Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - Reclaiming the power of the pussy with Regena Thomashauer, aka 'Mama Gena'.

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

In this episode of the Sex Talks podcast, Emma is joined be Regena Thomashauer, otherwise known as ‘Mama Gena’. She is a teacher, best-selling author, mother and founder and CEO of the New York-based School of Womanly Arts where she teaches women how to get (re)connected to their bodies and to their sensuality. “For as long as women are disconnected from their pussy they are disconnected from their power,” she tells us. Her book ‘Pussy: A Reclamation’, has been recommended to the team so many times we had to have her on the podcast to find out what exactly the School of Womanly Arts is all about. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did. And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

Before we start, we wanted to let you know that in this episode, sexual abuse and eating disorders are discussed. So please take a break if you need to. And we've added details in the show notes for organisations who can offer support. Hello and welcome to the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks exists to engender more honest, open and vulnerable discussions around typically taboo topics, like sex and relationships, gender inequality. and the role technology is playing and changing the way we date, love and fuck. Our relationship to sex tells us so much about who we are and how we show up in the world, which is why I think it's a topic we ought to talk about with a little more nuance and a lot more curiosity. So each week, I'm joined by a new guest, whose expertise on the topic I'd really like to mind,

and do well just that. From writers, authors and therapists to actors, musicians and founders, we'll hear from a glorious, array of humans about the stuff that gets the heart of what it means to be human. If you want to join the conversation outside of the podcast, sign up to my newsletter with a link in the show notes or come along to a live recording of the podcast at the London Edition Hotel. Okay, I hope you enjoy the show. It's incremental tiny choices that anyone can make every single day that will begin to feed the fire of pleasure which wants to be stoked within you. Right, I have a very special episode of the podcast for you today.

I am joined by Regina Tomashawa, otherwise known as Mama Gina. She is a teacher, best-selling author, mother, and the founder and CEO of the New York-based School of Womenly Arts, which was started in her living room all the way back in 1998 and has since grown well beyond what she could ever have imagined. I first heard of Mama Gina through a friend who had recently completed her nine-month course. It was one of the most impactful things I've done in my adult life, she told me. I seriously recommend every woman before the age of 50 connect with what Mama Gina is all about, she said. Naturally, I was eager to learn more and promptly bought her brilliantly named book Pussy, a reclamation, which I proudly read on the tube to many of bemused and curious expression.

A lot of what Mama Gina writes in the book resonated immediately. particularly with regards the important she attributes to women connecting to their sensuality. When we're disconnected from our sensuality, she notes, we're disconnected from our power. The more people I speak to via sex talks, whether that be my interviewees or people who come to live events, drop into my DMs, respond to something on substack, the more convinced I am of just how profound an impact our relationship to sex has on all aspects of our lives. Before I did sex therapy, I felt like I had this dirty little secret I couldn't tell anyone about. That was that I didn't really enjoy sex and had a pretty complicated

relationship to intimacy. It wasn't until I dug into this and ultimately rectified the myriad issues that were contributing to my feeling pretty unsexual. I realized how much an effect it had been having on my confidence, not just in the bedroom, but outside of it too. I realized how in feeling broken in my relationship to sex, I felt a little bit powerless. I was really curious after reading the book to speak to Mama Gina directly and learn more about the personal journey she went on that led her to set up the School of Womenly Arts. I wanted to know what she'd learned in the many years in which she'd been running it, and more about what exactly they do and teach there. Lucky for me, Regina had a trip to London scheduled, so I got to meet her

in-person for this episode. It was a real treat, not least because she was dressed like me in head-toe leopard print. I learned a lot from our conversation and think you will too, so I really hope you enjoy this episode. Hello, well, I'm so excited to record this podcast episode today as I am sat here with none other than Regina Thomas Schauer, who is a teacher, best-selling author and founder and CEO of the School of Women, arts and most importantly the author of a book that I've just read for a second time, Pussy, a Reclamation, which as I've just shown you, Regina, or I'll call you Mama Gina, if that's okay.

Yep, please do. Momma Gina, which I have highlighted, noted to the nth degree because it has been such an impactful book for me. This is so great. Like there's nothing that I love more than seeing. Like what would thrill me is spinning through and just seeing everything you yellowed. So I'll know because like every single word of that book was like architected by love and devotion and a real mission for what I wanted to provide for women, especially in the world, although men love that book as well. And you can feel that, I think, reading it because there's a real sense, although you bring in, you bring your research, you bring insights, you're a fantastic storyteller.

but there's also something really comforting about it. I feel like I'm being kind of having my hand held through, I think, often things that things have been hurtful, things that have been painful in my life. And I feel like you're holding my hand through them. This is exactly what I'm doing that. I'm doing that. And then you grabbed my hand and you were like, I'm going to grab you and put you in the studio queen.

Exactly. I was like, I need to know more. And just for context for the sex talks listeners, I asked you to come on the podcast because I mentioned at the very start. I keep on meeting women who tell me about you. That's what initially put me on to your book. I just, I think you said, when something gets mentioned three times, you need to act on it. You know that it's the great pussy in the sky talking directly to you and you just have to say, fine, I got it.

I'll do whatever, whatever, yes. Because if you ignore it, bad things happen. Exactly. So I didn't dare ignore it. But I had so many women mention your work to me and people who've gone on your, who've done your courses, who've in some way, have read your books, been in. involved with your teaching in some capacity, all of whom said to me, your impact on them had been transformative. Completely.

