Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 269: The Sex Episode | Devon and Craig Hase

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Buddhists don’t tend to shy away from talking about body parts -- but usually it’s more along the lines of meditating on things like spittle, defecation (otherwise known as poop) and the inevitable decay of the body. So where do sex and sexuality fit into this mix? Bottom line: how can we use sex to wake up? In this episode, I talk with dharma practitioners Devon and Craig Hase. They’re not sexperts by any stretch, but as a married couple who recently emerged from a year of monastic vows (which included celibacy), they’ve spent a lot of time exploring the intersection of mindfulness, meditation and sex. In fact, their new book How Not to Be a Hot Mess includes a whole chapter called, “Make Sex Good.” We start with a fascinating discussion about their own experimentation with esoteric, Tantric sex practices, but then veer directly into garden variety sex issues. It’s a fascinating chat, and I appreciate Devon and Craig being so open and honest on an intensely personal issue. Where to find Devon & Craig Hase online:  Website: http://devonandcraighase.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/devonandcraighase Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devonandcraig/ Book: How Not to Be a Hot Mess by Craig & Devon Hase: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781611807981 There's still time to join and complete the Summer Sanity Challenge: a free 21 day meditation challenge. The goal here is to help you build resilience so that you are less buffeted by circumstances you can’t control -- and are therefore calmer, happier, and better prepared to show up the way you want to for your family and your communities. To join the challenge, you can visit tenpercent.com/challenge. Other Resources Mentioned: Mentoring page: http://devonandcraighase.com/mentoring Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century by Barbara Carrellas: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781587612909 Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App access for Frontline Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/devon-craig-hase-269 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. Hey y'all is your's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad.

Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from, MySpace? Listen to Baby, This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, I think maybe a tad further. I just, I know, we can always lift you up, but it's a cloud. Okay. And what will you be for dinner? I think more importantly, what did we just do before coming on, which was dance to incredibly stupid pop music. Yeah, we have to shake it out. We have to shake it out.

So we did a little with Taylor Swift. We danced with Taylor Swift. Yeah. I don't know if that says anything about my mind, but I thought you were gonna say you actively prepared for this interview. Yeah, I thought you would say you had sex. Yeah, we could.

I think I had the same thought. I think I had the same thought. I think I had the same thought. Why didn't we do that? I think we did that. Sure. I heart of Forty-Booty. Why didn't we do that? Sure. I thought we'd shut your jangled nerves. Okay, I think we're going to sound so I'm going to quietly disappear. I'll be back on the end and have a fun interview.

Great. Thank you, Marissa. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, gang. We'll start talking about sex in a moment. First, one quick, super quick item of business. Just want to remind you again that you still have time to sign up for the summer sanity

challenge our free 21-day meditation challenge. It launched on Monday, but if you sign up today and get going, you'll be just fine. As I've said before, just in case you haven't heard me say this before, every day you get a short video from me, or me, and Seven A. Celacii, who's my partner in crime on this meditation challenge, and that's followed. The video is followed by a short guided meditation and you can do it alone or you can invite friends and family. It's all good. To join, go to 10% .com slash challenge 10% one word all spelled out .com slash challenge and yes, there will be a link in the show notes. Okay, let's talk sex. Buddhists, as you may have noticed, do not tend to shy away from talking about body parts.

Usually, however, it's more along the lines of, you know, exhorting us to meditate on spittle or poop or the inevitable decay of the body. So amidst all of this, where do sex and sexuality fit in? Bottom line, how can we use sex to wake up? In this episode, I talk with two long-time Dharma practitioners, Devon and Craig Haza. They're not sex birds by any stretch, but they are a married couple and they've recently emerged from a year of monastic vows, which included celibacy, and they spent a lot of time exploring the intersection

of mindfulness, meditation, and sex. In fact, in their new book, which is called How Not to Be a Hot Mess, they have a whole chapter entitled Make Sex Good. We start here with a fascinating discussion about Devon and Craig's experimentation with esoteric, tantric sex practices, but we veer pretty quickly into more relatable

garden variety sex issues. It's a really fascinating chat, and I really appreciate Devon and Craig being so open and honest about a supremely personal issue. So having said all of that, here we go, Devon and Craig Haza. All right, Devon and Craig, great to have you both on. Very brave of you to come on and talk about this topic. Thanks. Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

Excited to be here. So in full disclosure, you guys sent in a list of topics that you wanted to discuss. And normally I ignore those, but this list was so good that I'm actually going to just work off of it, which I never do. So the first question you wrote is actually the first question I would want to ask, which was, why do Buddhists so rarely talk about sex? What do you think is going on there? Because the Buddhists keep it real.

