that goes with you know this experience of it’s really going with the flow right like when you’re sort of like oh I’m just going to roll with it and and stay quiet it’s fine but it’s in inside you’re feeling all of this judgment about what’s not working for you in a situation but those little micro consent experiences are really a violation not only of you but also of the other person
(21:47) and the other people that you’re interacting with so the kind of respect you describe emerging from this commitment you know that one can make to speaking their own truth and boundar it’s totally gamechanging the word truth is thrown around a lot these days and I get so many questions about the best path to coming into personal alignment around truth I wanted to share something that has really supported me in the process that I come back to time and again to tune my system and tap into my inner wisdom and knowing the Divine truth
(22:23) Elixir from Lotus way helps you to illuminate your greatest purpose through the art of self-healing you use it to unveil your sacred offering and clarify your expression attract community and magnify your powerful presence this flower essence dissolves difficulty with telling the truth lack of purpose withdrawal patterns inauthenticity veiled intentions secrecy and wanting to run or Abandon Ship when things get hard it’s such a beautiful practice to sit with this Elixir and really allow yourself to feel the fact that you came
(22:57) here to be real the real you so head to lotus.com and use the code kelly5 for 15% off the link is in the show notes for you you talk about I like this even from you know a parenting perspective I have worked with this concept of like positive boundaries right and you give an example I really liked in the book where you talk about you know if you were GNA say you know don’t interrupt me basically like stop interrupting me you could say I want to finish what I’m saying right because for me and for so many appeasers right who can only set a
(23:33) boundary when they’re angry it’s exquisitely uncomfortable to generate social Discord in service of a boundary so for me I would never say to somebody who I’m not affronted by don’t interrupt me you know I would certainly be far more willing to lean into you know i’ really love to finish what I’m saying right because you’re you’re satisfying and fulfilling your appeasement part and also Al you know the part that says like come on say something this doesn’t work and so there’s a consensus that’s available and so I wonder if you think
(24:07) that positive boundaries is maybe a stepping stone for a lot of us to get to the place where you can just let it rip no matter what the environment is boundaries or boundaries I mean whatever they are I feel like that it’s really important I actually have a colleague who interrupts me a lot finishes my sentences and recently I had to say I mean in front of 80 people I had to say stop stop talking stop talking when I’m talking and like because before this person had never heard it and didn’t kept not hearing it so it happened a
(24:43) number of times at a big meeting we were at for a week and finally I just went stop it stop and then she didn’t do it again you know but I felt like that was costly like I didn’t actually want to do it like that i’ but I’ve spoken to her before like don’t finish my sentences don’t correct me or don’t think I can’t remember whatever the thing is I’m talking about stop it and so this time I just did it in front of people and they all had then I said to everybody let’s all take a breath you know just because I had to put a it was so
(25:18) annoying you know yeah I feel like the beginning of boundaries it one experiences anger and then it doesn’t have to be like that it can be like long before anger I think anger happens when we haven’t set our boundaries sometimes we don’t know we have a boundary until someone crosses it and so I feel like the anger comes when we all of a sudden we found out a new boundary or it’s been crossed so many times and we didn’t even know it was a boundary and now all of a sudden oh I’m so mad you know but because we have
(25:57) emotional release techniques also so we can neutralize the anger before we actually set up and speak about it I wouldn’t put my anger on you like I in the old days I used to put anger on people I write a lot about that in the book I mean yeah I had so much anger it just was my first response to everything and then when I realized that I didn’t have that I could handle that I don’t have to put anger on you or anybody else just doesn’t have to happen I mean anger is for when a boundar is trespass to identify that for yourself for your
(26:31) own awareness ex but I don’t have to put that out there on you I can just say you know yesterday this happened and I have a boundary about that and I’m going to say something from now on I don’t want to be angry at you so so H how much of this kind of dumpster diving that’s the phrase that just came to me around you know one’s own personal [ __ ] and you know the ways that we’ve been programmed and conditioned do you think is important to do yourself through you know sort of individual practices and you know how much can be done in
(27:07) Partnership like how much can be done through sexuality through this kind of intimacy intended connection because I know that you also are a believer that sex is alchemical and that you can work through you know and with a partner to transmute a lot of these old emotional energies that are sorted in the body or you think like do a lot of your own work first before you ever expect to be an intimate Dynamic with another person yes to that I think I don’t I mean I’m engaged now to be married for the first time in my life like I never I would
