The Menstruality Podcast - 241. Cyclical Sex Through Your Inner Seasons and Life Cycles (Carly Mountain)

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Just like our physical, emotional and mental energy, our erotic energy also ebbs and flows through the menstrual cycle month. Today we’ve invited the brilliant psychotherapist and somatic sex therapist Carly Mountain back to the podcast to explore the connection between the womb and our erotic cycles. Today Carly guides us on a journey through the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle to explore the erotic challenges and gifts of each phase. Carly has recently released a new book called Untamed Pleasure, which is a treasure trove for anyone wanting to experience more sexual freedom and pleasure. We chat about many of the beautiful teachings from the book, including; how to manage protective parts that come up around around sex, how we can’t produce sex hormones and stress hormones at the same time, the power and sensitivity of the cervix, perimenopause sex, untamed aging and how to access more pleasure in every stage of life. We explore:Why it can really help to take orgasm off the table, and focus instead on sensation and pleasure to relieve pressure and change the erotic landscape we’re exploring.How to cultivate your connection to your cervix, to deepen the sensation, move through numbness, and awaken more pleasure, and why it’s vital to move slowly and take our time. How the experience of eros can shift as we enter midlife.---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyCarly Mountain: @carly_mountain - https://www.instagram.com/carly_mountain

Welcome to the menstruality podcast where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexander and Sharnie, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, change makers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, thanks for joining us today. So just like our physical, emotional and mental energy, our erotic energy also ebbs and flows

throughout the menstrual cycle month. And today we've invited the brilliant psychotherapist and somatic sex therapist Carly Mountain, back to the podcast, to explore our erotic cycles. Carly guides us on this beautiful journey through the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle to explore the erotic challenges and gifts of each phase. Carly's recently released a book. It's called Untamed Pleasure, and it's a real treasure trove for anyone wanting to experience more sexual freedom and pleasure.

We chat about lots of the different insightful teachings from the book like how to manage the protective parts of us that might come up around sex, how we can't produce sex hormones and stress hormones at the same time, the power and the sensitivity and the majesty of the cervix, perimenopause sex, untamed aging, and how to access more pleasure in every stage of life. So here we go. Cyclical Sex through your inner seasons and life cycles with the brilliant Carly Mountain. Oh, Carly Mountain. I get to sit down with you again. I was actually reflecting on how cool your name is the other day. Like, what a name of Carly Mountain. Thank you so much.

It's so good to be with you. I always love talking to you. Yeah, thank you for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to always. It's always great to see you. And last time we met for the podcast, we talked about descent and rising and the cycles through that lens. And today we're going to be speaking about your new book that's on its way out into the world, untamed pleasure. And yeah, I've got so many questions. But before we get into all of that, let's do a cycle check in. Sure. Where are you at in your cycle? So I'm about five days off my bleed. So yeah, I can just feel. And usually that's the day when

energy goes a little bit lower. So I've had a fairly steady morning and yeah, but I can just feel I'm sort of drifting towards that more liminal place. Yes, yes. I'm on day 21. So I'm in like what feels more to be like the like volcanic bubbling stage before I start to go like down into the earth. Yes. And I'm, I was just saying to you before we started, it's interesting to be having this conversation today because I really feel inside the way you. describe eros and sexuality in the inner autumn where I want to devour everything. I want to like bite and just get my hands in the earth as a real wildness. And it's actually fun in this phase of life to feel fun. Is it fun? It's fascinating to feel like more of this wildness

allowed in me, unleashed in me. Like when I was younger, I'd try and be like hold it together and be more polite or socially acceptable and now I'm 44 am I, I can never remember, but I think I'm 44 and I don't give a shit. And it's great. And I just like if I went shopping now, I'd probably be happy walking down the shopping out going like, which is what I want to do. And I'm curious because I feel like we're at similar ages. I can't. Yeah. Yeah, I'm 46. Yeah. how is how is this quickening era this entering into midlife feeling for you like what are you noticing big question but what are you noticing specifically around your cyclical experience and your cycle shifts in mood and how you're feeling so on the whole i would say that i feel incredibly

alive in this phase of my life and in the book i describe it as swimming in a sea of warm eros that's flowing through my work, through my relationship with my partner who I've been with for over 20 years now, with myself, with my creativity, with my, you know, relationships. And so there is that. And within that, there is change that I, and grief. And it's really interesting being in this phase with two teenage daughters. So my daughters are now 16 and my eldest is about to be 18 this summer. And about three years ago, I had this overwhelming grief at the start of summer, interestingly, the season of summer itself. And they're blossoming into their womanhood and my feeling this other energy, which is very hard to even put words to for me at this stage,

So though there's this part of me that's really inside of this, there is also grief here. And though I really celebrate them, seeing them come into this first fertility in some ways, as mine declines, as my mother ring also declines, is a really poignant thing. So, and it's really interesting because each year at that time of year, and I didn't think it was going to get.

me this year and it did about my last bleed I just went down into a major like oh grief place so it's a real mixture of things but there's a wildness to that that I love and it makes it feels like it's calling me to ever more presence in life so I'm grateful for it and aging is a thing is it's it feels very tangible at this point and I know there's a lot more of that to come you know Yes, yes. I know I'm just on the cusp. Yeah, baby ages. Yeah, there's so much to come. And I'd like to ask you later on in the conversation

to get into the untamed aging chapter of the book and your experience of the erotic now in this phase and how it can shift. And yeah, thank you for sharing that about your daughters and the experience you're having. And isn't it interesting that the seasons of the year are provoking it. Like we're always living inside cycles, inside cycles, inside cycles. Exactly. Like as we reach like the ovulatory moment of the year, that's when it's coming up for you.