We talk about death. We talk about defecation. We do bodily fluids. But why no sex? You took the words right out of my mouth. I have listened to Buddhist teachers talk about defecation, your nation, and the decay of the body after death in front of 120 yogis on retreat, and only rarely, and only in very small groups, have I heard Buddhist teachers talk about sex. So why is that? I have been hindering this and I've come up with just a couple of

non-empirical answers. I think we probably need research into this question, but I think one is most people don't talk about sex. In preparation for this podcast, we did some focus groups. As in, we just asked all of our friends, what do they want to know about sex? Yeah, we kind of like bombarded, unexpected friend groups with questions about sex. And the first thing that we heard from people was we don't questions about sex. And the first thing that we heard from people was we don't talk about sex. I don't even know what I want to know about sex. And when we ask them further, like, well, do you talk to your partner about sex? And do you talk

about sex during sex? At least the people that we were asking, they said, no. No, you know, like we have sex, and we enjoy sex together. But we don't really talk about it. So I think my first take on why don't Buddhist teachers talk about sex is that at least in mainstream culture, the kind of culture is that we least in mainstream culture, the kind of culture that we're mostly involved with, a lot of people just don't talk about it,

even if they're having sex, they don't talk about it. And then I think a second piece, which is more particular to Buddhism, and especially early Buddhism, or the Vipassana tradition that we often practice in. It's very monastic. A lot of the teachers that either came to the United States to teach or that taught our teachers who went to Asia

to learn, they were in robes. They were celibate monastics who more or less avoided this topic entirely. And so I think we picked up some reticence from our Asian, called them our Asian ancestors or our lineage teachers who passed on the tradition to us. Yeah, I would say that's true for early Buddhism. We study both early Buddhism and also Vajrayana to Tibetan Buddhism. And so our teacher Mingur Rinpoche, who I know has been on this podcast before, he's also a monk. And he's very alive, you know, he's very good at talking about practicing with the senses

and awakening the senses. But because he's a monk, you know, he's just not part of his wheelhouse. And interestingly, and this is maybe something we can talk more about, the Vajrayana does have a whole very vibrant practice lineage of sex and sexual practices. And so we're definitely not experts on this topic, but just to say there's a whole wide range. So not to stereotype or simplify the range of Buddhist views on sex and sexuality. When you say you're not experts in the subject, you mean sex or Buddhism and sex or Tibetan Buddhism and sex. Like, what are you? Basically, I mean, we're not sex birds.

Okay. We're not experts on sex and sexuality, although we've explored a lot, and especially the intersection of mindfulness and meditation and sex. And then in particular, these sex practices that come down to us through the Tibetan Buddhist slash Vajrayana tradition are actually incredibly technical and sophisticated and difficult to learn because

they involve a lot of subtle body work with different musculature and these kinds of channels and wins and drops that you can get into. So we've done some of that, but we are really not experts in that realm. So would this be described as tantric sex? I remember hearing about Sting and his wife doing this back in the 80s or 90s or say, this is what you're talking about. Yeah, this is what we're talking about. But there's this whole realm of Vajrayana that isn't readily accessible. It's not widely taught. And it has to do with working with the subtle body,

which Craig referenced in yogic circles you might hear about Prana, Nadi, and Bindu, so the channels, winds, and drops. And you can do all kinds of work and training to control the way that energy circulates in your body. And sex and sex practices also are included in that realm of working with the subtle body, but they're just not widely taught. And for good reason, you know, they're kind of dangerous. If you don't have a whole lot of meditation practice and foundation beneath you,

it can be not very good for you. So I think especially in the West, we just don't hear very much about these practices. Dangerous how? You know, I think you can get in balance energetically, very easily through meditation. And you might have even experienced this. You know, when we go on a long retreat and we sit for a long time,

there's a kind of concentration that builds in the mind. We're really face-to-face front and center with all of our neuroses. And it's easy to get them balanced. It's easy to lean too far in one direction or the other, especially physically speaking. We can have all of these strange and sometimes supernatural feeling experiences. The body starts to shake or we make sounds or we feel like we're floating in the air. And all of these, as our teacher, Mingur Rinpoche says, they're just energy movement. It's just energy in the channels changing as we meditate.

But it's just really easy to get out of balance in that way. So if we don't have a lot of background in training and we're trying to do this very advanced practice, it's just really easy to get out of balance in that way. So if we don't have a lot of background in training and we're trying to do this very advanced practice, it's just risky. So you guys have done some of this. Do you ever like look at each other and just start cracking up while you're trying to do the meditative? Totally. Rousseau ball, I think we look at each other and crack up very often.

Insects and not insects. And I think one of the things that we wanted to talk to you about in terms of how to make sex good, which is the title of this chapter that we wrote in the book, is bringing more levity. You know, making sex not such a big deal. And so like if we're doing these semi-tontric practices together, yeah, it's good to laugh. And one of our favorite authors that writes about these things is named Barbara Corellis. She wrote a book called Urban Tontra.

And she has all these warm up exercises that are just meant to be goofy. They're just meant to be fun, you know, like shaking your body all around, or, you know, making each other laugh, or jumping up and down, or dancing to Britney Spears, or whatever it is, because a lot of us, when we're coming from a busy day, more difficulty, or stress, we need some way to shake off everything that has been layered onto us in our lives in order to just warm up and prepare ourselves to have some kind of genuine intimacy. So if you ask us, do we laugh? We try to make sure that we laugh. So before we started rolling, Craig and I were having lunch

and we were talking about how writing this chapter on sex was really challenging. And for us, we had to unpack in this conversation, we've been referencing these unspoken narratives or the cultural demands that we have on sex and sexuality. And we had to name for ourselves this trinity of bad sex, is what we call it. So we talk about patriarchy, which says that men are first and everybody else is a coslator. And then objectification, which is the sense of looking at ourselves from the outside,