Totally transformative. Yeah, you're going to be different after I walk out of studio. You too. Exactly. But as you can't see, pointing to our wonderful podcast producer today, we are both set to learn a lot, and I'm excited for that. So, Mama Gina, let's begin first and foremost with the School of Womenly Arts. For anyone who has yet to be introduced to your work, for who has yet to be introduced to your work,

for whom this is their entry point and one exciting entry point. What are you teaching women at the School of Womenly Arts? Well, basically, first of all, I started the School of Womenly Arts now, let's see, 25 years ago. Wow. In my living room with a handful of women, with a vision of what it could become, but no charted path and no known way there. And why I wanted to mention that is because I think that you probably,

have a lot of listeners who have dreams or desires inside of them. And they can't see a way. They don't know how. They don't know if or what or when or any, you know, they're left with questions when you have a longing inside. And what I want to say is your desires are the most important things about you and trusting your intuition and saying yes, even if it seems outrageous, just, even if it seems like it will break the culture or disappoint your family, it's so important to follow your deepest truth. Because when you follow your desires, it creates an adventure like no other and will lead you to your dreams. It'll leave you to adventures you couldn't even imagine. And I suppose in a nutshell, that's really what the School of Womanly Arts is about,

is kind of fanning the flames of women's longings and women's desires. such that they begin to live them because, as we all know, there's a deep imbalance in the world today between masculine and feminine. I would call it a patriarchal world culture, meaning that it's a culture that favors the masculine in a way that doesn't advantage the masculine, nor does it advantage the feminine. and we're all suffering this imbalance. So I started the school of Women in the Arts because I wanted to do my part. Actually, I started it when my daughter was born because I wanted to make sure that I was doing something that could ensure that the world could handle who and what a woman is.

And so I thought, well, I have to start with women. So I have to start a school. So, okay, here we go. And very practically speaking, what does that look like? So if I came to the School of Womenly Arts, where would I begin? Oh, my goodness. The chapter and verse that we have to start with is really introducing a woman to the language of pleasure. Because women, generally speaking, not every woman, but generally speaking, women are taught to take care of their husbands, their parents, their families, their kids, their boss, their corporation, they're taught to take care of their girlfriends, their experience.

their extended community, and we don't get a lot of training in taking care of ourselves. In fact, we very often put ourselves last on the list. And when we don't tend to our own pleasure, then we're kind of walking through the world as if we're unplugged from a socket, as if we're kind of dried up and toasted and we're not. connected to our life force and it's not like the world is you know there's a pleasure fairy out there that's going to bonk us on the head and say you've been so good you've worked so hard darling your labors have been recognized and here you are his beautiful day at the spa with like some hot lovers or you know a beautiful meal like there is nothing like that except if we create it and we're so busy

looking after other people that we don't take the time or the attention to really look and see like what would I long for? What would light me up? What would connect me to my pleasure? Because when you connect a woman to her pleasure, you're turning her on, which is allowing her to tune in and connect to her life force or her divinity. It's also, I think, a delayed, I think women are cultured in such a way as to feel like we need to kind of delay gratification. And until we're perfect, we don't deserve pleasure. And that is definitely the mentality that I think I had and what led me to eventually doing sex therapy

and then wanting to start sex talks is that I grew up with a very bad eating disorder and as so many women do. And I had this idea that was so ingrained in my head that one day I would be enough. And that was, I'd equated that with being thin enough. So when I'm thin enough, then I'd be good enough. then I could then life would begin yeah but until that point and that's obviously an ever-moving

point it's an intangible ever-moving point that you never really reach but it's the kind of trick that I guess we end up playing ourselves that at some point I will be deserving of good things but until that point I must suffer until that point my needs don't need to be met because I'm not enough yet right right and I think it's this it's so easy to get on that kind of one-track kind of mindset and forever delay a gratification and therefore not ask for what you want because you don't think you're deserving of it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that can be such a thing that we hold back. And with that in mind, who then is the School of Womanly Arts for? Well, for example, at what age did your eating disorder start? Twelve. Okay. Interesting, right? Because around 12 is the time of puberty,

where you're kind of shifting from a little girl into a woman. And if you had to like make the job description woman, what would you say? Like when you looked at other women, was it something you aspired to? I had no idea. I looked, I think it was around that time actually where there was that real size zero trend in Hollywood.

and all I had these women's magazines that said we must be obsessed with boys and then celebrities who were shrinking themselves to oblivion. Right. And that was it. Right. So you look ahead and you think, oh, God, that's what I have to conform to. That's why I have to contort myself. That's how I have to shrink down or in some way become.

And that set a woman off tilt in a really destructive way. I mean, eating disorders are not a joke. They are a huge epidemic problem amongst girls and women. And if we don't have an eating disorder, we have, you know, some kind of imbalanced eating, you know, where we always think we should be on a diet or we're trying oat milk versus regular milk as we were just discussing. Like, we're always on this campaign to try to shrink ourselves to conform. And so where the school of womanly arts comes in is to plug a woman from earliest childhood

into her own life force, into pleasure, into connection with her pussy. And that's why I ended up calling that book, Pussy, a reclamation, because we get completely unplugged. What did your bits and pieces get called when you were a little girl? I mean a range of nondescript names like fanny did you have front bottom yeah front bottom fanny and and girl bits private parts okay things often was like it was about not to be talked about not to be seen right and you were lucky actually because at least

you had a name for whatever was that area going on down there I would say when I run a seminar you know whether there's a hundred women or a few thousand women I'll ask what did your parts get called? And more than half will say nothing. Wow. That there was no name. Now imagine how skewed our lives would be if there was no name for, I don't know, our hands. And we just were like ashamed of them. And we just like didn't want to ever show them because we didn't have a name. You know, there was no way to address them. And we felt in some way bad or wrong because we had hands. It's ultra when it relates to the heart and beating soul of your feminine power, your source. And it's different with boys and men. When I'll teach

seminars for men, I'll ask them the question, you know, what did your parts get called? And they'll be like, penis, what's your problem? Why are you even asking me? And it's not the same for women and girls. So when you can learn just as much about a culture from what it ignores as what it values. And when you are pushing aside the core of femininity and eliminating it and exterminating it, the only thing that moves into a woman's body is shame. That's what takes over. So from the earliest time, literally, she feels ashamed. She feels ashamed that she has an unnameable part of her body that is essential to her nature that she can't relate to, she can't touch, she can't look at, she can't talk to other

children about. I mean, imagine if you were on a swing and you banged your, what would that be, your front bottom, your fanny, your bits and pieces, I mean, I've had crazier names. and that kitty, hoochy, connish, Walter Winchell, they're endless. You couldn't even tell your teacher what happened to you because you can't speak about it. So it creates this dreadful relationship between a girl and her own body where when there's shame, self-doubt follows self-hatred, where she knows she is somehow never able to measure up because of her essential nature.

