For The Wild - KIMBERLY ANN JOHNSON on Pleasure as Pathway [ENCORE]

00:00:00.000 To listen to the extended version of this episode, support us on patreon.com slash for the wild.

00:00:09.800 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with Kimberly

00:00:15.900 Ann Johnson. They don't really think that pleasure is the pathway to the healing. And it is,

00:00:23.680 And pleasure also, even the word pleasure, you and I will have way different meanings and associations, connotations, all of that to what it even means.

00:00:36.380 Kimberly Ann Johnson is a sexological body worker, somatic experiencing practitioner, yoga teacher, postpartum advocate, and single mom.

00:00:47.320 Working hands-on in integrative women's health and trauma recovery for more than a decade,

00:00:52.420 she helps women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries, and sexual boundary

00:00:57.920 violations. Kimberly is the author of The Call of the Wild, How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power,

00:01:04.760 and Use It for Good, as well as the early mothering classic The Fourth Trimester,

00:01:09.660 and is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma Podcast.

00:01:16.620 Well, Kimberly, thank you so much for joining us today and for your patience with my technical

00:01:24.900 difficulties this morning. I really look forward to this conversation. And the more that I was

00:01:32.300 researching for this interview and beginning to see and understand the intersections of your work,

00:01:37.620 I became more and more intrigued. So I feel really excited for today.

00:01:43.020 thank you so much i'm excited too awesome so where do we begin there's so much good stuff here

00:01:51.640 but um in your essay sex work is soul work you write quotes quote most people are dissatisfied

00:01:59.440 or mystified by sex because they don't know how to get to these transformative zones instead they

00:02:07.100 are trapped in conversations about how many times a week they're doing it or if they have multiple

00:02:11.700 orgasms or how they do it and pretend to love it just so they don't have to do it anymore,

00:02:17.960 end quote. Oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack there. I don't even know where to really begin

00:02:25.040 with the question. I mean, we could almost unpack each of those little segments. But yeah,

00:02:32.100 it's interesting why we try to even quantify our relationships like this. And so I don't know if

00:02:40.080 there's a point that you want to start with, but I'd love to just tease all this apart with you.

00:02:48.940 Yeah. I should start by giving you a little bit of context and giving the people who are

00:02:56.460 listening a little bit of context, like where I'm coming from and why I would even

00:03:00.100 be talking about this. For three years, I worked with 800 women and I do internal pelvic floor

00:03:10.580 work together with trauma tracking. So I'm a sexological body worker and I'm a somatic

00:03:16.240 experiencing practitioner. And I got into that work because my life was radically changed when

00:03:23.460 I became a mother specifically because I had a lot of tools before I became a mother. I worked

00:03:31.220 at a yoga studio. Richard Freeman was my teacher and he would teach that the foundation of every

00:03:36.840 pose is the pelvic floor. So I was kind of a relative pelvic floor expert before I became

00:03:42.480 a mom. And then I became a mom and my pelvic floor was completely rearranged. And then so

00:03:48.860 were many of my organs and I was in a lot of pain and I wasn't able to get help easily.

00:03:55.480 And in the putting together of my own, the pieces of my own pelvis and my own psyche and

00:04:01.760 transitioning into motherhood, which I did not think was going to be hard for me at all, because

00:04:07.020 I love kids. I really wanted to be a mom and I really trusted my body and trusted nature. So I

00:04:13.700 just was completely blindsided by the fact that this was a huge transition. And for me, it took

00:04:21.940 about six and a half years to put myself back together and to feel like I had my life force

00:04:26.760 again, and that I could use my body the way that I wanted to. And I was kind of lucky because now

00:04:33.140 I've heard so many people's stories, so many women, you know, tens of thousands of women.

00:04:37.680 Now I've heard their stories about their gynecological reproductive and sexual health

00:04:41.880 and really up to the point of giving birth for me, I had easy periods. I'd never had any unwanted

00:04:48.700 pregnancies. I had had a few sexual boundary violations that were really pivotal and kind of

00:04:56.140 my first underworld journeys. But as far as like going to the gynecologist and that kind of thing,

00:05:02.600 I hadn't had any negative experiences. So of course, then when I started hearing other women,

00:05:08.260 And it was like, holy, I mean, whoa, like what women, what we go through gynecologically,

00:05:16.060 reproductively, sexually, it's staggering.

00:05:19.480 And, you know, women's health is really a bit like throwing darts at a dartboard because

00:05:26.400 most of the diagnoses that people come to me with are so incomplete and so monolithic.

00:05:33.300 And it's pretty appalling.