all of the culture of social media and self-use, etc. And then consumerism, which is like my body is a commodity to either be given away or to own. And that these cultural constructs are at work in us in unconscious ways, just like all other kinds of unconscious biases are. So we have internalized patriarchy, right? I think my body needs to look a particular way in order to be attractive. He also, I think, has been conditioned

to think a particular kind of body is sexy or attractive. And we're talking about how, for me, it was really healing to write this chapter together, because I can see how his meditation practice, looking again and again at all of those thoughts and those patterns and how those are unconscious biases, and then decoupling from them, understanding, oh, I don't really believe this actually. This is an illusion, this is not true. And that there's actually a real human here, that there's intimate connection that's available here,

aside from all the cultural narratives. And that is powerful practice. That's dismantling all these powers of oppression, just like we want to do with racial bias, and all these other kinds of biases, sexual orientation, gender identity, all of it. So that, to me, has been really, I would say it's fulfilling to do on my own,

but really fulfilling to watch on my own, but really fulfilling to watch him also working in those ways. So that then, wow, we can do this together as a relational practice. Really interesting and freeing. Yeah. That's incredibly compelling. A very vivid example of the personal being political. Absolutely. And I think, you know, part of our interest in sex and sexuality is that it can actually

have the potential for awakening, that as we sort of have this glimmer in the vagranoliniage, I have this idea that we can learn so much about our minds and our bodies and our hearts through really engaging this as a meditation practice. So it's not outside the realm of this spiritual path. And what we've noticed in a lot of our communities and the teachings we've witnessed, this isn't brought in. And so while we're just kind of figuring it out for ourselves over here, we feel like it's

an important conversation to have, because let's just start talking about this. Like, what does freedom really mean? And how can we experience it through sexual energy, through sexual identity? So how can we bring our meditative practice into the sort of garden variety sex that most of us are having.

Great question. So I think if we go back to the basics, and we talk about this a lot in our book, that the way that we're sort of subtly trained to be sexual and have sex in our dominant culture, and again, just to name like I'm a white cisgender woman. This is the culture that I'm accustomed to, heterosexual, my partner. We're trained to actually not really inhabit our bodies. That there's so much of that unspoken narrative around performance and how I look

and how I'm pleasuring him, that I'm pleasuring him, that I'm actually really trained to be outside my body, looking in. There's this kind of separation that happens. And often, before I started meditating, I had this sense and sex that it was like, I'm numb, I don't really know what I like,

I feel empty afterwards. There's this real kind of divorce from experience. And mindfulness meditation is exactly the opposite of that. It's so much about coming home to our bodies and feeling our bodies from the inside out. And in long meditation retreat, even when we're under the third precept and we're not practicing any kind of sex or sexuality,

our senses wake up. We start to see things more clearly in the subtleties of experience and the senses really start to come alive. And so for me, wow, this practice brings so much to my experience of sex. Not easy, because it also means waking up to all of the complexity of emotions that is here.

Shame, insecurity, fear, a kind of shakiness. So I can't say that I'm always eager to dive in, but I know through meditation, the real benefits of these practices and how they actually really can free up some of the bound, tight neuroses that I've learned through my cultural conditioning. And so Craig or Devin, whoever wants to feel this question, I'm curious if you could be very practical with us about how to do what Devin just described. I think that's important and that's where we go next in the book. And so we offer three steps that are just super practical.

And the book we call them, unplug, slow down, and take back your body. And so what we recommend is you come home at the end of a long work day. Let's assume for the moment that you don't have children in your house, although if you do, we can also talk about that specifically, but let's assume for the moment there's no kids, but you come home with your partner, you're both tired. You kind of like look at each other, decide to order take out, I have no idea what you're going to do with your evening.

And then perhaps you have scheduled sex, which is something that we can talk about, or perhaps you talk about it and decide like you'd like to have sex. So then what do you do first? And what we say is that instead of just launching into intercourse, or even launching into some explicitly sexual foreplay, what we recommend doing first is you unplug. So you turn off your phones, you turn off your computers, you turn off the TV, you get away from all of the screens, and you just lie down together.

Like on the living room floor, sprawl out and just hang for a minute. And actually, in the book, we recommend maybe 10 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, just to kind of let the day wash off of you. Sort of regarding each other every once in a while, taking each other in, but without any pressure to be sexual right away. So then you slow down, you unplug, you slow down, you come into contact with each other, then maybe you do a little bit of just touching. You know, you just hold hands for a minute minute or you make eye contact for a moment. You start the process of coming together. And then from there, there's this sense of you're

taking back your body. So this doesn't have to be a formal meditation, although it can, if you're both into meditation, it could just be re-arriving, you know, re-enhabiting this physical form, this living organism, feeling what it feels. And often what you'll feel is some kind of like numbness or resistance or fear or stress, agitation. It won't always be pleasant because we live in lives that are difficult sometimes and not always pleasant But there's something about re-enhabiting the truth of this body that then will allow you to Act authentically with your partner and invite their authenticity to meet in a genuine sexual to me in a genuine sexual union.

And the last thing I'll say that is implied in everything that I'm saying up until this point is we really believe in de-centering intercourse, which is not to say that you shouldn't have sex because hey, you should, sex is wonderful, intercourse is lovely. But for me, I think especially as I have a male body, I was raised in a very masculine culture, and I was obsessed with ejaculation. As you know, you have some foreplay, you have some intercourse, you ejaculate, that's how you know it worked, right? And what we're saying is, whoa, there is so much more to sex than that script.