That is when we pull the power out of a little girl, and she actually gives that power to her family, to the first boy she has a crush on. It leaves girls and women so vulnerable to being taken advantage of her or going into situations where they can't find their true yes or their true no. So the work at the School of Womenly Arts is, yes, it's about pleasure. Yes, it's about learning yourself, the body woman, and it is about owning your sensuality and owning your pussy, not in an overtly sexual way.

It's not like you come to the School of Women of Arts to, you know, fuck your brains out for the rest of your life. Although I'm not objecting. I was going to say, I mean, if it's a choice, not a bad place. It's not a bad destination. but it's about being in connection to your deepest intuition, your deepest truth, your sense of rightness on the planet, you're feeling powerful, you're feeling confident, you're feeling like you can ask for what you want in the world.

It's really interesting to hear you describe the roots of shame in that way and the impact it has on women because I guess I'd never really thought about it in those precise terms. What that does to women, when we associate. our sexuality, our bodies first and foremost, and then our sexuality with shame. It's like kind of putting a cloak on that then follows you around always for your whole life. And I remember distinctly... A cloak that reads, not acceptable across the back. We'll never measure up.

It leads women to being in positions with their boss, their dating life, where they're absolutely powerless if you can see it in terms of salaries for women versus men it's something like in i'm i'm from new york so for me it's 79 cents on the dollar it's even more discouraging for women of color yeah the parody is is much more unequal so pussy is key it is and i think i remember the first i remember i mean i think most young girls have this memory of being in the shower, being in the bath and having the shower head. And essentially masturbating for the first time, at probably age 11 or 10.

And feeling so ashamed and so bad. And I was a good Christian girl. And sex was bad. Sex was wrong. And I remember so distinctly thinking, I've done something terrible and I must never do that again. And I didn't start masturbating until I went to university. So I wasn't until I was in my early 20s that I then began.

to actually explore my body myself. Up until that point, I just let other people explore it for me in a way that was often unpleasurable, painful, and comfortable. But I didn't want to call that out because there was this kind of kernel of shame that was associated inherently with my sexuality. Right on. Now, like, how crazy is that? It's like so crazy.

It's like we have people, they have to go to take driver's education to learn how to drive a car, to get a license, right? But we give women the opposite of that. And men too. And men too, entirely. It's, for my guys, I mean, it's not easier. We just keep the, what could be an extraordinary learning curve that, you know, mother to daughter, mother to son, or father to daughter, father to son, where we could be taught about our bodies, about how important pleasure is. Yeah. Because you have that self-knowledge first. had this girl, oh my gosh, like when I very first wrote, my very first book, it's called The School of Woman the Arts. When I was out on book tour and this red-haired girl comes up and

she wants me to sign her book and I'm like, what are you doing here? You know, she looked to be about 13 or 14. I was like, my book says, pussy in it. What are you doing here? This book signing. And she said, well, it's my favorite book. And I was like, why? And her mother had brought her. She had a red-haired mother, and she was this red-haired girl. And I was like, why? And she said, because I go to high school. And girls in high school hate themselves. And your book was the first time I ever heard the sound of a woman who didn't hate herself. She loved herself. And so I just keep reading it to keep me in that zone. So fast forward, like 10 years, she emails me. She said, you know, I met you at the book signing. And I just wanted you to know, like I'm in

college now, my very first boyfriend, I picked him because he paid attention to me. And none of the other boys did. And then when we would, because I had practiced touching myself, because of your book, I was able to show him how to touch me in a way that felt good and comfortable so that when I finally had sex with him, it was really fun. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Wow. I know very few people have a joyful first sexual experience to recount. That's incredible because we're alienated from our bodies. Yeah, exactly. But if you have the, and that's, I think, that, the power in learning to explore your body and moreover be comfortable in your body is such a great power because as long as we live disconnected from our body, how on earth do we should?

show up in the world in relationships and our jobs fully present when we're in this constant internal battle with our very physicality. I think it is impossible. Now, you write in the book that there is a before and there is an after. There's kind of a before women finding their pleasure and exploring their sensuality and there is an after, this idea of kind of the lights being turned on women find their pleasure and sensuality. Now, I think sitting in front of you in your fabulous leopard print suit talking so boldly and beautifully about the of the pussy. I think anyone listening, anyone watching you would think, wow, this is kind of somehow innate. This is how you've always been. You've always been super connected to your body,

your sensuality. But that wasn't the case. You very much felt growing up, your lights, as you described and were dimmed. Can you take us back to that Mama Gina before Mama Gina? Yeah. Regina that preceded her when her lights were off and before she found sensuality. Yeah. I would say that I was, well, I grew up in a family as many women do. where there was kind of an abuse pattern that meant that my childhood had a lot of violence in it at my home. Unfortunately, it's not atypical for girls and women, and many women had experiences of verbal abuse, sexual abuse, violence, being ignored, being overlooked. There's so many ways that things can go off the rails for girls as they're growing up. I didn't realize,

that anything was wrong because that was home. But I remember feeling when I was five years, five or six years old, I remember feeling like how can I be losing my enthusiasm and I'm a little girl like something's wrong out there in the world and I got to figure it out. And so I was just like a natural researcher, probably really nerdy little kid that love to read all the time. but around that time the goddess would come and she would sit on my bed and I could feel her presence and I don't know if it was something real or the construct of an unhappy little girl with a powerful

imagination but all I can tell you is that I had this experience of the goddess sitting on my bed and I could feel her beauty and her radiance and I thought whoa I want to find her if she's She's a goddess, which she seems to be, she must be in, I was Jewish, so I had synagogues. She must be in churches or temples or somewhere. And so I'll track her down. So I spent many years, like having my friends take me to the Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox, the Baha'i shrines, Islamic temples. I was looking because I thought she was, had to be celebrated somewhere. She was so cool.

