Sex With Emily - Your Brain is Your Biggest Sex Organ. Here’s How to Support It

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

In this episode, I'm diving deep into the second pillar of Sexual Intelligence: Health. I’ll be breaking down exactly how your physical and mental wellbeing are directly shaping your desire, arousal, and pleasure. I'm walking you through everything from movement, hydration, and hormonal balance to pelvic floor health, stress, trauma, and the negative self-talk that quietly steals your pleasure. If you've ever wondered why you're just not in the mood, or why intimacy feels out of reach no matter what you try, this episode will connect the dots in a way that finally makes sense. Better sex doesn't just start in the bedroom, it starts with how you're taking care of yourself every single day. Listen to Better Sleep for Better Sex w/ Dr. Michael Breus now! https://open.spotify.com/episode/3B1WMSz4aPKE4oxokEDdQF?si=2e7127661d784f99 Buy Kegel Balls here: https://shop.sexwithemily.com/products/118lelo-beads-plus ABOUT EMILY: Emily Morse is a Doctor of Human Sexuality, author and host of the #1 rated Sex with Emily podcast. Known as a renowned sexologist, Dr. Emily has helped millions of people around the world navigate their sex lives. Her candid and often funny conversations challenge cultural taboos, misinformation and awkward sex talks to create a future where people can deeply connect and embrace pleasure-filled lives. Because, life is too short for bad sex.  CONNECT WITH EMILY: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexwithemily/  X: https://twitter.com/sexwithemily  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sexwithemily  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sexwithemily  Threads: https://www.threads.net/@sexwithemily WANT MORE? Visit the Website: https://sexwithemily.com/ which includes FREE guides. Free Downloadable Guides: https://sexwithemily.com/guides/  Text With Me: https://sexwithemily.com/text  Receive Sex Tips On The Regular: https://sexwithemily.com/subscribe  Interested in 1:1 Coaching with Emily? Go to http://sexwithemily.com/coaching to apply!  Chapters: 0:00 Welcome to Sex With Emily 4:05 A Guided Breathing Exercise 7:23 Moving Your Body To Feed Your Desire 9:14 Hormones and Their Impact on Libido 10:52 Hydration and Nutrition 12:13 Why Pelvic Floor Health Matters 15:19 Medications That Can Affect Your Sex Drive 16:38 Mental Health and Sexual Pleasure 19:26 Stop Performing and Start Feeling 22:06 Breaking Negative Self Talk and Shame 28:06 Cultivating Self Esteem 32:37 Simple Ways to Calm Your Nervous System 36:40 Why Better Sleep Improves Your Libido 38:42 Embrace Daily Pleasure 41:06 Final Takeaways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am so excited to finally share this with you. I am going on tour. It is the best sex ever tour. And I hope you'll join me. And the show is all about you, the audience. Every night, I'm going to be answering your questions, win prizes, and leave with secrets to have the best sex ever. Every night is different because the show is all about you. So here's the dates, July 7th in Rosemont, Illinois at Zanis, then heading to Philadelphia on August 5th.

Nashville on September 29th and Austin on October 7th, more cities to come. Come with your partner, your friends, fly solo, you'll leave with practical tools, plenty of laughs, maybe some surprises, well, definitely some surprises. Visit sexwithemly.com slash events for tickets and tour information. I will see you there. Can't wait to meet you. We can't experience pleasure if we don't feel safe. I think the pelvic floor is like the unsung hero of our sexual health.

Sexual satisfaction is not just about what happens in bed, it is what happening in your body and your mind. We are not robots. We can't just be like, okay, switch on, and now I'm gonna be all turned on. So anxiety cancels out your arousal, all right? The healthy arousal and the healthy responses that you wanna have in pleasure.

If our body is exhausted, our mind is exhausted, we're experiencing a lot of stress. Do you know what happens? Hey everyone, welcome to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily and my mission is to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate conversation around sex. This show is all about you. It's about you having better sex, expressing your desires and knowing exactly what you want. Also be sure to follow me on all social media. It's Sex with Emily everywhere. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for full episodes and my newsletter. You're going to love my newsletter. I've been told

I give really good newsletter if you know what I mean. It's sex withemly.com slash newsletter. Finally, I'm going on tour and I hope you join me. I'll be going all over the United States and my first stop is in Chicago on July 7th and the show is all about you. I'll be answering your questions live. We'll be playing games. There's giveaways. It's going to be such a good time.