And the more you can break down the script, the more creative the sexual encounter will become. And you don't even necessarily know where it will go. What about maintaining your mindfulness during all of this? Yeah, that's great. So, part of these unspoken rules about how we're supposed to be sexual, I think, is we're not supposed to be distracted. We're not supposed to be thinking. And we're not really supposed to be communicating out loud with our partner either. Or for me, I can say, I'm so kind of bound up often with insecurity and trying to do it

right in the moment that I'm not really feeling like I can speak my experience or ask for something or say like, hey, I'm actually really distracted right now. So part of us, I think what we want to do is kind of dismantle all these unspoken rules. What happens when we take away all the stuff that we're supposed to do, all the sheds, and just be real with our partner and say, hey, I'm having this particular fantasy right now, or I am distracted.

So allowing ourselves to just be really real in the moment and know what's going in my mind, what's going on in my body, and is this interesting, is this something I can share with this person. So the moment to moment mindfulness, as we know through our meditation practice, is this kind of radical

allowing. Like, oh, wow, this is what's happening right now. That feels really good. I like that. And then the importance of being able to say that. Or actually, I'm not feeling this yet, or I'm actually not into going there. Can we sit and breathe together or do something else for a minute? All of that to me feels like breaking through this prescribed formula about how I'm supposed to do this right now. Including how I'm supposed to be mindful. Like maybe I'm actually not doing a good mindful thing,

but this is what's happening in my body. So can I say that? And I guess the other piece that I feel like is really important that we And I guess the other piece that I feel like is really important that we can draw from the Dharma is that so much of sex becomes very personal, right? This is about me and my body and doing it right or not doing it right. And can we bring in this view of not self? Can we actually not take it personally? But I'm experiencing nature unfolding in this very surprising organic way. And so is he.

And if he doesn't like what I'm doing, not so personal, I'll just try for the else. You know, so kind of again, stripping away the seriousness of it and this act of me performing and doing it right. And more just like, wow, this is a weird and awesome thing to be in a human body, experiencing all these very deep sensations and emotions. And what can I learn about how to be free within those experiences? How does this actually lead to a deeper sense of self-knowledge and freedom? Right there, I think you answered the question you posed earlier on, which is how do you use sex to wake up?

Right. I mean, I'm even curious to know what you think, Dan, like you've been meditating for a long time. What do you think about your own meditation practice and how it's influenced your sexual life? I would say it hasn't. There are many areas of my life. The more I meditate, the more humbling it is to see how there are areas that, and I'm gonna use a loaded phrase here, that the meditation has not penetrated. And specifically, I'm definitely thinking about sex, but I'm also thinking about eating, which we've talked a lot about in the show, that we've had many episodes on the show where we've talked about eating either as this subject for the whole episode or just something we've explored within the course of the episode.

And I really, you know, I've done a lot of, continue to do a lot of work around this and notice how as much as I said, an intention going into a meal to like, be awake for it, it's just, I get carried away. I don't even think I've made that intention with sex. I think there are a million reasons for it, but it's probably for the same reason that we're four to five years into doing this show, and this is the first time we're talking about it. It's just not emphasized in the tradition much and not super comfortable to talk about.

Right. And that leaves me in a space where I just don't think I'm applying these skills that I've been trying to cultivate on the cushion in this area of my life. Are you interested in doing that? Yes, definitely. For sure. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, Dan, I'll say for me, there's a resistance in our partnership. I'm the one who's probably less interested in general insects. And it's been a practice for me to learn through some of this slowing down and unplugging and really unsexy for play that I can actually step out of that resistance before play, that I can actually step out of that resistance and get in a certain kind of mood that is open and interested and really practicing with whatever is coming up for me.

So, in some ways it's a lot like meditation. We have a hard time building the habit, right? And why are we resistant to something we know that's good for us, but we just are. And when we break through that barrier, we sit down in the cushion, we realize, oh, well, this is why I do it. It's great for me. I feel better. And in some ways, my experience with sex

has become just recently like that. Like, oh, I know that I have to break through a certain kind of resistance barrier. But when I do, and I'm just like fun and silly in my body and allowing the difficulty motions to arise and speaking them and being in them with them, there's actually quite a lot to be learned. It's really, really fruitful, not to say

it's better than celibacy, because I'm totally into celibacy and asexuality as well. We can dive around that. We just did a year, 12 months of celibacy together. And there's all different kinds of things to learn through that practice as well. So it's sort of all in. Yeah, why do we do that? Yeah, it's very sorry to interrupt you. I thought you would finish, but you know the question, why your celibacy, what was going on there? Yeah, why in the world would you take 12 months off of sex? And by cellopathy, we're saying no two person sex,

and we're also saying no one person sex. So for an entire year of my life, I did not masturbate. Why do that? Not many men can utter a sentence like that. Isn't that crazy? I'm a little bit in shock now that it's over, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time, why did we do it?