(27:44) always like look at my partners and go I can’t what would I be doing another 30 years with this person like I I just I never met anyone who met me and I’m in a relationship now where I I’m with someone who meets me who really meets me fully and I don’t feel like I could have ever been here if I didn’t do my individual work so one I think people should take responsibility and do their individual work there are many ways to do that there are therapeutic ways to do that there are Workshop ways to do that there are seminar ways to do that
(28:17) there’s lots of ways to do that and I like I did a lot and if you’re in a relationship and you’re saying okay well I don’t want to leave this relationship but I realize it brings up a lot of stuff for me a lot of things from the basement then do the work individually and come back together but Partners can do it together also I mean my partner and I teach a course called extraordinary lovers and in that course we teach people a ritual way to say the hardest things so most times people would say something to someone and
(28:54) they’d get in an argument because that’s what people do they get defensive oh I’m not really like that whatever it is you’re saying I’m not listening to it but we teach people how to say it and hear it how to say it so that it gets received and then how to go to work on that but I don’t think that I personally don’t think that’s a place to start right I think that’s dangerous to the relationship people ask me I mean people have asked me for years should I come to this course with my partner should I come to this course with my partner and
(29:26) I usually say the truth is your being in Partnership will get in the way of you doing your work you’ll be looking at your partner seeing if your partner finds somebody else attractive you’ll be looking at your partners thinking that the work and the yelling that they’re doing is about you when in fact it’s probably happened long before you came on the scene so I use I often encourage people not to come to certain classes with their partners and to come to classes for partners with their partner that’s different there’s not that
(29:59) you know there’s not that much around for partners there’s not I think couples are an endangered species because mostly everybody’s experimenting with the limits of relating these days and so there’s not a lot of support for being in a couple yeah that’s true I remember I was laughing because I remember coming to the retreat and feeling like oh God if I were here with a partner this would be so much easier and then by the end of it I was like I am so glad I was not here with a partner because I just watched how challenging it was you know
(30:31) for those couples and I know a lot of what you know om and I have a podcast it’s actually my my most listened to of all my podcasts so far on the subject of manwoman relating and I know that you the three of us are in the same you know consensus around the crisis of manomen relating and the roles specifically that you know a woman can occupy in her relationship and a man can occupy in his relationship and what is this idea of polarity and complimentarity versus like just a transactional kind of like egalitarian you know modern-day result
(31:09) of feminism kind of relationship doesn’t yeah so tell us a littleit about your perspective on this endangered species of you know the healthy erotic couple who is experiencing intimacy you know what do you see as some of the biggest challenges that people are facing and what do you see as this solution yeah it’s a good one om and I talk about it a lot also he’s here right now by the way he’s in my house so so the three of us oh Michael and myself speak a lot about this the challenges feminism Big Challenge I was a card caring feminist I
(31:44) mean I told you know I marched in the streets for to be able to walk safely in the streets I wanted to have equal pay and I said to men who tried to light my cigarette when I smoked at the bar you think these don’t work I can light my own cigarette I can open my own car door I did say all those things and I have apologized a hundred times since then because for men life is more simple they just need to know what to do to get it right that’s all they really want to do they just want to like do the job to get
(32:18) it right with us but I didn’t know that I thought they were more like women are so much more complex they just and feelings run through everything and men were taught not to feel so my sense these days is that feminism screwed up a lot of men like men don’t know what to do they don’t know which role to pay they don’t know whether to pay for lunch not pay for lunch open the car door don’t open the car door I don’t smoke anymore so no one’s trying to light a cigarette but they just are lost they don’t know what to do and you
(32:52) experienced that in the class that you were in yeah oh yeah they were lost and fidgety lost and fidgety like it’s like and when we tried to do containment they couldn’t contain they couldn’t contain themselves let alone you so there’s a big problem there om speaks a lot about it couples come and they say the woman says I want you to handle me I want to surrender I want to see I want Rapture and the man’s like I wasn’t brought up like that I can’t handle you I don’t even know what that is and so it’s really difficult and polarity well I’ll