Yeah. And I notice that I ovulate now very soon after I bleed. Yes. Yeah. So those two energies are also coming together much closer and that's really fascinating to live. It's an interesting feeling in my body. Yes. Complexity is a word that comes up often when we're talking about Porry Menopause and the quickening, just multi-layered, multifaceted, lots to hold, lots to like kind of irreconcilable things to try and reconcile. And yeah. Yeah, yeah. And there's a richness in that, isn't there?

But also it's a lot. Yes, it is a lot. And we can get into it a bit more later. And maybe also when we get to the autumn of the seasons, like the seasons of our erotic cycles. Yes. Because in the book, you walk through like the different cycle, phases and how sexuality and our connection to the erotic can change and I'd love us to take a journey through those. Starting with spring, which makes sense at the beginning and in the book you say,

there's a freshness and also a pleasant emptiness that can be felt inside the body, a lightness, a renewal, but also a vulnerability. If we rush or share too much of ourselves too soon at this stage, it can be very exposing. And one of the questions you ask, is how might you knowingly or unknowingly tame this spring energy in you? Yeah, what do you see in the women that you work with around that taming of the spring energy? I think sometimes there can be a pressure for connection at that phase when we might not want it. I really enjoyed when my, an old teacher of mine, Jules, Heavens compared to the archetypal. of Artemis to that phase of the cycle.

And Artemis I often associate with that huntress energy, but also like the selfhood, this kind of quite singular energy. And I think sometimes, yeah, there can be pressure to connect too soon. It's like almost like when we bleed, there's almost, well, there's certainly in my household now an understanding that I'll be more probably inwards, not always, but often a little bit more inwards than I am, a bit less sociable. but sort of in spring there's almost this expectation of oh i'll just shoot straight back out again and crack on with life and i find it can just be a little bit too much too soon and i always find it really fascinating to think

about how i was as a young woman in that because i do think that we live a lot of the imprints we learned through our life stages inside of our bleeds and certainly as a young woman i was definitely more out and less protective of myself in my young womanhood than I would have been had I had this menstrual cycle teaching and an awareness of life stages and what my womb wanted. I mean, it just wasn't a conversation. So I think that taming the vulnerability that might come with this phase is something that can happen. But it might show up in a different. way. I mean, that's the beautiful thing with thinking of things through this taming lens. It's like, what particular thing do you tame? You might feel really vivacious and connective in this phase.

And do you thwart that in some way or dim it down or, you know, I'd just be really curious for anyone listening to this to wonder about how they tame that part of their cycle. Because it can be very, very varied for each of us, can't it? Especially this season, I find, this cycle phase. Interesting. Really wide variety. I've heard women and folks speak about, I guess, through this untaming lens, how they might tame their sensitivity and then go numb.

Yes. So it's like kind of just losing themselves in this phase, just not being aware, not being connected, because there's a sensitivity or like to use your word vulnerability that was there. because I just like to overshare on this podcast. I'm just thinking about how in my maiden years or in my early 20s, this isn't the case for everyone, but it's the case for a lot of us.

There was a lot of unwanted touch and touch verging on abuse. And it's like, I think something in me went, okay, dangerous. And there was like, there's a wild sexuality in me that I think I've probably tamed. because I I there was a patterning in me of learning okay well don't attract the wrong attention don't don't don't allow danger in protect to defend but now I am blessedly in a safe environment in a sexual relationship with a man who would who I do feel safe with so but I can still feel that patterning in of like don't come too close and and pushing away that I think I can sort of track back now as

perhaps connected to those maiden years Yeah, and I really love that you're naming this because it is something I speak about in the book that often we don't get, that that sensitivity can be so beautiful in a sexual sense if it's connected with by ourselves and whoever our lovers are in a, with respect and care and attunement, can't it?

But as you say, I too received, and I think it is the way that we have learned to cope with misogynistic culture to really give young women the message of, you know, don't attract the wrong attention. And it means that we never really are free to be untamed in that phase of life. You know, I already see it with my girls that, you know, unwanted attention already comes in as well. And then we learn to go, oh, I don't want that to happen again. What does it do in our bodies?

What's it doing in our wombs? So I think this is a really key piece of when those, I speak a lot in the book about it's structured around cages and keys. I think that one of the, that we're touching on an embodied cage now around our spring energy. Like is it safe to blossom into spring in this world? Not always. Yes. So it may be for those listening who like me might feel that bracing going on in the body. It's like can the spring phase of the cycle?

which is easier to track in some ways than other phases because it's coming after the bleed. And I know especially in midlife, the cycles can go all kinds of ways and get really long or come thick and fast. But that, like, maybe day five, six, seven to pay attention to what's happening in the body. Is there bracing? Can we explore how to soften into that spring energy or open into that spring wildness? Yeah. Yeah, especially like you say, if we are now in a safe enough space in our lives and a safe enough home environment to do it,

because I think that's where sadly some of the trauma plays out where we are still unconsciously living as if we are under threat in spaces where we're not. Yes. So I think it's a really, yeah, it's a great place to bring our attention to. There's a great question. you asked in this section where you said, can you save your first orgasm for after you bleed for you? Yes. Lovely. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, I think sometimes it might be like you say, where there's this

sensitivity, but also like a vibe that lives after your bleed. And you might not want to share it with another person, but there's nothing to say that you can't have that for yourself. So I really like that idea of like having your first orgasm post-bleed as yours or even during your bleed, you know, but there's a different energy after the bleed. So I think it can be quite yummy to do that and make it a ritual for this part of the cycle. And particularly those people who are in relationship with someone else, sometimes orgasm can become something that you only ever share with another and it can be really, really nourishing to reclaim that. for ourselves. Yeah, that word reclamation was coming up for me, reclaiming our bodies,

reclaiming our agency, reclaiming our eros, it's for us, it's to nourish us. Yeah. Oh, lovely. So in summer, around the ovulation phase of the cycle in the summer, you know, you're talking in the book about how this might be when we feel most turned on when eros is peaking for many. And then you ask, um, how, How might you knowingly or unknowingly cage your creative power? Could you speak to that, how that's one of the cages that is blocking our untamed pleasure? Yeah. Well, I think that this links to what we've just been talking about, about the spring energy, really.