Well, for us, we were in a transition. I was finishing my PhD in counseling psychology. And we finally had the circumstances in our lives where we could enter a period of both retreat and semi-retreat. And one of our teachers as a monk, Mindure Empice, who you've had on the show. And we admire him very much. and we talked to him about the possibility of taking a year of celibacy vows in order to concentrate more fully on the meditation practice. So I love sexual practice. I actually do think that it is an opening into deeper Dharma and spirituality. think that it is an opening into deeper Dharma and spirituality. But I think in that moment we just had this inspiration from one of our teachers and then also wanting to

mark a clear boundary between what we had been doing in our lives and what we were about to do with our lives. And so we actually did the ceremony with Mindure Impicci in person, last summer, which was very sweet. And then after that, we went into a three month meditation retreat separate from each other, Devon. But we shaved our heads together first. That was a big step. So Devon shaved her head, which was awesome.

That was one of the most bad-ass things I've ever seen anyone do. No, I mean, that's insane. It's loaded from a body image, sexuality. I don't know, I'm not telling you anything, you don't know. But it just seems to me that would be very loaded, especially for a female. It was, and it's interesting because I think it is related to celibacy, you know, the sense of taking off that identity for a little while. And it had been something I'd always wanted to do, so I was always curious.

But the actual experience, it took quite a long time actually didn't realize but shaving your head, you know, you have to go on stages and those few hours were really hard. Very scary. And afterwards I had this sense of, yeah, sadness and loss, like who am I now without this big head of curly hair and how much I'd identified with that. without this big head of curly hair and how much I'd identified with that. But also I had so much joy in like I could be anybody. Like this is awesome to not have, you know, we talk about it being a path of non-cleaning. Like I just have one less thing to cling to. And it was a big thing to not cling to. It felt great.

More of my conversation with Devon and Craig right after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page 6 or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama,

but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents,

but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. So I feel like I might have derailed you Craig because you were in the middle of answering to why you did this. Did I let you get all the way through that story?

Yeah, pretty close because then we did that three months of retreat. And then we came out and now, and then we did another six or seven months of semi-retreat. And now this is sort of how we're continuing our lives. We're in semi-retreat, nine months out of the year, and we're in coistered retreat three months out of the year. So for that first year that we were in the process, we were celibate as a way to mark that transition. And then at the end of that year, we began to explore sexuality again. And I'll say that when we came back to sex, it was different. back to sex, it was different. How so?

Just for me, I would say, they were just to say to people who can't see them, they stared at each other for a second, they're so gross. What should we say? Yeah, just, I said this a little bit already, but as someone in a male body who's raised in a male culture, I think I was unconsciously obsessed with ejaculation as an endpoint and after not ejaculating on purpose

Occasionally my body took care of that at night But after not ejaculating on purpose for a year, there's a lot more freedom in terms of how I play with my sexual energy. I just don't feel that it is the same kind of necessity that I know that we've had sex as I've ejaculated. It's just not like that for me. And so that opens this territory where we can be sexual for a couple of hours and have it be, you know, going in and out of sensual but not sexual, then sexual,

then sensual but not sexual again, with all kinds of different kinds of touching and massage and exercises and breathing techniques and bunny eye gazing hippie stuff that I happen to love and then more intercourse. And so it's just liberated me from what I think was an unconscious script that I had adopted in my own sexuality. Yeah, I think I would answer it quite differently. It was interesting, you know, I during that year I also chose to wear white and so was kind of taking on this much more semi-monastic identity. And what I noticed in my mind was that I had a kind of superiority complex about it. Like, oh, I'm so pure now because I don't need sex. And I have much less desires in general.

And a real kind of, it unearthed this bias that I have, I think, that maybe I adopted through some of the unconscious scripts and Buddhism, that being celibate is actually better and more spiritual. And so getting to unpack that near the end of our year we did our 12 months without any kind of self-touch and I'm generally not one to like that anyway. But I really challenged myself before we came back together in like the 13th and 14th month we decided to explore this on our own first. And it was hard. It was like, oh, we have to do this thing or touch myself, but actually it was very helpful exploring like, why do I resist this? Why do I feel dirty

about this? Why is there shame here? And what do I actually really like? What feels good in my body? And knowing that that was such an important training to then feel like, oh, I'm bringing a more full, whole self to this encounter. I'm not dependent on him to know what to do. I'm not following his lead. I can actually take the lead. And that this body is okay. It's okay to want to be intimate with someone else. It's okay to have all of these feelings. That doesn't mean that I'm less spiritual, and I can actually use all of this energy for good purpose.

You know, kind of discovering that we, I think, are sitting on this well spring of energy. They can be sexual, but also just sensual. And we don't tap into it. You know, so many were like exhausted and fatigued, and we're running on caffeine. But this feels like, wow, if I'm willing to actually tap into some of that complicated stuff in my body, whoa, there's like this whole other world of energy and wholesome desire, like you were talking about with Cara and a recent podcast.

Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it.

Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it.

Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara, I like it. Cara When I hear you guys talk about doing this for hours, maybe it's just gonna approach in 50, but that sounds exhausting to me. I'm not. Well, I'm not having sex the entire time.

Definitely not. I've done the whole staring into the other person's eyes thing, not so much with my wife, but like diyads in trainings, various Buddhist trainings, they pair you up with somebody and you stare into their eyes and I see all sorts of murderous thoughts arise in my mind. And, but, you know, you said you'd like it, so no disrespect to you.