(33:27) just talk about my coupling with my partner we first of all we don’t sleep in the same room because we feel that pheromones get mixed in the sheets and if your pheromones get neutralized then you don’t have polar attraction so we pay visits to each other but we have two master suites and we sleep in them sleep is very important very underrated sleep is so important I have a sleep expert who says that some couples break up because the sleeping habit are different and one may be really cranky just because they don’t get enough sleep so
(34:05) this is a Navy Seal ex-navy Seal who went to medical school after seal them and he studies seals and they are sleep patterns and there’s a crankiness and a whatever that happens if someone doesn’t get proper sleep so we have separate bedrooms we also don’t eat the same Foods we might eat at the same time but we eat different spices and different things because we believe it’s chemistry I want to interrupt you to tell you how how synchronous this is because I’m moving and I just bought I decided I wanted a new bed and new mattress and I
(34:41) just bought a queen size I’m single now and I just bought a queen-sized bed and mattress which I’ve never owned in my life like who buys a queen right and I said because that is the bed that is meant for me right like that’s the bed that’s meant for me and because I’ve come to the same conclusion that I I actually don’t want to like go you know n naana like sleeping cuddling you know like a little baby with my partner that that is something that I think in formerly there was such and I’m an anxiously attached person so like there
(35:14) was such this like hunger for connection like any kind all the time please that I would sacrifice like many aspects of the the nature and power of the connection to get those little like crumbs but then it’s also so culturally reflexive right like nobody is thinking about like would it be you know more conducive to polarity would it be more conducive to my sleep hygiene you know to my privacy to my separateness and individuality that is the foundation of beautiful complimentarity to sleep separately you know so I think this is many of us are
(35:47) coming on to this now good really so important and then there’s the piece about well in the absence of masculine the feminine will do both in the absence of masculine and in this case I’m going to say dark masculine so the dark masculine is the warrior the one that will protect the one that will cut the head off there I mean the light masculine is fine I’m not making it wrong at all light masculine is really important that’s the compassion acceptance no judgment but the dark masculine is what’s lacking in men these
(36:25) days and in order for me to surrender to like actually surrender into Rapture to surrender into my pleasure at the hands of or in the presence of the masculine I had to learn how to do that I had to feel safe because I could do both I’m like I’m so you know day after day when I’m teaching or whatever I’m in my masculine I’m not I’m not thinking about surrender in that regard and I learned that my inner little girl could be safe around men in who are my colleagues including om who are my colleagues who I I noticed were always watching out for
(37:10) me like they carry my bags or I had a sciatic issue once and we were going into Brazil and into the jungles and they got a a mule just to carry my bags and they and they were watching for me and I started to see that there was a part of me a hypervigilant part of me that could relax and a woman cannot be turned on when she’s hypervigilant if a woman is like being in a New York street she can’t relax into pleasure she can’t relax into orgasm she’s worried about her safety and when when there’s a man around who understands holding space
(37:52) safely protecting without judgment and he can handle that he can do that then someone like me can relax into pleasure and give up the Dual role and I think that’s so lacking today there’s just so few people who even understand that they’re just you know so everyone wants to be ravished but no one is ready to surrender to ravishment if they don’t feel safe and it’s a practice it’s not something that just oh now I’m going to surrender no I had to learn to surrender because people like om are in my life because my partner Michael is in my life
(38:32) because the people that I work with those men so not all of them but some of them are capable of holding me I’m powerful and they’re not afraid to take that on and so I learned oh I can relax here we did iasa together in that Brazil jungle and I remember looking around I was dancing for eight hours and I looked around and every one of the men that I really love and count on had one eye on me the whole time to make sure I wasn’t going to fall to make sure I wasn’t going to trip and fall into the fire pit to make sure I was on my feet and then
(39:12) at some point at the end of The Journey one of them came up to me and said okay you look like you’re really tired now you need to lay down on a mattress and he took me by the hand and walked me over to a spot to my own pallet and I was like oh I’m safe so safe this was so good that takes a lot so men need to develop that and women need to develop that too they need to want it’s like a desire I wanted to surrender but I didn’t have a space to yeah I I mean I experienced this personally you know at at the retreat and also have observed
(39:49) that you know when we think of vigilance we think of like you said like a New York alley right we think of fear but that it also masquerades as performativity right so when you’re with your lover or you know even a practice partner and you are so focused on their perception of you and your behavior that you’re not actually in your own experience enough to assess whether something feels a certain way or not that also comes from vigilance as does I remember om calling me out on this in one of the exercises like the nurturer