00:05:35.880 so in the midst of putting myself back together I already had body work skills I already had

00:05:43.740 movement skills a friend of mine said you know my tailbone's been hurting for three years and I said

00:05:49.180 what happened three years ago and she said I had a baby and I said well has anybody worked on you

00:05:52.940 and she said no and I said okay well do you want me to try and she said yeah and so I didn't have

00:05:58.080 any training other than my rolfing training where we work in mouths and noses but I said okay let me

00:06:02.960 seat. Let's just see. And in about 25 minutes, her tailbone unwound and she never had any pain

00:06:08.800 again after that time. And I started to see that the pelvis was this forgotten land and it was

00:06:15.260 draped in massage and it was talked about with no gender when it was a yoga class. And, you know,

00:06:21.660 energetically in the practices that I knew from my lineages of spiritual practice, it was gender

00:06:28.420 neutral and sex neutral. And I started to realize like, wow, there's a really untended

00:06:34.400 part of women that is not getting nearly the attention that it needs. And it's kind of a

00:06:42.020 hidden treasure because the tissue in the pelvis, in the vagina specifically, it changes very quickly.

00:06:49.840 And most women have never been touched outside of a clinical situation or a lovership situation.

00:06:57.560 There hasn't been very much neutral touch just to actually map the area.

00:07:03.840 So in those 800 sessions that I did at that time, I really learned some common themes.

00:07:12.060 And that work took me more deeply into sexuality because shame is such a big piece

00:07:17.520 of what women are working with just based on sort of the very insufficient.

00:07:24.340 I mean, and it's not only women that are dealing with that, but that's specifically the population that I work with.

00:07:32.500 The layer of shame of inadequate sex education, not really knowing our own anatomy, not really knowing how our arousal works differently than male arousal.

00:07:45.080 And then the layers of that when we come to these other peak and heightened experiences like birth.

00:07:52.680 So it's often that we would come to this territory again, and the earlier imprints are there with us.

00:08:03.080 So it's such important territory that's usually considered so separate from our spiritual practice.

00:08:16.980 And I mean, increasingly that's changing and that's changed in the 15 years since I really

00:08:23.960 began this journey myself.

00:08:25.240 I see a lot more education on menstrual health.

00:08:28.620 I see a lot more education on the importance of the postpartum period.

00:08:32.320 I see a lot more, I mean, just Instagram itself has popularized a lot more about anatomy,

00:08:40.440 sacred anatomy, tantric practices.

00:08:46.980 And yet I still, you know, I just was taught an in-person workshop for two days.

00:08:51.220 And a lot of what we're working with is sexual imprints and curiosities and

00:08:57.160 really peeling back to very elemental places of contact and how we contact and who the contact

00:09:08.580 is for.

00:09:09.660 I'm very influenced by Betty Martin's work, The Wheel of Consent.

00:09:13.200 I wish that I'm not crazy about the word consent, but it's about getting more clear about what we want and how we want it and being able to communicate that without a layer of morality or shaming and blaming and then getting really to the very essence of it, which is touch itself.

00:09:38.600 so i try to help people understand when they say sex what it is that they mean and what it is that

00:09:47.800 we what what all goes into that like tangled knot of yarn the strands what are those strands so

00:09:55.520 those strands could be uh pleasure companionship presence feminine energy masculine energy if those

00:10:07.920 categories mean something to a person. Attachments, commitments, and then for each person,

00:10:19.380 those strands connect. Some of them are knotted together. Maybe they're all just jumbled together.

00:10:24.440 Some people really know what they're seeking out when they say the word sex. And then for a lot of

00:10:29.020 people, it's just kind of a default place. So there's so much potential there. I used to say that

00:10:37.920 we could resolve a lot that we think we're taking to the therapy room because a lot of people don't

00:10:42.540 talk to their therapists about sex. Even if they're in relationship therapy, sex isn't really

00:10:48.340 a part of it. It's another way that sex is considered something that's separate. And for

00:10:53.060 most women that I've worked with, their sexual journeys and their spiritual journeys are very

00:10:58.320 aligned. There tends to be like a parallel track that's moving when we start to really listen to

00:11:05.600 each other's sexual stories and sexual desires, sexual assumptions. And because I really am a

00:11:14.300 devotee of the nervous system, I tend to bring the nervous system lens to how I work with sexuality.

00:11:22.100 yeah yeah the nervous system it seems to

00:11:31.020 be really important with every everything we do every type of relationship we have and it makes

00:11:38.540 so much sense how much it shapes the way we relate to our bodies and our sexuality and

00:11:45.300 our sexual experiences and in your essay sexual authenticity you write quote bringing consciousness

00:11:53.140 to your true sexual desires and your patterns allow you to change the trajectory of your sexuality

00:11:58.880 and bring it into alignment with who you are instead of resigning to sex as you think it

00:12:04.500 should be create sex as though it were art or a meditation because it is at its best sex is

00:12:13.320 co-created moment-to-moment experience that has the ability to transform you, end quote.