So quite a few of the women that come to work with me in therapy one-to-one will have different hormonal disruption going on, things like PCOS. And one thing that I notice with PCOS is how much ovulation is obviously dampened, but also seems to also be that creativity often gets dampened too. And again, I think as we unpack why that might be, it often has been that there's been some sort of violation, or it's not been safe, it hasn't felt safe, to allow that full flowering into the height of this summer ovulatory energy and to really flow with it. And I do think it's a reality in our world that women who are really creative and really visible in that do get attacked.

So I don't want to gaslight anyone and go, oh, you know, you're safe to do this. It's fine. I think it's always important to acknowledge in these conversations. It's a real thing. Yeah. And I think last time we spoke, we touched on this, I don't want to let that stop me because it's a massive loss. So finding places if you don't want to do creative things like online or in a very exposing place to at least have this energy and creativity for ourselves is, I think, just so vital. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I received a pretty difficult email from The Guardian yesterday. I think it was about female journalists who have been attacked.

There was a list of like 30. It was a rough read. And it's an important read because you're right. You know, there's a price that many particularly women pay when they speak out and speak truth to power. Yeah. And I always come back to you. That's why we need each other. And I'm just thinking of how delicious it is and I don't do this any way near enough, but to sit and craft, especially with a circle of women, quietly crafting together. There's so much quiet creative power in that, isn't there? Yeah.

I like you. it's something I don't do enough either. Yes. We actually live in Sheffield. We just start something. We should just be like, come on women. Let's go. Let's knit.

It was a lovely practice that you suggest is with a partner or alone, you can take yourself to the edge of orgasm in a summer and then eke it out. So to ride the energy from sexual to sensual to sexual again and see what happens. Yes. Yes. So I think sometimes there isn't enough. distinguishing between sexual and sensual energy. And I think some people feel, even if they're just self-pleasureing, a pressure to get to

orgasm. Like, that's why they're self-pleasureing. And I always really encourage women, particularly if they have been a bit estranged from their body or they do find this phase or allowing the fullness of their eros to really flow through their bodies. Can you just be sensual with yourself? Like, take, you can take orgasm off. the table, if it's pressure, then it's not going to help that it's not going to help you blossom.

So for me to really kind of distinguish, oh, if I can just be sensual with myself, just touch, just to just touch and feel. And notice like we can include numbness in that. We can include difficult feelings that we come up and we can include pleasure too. so that it kind of changes the landscape that we are entering a little bit. And I often find that when women start to cultivate that with themselves and that pressure just starts to kind of fall away, pleasure is so much more accessible and then orgasmic energy.

I mean, I think the orgasmic energy in us really wants to come alive. You know, it's right there. It's our nature, right? So as soon as we just allow it some space, it can come alive. And then it may turn into a more fiery sexual energy, but it doesn't have to. So just remove that pressure and get used to or begin to be curious about where does it tip from sensual to sexual for me? What is that like? And can I edge that?

can I play with that power in me? Can I get to know it? Can I kind of toy with it and tease it in myself? It's really delightful to orchestrate your body that way and have it orchestrate you. It feels like such a dance. Your words are gorgeous when you said, I think you said, orgasmic energy is our nature. What a beautiful thought, you know, what a beautiful idea. And I'm also thinking back to times in my life. like particularly when Artie was really young and also when I was trying to conceive where that felt so far away. And I'm wondering for anyone listening that's like, oh, I would love that to feel true for me, but it feels like a million miles away. And I imagine some of the women and folks listening in that quickening midlife 40s and 50s, like I hear it a lot.

Do you have a word to share about how to like a homeopathic way into that? or? Well, I think it's embracing what I call the pleasure paradox in the book, which is that the journey to pleasure or contact with pleasure is not always all pleasurable in avert commas. So I think that pleasure brings us into presence and in presence, anything that needs space in us will show up most likely. So I think one of the reasons we steer away from pleasure is because we're also steering away from grief or anger or frustrations or other less palatable feelings. But sadly, if we marginalise one feeling, we tend to start to turn down the volume on all of the feelings. And so one of the things that I speak about in the book is making love and making love as in opening out what we include in

our sexuality, what we include in our, in what we welcome in that. So it might be that tears are really needed. And then what happens after the tears? There'll be something else. Or it might be that there's some real like, some rate and sound and bearing teeth and freeing face and sticking tongue out and like really stretching through the body and feeling aches and pains in the body. And if we follow that, where does that take us next? So I think there's a

cage around our sexuality and eroticism that says that it should be only pleasing and only good. And if it's not, I'm doing it wrong and then I feel shame and it shuts me off from it. So true. Yeah. Yeah. And what I want to invite people to, and this is for me, kind of at the heart of untamed pleasure, is if we are there to make love, we are there to make love to whatever comes, whatever shows up. And I'm so grateful to my teacher, Sage Walker, for opening this up for me in my life, because it was her words. And she's really developed this idea over many years. She's in her 80s now. It's changed my life. It's changed the way I communicate with people about sexuality. It's really opened up the vista and unshamed the moments

when I just need to be held by my partner and cry before we do anything more than that. Yes. Oh, I relate so much. And I think you mentioned grief in there as one of the feelings that can be maybe in the way of pleasure or to be journeyed with on the way to pleasure. And one of the things you say in the book is for this inner summer phase of the cycle,