You can find that at sex with Emily.com slash events. All right, everyone. Enjoyed this episode. Okay, so if you've been listening to this show for a while, you know I'm not about random sex toys or gimmicks. I'm about tools that actually support your pleasure, your communication, and your and your connection. Well, that's exactly why we created the shop, sex with Emily's store.

Everything in there is curated by me and my team. And these are products I trust. I recommend to clients and would tell my friends about. I do tell my friends about. It's what I talk about all the time. Whether you're exploring solo pleasure, looking to reconnect with a partner, or you really just want something body safe and beginner friendly.

We've organized it so you don't feel overwhelmed. People love the dame pillow for supported sex. The Magic Wand Waterproof. Oh my God, it's so good. Cray Vesper. massage candles, Joe flavored lobe, We Vibe Touch, clitoral vibrators. There's just so many things on there because pleasure shouldn't be confusing. It should feel empowering.

You can check it out at shop. dot sex withemly.com and find something that supports where you are right now or just click the link in the show notes. Also, keep an eye out for curated collections coming soon. Everyone, welcome. How's everybody doing? I hope you all do take time for yourself this weekend. I know it's, you know, those weekends where you're like, yeah,

Now I'm not working, but I'm going to run errands all weekend. I want to do all this family stuff that I committed to. But I want to remind you that, you know, self-care, you got to put our own oxygen masks on first. So I'm just wishing everyone a wonderful Friday and a great weekend. And thank you for joining me today because this is our sex IQ pillar series that I'm doing. Last week we talked about embodiment. And this week I'm talking about the second pillar.

of sexual intelligence sex IQ. So this is a mini masterclass on health, which is again, pillar two of my sexual intelligence or sex. And today is really all about you. This is about your body and your mind and your spirit and how they all integrate together for lasting pleasure. So to remind you about sexual intelligence or sex IQ, it really is just the focus that sex is wellness. And I give you guys so many tips and tricks all the time. This is really the framework that's going to allow you to have the best sex of your life. And the sex you've always dreamed of. And I know that has not been accessible to a lot of us.

So I'm just deeply grateful for the SmartSX community. Thank you, everyone, for joining me on this Friday. And I would love to start with a little bit of just a few minutes, maybe two minutes of breathing. A little bit of breathwork, just to kind of settle into the moment. It helps me too. And I just want to, it really helps to do a little bit longer on your exhale. So just follow along with me, okay? We're just going to ground here in the moment.

So first we're going to take a deep breath in through our nose for four counts. So it's inhale, two, three, four. We're going to hold for two seconds. One, two, and then exhale for six. Two, three, four, five, six more. Inhale, hold, and then exhale. Breath work to get it started. change you that just like sets me here in the moment with all of you um and it's a huge pillar of

of our overall health just practicing breathing for a few minutes a day so today is our master class the health pillar of sexual intelligence and let's talk about this sexual satisfaction is not just about what happens in bed it is what happening in your body and your mind so as you remember real quick about sex IQ, sexual intelligence, it is made up of five pillars. And today we are focusing on the health pillar. So remember this, that your body and your brain are your largest sex organs. And if either is off, it is going to impact your desire, your arousal, your orgasm. So if our body is exhausted, our mind is exhausted, we're experiencing a lot of stress. Do you know what happens, your sex life is the first thing to go.

Anyone ever noticed that? Is that when you're, anyone ever feel like stressed or anxious, right? Really, really hard to be in our bodies when we're experiencing a lot of stress and anxiety. So we got to think about how our mental health and our physical health impacts our sexuality and our sex life and our desire. And just when people think about sexual health, they often think about our reproductive health or our hormone levels. And that's part of it.

But it's also about like, do you feel energized? How is your blood flow? How connected do you feel to your body and your emotions? And just a reminder that last week was the first pillar, which is the embodiment pillar, and we talked a lot about being more in our body. So for health today, I want to break it down into two specific categories. So first, let's just talk about our physical health. So when I say your physical health and your sexual function, what am I talking about? So your body, your body is an incredible vessel for pleasure.

And if it's not supported through great physical health practices, pleasure becomes harder to access. So remember when I say pleasure, I'm really talking about everything. I'm talking about enjoying your life, enjoying the things that give you joy, spending time in nature with your friends, with your kids, cooking, doing hobbies that make you feel good. All those things give us pleasure. but when we're not in a great state, it's hard to access it. So today, by the end of this, we're all going to feel much more equipped to receive pleasure. So the first part of physical health is moving your body to feed your desire. So I am not the first person to tell you the importance of exercise.