00:12:20.700 Yeah, I want to hear more about this transformation and also wondering how does

00:12:26.660 finding alignment and meaning within sex translate into other areas of life?

00:12:33.520 Oh, there's so much. And, you know, a couple of things I didn't mention in that ball is also,

00:12:40.800 creativity and play. And it's a space where there's a huge potential because our system

00:12:55.260 becomes very malleable in sexual space. That's why it can be really scary because

00:13:01.720 the way that the system can organize itself hormonally specifically is similar to any kind

00:13:15.060 of trance state or psychedelic state. And so in that state, your system is a lot more impressionable,

00:13:21.200 which is why if things don't go well, you're also, those become kind of deeper impressions

00:13:26.040 And you wonder, like, why is this taking up so much of my awareness when, you know, there's a lot of other things that could be taking it up as well.

00:13:33.980 But the converse is also true that, you know, in my I teach a whole class that's specifically about sexuality.

00:13:44.100 And I don't teach any classes that are overtly called like healing sexual trauma because positive reparative experience and education actually are a part of healing trauma.

00:14:00.820 So a lot of times people think they have to go back over like all the bad things that happened or even all the mediocre things that happened.

00:14:07.280 But we can create in real time experiences that because they put a positive imprint, they just sort of shimmy out whatever it is that's unsettled or, you know, the sort of boulders or rocks or pebbles that are in the sand.

00:14:26.080 And so I'm sort of divided right now, like part of me wants to kind of explain it from

00:14:37.220 the, I know, and like the nervous system, even saying the words, the nervous system

00:14:41.560 at this point is like the nervous system.

00:14:43.280 I don't even know if those words mean anything anymore because it's everywhere and everyone's

00:14:47.360 talking about it.

00:14:48.700 And so it may be, it needs, maybe that in and of itself needs to be more grounded in

00:14:53.540 like a specific example or just the technicalities of it. But

00:14:58.340 pleasure is a huge part. People think that pleasure is kind of anathema to healing trauma,

00:15:10.760 like pleasure is what you get after you heal your trauma. Pleasure is the cherry on the

00:15:15.700 Sunday after you have the hard conversation. The orgasm is what you get after you earn it.

00:15:23.540 kind of thing they don't really think that pleasure is the pathway to the healing and it is

00:15:30.720 it is and pleasure also even the word pleasure you and i will have way different meanings and

00:15:37.240 associations connotations all of that to what it even means because we do in anglo north america

00:15:45.480 we have a puritanical inheritance that is essentially polarizes work and pleasure and

00:15:53.080 work is valuable and pleasure is what you earn if you work hard enough but basic pleasure like

00:15:59.740 the ability to allow something to feel good so even right now a listener could just tune in for

00:16:07.160 a moment and go to the inside experience and just notice if there's anything that feels good

00:16:14.240 and usually when we're invited to notice a sensation we immediately notice something

00:16:19.460 that's painful we go to like oh my back hurts my neck hurts um my heart's beating fast

00:16:25.540 so it's a bit of a training to be able to notice something like spaciousness or oh my mouth

00:16:33.660 salivating but actually that feels good and then you could look out into your environment

00:16:39.360 and see if there's anything that's pleasing to you in the space that you're in

00:16:45.060 or if you have a window in something that you see outside.

00:16:51.780 And as you look outside, even disorienting outside of yourself,

00:16:55.600 you might notice that you take a deeper breath or there's a sense of settling

00:16:59.740 because a lot of times we're really oriented,

00:17:02.520 especially people who are listening to this podcast

00:17:05.440 are people who really care about the planet, care about the health of other people, care about the

00:17:11.600 future and what we're leaving to the next generations. And we can really get quite deep

00:17:17.020 into the sense of grief and hopelessness and bad news and all of that. And it's important that we

00:17:23.820 can be with grief, but it's also important just for our own health and wellbeing. And not that

00:17:31.140 that's the, you know, the only thing that we're tracking, but we do also need to be able to touch

00:17:38.080 into the present moment and the beauty that's around us. And when it comes to sexual boundary

00:17:44.420 repair and just sexual health and sexual satisfaction and connection, and we can put

00:17:51.560 the word sensual in there and we can put the word erotic in there and we want to be in tune

00:17:57.120 with the erotic then we have to actually be able to see what we're looking at and developing a