And, of course, I found nothing. it led me to this deep interest in spirituality and in alternatives to the patriarchal world religions that are male dominated. You know, it's Buddha, Yahweh, Muhammad, Moses. These are not women who are dominating the global religions in our culture. I just didn't remember asking my priest, where are the women? Yes. And he was like, Mary. And then Mary Magdal. I was like, this is not enough. Not enough. Not enough. So it's, it led me to this quest and, and led me to being sort of very in my own little world, very anti-social, very disconnected. I would, I want, I came to New York. I wanted to be an actor, but I just had

no confidence. I didn't even know who I was as a woman. And I thought, how can I be on a stage if I don't know who I am. So I started to study the archetypes of Carl Jung. I read Joseph Campbell. I studied Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, indigenous cultures, where I found little trails of the ancient goddess religions, especially with the books of Maria Gimbutus, Ryan Isler, Merlin Stone, these authors that had spent their lives investigating a time when she, who bleeds, but does not die, was considered holy and sacred. And so I was riveted, but, you know, it's not like I could by myself a little hermit living in New York City revive a dead religion.

I kind of let that go for a bit and found myself just so lost. I was lost, I would say. It was probably the most depressed, invisible human being in New York City in my, you know, early 20s. So it was from that, that was the beginning of my adventure. So anybody out there who's feeling kind of lost, no, it's not forever. No, it's a part of your creativity coming to get you and that would be more steps for you to take, but to hold yourself just tenderly in that place and grab a hold of pussy or reclamation because it will help you. Cool. And I know you try, kind of different forms of therapy.

I did. As you said, you immersed yourself in academia. I did. You know, massive nerd reading lots. But what then took you on this pleasure journey? I was so lucky. I was so lucky. And I was, I signed up for this acting school called the Actors Information Project.

And it was great because they were going to help you create a business plan for your acting career. And I auditioned for them. And they said, you did a great audition. but you have absolutely no sexuality in your audition. And that, it's no problem except it would mean you'll be cast in roles much older than yourself. And I was like, shit, that makes sense. I haven't had, you know, since my college boyfriend, I hadn't had like any sexual experiences.

I sort of went on the hermit trail. So I thought, what am I going to do? So I asked one of the teachers there and he said, well, there's a class coming up. And it's called basic sensuality. And it's given by a school called Moore House. And it's going to come to New York City. So we think you should take it. We'll help you with your career.

And I was like, fuck yes. I'm going to take this thing. But meanwhile, I show up for the class. And I'm like, you know, did you ever take a class that's so outside of your world? You're like, what have I done? Who are all these crazy people in this class? me, I have to get out of here. But fortunately I stayed and it was so valuable because that night they gave us a homework assignment where they asked us to prepare as if the most important

person in the world was coming to visit us. And I never did anything like that for myself. And it was most extraordinary experience because when a woman begins to step into the experience of creating pleasure for herself, for no one else, time and space changes, literally alters and shifts. And this paradigm called pleasure opens up. And suddenly it was like I put on music, I tidied my little apartment. I've created a bath for myself. I had little flowers, a little bubbly water, some nuts and chocolate. But, and suddenly I was like, I am Cleopatra. I am like a princess.

And then when I looked in the mirror, the craziest thing happened. When I looked in the mirror, because there was a part of the exercise to see yourself. And I looked in my eyes and I was like, oh, shit, that's where the goddess is. She's inside of me. And I thought, it's got to mean she's in every woman. But women don't know this. We have no idea that we are divine because we always taught that God is a man. So we don't think that we're divine, even though we're created in his image.

How could we, we don't quite put all the pieces. We can't put the pieces together in the way the culture is skewed. So as soon as I had that insight and beautiful experience of seeing my own divinity, I was like, okay, that's it. I got to tell every single woman about this. But first I have to learn for myself. and I ended up taking years and years of classes at Moor House. I am so grateful for them.

They're in a small school in California. I actually moved in to a Moor House. It's a functioning commune where I remained for about four or five years. I love hearing you tell that story. I think that is my sex therapist quite early on doing sex therapy told me that I had to learn to seduce myself. She doesn't run a bath, light a candle, do all the things. that you'd usually associate with a romantic partner and that you would only save for doing in a romantic context.

And it sounds so simple, but I said at the time, like I had a bad eating disorder. Spending time alone meant often making food and throwing up. I was kind of in this cycle of self-destruction with bulimia. By the way, I just want to say, I'm so grateful for your transparency about this issue because it's girls, women have to know they are not alone because it's such an epidemic.

And I know it takes us in a tremendous amount of courage on your part. So, yay. I appreciate that. And I think you're right because I think particularly with bulimia, it's really gross. It's really messy. And I think people don't want to talk about it because there's something in our culture that we praise thinness, we praise discipline that comes with thinness. So anorexias kind of becomes culturally, I know, it's like less dirty.

Whereas bulimia is gross. It's revolting. It's this kind of, imagining it is quite a horrible thing. And so I think that we don't talk about it. And I just know so many women who are struggling with it right now. But learning to seduce myself, or at least to take the time to spend time alone that wasn't self-punishing, that was actually about self-care. And I think self-care gets bandaged around a bit on social media now. But the fundamentals of what it means is like not being at war with yourself in the privacy of your own home.