(40:21) he called it like fake giving right so when you’re as a woman you’re in that sort of like nurturing energy it’s potentially one that comes from Fear right it’s the shadow mommy energy of like you know taking care of the man because you don’t trust that he can take care of himself let alone you and that’s a buzz kill that right there that kills all eroticism the mommy that comes out from nowhere and is taken care of yeah yeah these are tough ones I mean these are tough challenges for people to face and some people don’t even want to like
(40:59) look at it they would make this conversation wrong clearly you are controversial on the internet I’m controversial and some people don’t want to look at this at all they think that this conversation is even wrong that because it’s binary and I think people in non-binary relationships still have this they have it in one way they don’t have we don’t have to call it masculine feminine but if someone’s going to be hypervigilant all the time then that person is not going to surrender to whatever the pleasure is that the other
(41:30) one wants to give them I don’t think it has to be cut sliced and diced in masculine and feminine it yeah I mean I speak yeah from my Through My Lens and from my experience and also I’m like deeply invested in the polarity of man woman relating because it’s not just about sexual polarity it’s like how I interact with my neighbor with my brother with my dad you know with a lover it’s all going to stem you know my bias is from a woman’s fear that she’ll be killed you know especially for the expression of her her vital force energy
(42:02) right I’m going to pause here for a quick second if you are into the topic of manwoman 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 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
(42:39) that helps I do think that that is our responsibility to transmute however I am biased and I wonder what you think about this you know along the lines of an order of operations like I do feel that when men and I feel for them right because you know I watch a lot of like Viking shows and I love the show Outlander and I watch all these like shows where there is a depiction of men from an early age you know learning how to build and to fight and you know to kill and to offend and you know these days we have men we put them in a
(43:13) kindergarten classroom with a woman at the front of the you know the class telling them what to do all day long and that is a boy’s upbringing and then the women of the world are like where the hell are all the men you know so so we have a mess here we have a mess if men learn how to contain themselves and others as you’re describing as om speaks Doom I actually think it’s very natural for most women who’ve done a modum of self-work to surrender to that right I don’t think we have to actually work very hard as women to open when we are
(43:45) in the presence of that field I don’t know that’s my my bias is that there is sort of like an order of operations that can really work you just actually said the secret which is when we’re in the presence of presence I mean that’s the key presence and people presence can be taught but it isn’t usually and with everybody on their device I was going to pick my device up everybody’s got this going on all the time and this takes us away from presence and the scrolling and the craziness that’s all against presence presence is and this is where
(44:25) Tantra comes in presence is I’m with you my eyes are with you my being is breathing next to you with you together with you and I am so present that I can’t miss a thing and if all of a sudden something moves in you or your eyes blink I see it I’m with you that’s the gift like I love to say that presence is like presence and it’s a present it’s a gift it’s the best gift you can give someone be present to them and that way we can surrender it doesn’t take much if somebody’s present we might test them a bit but and that’s the
(45:07) mirror also right is that when I am present enough to myself as a woman monitoring attending invested attuned then I can you know receive that kind of a presence otherwise I might remain in you know some degree of outer focus when my role especially we’re talking about Dom sub you know my role as a sub might be to Simply go Inward and be within myself I’m violating the agreement to focus on you know the Dom’s experience and I do know that this experience that we have as women of being in vigilance you know it comes for good reason right
(45:48) as you described there is a reality that as we walk the earth we are vulnerable to physical threat that is simply a reality it’s a biological reality and I think that transmuting this the way that we interact with fear through the archetype of the father right is one of the most just some of the deepest work let’s say that a woman might do in her lifetime and I wanted to I don’t know why I saved this for last but I wanted to talk about you know this this experience that you shared through your scene play in BDSM as you know you
(46:26) started to work with om and integrate BDSM into your tantric and intimacy work you shared a story about your personal experience of transmuting dynamics that you had with your father that seemed to be interfering with your relationships and you know this is part of the truthtellah in that moment where I felt like wow I am listening to this woman speaks so frankly and candidly about something that is so taboo and she’s totally self-possessed her I could feel your system totally calm and it allowed me to embrace like