But the whole situation you described sounded, yeah, I just immediately where I went with it in my mind and I have a pronounced tendency, and I've been called out for this repeatedly and helpfully to be dismissive. So let me just throw that out there. But immediately where I went with that in my mind when I heard you describe this several long hours long thing was like, oh my god, really? Well, I was thinking, oh god, I was one. Okay, I'm curious about that, Dan. Because why is that tiring? Why is it time to spend two hours in your body?

I don't mind spending two hours in my body. In that, I try to be awake as I'm exercising, for example, or certainly a huge focus in my meditation practice as I would argue this should be a huge focus in anybody's meditation practice is the sensations in my body getting out of my head. So I've done long retreats including sitting next to you at a retreat in Massachusetts. It was more the sexual, sensual relationship thing. And I love, you know, I love my wife.

And she's the most important other than our child, the most important person in my life. It's more just like that just sounded, I guess where I took it was, wow, that sounds forced maybe. Or like, yeah, some sort of like Zen sex deathmort. If that were it is that how you experience it. So much. But that's so good.

Well, the first thing I'd say is that then don't do it for two hours. I know you're not telling me to do it. I know you're not telling anybody to do it. I'm just saying that's where I went with it. I suspect there are people in the audience who have the same thought, but maybe there's something in them. Maybe there's some resistance in me. And Devin, I think you were,

hopefully trying to probe that a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just being honest about what came up for me when I heard you say the thing. Yeah, I love that. I love that. But I think I'll just emphasize, I'll say a couple of things. One thing I'll say first is there's no requirement. You know, speaking to anybody in the audience who's listening, there's no requirement for

length. You know, a lot of what Devon and I are talking about here is getting rid of those requirements, those scripts, those external ideas of what sex should be and how it should be. And for us, in our particular circumstances and our particular lives, with our particular identities, it's been important to give ourselves more time. So that's our personal experience, is that when we block out a couple of hours and frankly, schedule sex,

that we know that we're going to be doing something sensual and intimate, then it opens up a space for unusual things to happen, for creativity to happen, to explore new ways of being together, sometimes that we get out of a book or a video that Devon has watched, sometimes that just arise spontaneously, and just in our experience, having more time allows for that spontaneity or that extra possibility. The other thing I'd say is that, I mean, it's not full on the entire time, and I think there's this expectation that Devon named earlier

that if you are sexually intimate with somebody, it needs to be amazing for every moment that you're doing it. And what we're exploring is like, well, sometimes I'm just massaging Devon's foot, which is not an incredibly transcendent experience. It's just kind of like we're handing out, and then we might talk for a little bit and check in. But I also recognize that this is kind of like

hippie stuff that we're doing here, and it just might not be for everyone. And some people might just like to have a really awesome 20-minute session and find that incredibly satisfying. And if that's the case, I would say, great. Do that. I mean, I think also in our history together, I've actually, I went through a phase of questioning my own sexuality and asexuality because I would so much rather hike for two hours, you know, or go swimming or dance. Rather than, for me, I do have that mind just like you, Dan, that's like, oh my god, two

hours of Zen's sex march, really? So we've had to work it out, like for a while during that phase, I was like, oh, we were going to trade off. If you go for this 3 hour long hike with me, then we'll spend a good long period of time exploring sexuality, but knowing that we have different preferences. Now, I think for me, this is just the phase I'm in because I feel there's so much fertile ground for lack of a better term to discover, this is like spending two hours meditating. And both of us are super into that. So if I see like the awakening potential here, then I'm all in for sure.

We've been pretty good about not doing too many sex puns during the course of the session so I've only been two that I can count. Craig, Devon has spoken, you know, I really appreciate a lot of what she said about sort of the impact of sex on her mind and what she's learned by bringing her practice to the mattress, you know, about not only what she's seen about patterns that I think are injected into a lot of women through the culture, but also on an even deeper level that none of this is personal anyway. What the practice is designed to help us see, you know, that everything that's arising is impersonal and it's our

personalizing of it that is the source of our suffering. So, I think maybe I'm summing her up with some degree of accuracy, but assuming I have, can you riff on how the practice of sex has impacted the practice of meditation for you and the ways that Devon has already done? Yeah. Maybe I'll start with the ways that meditation has really impacted or influenced sexuality for me, and then I'll go back from there how sexuality has influenced my meditation practice. So, just a really basic piece for me, as Devon mentioned, is being in my body. And sex is I think it's intense. And there's a lot of emotion

that comes up, a lot of it unacknowledged. And sometimes it's quite difficult to really fully stay with my experience in the moment of sexuality, whether it's some strange insecurity that's coming up or a desire that I think is not okay or some kind of a version or wanting something not to be happening that I also think is not okay. And I think what the meditation practice allows me to do is first off be with that myself. Do is first off be with that myself. The mindfulness practice trains me to be alive in this living form. Whatever is going on in the physical sensations, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, in the emotions, whether they feel satisfying or frightening in my thinking mind, whether I like what my thoughts are or very often, I don't really like what my thoughts are.