if women and folks have struggled to conceive, this time of the cycle can feel rocky, grief, rage, all kinds of feelings. And we could have a whole hour long conversation about this, but grief and the erotic. How grief and the erotic, discuss, Carly. Well, I mean, if Eros is life force energy and if for me life force energy is the essence of love with a capital L, then for me that that will necessarily touch grief at times. And again, I think that because we've made sex into such a commodity of, I have sex, sex is good, sex is pleasurable,

we've really just like turned it into fast food version of what should be a much more complex set of flavors. And so for me, again, this is what we, we might mean by sexual healing because actually our sexual energy takes us towards whatever it is that's needing love and that will be if we haven't had the opportunity to have children and we really wanted them or if we haven't been able to conceive obviously we're going to have feelings about that and that is probably going to come up in our sex life so of course is kind of what I want to say but isn't it so crazy that we're living in this paradigm

around sex that is so far away from that. It's so weird. And as a woman who did try to conceive for four years and was so blessed with a son at the end of it, it's so weird how we don't, the conversation around sex doesn't include that because it was all happening in my body. I didn't stop thinking about sex,

but there's nothing to do with desire. It was to do whether it could create the thing I wanted to create and it was really messy and difficult. And I'm still untangling it. it five years later. And I think I think that feels like something to normalize too that like there's so much that's complicated about sex and if it's messy and strange and confusing and then that's fairly normal I imagine, you know. Absolutely. Well it's where we meet ourselves and it's also you know where we meet if we think back to and again I speak about this in the

book sort of going back it's a non it obviously hopefully we're bringing communication into our sexuality, but ultimately it's a it's a visceral embodied thing. So we hold lots of our nonverbal stuff inside of our sexual interactions as well, stuff that is that is pre-verbal that happened right back at the beginning that we may or may not even be conscious of. It's really primal territory. And for me, that's what, you know, that's the beauty of working here in this territory. but also, yeah, like you're saying, it's naughty. It's, it's, yeah, it's gritty at times. And we, but if we embrace that, I just find there's so much beauty there.

Talking to you, I'm just realizing it just contains the fullness of our humanity. Absolutely. Yeah, it's how we all got here. Yeah. It contains the fullness of our humanity, yeah. And when we say it's how we all got here sometimes, science intervenes and creates babies with some magic. But yes. Yeah. Okay, so speaking of primal, let's move to the inner autumn pre-menstrual phase. And in the book, you say, Autumn heralds

the fire and fall of Eros where we contact the wild womb's erotic ferocity. It can feel like the energy of red, sometimes rage, sometimes hunger. We often want to devour in a delicious way, sometimes in a frantic way, food, our lover, our lives, which can be vibrant. That's where I'm living today. I love that. And one of the questions you ask is, what is your relationship with your wild passion and power? And I imagine from any listening, it's like, I don't know. Like, is it allowed?

Is this okay that wild passion? Because of the reasons we've spoken about already, yeah. Yes, yes. I find it really fascinating that the solar plexus is also a fire center and the place that we often navigate our personal power from and that the womb's right below that stoking the fire, you know? So I feel like, again, I work with many women who have learned to really dampen this one down. And I think there can be a real fear about the shadow of this energy. Like, it will burn my life down if I let this have its way with me. Yeah.

And yet I find that when we suppress it, it finds other ways to act out, shadowy ways to act out. And often with women, I find that the energies act inwards in a damaging way rather than outwards. So it will act out in, which makes no sense. But you know what I mean? It will be harmful towards self. That's what I'm trying to say. So it could be, yeah, like I say, drinking too much or finding other ways to satiate that

energy rather than actually letting it nourish and really express in the way that it wants to. So like a contortion, a contorted version of it. Yeah, okay. And one of the ways I do that I know is with food. It's like a when I feel a lot of, well, I just when I feel a lot and there isn't much space in my life to feel a lot, I can tell I go to food and it's and it just quietens everything. Yeah.

That is delicious. Like food is delicious. But what, so what would you? say to begin to like flip those cycles around so that instead of like squashing it down we're like slowly starting to untame it or allow more of it. Yeah yeah yeah. So I think having a diet like first of all noticing like you noticing the relationship with food for me it would be a glass of wine and actually my body now hates wine in this phase of the cycle it does me in so I actually can't do that anymore and it's been really good for me not to be able to.

Yes. But the impetus is there. It's like this party part of me kind of just wants to indulge a lot. So once you know what your particular vices in this phase of the cycle, it's then for me getting curious about what's that trying to satiate? Like what does it really want if I was going to find the desire underneath the compulsion? What is that? and often for me it's connection at this point in the cycle.

Like I really want to connect. And yet for some reason there's a heightened vulnerability in connecting here. Probably because it is so wild. Like if I really unleash this energy of myself, it's delicious. But it will really, it's a very honest part of my cycle. It's pretty uncensored. So I really love that energy when I can go into it. but for me there's a bit of freeze here.

I see it a lot in women. So, yeah, to just name it. Well, first get curious. Discover it if it's too much, if you're in a partnership, if it's too much to bring it to your partner, maybe find a way of dancing with it alone to begin with. And then, yeah, letting more of it out if it feels right for you.