We all know moving our bodies. We have to do it. But some days it's just elusive. We don't have time. But even like a 10-minute walk makes a huge difference. Because a big part about feeling pleasure is blood flow. And so when we move our bodies, it increases blood flow through our genitals.

It also strengthens our pelvic floor. We get all those feel good endorphins. And movement also helps support circulation and our sensations, especially as we age. So for this pillar, I want you to think about for health and for movement. Choose activities that feel pleasurable to you, not punishing. So it could be walking or dancing or yoga or swimming.

I just got a, I just did a health review with my doctor. I have a new doctor. And I was telling her that I get really tired in the afternoon. I try to work out every day and do something. And I said, but in the afternoon, I'm getting tired lately. And I didn't used to. And she's like, do a little exercise snack. That's what she called it.

So every day in my calendar at 3 o'clock, I'm not going to do it today because I'm talking to you. and I already feel very energized. But I have it on my phone for five minutes, she'd say, get your heart right up, do jumping jacks. You know, I have a little mini trampoline, go run a sprint, like do push-ups, just do something.

Because usually that is a big slump time for everybody. But again, that's going to help your circulation. That's a really important part of our sexual health. Again, if you're coming at me and you're like, I don't feel desire, I don't feel roused, I'm going to ask you, tell me about how you're moving your body every day. How much are you exercising?

how many minutes a week are you logging? Like it matters. The next thing is we have to support our hormonal balance. So remember that estrogen and testosterone and progesterine, oxytocin, those all impact our sensitivity, our libido, it impacts our lubrication. And there are so many things in our lives that impact our hormones. And what I love is there's so many ways now that, like, there's so much more information about hormones. I'm going to tell you a true story. I went to my doctor. Like, I think it was probably 12 years ago now. And I said something to him about hormones.

And I said, but isn't this like a hormonal thing? And he goes, you know, we just don't know enough about hormones. This was like 12 years ago. I was like, what do mean we don't know enough about hormones, right? But now we do. Now we understand that there's so many parts of our life, whether it's, you know, postpartum, perimenopause, stress, the foods wheat. It can all lead to low desire.

It can lead to erectile issues. It can lead to fatigue. So really, we want to get tested. You know, HRT, hormone replacement therapy, great options for you. Make sure that we're avoiding hormone disruptors. There's some great apps now where you can test certain products you're using, you know, on your body, body lotions. Like all of these things we are finding about a huge environment are all having a huge impact on our hormones. So I just want to remind you that if you are noticing changes in your desire and your

mood or your arousal, figure it out. There are options. There are lifestyle shifts that you can make. The next thing in the health bucket we're going to talk about is hydration and nutrition. Your body needs, requires the right building blocks to produce hormones and support your nerve health. So if we are dehydrated, you dehydration is just a huge problem. Today, okay, today also, I got blood work done and I just been in the desert for the last few days. And I was really, really dehydrated. And I'm a healthy person. And like she wasn't able to take like my blood. I thought, I'd drink water, you know, enough. But I hadn't. So like, we're dehydrated way more than we know. Our body requires us. Like we need a dehydration is like when our blood sugar crashes,

alcohol consumption, inflammatory foods. These all disrupt our around. It's just a really big part of it. So if you've been wanting to make a shift in the food you're eating and you haven't quite made that shift yet, but yet still you're, you know, having some problems with arousal and desire, you've got to fuel your diet with, like, healthy fats and greens and hydration and limit things like sugar and processed foods and excess alcohol, especially if they're affecting your desire or your. So just a reminder that these are, it's all interrelated. it's if we're moving our bodies. Again, the foods we're eating, hydration hormones. Finally, our pelvic floors. This is whether you have a penis or a vulva, we've got to give our pelvic floor some TLC. When we have a strong, responsive pelvic floor, we have better orgasms, increased sensitivity, reduced pain. I have to say like even, and this is for all genders,

but especially for women, like when you've had, after you have a child, right? We know that our pelvic floor is impacted. And if you live in America, we're like the one place that doesn't even support women's after we have a baby. Like if you have a baby in France, you pop that baby out and they're giving you pelvic floor advice and giving you devices to help you get back. But we don't do any of it here. And even if you haven't had kids, just like every other muscle in your body, your pelvic

floor is going to weaken. And there's such a large concentration of muscles in our palpit. So just remember, like, it's really important. Like, our pelvic floor tissue is going to thin over time. This is why hormones are important. This is what is important. Cagul exercises are great. Men get checked out, check out, you know, go talk to your urologist.