So the meditation practice allows me to be with this whole organismic experience throughout my double daily life and during sexual intimacy. So that's really, really helpful, first of all, for my own experience, but then because I can actually communicate it to my partner in a way that can be helpful, that you can hear, and that we can work with together. That makes sex much, much more satisfying. Then in terms of how sexuality has come back into my meditation

practice, sex wakes the body up. If you can be in body during sex, then this body, it becomes more alive. It becomes more vivid, and that vividness travels with me back onto the Christian and back into nature and into my whole life. So I think that at its best sexuality opens me. You know, it opens my heart, it opens my physical sensations, it opens my senses, and it just makes me sort of more whole, more full as even being in the last part that it does, is it makes me much more in love with Devin. So when we did this year of celibacy, what we discovered was we became really good spiritual friends and that was satisfying. It was really nothing wrong with that.

But there wasn't this sense of arrows. You know, it was like a lot of agape, not a lot of arrows. So a lot of sort of like, sisterly, brotherly love, lots of support for each other. But not this sense of touching and being close to one another, and that kind of specialness of connection that we share that because we're monogamous, I don't have with anybody else. And so since we started to explore again sexually, that has all

woken up. So Dan, have we convinced you to put sexuality at the center of your mindfulness and Dharma practice? No, but you have convinced me that it should be a part of my mindfulness and Dharma practice. And by the way, I would have said that nothing's excluded from the meditation practice. I would have said that, but I wouldn't have actually, I think subconsciously, I wouldn't have actually meant it. And so what this conversation really has done for me is allowed me to say, oh yeah, here's another area

where I'm actually operating on autopilot and I haven't brought mindful awareness. And so yeah, this is an area to explore. I'm not quite ready to say it's going to be the core of my practice. More importantly, I suspect my wife's not going to want me to make it to make a whole series of demands based on this conversation. So how excited is Bianca for two hours and sex marks? Yeah, maybe, maybe she would be, but probably not with me.

I'm going to do something that may or may not be a good move, but I'm aware that I'm asking these questions from male perspective, also sort of an older male and a married person. And so I know that we have it with us on the line here, Marissa Schneider, who's our producer. And so Marissa, you can bow out, if you just deeply disapprove of what I'm about to do, but I'd be interested to hear Marissa whether you think there are questions

that haven't been asked, given the guy who's doing the interview here. Um. Ha ha ha ha. Well, I guess something I'm interested in. So I went on a, and I'm definitely gonna edit this out when I work on this, but um, my relationship blew up during the pandemic.

It was like we were living together and stuff and we broke up right when it started. And I went on a date yesterday, a socially distant date. We'd been, this was our second date, we'd been chatting. And I'm like, I don't really wanna get into anything serious now but with venereal diseases and coronats, like hard to connect with people.

But I had him get a COVID test. He is negative. And I'm definitely curious about a lot of these practices that you guys are talking about, but I'm sort of wondering about that intersection of like not knowing people or I guess what it means to like go deep, but like in a way that suits your own practice, for example, like even with Dan talking about, well like with what I have in my life going on, I don't have time for two hours, but like how can I still take some of these practices and integrate them?

And I'm, I have similar questions. Yeah, great question. What first comes to mind for me, and also just speaking from someone who's been married for 11 years and totally out of the dating scene, so I feel like this might be a little bit antiquated. But what comes to mind for me is just never underestimate the power of sensuality aside from sex, and it's sort of like de-centering intercourse like Kreg is saying that there's so many amazing sensual experiences that we can have alone and together

where we touch on all of this material that we're talking about. So it's a little bit like exploring on my own first, you know, and as a meditator, you know how to practice with your mind and your body and your thoughts. So really taking the same paradigm on, like the intention to dismantle patriarchy and objectification and consumerism through my sitting practice, through my exercise, through my just being close to another body, and getting to know another person through conversation and share dinners or whatever else you're doing through dating. There's so much that's all in some way is for play and really important, I would say,

before you get very intimate with someone. So in some way, I want to kind of blow this whole conversation up into outside of the realm of sex and sexuality, we can do so much just as sensory beings. And again, as someone who's like totally pro-asexual. And also knows like Minguribijan, Solanistali Laman, all these people who are so alive and so connected to intimacy and the world and other people without any kind of sexuality. So to emphasize like, yes, you can be sensory with another person. And then when it does come to being sexual near dating, using your practice and all the ways you know, like how is it to work with vulnerability, how is it to use really mindful,

skillful communication with this other person? Just sounds like you're already doing. Yeah, it's like, again, nothing left out. So you can bring all the good practice that you know how to do right into this room right now. And maybe I'll just add to that, it's important to find people that want to play. So this is something that's important to you. If you want to express your sexuality in this way, that is more playful, more open, more spontaneous,

more practice oriented or mindfulness oriented, it's important to find somebody who might also be open to this realm of being. So I work with, you know, Devon and I both do a lot of one on one mentoring, and I work with a young woman who is in a relatively new relationship, and she read this chapter in our book, and she brought all of this into one sexual encounter that they had. She was quite nervous about it. It's kind of weird to just lie next to each other for 20 minutes, but he was willing.