I'm going to pause our conversation with Carly to share an invitation with you because the doors for Red School's next menstruality leadership program are now open and this is the world's first leadership training rooted in the power of the menstrual cycle and if you're curious about it now is a good time to head to menstruality leadership.com and explore the curriculum what the course includes how it can support you and your leadership and lots of different stories from the menstruality leadership program graduates because there's a super early bird offer on at the moment where you receive 500 pounds off the course until July the 29th and here's a story from one of the graduates dimple mukaji who shared

her experience of the menstruality leadership program. Hi everyone my name is dimple mucurgy and I did my menstruality leadership program training in March of 2023 and it's been an absolute game changer for me in my life and in my career as an occupational therapist and also as a coach a personal coach and what I particularly loved about the program by Red School was that it really allowed us to sink into a place of depth and I think my favorite part of the whole program was just the amount of support that I got and how held I felt in this program as I was guided by Shawnee and Alexandra as well as the mentors. The most beautiful thing were the community calls as well as being able to connect with the mentors individually. That was so valuable for me

to go through those three calls with my mentor on a one-on-one basis where I was led through medicine circle and I was also encouraged to really reflect and to go inwards into my own deeper knowing and to really share that and the way the mentors and Alexandra and Shawnee really the way they really clarify and sort of reflect back to you where it is that you're at with this process to me was mind-blowing I found that really really helpful And, you know, one of the themes that I was working with this year was also to build community and to build friendship. And I can truly say from the bottom of my heart that the community of women that are in these

programs are just incredible souls who are doing the work that our world needs right now. And I love that I've met so many women from all over the world. And the container of the menstruality leadership program at Red School has really had. held me and held the sacredness of each of our lives. And I really want to thank them for that. I speak to a lot of women and folks who in midlife in 40s and 50s, it just feels like weeks and weeks of in autumn pre-manstrual energy, which is a lot, like to still be out in the world, like for those of us with kids still doing like school, pick up and drop off or caring for elderly relatives and dealing with the fullness of life in the middle of life, I often just feel

like, really sex? Like, God, that's something else I've got to try and fit in. Yeah. So it's so interesting because I've bumped into this in myself and again, it was a cage around rewriting the narrative inside of me that I had to give more inside of my sex life instead of actually going, I just really need to receive. And the vulnerability of turning towards that and actually acknowledging it and actually recognising how defended I was around receive for a long time.

And if I can, since I have really opened those vulnerabilities up, which has taken a lot of those less palatable things we were talking about earlier having to meet those, I find my whole sex life's way more nourishing, but it really nourishes this. part of the cycle. Yes. And I do think there's something here about, you know, the red woman, the wild woman, the lilith that was exiled, that kind of siren energy almost that has been so shamed and yet so objectified in our culture. Yes. And how we've related to that energy as women,

how we've coped with that splitting of like either she's like the most desired thing or she is the thing that's absolutely exiled. How's that in our body, in our sexuality? Because I think this part of the cycle is a really great place to dig into that and start to dare to call her home in our bodies and go, if I let her have my way with me in a safe space in my life, what does she want? She's pretty direct when you ask her. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Mine has a very strong, very well-rehearsed, man-hating part, protecting them. Because of that split, which I've just been, I don't know about you,

but since I was like 14, 50, and I'm like, this is fucked up. The way we deal with women, because we grew up in the 90s, it was a LADET culture, women were even more sexualized than they are now, that's even possible, and objectified. and I just knew it was wrong and I could feel this wildness in me and to defend I got this man-hating part

and she's only got stronger as I had abusive experiences she's only got more loud and I just had to learn to be like I hear you and you've got like I need you to step aside because she was decimating things especially in the pre-menstrom

especially with my partner who is male so yeah yeah interesting now that I've got more space from her to actually feel that, because she feels like the wildness, but she's not. Yeah, the wildness is actually underneath her. Yeah. I kind of, when that part comes up in me, it definitely feels like protectress energy,

but I think her shadow side would be when she, you know, just dams all men inside of it. Exactly, which is what I'm done. F you, F you, F you, load of losers, waste of time. I'm going to go and talk to my women because you're all, yeah, that, that part. It's just so dismissive, destructive. Yeah, and I hear her. You know, it's like there are reasons to believe that. But it's definitely not the whole story.

No. Yeah. Okay, winter, the menstrual phase of the cycle, there was this beautiful share from a woman called Jess. Mm. When I'm bleeding, so this was in the book, because you share lots of stories of people's experiences. So when I'm bleeding, I feel like I'm retreating into my womb cave.

I feel like I'm going into the depths of my. myself and I have a really strong desire to connect with my partner from that space. There are no words for me in that space. So I have a desire to connect with him sexually because I want to bring him into my cave into that place that I can connect to that I can't describe. I literally want him to bow at my feet and be like, yes, Queen, I want to serve you. I want to really go deep, deep into my inner world and have him see me, behold me and meet me there.

Beautiful. I haven't experienced this a lot because I haven't had sex. lot in this phase of my cycle because of the blood, which is a shame. And you do actually say, and please can we shed the shame around making love when we're bleeding? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you have any thoughts around that to share with those of us who like, it's just not, it just doesn't happen so much at that phase of the cycle? Yeah. Again, maybe self-pleasureing in this phase. So I think that a lot of people don't realize that the heightened sensitivity of our vulvers and vaginas at this phase can also lend itself to a lot more pleasure,

but only if we go really gently and kind of sort of with attunement to it. And I think because of that heightened sensitivity, that's also what puts a lot of women off. And yeah, maybe still some feelings about the blood itself. I'm not, I don't know. I'm pretty sure that will come up for some people. It's also quite messy. need red towels red towels good yeah red towels or like a bed sheet that you don't care about yeah um but yeah

i mean i must admit i don't i don't love sex in this part of my cycle but now and again yeah i really do and that energy comes up and so um and i have found that i've had some of the most like primal orgasms of my life in that phase, I would say, like ones that stand out in my head and I can tell you where I was and when and actually the last time was in a hotel room, my husband's in London. And I still remember it now because I was like, oh my God, what was that? Yeah. So I think some orgasms do that to you. They like stay with you for life. Yeah. But yeah. So I just, I just would love to open the Pandora's box.

of it, you know, that it's like there's no pressure to because, geez, we've had enough pressure around sex as women to last as a lifetime, most of us. Oh, yeah. And yet, I'm just so interested in women having the most pleasure available to them. Yeah. So, you know, if there's a curiosity there as you hear this, follow that thread. And if there isn't, fine. Yeah.