And if you can make peace with yourself. at home alone by yourself, not performing this piece for somebody else in a romantic context. I think it sets you up to be, I think, powerful in the rest of your life where previously you might have felt broken and disconnected. And I noted that word broken that you, you described yourself as having felt broken before in the book. And it hits me every time because I hear so many women tell me that they are broken in their relationship to sex. And I started sex therapy saying to my sex therapist, I'm broken and I'm alone in my brokenness and you're not going to be able to fix me.

So there is this tremendous, I guess, power and encouragement in realizing that so many of us feel alone in our brokenness. But actually, we're totally not. And not only that, but it is, it's solvable, it's manageable. Yeah. And so I'm wondering now, you've had this, going through this process in your life where you're discovering your sensuality, seemingly for the first time. What did that kind of really look and feel like to you?

What does sensuality really mean? I think it means something different for everyone. For me, my journey was literally the school that I went to, their area of specialty was the area of female orgasm, not male orgasm, notice, I have said that. It was the study of how to cultivate and extend and expand and intensify a woman's orgasmic experience. Why?

Because women are constructed really differently than men. We mostly, if we're heterosexual, we mostly learn about sex through the male body, which experiences pleasure really, really, really, really, really differently than we do. And the women who I met at that school, I could tell when I was taking their classes, I was like, these women know some shit that I don't know. They're just like beaming a confidence in a power that I have no clue about. So I'm going to study whatever it is they're studying so that I could learn this too. So I went to basically orgasm school and I took this class called the expansion of sexual potential.

And what my teachers, there were always in my sessions, one man and two women in my individual training sessions, and I would learn from watching a man stroke one of my certified teacher's bodies, and I could see her orgasmic experience. And then my body would be like, oh, that's what it's like. Did you ever hear of something called a circle jerk? No. It's something that boys do. They get into a circle and they might all pee together and then they might all jerk off together.

Wow. It's like a thing they do because penises are kind of on the outside of their bodies and it's something that they can, you know, see and there's not a lot of shame around that. Whereas women, we don't really see each other ever. We don't see each other's naked bodies. We don't see each other's orgasmic experiences. is it's all very privatized, you know, unless you're brilliant enough to have a woman lover at some point in your life, even if you're heterosexual, although I think everybody's a little bisexual.

I think so. I think so. And then the certified teacher would stroke my pussy, and then I would learn to do the opposite of what I thought I was supposed to do, where instead of tensing my muscles, I learned how to relax, which is not simple. Just like relax, relax, relax, because the more you can relax, the more you can feel. And you begin to, instead of being in a place of criticism about your body, or like, better hurry up, no one's going to want to stroke you that long. He's, he or she's been at it for five minutes. I better hurry, you know, which that's an orgasm killer if you ever put a timer on your orgasm. And I learned how to just feel every single stroke.

And it was incredible how it connected me to my body, to my intuition. It's almost like the more pleasure that I fired up in this body, the more I began to trust myself, the more I began to be able to speak my truth, the more I began to actually create in this world like literally the pre-orgasmic regina there's no fucking way i would have started the school of women the arts but post studies there would be nothing that i longed for that i wouldn't make sure happened and i think it makes to me it makes perfect sense hearing you say that because when we feel broken in our bodies when we feel disconnected from our bodies we carry that brokenness into all aspects of our life.

We carry that shame. We carry that disconnectedness. And that manifests, I think, very clearly in the way we present ourselves publicly, present ourselves in relationships. It's like, I always think it's kind of like our bodies are like circuits. And when there's a bit of the circuit that's broken, that obviously has ramifications on all kind of aspects of our lives.

And it's why sexual wellness, as a kind of, it's a bit of a kind of capital term, but being connected to our sexuality, connected to our sensuality is such a core part of our overall health and well-being and just our capacity to show up in the world. Yeah. And how did it work with your sex therapist? Like, where did you start and then where did you get to in your studies and your training? Well, interesting is hearing you talk about orgasm being able to really be present in your body and I think like ride the wave of your orgasms is interesting to me because I started sex there because I couldn't orgasm and partnered sex. And it was really interlinked with the eating disorder, which I didn't realize

until I did sex therapy. But I just felt broken. I felt I was not sexual. I was totally unsexual, unsensual, spent most of the time trying to attack my body, punish my body. It was this thing that I'd spent my whole life hating and a kind of constant, it was really my body was a thing that was the projection, the thing that I projected all my anxieties and worries and frustrations and anger onto. So it was this kind of constant sense of internal, I guess, combustion and self-attack. And so doing sex therapy, I just did talking therapy initially. And that was very much about learning to, first of all, understand that my relationship

to my body was central to my connection, my relationship to sex. And then to begin to incorporate practices like seducing myself, practices like keeping a pleasure journal, so noting things throughout my day that gave me pleasure, that allowed me over time to begin to look after myself in a private context and see, appreciate pleasure in all kind of facets of my life. But I think because I then, over time, was unable to orgasm and partner sex, which was one really wonderful result of sex therapy, more than that, it was also put a stop to years of bulimia. I could no longer, I think, attack myself in private having learned what I'd learned in the sex therapy room

and learned to see my body through a prism of pleasure and not just pain. But now I think it was a few years ago and I still feel now I've set up sex talks I'm getting to interview people like you and feel like I'm learning so much. But now I do feel in the context of sex. I'm so excited by the fact that I can orgasm now

that I do kind of rush to it. I'm like, quick, quick, quick, must make it happen because I'm so aware for so long it couldn't. And so I do still feel that sense of like, God, the time is ticking, like, you know, must get to it also, you know, all those thoughts immediately crowd in. Is that the person getting bored? Is this taking too long? And I have actually found it really empowering, reading your book and thinking, I did, she had sex the day and was thinking about your book as I had sex, thinking like lean into this pleasure. Don't try and rush