00:18:06.120 relationship with pleasure and so I think a lot of people hear that and because there's so much

00:18:10.420 out there now about self-pleasure practices it's like all of a sudden people are thinking about

00:18:14.420 like you know developing a relationship with pleasure like now I'm going to have to dance

00:18:18.960 in the mirror every day and I'm going to have to like lather myself with oil and that that could

00:18:23.620 be true. That could be a pathway. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's really just way more

00:18:31.520 elemental than that. It's like when you're walking down the street and you feel the sun and you turn

00:18:37.720 your face towards the sun, can you actually be there in that moment and let that move into every

00:18:44.540 cell of your body and allow yourself to have that moment that's as real as any of the ideas that

00:18:53.540 we might have any of the problem ideas about problems or ideas about solutions but that's

00:18:59.600 just what's happening right now so a lot of my work is helping people be able to not only turn

00:19:07.380 towards that but establish it and feel that that's fully seeped into the cells of their body and

00:19:15.920 essentially over time the more that we practice that and I worked with a man called Steve

00:19:23.220 Hoskinson and he calls it, he has a, I guess, a method. He wasn't a somatic experiencing teacher

00:19:29.460 and now he teaches something called organic intelligence. He calls it a blue sandwich. So

00:19:33.880 you look outside yourself into this, into the environment and you see something and you land

00:19:38.640 your attention on it. And then you come inside and you find something that's blue. That's the

00:19:44.460 meat of the sandwich or the filling of the sandwich, something that feels good. And if

00:19:49.180 nothing feels good then you actually touch the surface of your skin so that you're in contact

00:19:55.120 with your skin so you feel the contour of your own body and then you go back out into the environment

00:20:02.460 and you just do little blue sandwiches every once in a while and it starts to train your attention

00:20:07.540 that it's okay and it's it will create more platform of resilience so that you can be with

00:20:16.080 the waves because you know life life is life and life will do what it does but we can have more

00:20:23.400 resilience in our own system by establishing that relationship with pleasure and that relationship

00:20:29.660 to pleasure also allows us to have a better litmus test for what we don't like or what we're

00:20:38.500 just basically accepting but it's not great it's just kind of the the way the habits the way things

00:20:44.820 are and it can be really satisfying to have that if you're in a sexual relationship with someone

00:20:52.040 else because you're you know that you know the difference between going along because it's

00:21:01.980 easier to go along than to say stop or to say pause and you know the trust that is built when

00:21:09.020 you're also open to someone else saying that they're ready to pause or they're ready to stop

00:21:14.400 or they would like to change positions. And instead of hugging, laying down, they'd like

00:21:20.500 to sit up or they'd like to sit side by side, or, you know, they'd like to come closer. So really

00:21:27.240 working with these very elemental, I call it building the buffet of sex or the alphabet of

00:21:33.460 sex. Cause usually when people think about sex, unfortunately, most of us still think about the

00:21:38.380 bases. And so when people describe it, they go like, Oh yeah, I go down on him. He got down on

00:21:43.080 me I come he comes and that takes like 25 or 30 minutes and that and that's considered good sex

00:21:50.040 I'm not trying to take that away from anyone if that's what they're really satisfied with

00:21:55.120 but most of the people that come to me are really they know that there's like a treasure trove

00:22:02.400 available to them where like there's so much that they could be accessing sexually that they're not

00:22:09.200 they just kind of know there's magic there, but they don't know how to get there. And so my job

00:22:14.160 is to kind of show them the full palette and the full alphabet of like all of the options that are

00:22:20.760 available and connecting. And a lot of times that has to do with the difference between

00:22:25.260 hot sex and warm sex. So what we see out there in the culture a lot is hot sex, which is

00:22:31.120 power oriented. You know, the Calvin Klein ad, it's very popular in polarity work now, like,

00:22:37.880 you know, you want your man to throw you on the bed type of stuff that can be fun. And again,

00:22:43.040 I'm not shaming anyone's desires or the way that they like to do things, but the people that I

00:22:51.160 work with usually haven't ever seen an example of warm sex, which is less adrenaline and cortisol

00:22:57.540 based and more oxytocin based. And they would like to at least develop a range for that.

00:23:03.500 So they have an experience of what warm sex might feel like and what like long protracted orgasm might feel like instead of sharp and steep climaxes.

00:23:14.500 So I think there's space for it all. But what I see is a lot of women who have been performing sex in a certain way for a while.

00:23:25.260 And then there's like a huge life event, which could be motherhood. It could be a big life change, like a loss.

00:23:32.840 It could be a change of phase of life where they're wanting something different and they don't know how to talk about it because the only conversations they've ever really had have been about quantity or size or something that's exterior.