In the book, you mentioned that the cervix is lower. during menstruation and I'm finding myself that as I get deeper into my 40s it's all about the cervix for me my body's changing I don't know if this happens to everyone but but what used to work isn't working in terms of turning me on it's also after having a baby so I feel like everything's a bit different down there around my vulva and so now I'm like it's like the cervix is calling me and I was I was just thinking um how nice it would be to have a wand which I don't have, but a wand that can reach the cervix and that I have my sacred time with myself in my bleed while my cervix is lower to explore. I think that could be really lovely.

Yeah. So if anybody wants a wand, I highly recommend Olivia Bryant's cervical wand. She designed it herself. It's beautifully curved. It's nice and long because if anyone's like me, that my cervix is very high and kind of at the back of my pelvis. And so it's, It's hard for me to reach even when I'm on my bleed. So I really need a wand to get there. And I just find that one is the best. But yeah, like you say, to really have something that can help us contact that place. And I find it really interesting to hear that the cervix is calling you at this part of your life.

Because for me, I feel like our cervix is like our inner crown. And that this phase of our lives is like the queen phase, if you like, of our lives. if you think maiden mother queen, Crone, I quite like that. So yeah, I feel like there's something so sacred and deep and potent about connecting with the pleasure of the cervix because so often we just associate it with the functional,

the cervical smears, the cervical cancer, the pain of the cervix rather than the pleasure of the cervix. Yes, I mean, perhaps only. contact it when we are having exams or do happen to be pregnant. And there's, there's healing to you're done, isn't there? I know of a few women who have told me that they've had biopsies of the cervix and they've really needed to. It's been very, very painful in a kind of deep emotional way that they weren't expecting. Yeah, definitely. And also like having IUDs fitted and those kinds of things. And I think sadly the medical profession, because

so Alfred Kinsey did a report on the cervix in his Kinsey reports, I think it was like 1953 and he named in one of those reports that was specifically on female sexuality, he basically said that the cervix was devoid of feeling. Oh, Alfred was his name. Alfred Kinsey. Alfred, how wrong can one person be? Yeah. Basically said that the surface of the cervix is the most completely insolves.

sensitive part of female genital anatomy. Well, how wrong can one man be because it is the part of our anatomy that is most connected by the most nerves of any other part of our anatomy? And anyone who's had their cervix bumped into when it's not really nice and right will know how bloody painful, how much feeling there is there, right? Yeah. So I think reclaiming the cervix as something that is not medical, that is a pleasure organ, and that may have experienced pain from medical the way that it's treated by the medical profession or by lovers in the past or by ourselves is, yeah, can be an important part of the journey that we can't kind of bypass. Yes. Oh, my pre-magstrial day 21. So responding quite strongly to Alfred.

Oh, okay, calm. You said in the book, under a microscope, cervical tissue is arranged in a sacred geometric flower-like pattern, Alfred, that actually spirals around itself to the eye of insight in the middle of the cervix that's called the os? The os. Tell me, Carly, what's going on? Yeah, again, I learned this from Olivia Bryant. If you don't know Olivia, I think you've had her as a guest, haven't you? Yeah, we've had her, I think, it was in the, like, episode 50s. Yeah, it's a wonderful episode.

I'll drop a link to it in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, I absolutely love her work and I've really benefited from it. So I was like to name her. But yeah, the cervical tissue actually spirals and actually Olivia has this image as her logo, like the sacred geometry of it. It's very, very beautiful. And what I find so stunning about this is, you know, spirals are such a part of nature, aren't they? And not only that, that when a baby comes out of the womb as we birth, we spiral into life.

We spiral through the cervix. So I feel like this spiraling energy is orgasmic energy. It's the erotic life energy that animates us all. And so for me, then, in a sexual, sense, this is why cervical orgasm, cervical pleasure, contact with the cervix, the sacredness of the cervix can also rebirth us. It can rebirth the way that we feel in our bodies, the way we feel about our femininity, the way we feel about life, the way we experience orgasm. There's just so much potential here and I'm just so sad that so few people have accessed it. You know, of all the

people that I interviewed, the majority of the women said, I don't really have a relationship with my cervix or not a pleasurable one. And then there were some absolutely amazing accounts of cervical orgasm and pleasure and orgasmic birth that came forward through the interviews that I just was so nourished to hear. So we can write a different story. And the beautiful thing about the cervix is though it can feel very mysterious and difficult to contact, it is right here in our bodies. And so, you know, be the pioneer of your own cervical pleasure is what I would say. Yeah, what an invitation. And for those listening that do feel like, wow, I've never even connected with this part inside me.

There's a beautiful line that you shared. It's something like, because of violation, it can take time. to reclaim our vaginas and cervixes as our own. But unless we do, we can't fully untame to really untame our pleasure as women. We need to reassociate and reincarnate our internal world. Yeah. Yeah. So for those who are like, wow, never even connected, what would it just a beginning be there?

Yeah. So to begin with, you can just visualize it. If self-penetration, I mean, It's quite amazing that I think so many women don't go inside. Like a lot of women just focus on external clitoral stimulation and don't penetrate ourselves. Studies have shown that a lot of women don't and I hear it a lot. So again, curiosity, why am I not going inside with my fingers? What's the resistance there?

What's the association? What memories come up and that can be difficult work? So if you need to go to seek out a therapist for support, that would be a good idea if there's trauma there or something. So, but to begin with, if penetration with your fingers feels too much, just visualising, just sensing into the vagina, sensing into the cervix and breathing into it and seeing what comes up. The other thing you can do if cervical touch feels too much is that the nipples and the cervix are really, connected. And studies have shown that the nipples and the cervix light up the same orgasmic centres in the brain. Oh, wow. So nipple stimulation is really important for cervical pleasure and can really help to ripen the cervix to touch. So play with your nipples, really, like,

really intuitive breast massage. If you have a partner and you want to get them to like kiss and lick and touch the nipples to really stimulate them. And as they're, doing that or as you're doing that, to really attune to your cervix and start to get curious, oh, can I feel sensation there? What's the sensation there? And initially the answer might be, no, I'm numb. It's numb. Well, then feeling the numbness is the first step to finding out what lives beyond that.