And so they were able to do this. And from her report, I've not talked to him, but from her report, this was some of the most powerful, intimate sex that they have had so far in their young relationship. So finding somebody who is at least willing to hang out in these realms seems pretty important if this is something that you want to explore and or inviting people, you know, especially early in a relationship. It's easier to get people to do things. No, I know. We met online and I just like sent him like four books that I was interested

in. And I was like, I want someone that that I was interested in and I was like I want someone that like is into these books and likes to do these kinds of things because I'm basically looking for the opposite of my last because as I tell this to my boss on the interview but yeah. That's awesome or so that's go whole communication right there. Yeah and also like just tactically great to train your partner early. It gets harder than later you get into the relationships of. Yeah, I'm untrainable. Oh, this plan.

Yeah, exactly. So, Marissa, thank you. You're a very good support. Whatever you decide to do with that in an editing, from an editing standpoint, I support you. Let me just close with this question and up because I'm sensitive to your time guys and also I'm sensitive to the fact that on the East Coast it's 517 and pretty soon my five-year-old,

the product of sex, we'll walk in here and tell me it's time for dinner. Actually, he was an IVF baby, so really not the product. Anyway, he's not going to hear this episode. The final thing on your list of things you wanted to talk about, and by the way, you guys, I asked a few of these questions, but you managed to cover pretty much all of them just organically in the course of your answers But the final question you asked it's a notion you listed to hear is and I'd love to hear you hold forth on it Is the better we know ourselves the better our sex will be? What do you mean by that?

Yeah, I think this ties into what I was just saying about how meditation ties into what I was just saying about how meditation influences my sexuality as a meditator, as somebody who is spending quite a bit of my time watching my own heart, mind, my own sensational body, I'm getting to know myself. And I don't just mean I'm getting to know myself, and I don't just mean I'm getting to know my stories. I really mean I'm getting to know this whole experience of body, mind, emotions, and the more that I know it, the more playful I can be with this manifestation, the more connected I can be with another because I'm not scared of my own inner world. And I would say even the more I can know another.

If I really know myself and I'm not frightened by what's arising in my own heart and mind, then my partner won't be quite, I mean, sometimes you scare me. Sometimes she scares me, but I'll be much more able to roll with the intensity of her mind, her emotions, her full experience. I think that's what I would mean. Yeah, I would maybe just add one piece to that sentence, like the better that we know ourselves and accept ourselves, the better our sex will be. And I just loved your episode with Kara because it was so much about like freedom is really allowing ourselves to be completely, authentically, who we really are.

And that's inspiring to me. What is it? That's here. It's really what motivates all of my meditation is like, there's so much here that does not meet the eye and is beyond what I perceive. So even just this notion of anata of like, whoa, this is just nature here, unfolding. And nothing's wrong with it. And I don't have to force it or control it in any way. Wow, how is that then to be that authentic and open with another person? The potential for intimacy and for connection and understanding the depth of interdependence and how this notion of separation is just an illusion. You know, like, wow, that's like knowing and seeing the whole of the Dharma is just getting to know reality, right? And so then everything is going to be

better. You just said a lot there. So I just want to see if I can kind of reflect it back to you to just make sure that I fully grocted because it's really important. Use the term Anata, it translates into sort of the idea of not self that there's obviously we exist on some level we have to put our pants on and you know check our phones and blah blah blah but on some really important level there is if you look closely you're not going to find some little homunculus of Devon between your ears. And you both talked about the fact that what we can do in meditation, and this can be just being awake in the course of sex, or just being awake of doing your dishes, or whatever, is to see the full dumpster fire that's raging within all of us, and to just be okay with it.

And see, as you said before, that it's just nature. This is just all this stuff is a, we take it so personally, but it's all arising based on an impersonal set of infinite set of causes and conditions that are all just kind of manifesting right now in this thing we call devon or crag or danna marissa and when the cooler you can get with your dumpster fire the cooler you will be with your partner during sex and as you said devon the cooler you will be with everything and therefore everything gets better

is that an accurate reflection whoo that was good very well said very well said. Very well said. Yeah. Well, I'll just copying you. So very well said in your part. And I just want to say again, this was a not an easy thing to talk about. So I just salute both of you for doing it and doing it with so much such a sense of like playfulness and a sense of humor and yeah, I really appreciate it. No, you made it easy for us, Dan.

Thank you. Yeah. And shout out to Marissa who really wanted to do this episode and I don't know if she's going to make it in or not, but I hope she does. And that was brave of you, Marissa. So thank you. Well, we have to follow up, Dan, and see how it goes for you. Big thanks to Devon and Craig. As I said, not the easiest subject to open up about, but they did

a great job. We're eager to hear your thoughts on this episode. It's a little provocative, so we want to hear what you have to say, and also in particular whether we should do more on this subject. So if you have questions on sex that you would like our teachers to answer, send them via voice memo to listenerattenpercent.com. So you can record a voice memo with you asking your question and send it to us at listenerattenpercent.com. You can also just send via text, any reflections or questions you have that way. That's listener at 10% .com. That email address will be in the show notes, fire away. Big thanks to the team. Samuel Johns is our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our producer. She produced this episode. There are a lot of hard work coming up with the idea and executing.

So a big special thanks to Marissa. Our sound designers are Matt Boen and Anja Sheshik of Ultraviolet Audio. Maria Wertel is our production coordinator. And as always, we derive a ton of wisdom from our TPH colleagues. Jen Poient, Nate Toby, Ben Rubin, Liz Levin, and last but not least, big thank you to my ABC comrades Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see you on Friday with a bonus sleep meditation. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon Music app today,

or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. you