it. Trust your body and allow yourself that, that time. Yeah. Because that is the ultimate, you know, you'll be able to reach such a much like higher height of pleasure. And I wondered for anyone listening who is curious in terms of connecting to your sensuality, learning more about your sexuality and what gives you pleasure, how do you translate that into the bedroom? So with a sexual partner, for example, what does that mean? Like, how do you show up in the bedroom? Well, I think once a woman, I mean, imagine if you'd had the kind of training that you gave yourself when you were a little girl. So you, right? You said that you never had to go through that period of having your body be your enemy. And you're always in relationship. So I think that

what happens for us is the more we can learn about our bodies. Like literally, it's kind of like learning how to put your key in your own ignition, turn that baby on, take her down the highway. Then you can invite passengers. Because then when you're just like my red-haired girl, When you have a new partner, you can say, yo, if you want to really, really turn me on, like, if you start, like, kissing me, like, right there behind my ear and then kind of go down to my shoulder and then kind of nibble a little on my shoulder, that is going to really turn me on so much. And then, like, a little, like, bite me a little that really gets me. We have the gift of a clitoris.

We have 8,000 nerve endings dedicated to pleasure. I've recently learned now 10,000. They keep one up in the number, more research. It's really exciting. So we're going to go with 10,000 plus. 10,000 plus. So you, that, there's so much sensitivity there. And guys only have 4,000 nerve endings in the head of their cock.

So generally speaking, if you take a woman as your lover, she'll be very attuned to pressure because she has a clit. If you take a man as your lover, he generally, speaking, we'll be touching you with a little more intensity than perhaps you might like because he's accustomed to touching himself with that level of intensity. So when you start being clitorate, when you start knowing your body, when you have really done the research on yourself, then you can really teach a partner what you like. And there's so much sensitivity like literally if all your partner did was spread your legs and whisper adjectives

about your pussy that would turn any woman on like just to have your partner say you have the most beautiful pussy on earth is so delicious everything about it is exquisite like that is heart and phenomenal, even without touching a woman's body. She's that sensitive. Even you saying that, this is how, no matter how much work you do, there's always more work to be done and more. Because even as you say that, I'm like internally blushing, imagining, imagining that scenario. I'm like, oh my gosh, I cannot imagine someone even just like, I can't imagine being comfortable enough with someone naked, just looking.

at my pussy and saying I think that just makes I'm like oh my god that's so embarrassing which I think says everything it's just there's so much we still so I still definitely have so much work to do in terms of growing more comfortable with my body and I think it's changed so much and I've had such much I have such much better relationship to my body and that is translated so much to sex but I still feel like there is that that burden of shame that that barrier to communication still it's heavy. I get that Emma, but think about it. You have created a life for yourself where you have evolved so much further and faster than you could have ever dreamed five years ago because of the work that you've done. And I promise you, this is not hard. Next time you choose a lover,

you're going to be like, hey, I did this podcast like a couple weeks ago with this woman from York City and she like told me that if a partner whispered adjectives of praise to my pussy that it would really feel good to me. Would you like to try that with me just to see? Because like I do this podcast and I just want to experiment. I bet you'd get a really good outcome and I can see you doing it. Okay. You know what? Challenge accepted. I can't say no to that possibly. Now we've touched there on, we're alluding really to the power, importance of communication, which I think living in a patriarchal society, we have all been done such a disservice when it comes to how we interact with one another, how we show up in the most intimate

environments, for example, sex. And I'm always very conscious to say this with sex talks, that none of the conversations we have at sex talks about blaming men for the orgasm gap for patriarchy. I think we all done a disservice because of kind of a straight jacket of gender. and how little we like learn about. Yeah, and it's just the culture at large. Exactly. But I was interested reading your book. You have a chapter on relationships specifically, which feels like a hot topic right now.

I'm in my early 30s and I'm surrounded by incredible, powerful women who are beautiful and smart and, you know, so ambitious and incredible, but are all struggling. I've got kind of a group of women who are really struggling. I think by myself included with when it comes to relationships, when it comes to intimacy. And it feels like they, like my best friend, one of the most powerful women I know, and Killy's heel is men. They're going for,

going in these cycles of men who are disappointing and who are, or they're getting stuck in situations, they don't want to be in it. It feels like in the context of intimacy, they lose their power, and I definitely count myself in this. And reading that chapter in relationships in your book,

I was struck because it's quite easy, I think, in a contemporary kind of dating context. I feel like often the conversation moves to how shit men are, how the red flags, men are being crap, men, kind of we put women I think often in this kind of victim category of like things are being done to us and we are the victim of often bad, useless, inadequate men who are dating us all wrong.

But the chapter in your book on relationships, you really delve into the miscommunication that is happening at all levels in relationships, from sex to intimacy, just to be, dating people. Can you tell me, tell us how we can get better at communicating in such a way that we can do relationships better? Yeah, that's such a good question. It's such a hard work, right? It's like, oh, God, you know, because it's, I love men. Me too. I love women. And Men actually, they don't know what it is we want.

Men actually live to serve women. They want to make us happy. And they have no idea how, no clue. And women, we don't tell them. We don't ask. And when we don't ask and we get in the passenger seat, of a car and we just say drive as if he's supposed to read our minds or be psychic about what we long for or drive us to our dreams. It's just such a cluster fuck. And we learned to do this. I mean,

I tried to keep Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid out of the library of my daughter's life. Like we did not watch those Disney movies. I did not have those books because all of those storylines, well, except for Beauty and the Beast, but the story of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, it's a young, beautiful girl in a coma

and then a prince comes up and he kisses her and he takes her to his dreams or the castle. And so women think that they're supposed to be like that. They're supposed to be, look beautiful and say nothing.

and it's funny you know when when I was dating I don't know if you had this thing where you go out and somebody's taking you to dinner and they give you the menu and then you open it and then you're thinking uh should I order the pasta because it's cheap or should I go for that steak that I'm really in the mood for you know and then you're like well how much do I like this guy do I like could I if it kind of like if I bought the steak would I feel like I had to fuck him and if I did get the steak would I have to fuck him like do I feel obligated like you know what I mean it's like this whole thing that women go through that men don't even know about and so I mean have you ever had an experience similar to that um this is

but depressed I think I would be more thinking don't eat if you're going to have sex I'm I'm like, I best not eat anything because I best not be in anything. I don't really eat if I'm, if I'm a date because I'm like, if I'm going to have sex and I don't want to be bloated, I don't feel anything. So that's what's running through my mind is the kind of self-regulation of body. That's a good one. That's a good also. So women just have it skewed wrong.