So numbness is part of the journey for many, many people. And then if you feel like oftentimes, there's a beautiful anay-nin quote in the book where she, you know, the cervix, it actually can draw in. So I think the more attention we give her, she'll actually kind of, she will make you want to touch her or feel into her at some point if you give her enough time and space. And at that point, you go in and you meet her and you see what comes up. And again, just really following your body's pace because what we don't want to do when we're working to reclaim our penetrative energy and our internal pleasure is to violate ourselves

again by rushing because that's what's closed it down possibly in the first place. So to really go slowly, to stop when the body's a no, but perhaps stay with curiosity around the no to just kind of rather than like, no, I'm going away from that, you know, it's like, okay, if I can just be with the know and stay with my breath and then follow. It just takes time. Yes. Yeah, it's something I've been practicing because my cervix is calling me. Like I said, it is. The more attention I pay to it, the more sensation I feel there. Yeah. Something I'm noticing because sex can be painful sometimes these days. I've actually got these cysts in my vagina at the moment that I'm working with wonderful Melinda McDougal, who I also interviewed to try and see if we can work with these because the doctor

says that spontaneous remission or whatever it's called is unlikely. And I was like, we'll see. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. But it does, it's changing the sensation. So if it does start to feel a bit painful, instead of immediately going, no, stop. It's like, how can I focus in on my cervix? Because there is pleasure there. There is sensation there. There's possibility. And it can sometimes open the doorway to like the pain easing and the pleasure opening. It's just kind of an that I'm playing with at the moment. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's just so good to hear.

And also you can apply that to being with a lover. If you have a male lover, before I met Olivia Bryant's work, self-servics, I had had cervical orgasms by accident in longer lovemaking sessions with my husband, and I talk about this in the book, but I'd never intentionally gone there because I didn't know what they were.

I just knew there was an intentionally pressure thing that sometimes happened, but what would happen sometimes with my partner was he'd bump into my cervix before I was fully engorged and ready for that kind of depth of penetration. And then we'd go, and we'd shy away from it. Instead, because I didn't know that what I needed was more touch, more engorgement, more attention before we went there. And once I realized that, if I got that feedback from my cervix I was able to go oh okay so I need more breastplay I need more touch I need more more time yeah and then my cervix goes oh now you can come here so you know having that knowledge I think is a key because often when we feel pain like you're saying you just kind of just shy away

from it again but actually if we can stay with and get curious and give more time to other areas of the body and really warm ourselves up. Things can change in such unexpected ways. Exciting. Okay, let's talk about how this experience of Eros can shift as we enter 40s, 50s, midlife terrain, perimenopause, the quickening, as Alexander and Shawnee often call it. In the book, you describe how this can be a time of like an uprising of fire energy.

I think we've talked about that already. Yeah. And you said that you're needing to be even more sensitive to your own erotic energy system to thrive. I'd love to hear more about that. Yeah, I can't work as full out as I used to. Yeah, neither. I've always been very fast, very capable.

And again, that's how I would misuse, I think, the autumn energy. Yeah. And now the sensitivity there means that I just can't, I have to be much more discerning. about what I give that energy to. And that's been really good for me because actually it's made me go, I can't do it all.

And actually, I don't think it ever served me to be trying to do it all that way. I think it was an override in me, actually. So yeah, and the first thing that suffers if I am overdoing it is my sex life. Yeah. And my relationship with my body exercise will fall out the window first and my sex life also.

So, yeah, the body can't make stress hormones and sex hormones at the same time. Oh, geez, that's an important truth, isn't it? Yeah, I've never thought about it that way. It can't make stress hormones and sex hormones at the same time. That makes so much sense. Yeah. Keep the stress off and your sex life will thrive. And me, like I could imagine many listening are going, how? It's so hard in midlife to not be stressed. But I love this term erotic energy system. I mean, maybe could you sort of walk us into an average day where there's too much going on and you can feel that you're like the part of you that would have overridden in the past can't?

How do you tend to your erotic energy system in that moment? So worst case scenario for me, I get this jitter thing at 5pm. It's like the blood sugar just plummets. and that's it. It sits me down. Yeah. It's just that is the end of the story. Yeah.

So, and then I have to eat immediately. That's the only sitting down and eating and usually a cup of tea. Yes. Is the only thing that will sort of settle that feeling? It's not a pleasant feeling at all. So I always know when I've overdone it if that happens. And interestingly, I am learning to not. push myself to that point now, but my body's really teaching me. So yeah. And then after, and I have to

absolutely get my, get rid of my screen at that point as well. Yes. Because it's often when I've been on a screen that it seems to heighten that, that reaction. Yes. Yeah, I wonder how it would be if we were all just body to body like we used to be. I wonder how that would be for our bodies, especially those of us in midlife and with wombs. Yeah. I mean, Libby. is the term that's often thrown around. I never hear you use the term libido really, actually. I wonder what you think about the term libido. I don't use it a lot.

I don't have a problem with it. I guess it's often used, isn't it, to talk about high or low libido. And I kind of feel like that, again, can be a bit of a cage, particularly for women, because women often get kind of pasted with this low libido narrative instead of actually realizing that we've been living in a culture that actually, is asking us to move at a rhythm and tempo that is not designed for our bodies and our erotic cyclical energy system. So I think the womb is the centre of this in many ways because we're different from day to day and as we know testosterone kind of dominant bodies are not the same in that sense.