It's all just a huge part of our overall wellness. I think the pelvic floor is like the unsung hero of our sexual health. We just don't really, like, pay much attention. like pay much attention to it but when it's healthy and we also have a lot of things on our website you know when i first started exploring my pelvic floor i'd say it was about maybe 15 years ago we started working with different companies and i know we have some caggle um keggle balls on our website maybe alexa could put some here in the chat which would be amazing um we we

so there's these little balls are like weights for your vagina if you have vagina and you you put them inside of you and you just wear them around like I used to wear them to spin glass or on a hike and you put them inside of you to like little balls and they're not turning you on they're not for arousal but you're actually working your pelvic floor and strengthening it as you're moving so you don't even realize it but your muscles are sort of clenching around them and in this period of time when I was really regular with it I noticed that I had a stronger pelvic floor I had stronger orgasms it helped with any sneezing and peeing that I might have been having to have to be. having it was like gone. So that's just like one area. And please let me know if you are interested

in more pelvic floor support because another amazing thing that's happened in the last 10 years is we've got pelvic floor physical therapist jumping up everywhere. We didn't used to have as many of them. But again, for all genders, it's really important. Sometimes like we have lower back pain or we have a lot of other issues that we have and we treat the lower back pain. But it might actually be our pelvic floor health. And so again, we've got to keep our pelvic floor, tiff, top shape, pay attention to it. It matters, and it could be impacting your ability to feel more pleasure. So that is our physical health part. And also, I want to remind you that if you're taking any medications, so this is another part that we're not often told, but the birth control pill,

antidepressants, blood flow, what's it called, blood thinners, they all impact our, can impact our libido. Now, some people are antidepressants, they have no problem with it. Some people take the birth control pill. It's been great for them. But we are finding so much now that the medications, whatever we're putting in our body or on our body, are going to directly impact our sexual health. So taking a whole look at that, reading the labels, talking to your doctors. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm not saying you should go off your medications, but what I want you to do is explore it with your doctor because when I was on a medication that was impacting my sex drive, I talked to my doctor by it. And we found another solution. We went down on a certain medication.

We added some more things in. There's some great supplements that you can take. So like, this is really the time in our lives that like we have so much more information. And so I just, like I want you to be aware of this huge, the second pillar of sex IQ, health and your physical health. So it's moving your body and the foods you're putting in, our hormones. Now let's get into our mental health and pleasure. So let's talk about our mental health from it. If our brain is our largest sex organ, if we know, if our brain's on board for sex, we're more likely to be on board for sex, it can also be our biggest block. So we really have to pay. attention to how much stress do we have? How much anxiety do we have in our life that is keeping us

from pleasure? You know, I call them the pleasure thieves, stress, trauma, and shame. And I would say that anxiety and stress are probably two, like, those are the killers. And so when you're feeling really stressed out, it would make sense. You might wonder, like, well, how come I, my partner, like, we go to have sex. It's nighttime. We're ready. We've had, you know, but I'm just not in the mood or maybe your partner's in the mood and you're not, I'm going to say to you, how was your day? Did you have stress? Are you still stress? If you have anxiety, when you have that spike in cortisol, when you have a spike in cortisol from anxiety or stress, your arousal can't, it can't live in the same place. So anxiety cancels out your arousal, all right? So, or the healthy arousal, the healthy

responses that you want to have and pleasure. So we just really have to, like, tame it. and chronic stress can make pleasure just feel unreachable, unattatable, and it makes pleasure feel like another item on your to-do list. And so that's why I started with breath, because even for me, like I found that when I'm feeling that I'm not in the mood, I just know that I haven't, for example, I haven't disconnected from my day yet to even move into date night or to move into sex.

So I'll do breathwork. I will take a hot bath. I will go for a walk. And I try to disconnect the day and move my body and kind of release some of the stress because we are not robots, guys. We can't just be like, okay, switch on. And now I'm going to be all turned on when I wasn't supporting doing the things that are supporting healthy arousal, healthy sexual functioning all day. So just a reminder. So practice breathwork, practice humming or even sensual self-touch to calm your nervous.

And I love the breathing practices. Like you could even do box breathing, which is that four breath. It's inhale for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Maybe I'll do that during our next session. That one's actually a really easy one to follow. But inhale, before, hold, exhale, and you just do that in a loop for three minutes. Total game changer.