00:23:51.640 or they haven't really had a, they haven't really been invited to a conversation of

00:23:56.280 what does, what do I want sex to mean to me? What does it mean? Not like, oh, I'm, I'm an

00:24:05.680 emotional person, but you know, what are, what are my curiosities? How could I meet those

00:24:10.880 curiosities? If I were to separate out these functions of pleasure and companionship and

00:24:17.340 desire and access to play and improvisation and then how might I like these to go together and

00:24:26.080 how could I communicate with someone no matter what kind of relationship I'm in no matter if

00:24:31.640 it's a first date or a 20-year marriage what could I arrive to that space with so I

00:24:38.220 I think it's pretty radical and for most people when they're brave enough to turn to it their

00:24:46.320 whole life changes because it gives you a type of energy that makes life feel worth it you know

00:24:55.660 that when on the days that are hard to get out of bed or you're worried about the latest

00:25:03.100 crisis that's you know whether it's gun violence or environmental or you know the latest cancel

00:25:12.280 takedown there's something that's very primal that fills us

00:25:19.520 and when not tended to it tends to be a bit of an achilles heel that's just sort of always there

00:25:28.720 that that dissatisfaction is always kind of looming and feels really scary to turn towards

00:25:35.100 but also feels like it's it doesn't go away

00:25:38.760 Silence in your heart

00:25:51.500 Is violence in your hand

00:25:56.020 There's no one to blame

00:26:00.740 Cause nobody understands

00:26:04.780 And how would it feel if you had to run for your life

00:26:14.540 And all of your days turned into the night

00:26:23.840 yeah i want to go back to what you were saying about

00:26:45.220 the adrenaline sex versus the cortisol sex oxytocin oxytocin right sorry yeah

00:26:53.340 uh it's really interesting to me there's so many levels of why that's fascinating actually

00:26:58.760 we probably don't have time in the last parts of our conversation to get into all of the facets

00:27:05.080 but i think uh maybe we're to start with following this thread of my curiosity is

00:27:11.640 how much sex in dominant culture is about power which is something that you you know referred to

00:27:19.220 as well and how our conditioning around power and rape culture and patriarchy and of course

00:27:31.380 pornography only for the most part feeds these narratives, these very specific narratives.

00:27:39.740 And I feel like with that conditioning, these narratives start living inside of us and then

00:27:47.460 that's what we become attracted to, whether that's what we're attracted to in sexuality

00:27:52.720 or what we're attracted to to buy things or what kind of clothes we want to buy. It's incredibly

00:27:59.280 potent, these conditioned narratives. And sometimes even in myself, I wonder what is me

00:28:06.720 and what is outside of me and how has my desire been co-opted? What is it that I actually want

00:28:16.280 versus what have I learned to want? And how do I even learn to separate that at this point?

00:28:23.060 And then there's the bigger questions, which of course I could almost answer, but maybe I

00:28:28.640 can't either in terms of like, why is this power dynamic so sexualized? Like I said, I'm sure I

00:28:37.920 could come up with my own responses for that, but I think it's really fascinating of what does this

00:28:43.580 conditioning do for the dominant culture? Like if we bought into these narratives of power and

00:28:49.600 dominance, and we even got turned on by them, what is that feeding? How are we supporting systems

00:28:56.860 with our sexuality even? So I know I just asked a bunch of things and it was a bit

00:29:03.260 stream of consciousness, but I would love to explore this more with you.

00:29:06.760 yeah I mean my mind's going in a lot of different directions because I think that

00:29:13.620 one of the great things about sex is it's a really it can be a really great way to explore

00:29:20.840 power in ways that you might not be able to have it outside of that dynamic you can have it in

00:29:30.580 a dynamic and so your system can get used to what it feels like to have it if you don't usually have

00:29:37.140 it and what it feels like to safely um act out submission but what i would say is that and we

00:29:47.220 haven't i don't want to like totally side you know dog leg our conversation but just as a bit of a

00:29:54.680 frame because I think it's really important. So we've all crossed boundaries and we've all

00:30:01.820 had our boundaries crossed. And some of us have been in one of those positions much more than the

00:30:06.640 other, but this is just part of being human. And my work is really about the predator prey dynamic

00:30:14.840 and the predator being, you know, we don't like that word in English, but the predator and the

00:30:20.900 prey is just a relationship in the natural world. We need predators and we need prey. And some

00:30:25.860 animals are only in one of those roles. And some of them are prey to some animals and predators

00:30:33.340 to others. But in a nervous system, we need that full spectrum in our nervous system.