(47:16) an even deeper commitment to what it is to transmute this fear of men because that’s what I’ll reduce it to that may not be how you look at it but that’s how you know I experienced it on some level that as daughters we have a fundamental fear and confusion that gets bound up in erotic energy with our dads regardless of what happened whether we were beaten molested neglected adored really it’s it’s there and to not have a deep understanding of your dynamic as a woman with your father will necessarily impair and impede your capacity for intimacy
(47:49) with men in the future and so I would love for you to share that you know on this platform because you’re willing to I got your consent upfront and because I just think you you grow the field of permission for us to see like not only that this is real you know that we’re walking around with these issues and we all are but also what can be accessed through you know sexuality that in no number of years of therapy would become available right and so this embodied Alchemy you know I’ve become a zealot about it because I know it’s a missing
(48:22) obviously as a psychiatrist you know I know there’s only so much you can talk about sometimes it needs to [ __ ] out of the system so exactly exactly that’s what I did yeah I I mean I’ve had a LoveHate relationship with my father I mean my whole life my father’s not alive anymore but when he was alive he mind [ __ ] me like all the time like he would say he would say we’re going to do this and then he would change the rules but not tell anyone and so I would prepare for the this and then the this was changed and it happened all the time
(48:53) and I know that he adored me and I know that I adore him but also it whatever it was weird the craziest part about it was that he was my dentist this is the part where it so he was my dentist and I would go to his office to have my teeth cleaned or to get a filling or whatever I would be on nitrous oxide which is a very sexy like nitrous oxide takes away the they use it in the dentist office because it takes away the gag reflex that’s what was explained to me but it has like tremendous like effect on the body it’s kind of a stimulant for
(49:34) arousal and so under the influence of nitrous oxide my father would say open wider L and every time I was at his office I would think to myself I’m getting these weird feelings about my father these are so weird like I’ll just keep it to myself you know and I never I never said anything to him about it but I did at some point my father started to get high he started to smoke marijuana and he wanted to do acid at some point and he said to me I want to smoke marijuana with you and I want to trip on LSD and I said I’m not and he said why
(50:08) and I said because it’s too intimate I don’t want to be with you under the circumstances of those drugs of course he didn’t know what my feelings were about nitrous oxide I never said that to him but I said no I wouldn’t do any psychedelics with him and he was really curious he read Aldis Huxley and he wanted to do everything anyway after he died I had a lover that was very cooperative and also who knew my father and I said to him I need you to play a role with me I need you to play my father and I need you to say these
(50:41) things to me and we need to have sex like we have to [ __ ] our brains out while you’re saying these things to me and he said are you sure and I said we absolutely have to do it I have to get it out of my system I have to play it out and he said okay and so I told him exactly I told him to say open wide or L I told him to say you know okay everything looks good in your mouth you know whatever my father used to say to me when I was on nitrous oxide and we had sex we had like hot amazing sex and he was saying these things to me in my
(51:14) ear and I said say that you want me more than you want Mommy all the edible stuff everything that that you could think about in edible or Electra complex I said say these things to me now I learned about this in Tantra my Tantra teacher used to ask us to do emotional release with saying things like I’m your special little girl daddy I’m your special little girl look at me look at me and most of the people in the class wouldn’t do it but I did it rigorously because I knew it was it was in there I knew it was so then to do emotional
(51:54) release with all that and then then later on to have a lover who would play that out with me I just said I I need to do this I knew he would do it so it was tremendous it was so freeing like I got over it and then at the end I remember him saying to me I hope my daughter doesn’t feel like this about me and I said she probably does you know and you you know you spoke about you and om spoke about something I had never really again as a psychiatrist and I was taught in a very Freudian institution it never really came up
(52:32) which is the inherently eroticized nature of the fatherdaughter dynamic and how what adult women are looking for in their man is the same thing that that little girl was looking for in her daddy right but that the Mother’s Son Dynamic is quite different for reasons that are confusing where like what a little boy is looking for in his mommy he’s distinctly turned off by in his you know adult female partner yes I don’t understand that either I have no idea why that is I really don’t know to me I always looked at if a man has a