So that's just a really great way to, for our first part of mental health is taming your stress. is taming your stress response, breath work, game changer. The next thing is we want to shift from being in this performance mode to being more present. So I famously, or maybe not, have you been following along, I was the queen of performative sex when I first, before I started my sex with Emily journey 20 years ago. I was doing all the moves and arching my body and doing all the things that I thought that my partner wanted, but it was much more about their pleasure than my own.

So we just want to not think about like how we look, what my partner's thinking, getting it right. Because remember, when we are in our head and our blood is rushing to our head, when our blood is rushing, we're in our head, our blood's rushing to our head and away from our genitals. Like just thinking like that. Like if I'm worried about anything, that email I didn't send for work or the text I in center what my partner's thinking I am not present in my body and it's going to be really really hard to feel to feel arousal and so the other pillar the other pleasure that comes here is trauma and I know I bring up trauma a lot but if we have trauma that's living in our body and we haven't we have worked on it

in therapy or whatever that's also big part of the mental health pillar is is is untreated trauma whether it's sexual trauma or otherwise and I'm going to go as far as say that we all have trauma whether it's a big T trauma or a little T trauma, certain things happened when we were growing up. We have a pattern of responding to situations because of the way we were raised, even with our best parents that we love deeply. We started to respond to things in certain ways. And when we say trauma, we mean like we get these responses. And they're literally locked into our nervous system and the way we react. And that impacts stress levels and all the things.

So just some great trauma therapy, trauma work, even dancing, moving our body's breathing, can all help release that trauma that is keeping us from pleasure. So my tip here, though, is, you know, try a little bit of, like, self-touch maybe without the goal of orgasm. If you find that, like, breaking this habit of performance is hard, I love a little bit of solo sex action and just practicing on my own and focus on feeling instead of performing. Like tuning into like what am I feeling right now? What's the texture that I'm feeling? What's the temperature? What's the rhythm? Like what kind of movement feel good? So that's just another way

to kind of work with our mental health, work with our nervous system. Another way to think about this is watching the mental health part is watching our in. our narrative. When we talk about mental health, I think about a lot of the negative self-talk that we have in our heads. I'm too much. Or I'm not enough. I'm not sexy anymore. I don't like the way my body looks. This isn't normal. My desires aren't normal. My fantasies are normal. What my partner wants isn't normal. We have judgments. We have so many judgments around sex and sexual functioning and this can create

well we know what negative self-top does just even in the bedroom or the board room or in our personal life it really doesn't help us and so anything we can do you have to remember that we all have the default mode network and the default mode network is all about

negative the negativity bias so a lot of us are going to have these thoughts and these feelings but I want to specifically focus on how they show up in the bedroom And then when we have these thoughts about ourselves, guess what pops up? Shame, our third platter thief. And that creates a really big disconnection not only from our partner, but from our bodies.

And so when we can't feel safe enough for pleasure, like we can't experience pleasure if we don't feel safe. And so when we're judging ourselves, we are immediately not feeling safe. So say that again, we can't feel safe enough for pleasure when we're judging. ourselves so so much of really like letting go and feeling connection and having pleasure and having orgasms is feeling safe so what I'm laying out for you here is all the things that are making us feel unsafe and it's not just in the bedroom we might feel unsafe in other areas I was just speaking this weekend at Canyon Ranch which is this beautiful

wellness resort in Tucson. I was there this week. And even I was getting a deep tissue massage after one of my talks. And I'm going to be real with you that I, again, I'm not saying that whoever goes away, right? It's we learned to manage it and recognize it. But even in this deep tissue, this is like a full somatic experiencing, I felt some emotions coming up. And the emotions that were coming up for me was that I hadn't been feeling safe around something that was happening not in not in the bedroom, but something that was happening professionally. And I was noticing that it was in my stomach where it was coming up, right? But through this somatic releasing, I was like, okay, I don't feel safe. Now, of course, I am safe. I'm physically safe. I'm surrounded by loved ones. I've got a great team.