They are more linear and consistent. So I think if we can, on, of that in ourselves, consecrate it in ourselves, and then listen to its wisdom. I love the way that Alexander and Shani say ordain the cycle with, you know, the wisdom that it holds. I just think that's such a beautiful way of saying it. Yes. I think if we can ordain our erotic energy system as part of that to recognize how our sexuality and our attractions are woven into that. How does that change how we move through the months, how we move through the seasons of our lives? Yes. When I connect to my cervix, I feel like it's the gateway to the universe. And I imagine a world, I could cry if I'd grown up in a woman-loving world

where I'd been taught not only about how that I was cyclical and that was right and that there were different powers available to me as I moved through this mental cycle, but also that I contain the gateway to the universe inside my body. Instead of these stories of, from the religious and cultural traditions that we've received, like how different it would be. And so what can we do? We can ordain it inside ourselves. I can say, I have a gateway to the universe inside me and I can claim that to be true, even if no one around, apart from you and Olivia Bryant. amazing women and teachers are telling me so, you know, we we get to be the revolution from within, I guess. Yeah. And that's the power, isn't it, of our sexuality and our erotic

intelligence, which I feel is like the opposite of the AI that is taking over everything. We need erotic intelligence more than ever. What a great take. I've heard like, instead of artificial intelligence, AI being ancestral intelligence. I love that. And I love just talking about H.I, the original human intelligence. And yeah, erotic intelligence. Yes. I think in the book, you say this, the aging process is an opportunity to become more closely aligned with our erotic intelligence. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the sensitivity to it is up as we've been talking about, isn't it? And I think that there's this idea that once our sort of fertile years in terms of the potential to conceive and have a baby are over, that that's it.

Women kind of just put them out to pasture. I just don't think it's further from the truth. Yeah, yeah. I feel like there is, and that's what I heard from the women that I interviewed in the book, I heard so many stories about this upsurge of erotic energy through 40s into 50s and beyond, actually. Yes. The oldest woman that I interviewed was 71. she's having the best sex of her life.

So you were speaking earlier about the pressures and the multitasking we do when our kids are younger and, you know, we're working and doing all the things. You know, once the kids leave home, once we're no longer bleeding, once we perhaps can choose what we do with our working day a little bit more, we're going to have so much more time to spend. making love to whatever it is we want to make love to in life. So, and because we're living longer and we are living our lives with different expectations. Now, why wouldn't we want to really enjoy pleasure in later life? Yes, yes. You speak about composting lots of old ideas around aging and sex and eroticism. I feel like we've touched on a couple of those, this low libido idea.

Yes. I've forgotten the one I was going to say then, but that's okay. That's just my midlife moment. But that, yeah, the idea that sex is going to diminish as we get older. Yeah, I met him incredible all the ones who was 75 and also having the best sex of her life, actually with multiple lovers and it's having a wonderful time and it's so liberating to hear. Are there some other myths around aging that it's important for us to compost that you'd want to name? I think one of the things that's really good to challenge at this stage of life is penis in vagina sex as being the sex that we're engaging with.

Yes. Because, you know, I've heard many, many women say, I just don't want to be penetrated in the same way that I did when I was younger. And also, obviously, our vaginal tissue can really change in later stages of life. So that's really understandable. why does that have to be what making love is all about? You know, I absolutely love penetration, so that's great and good and well, but I also love all the other ways of relating sexually with a lover.

And I just think it's such an amazing thing to burn the script of, and it opens up so much more potential for different ways of being playful and, you know, turning what has been labeled for play, like as if that's the pre to the main event. And I'm like, it just does not have to be that way. We could have multiple orgasms with no penetration involved whatsoever. I also spoke to a number of people who had been in heterosexual relationships for a good chunk of their lives that had gone, do you know what?

I am attracted to women. I want to be sensual with women or had entered. full, like committed relationships with women in this phase of life. And I hear that from a number of women. Because again, I think, you know, our generation and the generations before, it was less acceptable to explore being sexual and sensual with the women. It was still like a very much like, oh, you're gay kind of, that kind of crap. Heteranormitivity was so dominant when I was a young woman.

So I think that there are a lot of women who grew up inside that culture that get to this stage of life and go, well, if I don't do it now, when am I going to do it? And they go and have sex with women and have. And again, what was so beautiful speaking to women in the book who'd done that, they were like, oh, my life, once you take penetration off the table, the whole thing is just this unfolding, unending. sensual, erotic experience that doesn't have that penetration, then it's over. Yeah. Because this is the thing that this is probably why I don't use the term libido so much, is that women are abundant. Like we don't have that refractory period after orgasm where we can't, we have to wait till our penis is erect again.

We can just keep going. And actually the huge, the huge. potency of women, I think, is just so unsung in this culture. Yes, let's sing it. Let's sing it. Wow. Oh, it's just been such a delight. So enlivening, enriching and just, yeah, opens up whole new worlds, I think, this conversation and the work you're doing in the book. Like, tell us how we can connect with you. How can we get the book? How can we go further and deeper with this journey. So you can find me at carlymountain.com and everything is basically on there.

I hold courses for women as well as one-to-one therapy and untamed pleasure is available on audiobook or wherever and paperback as well. So yeah. And you can order for Womancraft Publishing or just wherever. Exactly. Womancraft publishing, which would be great because then you're supporting a wonderful independent woman-led business as well. Yes, Lucy is doing amazing things. She is doing amazing things, yes. All right, love, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing so much

for your time and your wisdom and it's been delicious. Thank you, love. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being with us today. If you know someone who would enjoy this conversation or would benefit from this conversation, please forward it to them. And we would be really grateful if you could come and leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps. It's the best way to help the podcast to reach more people if you'd like to help us do that. And we're so grateful. Yeah, okay, that's it for this week. I'll be with you again in a couple of weeks time. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.