00:30:41.400 And if we have it, then we're not acting out of a default. So for instance, a predator is in

00:30:54.760 the fight side of the nervous system, a healthy fight. It's healthy aggression. Predators only

00:31:01.400 kill what they need in the wild. If they approximate domestication and they're feral,

00:31:08.440 then they kill more than they need so that's like a wolf in a hen house but a wolf out in the wild

00:31:14.020 that's not close to domestication it just kills the food that it needs to eat but we we take that

00:31:20.440 word and we think we make it moral and ideological and one of the ways that I learned about this was

00:31:26.060 watching a video of a wolf and a rabbit when I was in somatic experiencing school and I was

00:31:32.180 freaking out about the rabbit the whole time I was like oh my god rabbit why don't you see that

00:31:37.400 wolf coming? What are you doing? Why aren't you running away? Like it's coming closer. And then

00:31:42.220 the rabbit collapsed because it froze. And then the wolf came closer and picked it up and shook

00:31:47.620 it around to make sure that it was dead because wolves don't like dead prey. And then it cast it

00:31:53.520 off and the wolf ran off. And then the rabbit that was collapsed and, you know, had gone completely

00:32:01.060 hypotonic, slowly started come back to life and orient itself and then come into horizontal and

00:32:09.240 then look around and then shake a lot and then hop off. And when the lights came up and everybody

00:32:15.020 in the room had been watching that, they said, who identifies as the wolf? And immediately in

00:32:19.320 my head, I was like, what freaking psychopath would identify with the wolf? And 30% of the

00:32:24.600 people's hands in the room went up and they were people that I liked. So I couldn't just say like

00:32:29.720 they're bad people and that's why they identify with the wolf and then I realized oh wow this is

00:32:35.300 how over identified with the prey that I am like flight and freeze mode this is my default this is

00:32:42.380 where I've been conditioned to be it's much more comfortable you know the emotional correlates to

00:32:50.040 flight and freeze are anxiety worry panic in the flight and confusion disorientation and

00:32:58.740 helplessness and the freeze and the emotional correlates in the fight are irritation, frustration,

00:33:05.240 anger, and rage. And for most people, it's acceptable for people socialized as women

00:33:11.940 to be confused and to be helpless, but we don't really like that for people socialized as men.

00:33:18.320 And the converse is true. We don't really generally, and this isn't true in all time,

00:33:23.300 in all cultures, for all people, but generally we don't really like to see women very angry.

00:33:28.520 And that's starting to change.

00:33:30.280 And there's now books with the word rage on female rage on the cover, things like that.

00:33:35.020 But that's relatively recent.

00:33:37.200 And so I realized in that moment, oh, we've decided that predators are bad and men are

00:33:42.260 usually predators.

00:33:43.040 So men are bad and prey is good.

00:33:45.840 And women are usually prey.

00:33:47.200 So prey is good.

00:33:48.560 And then those are moral and ideological frameworks, but they don't tend at all to the nervous

00:33:55.040 system and to be able to have those corresponding patterns in your system. And so I started helping

00:34:01.700 women physically occupy the wolf and be able to occupy all of the gestures that come with

00:34:09.920 predation, which are focus gaze, zigzagging, the grinding of the teeth, salivating, showing your

00:34:17.060 teeth, right? You can dominate a dog by showing them one of your canine teeth, being able to look

00:34:22.940 angry so if you're angry look angry don't try to disarm yourself and to restore the self-protective

00:34:29.940 gestures now what wolves and rabbits don't have are a social nervous system and the social nervous

00:34:37.340 system is something that only human primates have not of course human you know animals have very

00:34:43.560 complex social networks but they don't have this specific vagal social nervous system and in that

00:34:50.980 system that was developed for maternal bonding. So it's very estrogenous. It's estrogen and

00:34:57.320 oxytocin based. And it's where on the, when we're under threat in the social nervous system,

00:35:04.560 that's where fawning happens and it's where fitting in happens. So it's why women return

00:35:09.660 to unsafe circumstances because being closer to the threat is safer than being farther away from

00:35:16.060 it. And so they approximate it and they don't know their needs and they go with the needs of

00:35:20.800 the person or the thing that has more power. And so it's a physiological choice. Of course,

00:35:28.520 women are manipulative sometimes, but in this case, fawning is an organic physiological way

00:35:36.520 to not incur more danger or threat. And the other thing that happens in the social nervous system

00:35:43.080 is fitting in. So camouflaging, not standing out, not being different for fear of being ostracized

00:35:50.580 and not belonging. And the social nervous system really disproportionately impacts females because

00:35:56.440 of that estrogen cycle. And it's why you can see also that women who are exiting their fertile