But something had happened where I was like, oh, I'm not safe. And it was really triggering an older, like younger version of myself, like even a child version of myself that didn't often feel safe in my home. And it was all linked up. And again, I've been. doing this work for a long time. So I'm just saying like I kind of recognize this, but it's accessible for all of us. And so that feeling of safety, we all have had times in our life where we didn't feel safe. So through like breathing with this massage therapist, I was able to like welcome safety back into my body. But in those moments, you know, I even notice that even during sex, there's times where you might not feel safe. And you might even be like like not safe because you haven't, maybe you've had

a disagreement with your partner that day and it hasn't been resolved yet. Or maybe something happened just something is happening in your environment where you're not safe. Again, when we're not safe, tension, fight or flight, we tense our pelvic floor. We feel tension in our back and our shoulders, right? So like, we don't have to live with tension. So a lot of that is that's what I'm just trying to give you examples of how it's all wired in our body. Nervous system, trauma, stress. Again, all going to impact our ability to really, really receive pleasure. And once I was able to release that in just this 10-minute exercise on this massage table, I was actually able to breathe more and start to move and actually able to feel more pleasure,

just the pleasure of being touched and the gift of receiving, you know, because I was there working, but then I was going to like switching into pleasure mode. Visit BetMDMDM casino and check out the newest exclusive. the price is right fortune pick BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly 19 plus to wager Ontario only

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BetMGEM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario So it's a practice, right? So to go back to the topic here watching your inner narrative, ask yourself when you're having this negative self-talk or voice, words that don't serve you. Ask yourself, whose voice is this? Is it mine? Is it one that

I inherited? And then you get to reframe it. You get to reframe it with compassion. And you can have an affirmation that says, my pleasure is valid. I am deserving of pleasure. Pleasure is my birthright. I have affirmations on my phone that I turn to for different things that just help me rewire the thoughts that don't always serve me. And it's a really important part of the health pillar is our mental health. And I don't think we pay enough attention to it. So that's why I'm really so grateful that you're all here today joining me so we can really kind of think about where in our life is this narrative around our body. or just our mental health showing up and how is it impacting our sex life.

I always found it so interesting that for many of us, we don't really see the connection, right? We just don't, we just like, well, that's my mental health and that's my physical health, but sexual health is over here. So I should be able to just be ready to go. And I got the toy, Dr. Emily, that you told me to get. And I did that position and I had that talk, but I still wasn't aroused, right? So these are all the things that are going on beneath it. So the next part of our mental conditioning is cultivating erotic self-esteem.

Okay, so what do I mean by erotic self-esteem? Now, it could just be our self-esteem in the bedroom, but confidence isn't just a physical thing. Like, I know the moves, I know what to do, but it's energetic. So when we feel good in our bodies, we are more open to sharing our bodies. And so another great way to cultivate our erotic self-esteem is the stuff that I've talked about before, but like mirror work, like spending time alone, being naked in the mirror, looking at your body and learning to like, I know a lot of you are like, I'm out, I'm not going to look at myself. But let me just ask you about that for a minute, because I've heard this, be like, I'm never doing that. So if you're not comfortable being naked, look at your body that is serving you to move through this life and live your wonderful. life, even though it can be hard sometimes. And imagine how hard it is to show up with someone else

in the bedroom. And now they're looking at your body, but you don't want to look at your body. So what really helps increase confidence and your likelihood of initiating sex and enjoying sex and experimenting sex is doing things like mirror work where you are just touching yourself or maybe you're just looking in the mirror. You could even look at your face in the mirror and be like, I love you today. I love you. Say your name. I love you, Emily. Today's going to be a beautiful day. And like looking in your own eyes, good morning. I love you. You can start with your face. But I love the mirror exercise that talk about actually being naked, looking in the mirror. Maybe you're doing some self-pleasureing. It actually is a really big turn on to see yourself in the state of arousal.

You can also just practice some like central movements or dancing for yourself, like just looking at getting your body. to move. All of these things are going to contribute to your erotic self-esteem and your confidence. So ask yourself now. Like think about it. What makes you feel alive? What gives you that life force energy? Because that's what we're talking about. Sexual energy is your life force energy. Your pelvic floor is your life force. It's your power source. And so it's all in here. This is, this is, this is the magic. This is creative energy. This is sexual energy.

And so what makes you feel the most alive? What could you do that would allow you to feel more connected to yourself? And these are all practices that are just so important, even if you picked up anything now. I don't, I'm not a fan of saying every single day, I want you to do something. but I know the tools. Like I know before I give a talk, I do a few minutes of breathwork, or I always have to be out in nature

for a few minutes a day. I have my affirmations. So I'm giving you a lot of information so you can kind of little tips and tricks so you can kind of say, you know, maybe I'll try out the mirror exercise this weekend. Maybe I'll take 15 minutes in the bathtub just for myself this weekend.