Like what a guy would love is a woman who actually knew what she wanted. so she could tell him right away she could be like yo this is where I am in my life I'm in my 30s I'm kind of looking to see if this relationship has legs like I don't just want to love her I'm I'm looking to see if you know we have some potential are you at a place in your life where you're into long term or short term like what's you where are you right now because this is what I long for, like for a woman to be so confident in herself that she could just lay it out where she is, ask him, and then she'd know right away if he was on the page with her or not. Because sometimes guys are going through periods in their lives where they don't want

a partner. And sometimes there are periods in their lives. So they long for a partner. It's really important to get on the page with it. I also think that, um, And maybe this is even more primary and more important. But when a woman is disconnected from her pussy, she's moving towards relationship from fear. Will he hurt me? Will he disappoint me? The last one hurt me and disappointed me.

Will he fail to honor me or stand for me? so she's coming at him a little bit like hi are you about to destroy me right now and disappoint me like that's how she's showing up on her date instead of uh approaching the situation with curiosity and saying like oh my god you're super hot you're super fun you seem like a great time are there any red flags i should know about like are you really this are you ready this great Yeah. You know, where she's liberated because she's trusting her body. She's trusting herself. And then you start to look at relationships differently and you start to evaluate, like, based on, is he interested in me? Is he interested in giving me what I want? Is he curious about me? Does he try to attune to me?

And then you base your choice on a man who wants you to have everything you want. Now, the challenge with that is you have to be ready to receive it, meaning your self-worth has to be such that when he starts to write you love poetry, you're happy instead of you feel ick. Ew, why is he writing love poetry about me? I oscillate between being really bold and confident and I'll book a great date. I'll book, I'll be like, let's do this on my terms. I'll book hotel, book a night out, book a recent name, cabin in the countryside and be

like, will you come with this? Will you come with me to this? And I feel like it takes every iota of self-confidence and power that I have in my being to do that. And I feel like I take these big bold moves. And then after that, not that I withdraw, but I don't say anything. Then I'm like, okay, I've done my big move and that's all I can give. And after that, like, I don't want to ask, do you want to be in a relationship? Do you want to be like, what are you looking for? I'm like, I made my move. I was assertive. I'm so scared that you're now going to reject me, that you're going to leave me, that you're going to tell me, you know, you're going to basically that you're going to hurt me and that you don't want me because fundamentally I kind of believe I'm

unwontable and I'm unlovable. So I feel like if I can, but the bold move is me thinking I'm ticking the boxes and then after that I think I emotionally or like physically withdraw. Okay. I got two assignments for you. Okay. One, get him to book the hotel or the cabin or the restaurant. Like men truly live to serve us and if you want a man to really like you, give him something to do for you. That is what has a guy eternally devoted is when she's making use of him and so that he's able to give her something she wants. And then the only reward is for him, it's not like you have to do the same thing for him

next weekend. You know, after he takes you to dinner, you don't owe him one. After he takes you to dinner, what he wants to see. is that you're delighted and that you're like, yay, that was great. I wanted to try that restaurant. I'm wanting to go there for like a month and month and you made it happen, thanks. They don't need more than that. They really don't.

But they love knowing that there is use for their production because men want to produce for us. They want to make us happy. But it feels antithetical to the, I feel like I need to be. And I think I'm echoing a lot of what a lot of my friends. would say, strong, independent boss bitch woman. I run my own business. I'm self-confident. I stopped waiting for someone to come and save me. I saved myself. I did all the work. And I've done so much to get to this point where I'm independent. I'm self-pleasureing in more ways than just sexually.

And it took a lot to get here. I've had to do a lot of building and a lot of unlearning, a lot of relearning. And now suddenly I have to like, I'm kind of almost showing up in this like too hyper-masculine way or being too assertive. but I'm like, I can't get it right. Listen, I so get you. I had to like, I, by the time, I was a single mom raising my kid, running my company, I had like a cock a mile long. Like, it was so big. It was like, I could like, I was dragging it around the streets with me.

Like, there was no man that could get anywhere close to me. Like, that's just a big cock dangling off me. And it literally, when it came time for me to date, especially like after my daughter, went to college, I was like, okay, now is my time. I had to like unhook that thing, put down my sword, all those things that made me, you know, powerful, independent. It was not, that wasn't the part of me that was going to create the kind of intimacy and surrender that I longed for in partnership. So it's kind of, it's not leaving that stuff. It's just developing another side of yourself or allowing, more like allowing another side to come forward. It is very easy to fall

into, I think when you run your own business, when you've done all the, the unlearning of the romantic idealism that I think is so important for women to do at some point in their lives to unpack the fairy tales and to say, you know, I will save myself. You feel like you need to be the person who does everything for yourself. Like no one is, and my Palaton teachers always say, no one's gonna save you save yourself and so you get it's really hard like to to learn to do that and to be so self-dependent and so and my biggest fear is being needy as being too much for anyone I feel too much all the time I feel like I want to be too so I don't want to impose I don't want to be too much I don't want to ask anything of anyone because it's all too much too much too

and I can see how that translates in the context of dating yeah and you almost like make yourself a little bit like small and invisible but then you make these big moves to try and count contract that, but it just is very confusing, I think, as a dialogue. Yeah. Perhaps. I think it's, I can totally relate to you. I see the spot you're in. I get you. And what we want to do is you want to sort of look at this like, I'm just curious. What if, what would happen? Let me just try like a three month experiment of asking a, men in my life to do things for me and seeing if it makes them happy and it makes me happy. When I first started to play with this, I was so bad at it. I was with my first husband, Bruce,

at the time, and I literally was so independent. I couldn't think of anything for him to do for me. So I would like call a girlfriend and be like, I can't think of anything. I want to do this experiment, but I can't think of anything and she would be like you know that jar of mayonnaise you just bought get him to open it for you when he comes home from work and I'd be like great idea so he'd come home from work and I'd be like I can't open the jar and then he'd open I'd be like yay and that was practice for me I ended up asking him to paint our bedroom pink and then it got he painted it pink and he was so proud and he loved it so much and then I was like like, well, it's not exactly the right shade of pink. Could you paint it even lighter pink?