00:36:01.320 years become much less concerned about family and group togetherness and dynamics. They're much more

00:36:10.340 willing to say, you know, I'm not cooking dinner. You all handle yourself. It's when a lot of

00:36:15.140 divorces happen because that there's not that hormonal compulsion to keep group together at

00:36:22.280 any cost. And so when we're talking about power dynamics in general, for most women who default

00:36:30.080 to flee, fleeing or freezing or to the fitting and in fawning, the reparative direction is coming

00:36:37.560 into healthy aggression and predator energy and that's being able to hold activation and so it

00:36:45.600 shouldn't be mistaken for being an alpha female or for being predatory in the sense that you're

00:36:52.580 taking something that's not yours again we're talking about the natural natural meaning in

00:36:58.740 nature what happens between animal dynamics and that both are totally necessary so when you know

00:37:05.860 that you can protect yourself and defend yourself and you know that you can stand your ground then

00:37:11.840 it's rare that you actually have to activate that circuitry because your nervous system's already

00:37:16.580 communicating that you don't have to you you're coordinated between your facial expressions your

00:37:22.620 vocal tone the content of what you're saying and how you're organizing your body at the same time

00:37:28.340 so when we're talking about internalized power dynamics is what i kind of heard you say or like

00:37:37.400 you've you've seen ways of doing something and that might impact your preference for

00:37:42.740 lingerie or um partners or all different kinds of things there's a lot to say about that

00:37:50.540 but what i i really am a stand for instincts and what i see happening because i do have a 15 year

00:37:58.140 daughter, like I said, and teens are coming into their sexuality much differently now than really

00:38:04.960 at any other time in history. And because gender identity has become such an ubiquitous conversation,

00:38:12.120 it's really enmeshed in their experience, the teen's experience with their sexuality as well.

00:38:17.740 And they have all these labels to choose from. What's not happening is a lot of experimentation

00:38:23.280 meditation physically. What's happening is a lot of kind of intellectualizing and categorizing and

00:38:28.860 wondering about, but without actually putting those actions in action. And that's just statistically

00:38:36.460 what's happening as well, is that there's people are delaying sexual engagement much later and

00:38:41.680 longer, which originally I thought was maybe good, like maybe people are having less sex they don't

00:38:46.120 want. But now I'm seeing it's because we live in such a touch contentious culture that everyone's

00:38:51.560 afraid of making mistakes. And we've become so hyperverbal about everything that it's the verbal

00:38:56.880 and the enthusiastic consent and the talking that's the most trustworthy, that there's a big

00:39:03.400 disconnect between talking and touching and having some kind of mutual agreements and trust. And

00:39:11.620 there's people that are so afraid. Most men that I know are very confused and afraid of being

00:39:18.160 labeled as perpetrators so they're muting their own arousal because they don't want to be too much

00:39:23.820 and they either have a relationship with porn and they're ashamed about it or they're trying to get

00:39:28.580 off it but there's all these stereotypes and tropes about why it is that they're using it

00:39:37.300 and what it's for and so there's just a lot of confusion out there and I want to be a part of

00:39:44.660 helping people have a framework for how to tease it out. And so that we can have more contacts that

00:39:51.140 we want and more connection that we want and more positive relational experiences

00:39:57.840 that are totally possible. And I think I'll just tell you one story that I've been all the kinds

00:40:05.840 of ways in relationship at this point, because I was married and then I got divorced when my

00:40:10.120 daughter was about two. And then I didn't have really time to date because I worked full time

00:40:16.360 and I wanted to be with her when I wasn't working. So I really had to figure out, okay, I'm not going

00:40:20.840 to have like the family situation I thought I was going to have. And I've always coupled sex with

00:40:26.120 attachment. So I've always wanted to be in a relationship to be sexual with someone. And maybe

00:40:31.100 I need to look at that a little bit. So I started dating and then I tried orgasmic meditation,

00:40:36.960 which is a kind of meditation where you just find someone who will partner with you in the

00:40:41.540 practice of clitoral stroking. And then I, I experimented with nude photography at this was

00:40:48.700 pre Instagram. So it was really a new thing for me. And also I was a yoga teacher at the time.