You know, when I was seeing the nurse this morning, I told you what I was getting my blood drawn and she said, you know, she has four kids and her life is really busy. And I was like, well, what do you do for yourself? And she said, well, right now I just really don't. I just get up in the morning and I go and it's all about work and it's all about my kids. Like, well, what could you do anything this weekend?

Like, could you take 15 minutes for yourself this weekend? You know, we were just talking about it. She said, yeah, you know what? There's this park by my house that I love and I'm going to just leave the kids at home with my husband and I'm going to go walk for 15 minutes. Like we all know it makes us a better everything when we take that time for ourselves. So think about that. Maybe you could even make a commitment right now.

And if anyone wants to like chat about it or make a commitment here to the community of what you're going to do this weekend, that's going to help cultivate this presence or any practice that I've mentioned that you'd like to commit to. Feel free to put it in the chat here. I am going roller skating tomorrow for the first time in 30 years. I'm trying something new. I'm taking a roller skating class. I just think anytime we try something new, we get out of our comfort zone, we do an affirmation,

we try something like, for me, that's like my new thing this weekend. At first I was like, I don't want to drive, I don't want to do that, I've got my routine, and I'm like, nope, I want to go roller skate. Wish me luck.

Okay, so here is a little bit of a bonus. I talk a lot about the nervous system and your nervous system is basically the bridge between your brain and your body and if it's dysregulated, even the thought of sex can feel like too much. So when I say nervous system, I'm talking about that. If it's dysregulated with stress and anxiety and trauma,

everything feels too much. So just some more techniques that help shaking out tension. You can just do that for 30 seconds, shaking. I do that sometimes. I remember once years ago before I hadn't done a lot of public speaking. Like I've done a lot of this speaking about public and she's like, just shake. And it made a huge difference.

can just help release, right? Long, slow exhale, like we're doing at the beginning. That activates the vagus nerve, which is located right here, and we can kind of like behind our ears, and it helps us release tension. Warm baths, cold plunges, even humming.

Can all help regulate your nervous system, and then sensory pleasure. This is my favorite one, scented oils, weighted blankets, cozy fabrics, music. These can all help in your embrace. If you're like thinking like wow I do a lot of stress and I do trauma because I want everyone to leave here You're not going to solve it overnight. I had my not feeling safe my body come up three days ago

I am not telling you it goes away But some antidotes to that are like we all have a candle that smells great that we could like this weekend You know maybe a weighted blanket or like cozy fabrics or wearing something that makes you feel good like that stuff's accessible to you right now So I just wanted to throw in a little bit of that activation for you that that might help you this weekend and I love that some of us are commenting here Nina's gonna wake up a little earlier go for a long walk. I love that and Christine the weather's off here. I'll be walking on the treadmill, but I'll enjoy it with my Kindle. I love that Raymond you've been struggling lately and you've been neglecting your sexual health. You're gonna try stretching more. I love that you know what? Stretching is so accessible and you can even go on YouTube and

and say five minutes stretching, five minute stretching exercises, find someone you like and do it for five minutes. Because we don't have to do anything alone right now. I have a breathing app. I've told you guys about this a lot. I have a breathing app that helps me breathe. I basically don't do any of my stuff. I mean, I go for a walk alone sometimes, but Raymond, I go to a yoga class, but you can just say, like, YouTube, stretching, and just do it for five minutes and play some music, light a candle, like try to bring in as many senses as we can when we're doing. these kind of activities because it will just make a huge difference. Okay, Christine, I'm going to tell you the breathing app that I use.

It's called Awesome Breathing and it has Box Breathing. It has 4-7-8 breathing. You do it for three minutes. I do it all the time. I do it when I'm flying, when I'm driving, when I'm walking, when I'm stressed, when I'm feeling, I call, you know what I mean? It just game changer. Okay, so it's called Awesome Breathing.

And Alexa will put that into the chat. Christine, thanks for asking. I love that. All right, guys, we covered our health pillar, but I want to give you some more actionable steps here. I'm going to recap some of this for you and bring in some just kind of, I don't know, you guys, it helps me to, there's a lot of information. Health pillar number two.

So health pillars are our second pillar. Practice, these are like simple, realistic actions you can take this week, this weekend. Try some practice stress reduction. Do the breathing. Do some movement. Bring in your senses. is, you'll bring yourself into the moment. Try some lavender oil.