(53:09) good relationship with his mother they make better Partners than if they don’t have a good relationship with their mother or if they’re bossed around like the mother tells them everything to do I once broke up with somebody because his mother was telling him he had to do this and this and this for me and I was like oh my God I can’t like your mother’s going to be ruling our life I can’t have that but if somebody has a decent you know good connected relationship with their mother I think that’s healthy but women and their fathers it’s so complex
(53:42) you know how he was and what number you are in the family and what that’s like so much so I was number one in my family and my father you know he was great in some ways and terrible in some some other ways and I just had to get that out of my system like I always look for people not like him and it’s interesting because my partner now many times reminds me of him yeah of course many many times reminds me of him integrated that yeah I just smiled to myself and I go if you only knew I don’t talk about it much I don’t
(54:20) bring it up much but inside me I have this like warm feeling of like oh like my father was super intell ual and I always avoided that I always tried to find like mechanics or firemen you know some people who weren’t like so heady and it turns out my partner is just so intellectual can argue anything can argue any point has certain point and sometimes it just cracks me up I go wow I guess I love the guy after all and that’s what so many right would describe as the the nature of the erotic impulse is to complete
(54:59) that Arc right to actually Source from the original you know Reservoir the love and connection that wasn’t available in your childhood you know that’s what Imago theapy is based on right this idea of like you know it is possible to find the love in that place but first you got to recognize that is not available in all the other places right exactly Source it out so I think this is It’s just so profound to to bring this out of the closet so to speak you know because I think otherwise there’s a real missing piece in the Dynamics that we play out
(55:37) that are often you know the source of a lot of struggle and suffering the competition that men and women have the experience that women have of resentment and bitterness and disappointment with men and of course you know in the activism world I encounter a lot of women who have myself Chief among them who are fundamentally afraid you know who are afraid of men and this is how we compensate for that you know we we make a safer World by fighting you know the bad daddy out there kind of a thing and it’s all subconscious stuff you know so
(56:05) until you at least have again this this permission field put in front of you to say Okay this may be relevant to you you know I don’t know what do you think you want to check it out and the idea that it could be transmuted in you know safe partnered practice is really again you know what some of these you know whether it’s Tantra or beia some some of these cultures are really bringing to the table is just expanding the toolbox so that it’s not just you know chitty chatting on the couch forever about your you know your woeful childhood so I am
(56:38) so grateful you know for the work that you’re doing and we’re just talking about you know that you’re coming from an international trip and I know you’re you’re bringing these practices to so many people who would not otherwise feel comfortable you know exploring them let alone reap the benefits so I am so grateful for all that you do and I know that you have some some new stuff coming up you said a book also right yeah I have a new book coming out it’ll probably be around the holiday time in 2023 like just before around
(57:08) Thanksgiving time I think and it’s also called sex and happiness but it’s sex and happiness gets better at any age so it’s really geared towards people who think that when they turn 50 they’re going to be dried up nothing’s going to happen anymore they feel like they’re losing their beauty or they’re losing their erection whatever it is and I give seven new laws although one law is the same boundaries I still keep boundaries in there we start the show with boundaries boundaries it’s different for older people boundaries are about people
(57:44) trying to take advantage of them it’s not the same as sexual boundaries it’s more like boundaries of saying no like I’m hanging the phone up or no you I’m not opening the door or whatever not like less people pleasing in a different way but there’s seven laws about things to stay youthful to stay young to keep growing to keep challenging oneself both sexually and otherwise because it doesn’t have to be that way someone doesn’t have to say oh my sexual identity is now going away because I’m over 50 so that’s who the book is geared
(58:25) to it’s geared to people getting older and continuing to have their Mojo absolutely and you know requires a reframing of Euros in general right that it’s not simply about this objectified actually quasi pornographic depiction of of sex that it is your vital force it is your life force and why shouldn’t it be available even more so you know with the really wisdom that is accured over these years so awesome I’m very excited for that Lori and I love being in conversation with you I love everything you’re doing and I’m so grateful to have
(59:01) cross path and for this conversation thank you can I say one thing of course I want to just say that if people want to go to my website Lori handlers. I have a free gift for them which is a book on it’s a workbook on boundaries amazing that’s perfect we’ll have the link in the show notes for sure that’s excellent that’s great thank you thank you so much thanks Lori