And that he was so excited to paint it the lighter pink. And so I started to see that my independent ways of doing all the things myself or hiring people to paint my bedroom, that I actually made us closer when I was willing to be vulnerable enough to ask. And I think that's actually a really important lesson across the board. in learning to be vulnerable with the people around you. And it can feel, as I said, antithetical to what we learn to be strong independent boss bitch women to ask for help when you need it.

And I think that transcends romance. I think it's also true amongst our friends and people around us. You can get kind of straightjacketed by your sense of independence, which is wonderful up to a point, but actually can be quite limiting. And I think there's something, and I think connecting it back to this notion of sensuality, which has kind of been the through way of this discussion,

there is something in submitting and like kind of allowing yourself to feel through your feelings and be present in those feelings and then ask the help that you need that requires a sort of submission in the same way to kind of being analogous to sex to kind of submit to pleasure, to orgasm to those things to kind of like let go a little bit.

It's true. I'm conscious of time. We're going to have to wrap up in a second even though I wish I could talk to you all day. I feel like it might be able to solve all mine and my friend's problems and everyone who comes to sex talks to. I think we all have pretty much the same. You know what you should do.

is I have this incredible course that I teach, which is like a basic primer of pussy, of man training, of partner training, of pleasure, of flirtation, of inviting abundance, all the womanly arts. And it's called Virtual Pleasure Boot Camp. And you could point them to my website. I will show that.

You know what you need to do? All sign up for. and take it together. Take it together like a book club. It's phenomenal. It's eight weeks long. You would have like your little session every single week and then you'd have the homework that would guide you.

And oh my goodness, this will literally change your life. It's called Virtual Pleasure Boot Camp. It's on my website. Virtual Pleasure Boot Camp. I will put it in the show notes and anyone listening who would like to join up with me. Oh my goodness. This will be, I love a book club. So this is a pleasure book.

A pleasure version of a book club sounds right up my street. It's so good. To wrap us up, how can people begin to, to prime them for getting ready for the boot camp, begin to incorporate what you describe as a pleasure practice into their day-to-day life? Yeah, yeah. Pleasure is a discipline and it's so easy to live a mediocre life. But to have a pleasured life requires, and it's not that it takes a long time, it's that it takes a discipline, a practice. So it's something simple like when you make your tea or your coffee in the

morning, it's choosing the mug that will make you happy, like being willing to rinse your favorite mug from the day before so that you could have it again this morning with your favorite creamer in your coffee or your tea. It's a question of making a choice that values you. it's something simple like for me if I lay my clothes out the night before I feel like spoiled the next morning because the decisions already made it's like there so it's little tiny things flowers for yourself for no reason putting on a tiny little bit of lip gloss for me that's really uplifting it doesn't take it's like boom boom I've glossed and I just feel a little bit more connected to myself in a lovely way. So it's incremental tiny choices that anyone can make

every single day that will begin to feed the fire of pleasure which wants to be stoked within you. And then that allows you to have so much surplus to take care of others and do the work you need to do in the world. And it's a really good starting point. I think getting you used to appreciating points of pleasure in your life, which I think is that on a continuum with sexual pleasure. So if the sexual element of these things feels intimidating at first and feels like, oh, that could never be me. I'm never going to be someone who luxuriates an orgasm or feels super sexual, I think, beginning to notice those pleasure points early on, like as a kind of the coffee, the tea, those sorts of things. It's the first point of entry, I think, to then beginning that

pleasure journey, which I think can be so powerful. And so much of this, and it's my final question, But so much of this requires, so much of what we've talked about today and what you discuss in your book requires that we unlearn a lot of the negative stories that we've been brought up, inculcating from such a young age around what it means to be a woman,

what femininity means, what how to exist in, as you say, in a patriarchal, hyper-masculine world. What do you think, from all the women that you've worked with and spoken to through the School of Womanly Arts, what do you think is the most important thing for us as women to unlearn?

I think the most important thing for a woman to unlearn is that the sense of disconnection between a woman and her body to look at yourself in the mirror and say, you're hot, you're sexy, you're amazing. Approval is a way that we can instantly connect to ourselves and our bodies because we don't realize how much time we spend in disapproval. so when you just reverse that boom you can have a hundred little connections a day of a few seconds of joy just because you're alive and you had the genius to be born a woman oh i love that what a positive beautiful appropriate note to end on for has been such a beautiful conversation thank you so much

for the work that you do thank you for taking time to speak to me and to all of our sex talks on this podcast. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Emma. It's my joy, and you are so good at this. Congratulations. Thank you so much for listening to today's Sex Talks podcast, with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. If you'd like to attend a live recording of the podcast, check out the event bright link in the show notes, as we have lots of exciting live events coming up. You can also keep up to date with everything coming up at Sex Talks, plus get my sporadic musings, via the Sex Talk substack. I've also popped that link into the show notes. And over on Instagram, where I'm at Emma Louise Boynton. And finally, if you enjoyed the show,

please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to this on, as apparently it helps others to find us. Have a glorious day. Thank you.