I have a little essential oil that I carry with me in my makeup bag that sometimes I'll just like rub a little bit under my nose. When I'm doing my breathing, that really helps. Soft blankets, three deep breaths, a few deep breaths before a meeting, or any difficult conversation. So that's number one. Number two, I didn't even talk about sleep, but this is a great time. Sleep, resets our hormones, our mood.

our energy. And here's a fact. One bad night's sleep is a reduction in 15% reduction in testosterone, one bad night's sleep. So whatever we can do to prioritize sleep, power down early, avoid your screens late, use those blocking, those, what are they called, the blue light, what are they called blocking glasses, create a sleep friendly environment, no phones in the room, that it's dark. No screens before bad man. That's a hard one. But just they also say all the sleep experts.

I did a great podcast a few years ago with Dr. Michael Bruce. He's a sleep doctor. It's one of our most listened to episodes. And he's just so clear and specific about sleep hygiene. And I'll never forget this, that one of his tips was like, go to bed at the same time every night and you wake up at the same time every morning, even on the weekends. And that stuck with me because I was like, oh, no, I want to sleep.

I'm a sleeper, you guys. If I don't set my alarm, I would sleep till 10 o'clock every day. And I don't know the weekends anymore. I really, maybe I'll give myself a little bit more time on the weekend, like a half hour more. But I really know it's a huge difference. I just try to get in bed and wake up at the same time every day. And a half feed after 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

He has really great specific tips. Oh, thanks. Alexa just put that podcast in the chat. And so take a listen to that, you guys. It's really helpful. He's so great. And I never forgot some of these tips. Yeah. It's like caffeine, turning off your, you know, sleep. So prioritize sleep. That's my tip for you guys. Think about how could I prioritize sleep because it matters. Testosterone is the tip of the iceberg. There are just so many other things that sleep impacts. Increased anxiety, slows down our metabolism, hormone disruption, all the things. Okay, guys, this is a big one. My next tip for immediate action here is embrace daily pleasure. Our brain needs daily doses of safety and joy to open up to intimacy. I'm going to say that again. Your brain requires daily doses of joy and safety to open to intimacy.

So if you've been feeling my libido's low, I haven't been wanting sex, It's a drag. I'm running down. Have you opened up and have you given yourself daily doses of joy? What have you done for yourself? That wasn't a requirement that you didn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get. So, slip your coffee super slowly. Stretch.

Raymond, that's for you. Touch your body with intention. small pleasures train your body to feel good and this is just I mean I've talked about this before but the pleasure the figuring out like looking at my life and like looking at the week ahead when I look at my calendar and I'm like what am I doing for me this weekend like what's on my pleasure list having my phone like time with friends nature sleep watching TV like things because I don't actually watch it on a TV, but like I, to me, that's a pleasurable thing. If you watch too much TV, that might not be on your pleasure list, if it's like something that bothers you.

But for me, like shutting off and actually allowing myself to enjoy a show, walking my dog, and make sure that I have those doses, right? Obviously, solo sex, right? It's important. It's going to help you with intimacy. Also, like, pay attention to what affects your desire. I want you to track your body signals. Are there certain foods, lack of rest, emotional stress?

You can try journaling for one week about your energy, your mood, your libido, look for patterns. I mean, can you remember the last time you did feel your libido really turned on? Do you remember what was going on? What was happening? So track it. Become a master of your own health and how it relates to your sexual health. And so in closing, I just want to remind you all that pleasure is not a luxury. It's not just something that you get once you cross everything off your list.

It's part of your health. And like anything worth having in your life, it does take intention and it does take practice. So you are not like stuck in your certain stuff. state you can get better sleep you can choose one action today that's going to support your sexual health you can do a daily mindful movement a breath work ritual before bed like one movement of sensuality for you and then notice i want you to do the noticing like what is shifting your body's always speaking to you it's always telling you what it's need what it needs and and you'll know like We have such an inner knowing and all this other stuff I'm talking about, this mental energy we expend, is just keeping us from that knowing.

But your pleasure is worth listening to. And you all deserve it. I want it for all of you. So I am wishing you all a very healthy and pleasurable weekend. There's been some nuggets in here that you can take with you into the weekend or into this week that your health matters. And if you've been putting off the classes or the stretching or the yoga or the breathwork or the doctor's appointment, just know that when you make that call and you do that thing, that it's just going to be depositing into the bank of your sexual out. Thank you. Thank you.

You're all amazing. I appreciate you so much. Have a wonderful day. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad-free? Don't worry, we get it. Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life

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