00:40:54.020 So I was really nervous about people who saw me as a spiritual teacher ish, then seeing me naked

00:41:00.540 on the internet. And, um, it was really just trying to figure it out. I was trying to figure

00:41:05.780 out what, how do I do this? How do I, I knew a lot of people who said, well, now you're a single mom

00:41:11.160 and you might as well just wait until your daughter graduates from high school. So how do I

00:41:16.480 be an erotic person and have an erotic identity that's outside of mothering, but with all of

00:41:22.740 these other roles that I have. And at one point I kind of realized that I wasn't very good at

00:41:31.340 picking people picking partners and one of my friends who I thought was pretty good at it

00:41:37.620 we were at an African drumming class and a dance class rather and there was a bunch of drummers

00:41:43.700 and I said you know which one would you pick and the one she picked I was like really like

00:41:48.580 are you serious I thought she was joking and then I was like okay interesting and then I saw who I

00:41:54.020 picked and I was like oh that tells me a lot and so the next time I was dating online I tried to

00:42:00.280 pick like my friend would pick and so I ended up having a sort of dinner date with somebody I was

00:42:07.860 out of town and I was staying at a motel and so I invited this person to the motel and I thought

00:42:14.060 okay this is a lot of people would think this is super dangerous but I think it's okay like I'm

00:42:18.800 getting an okay vibe and I know how to speak up for myself and so he came to my motel room and

00:42:24.240 we sat on the bed and we talked for a while and I think we talked for a couple of hours and then

00:42:28.180 he just said, you know, did you want this to end with talking or would you like something else to

00:42:33.620 happen? Which I thought was a really beautiful question. And so I said, I'd like something else

00:42:39.020 to happen. And, and then I said, we just, I kind of said, well, what would, if you could have

00:42:43.840 anything you want right now, what would you want? And he said, like, no one's ever asked me that

00:42:49.820 question before. And, and I said, well, you know, just cause you ask it doesn't mean we're actually

00:42:54.180 going to do it, but you can still ask it. And so he said, I'd like a blow job. And, you know,

00:42:59.600 in my mind, I was kind of like, wow, that's, that's quite, quite a distance from where we

00:43:04.840 are right now, but fair enough. And so gave that a little space. And then I said, is there anything

00:43:12.180 else you want? And he said, well, you know, actually what I want is you to just put your

00:43:16.720 hands on my back. And I said, okay, well, between those two, like, which do you want more? He said,

00:43:22.440 I just want that contact.

00:43:24.900 And so that's where the evening started,

00:43:27.580 but I, or where the touch part of the evening started.

00:43:30.860 But what I realized was he didn't really know anything

00:43:34.380 to ask for other than a blow job,

00:43:36.180 because that's the stereotype of what men want from women,

00:43:39.360 if women are willing to offer anything.

00:43:41.880 And I wasn't saying I'm offering everything.

00:43:44.240 I'm just saying everything's on the table

00:43:45.920 and then let's see what's on the table

00:43:47.800 and what feels interesting.

00:43:49.700 And that moment really taught me a lot.

00:43:52.440 Because the tenderness and the innocence of then him really going a level deeper and reflecting on what it was that he wanted.

00:44:02.500 Yeah, it just really showed me a lot.

00:44:04.300 And I'm not saying that that's what everybody wants.

00:44:06.380 And I'm not saying that that's how it goes all the time.

00:44:10.320 But I am saying that there's, I in no way, most of the women that I've worked with, once they're clear on what they want, if they have a male partner,

00:44:20.440 the male partners kind of just waiting for them to roll out the red carpet and tell them what

00:44:26.300 they want many women want to bring their partners to me and occasionally that happens but we have

00:44:33.200 a lot of agency when we just start to be able to communicate verbally and non-verbally what

00:44:39.580 we're open to and what we're not open to and we're you know there's five or ten percent of

00:44:46.820 the people in the culture and that's just like an bs statistic that i made up but something like

00:44:52.300 that where i think there's like some really something very problematic and wrong but most

00:44:58.320 of the other interactions are happening in the 90 percent of gray area of confusion about shifted

00:45:05.040 social norms and shifted expectations and zero sex education and then a whole lot of

00:45:12.200 of socio-political ideas that don't always align with what our internal desires are.

00:45:24.020 Sex isn't really very PC most of the time. I think being respectful is politically correct

00:45:30.200 and humanizing the person that you're with. But the rest of it happens

00:45:36.900 in the more physiological, biological. And then as you're saying, like parsing out

00:45:43.700 what our real elemental desires are. And I would also say that after this time of isolation,

00:45:50.300 that I would expect that people are wanting a lot more comfort. And they might not know that's

00:45:59.100 what they're wanting, but I've been noticing in my teaching that it's very hard for people to

00:46:04.240 take comfort when it's offered to them. And that on a road to a sexual engagement with someone,

00:46:13.100 that there would probably be, for a satisfying interaction, there would probably be

00:46:17.740 a lot more comfort on the way to that interaction.

00:46:24.240 I really appreciate your personal experiences. I could honestly sit in this session for a long

00:46:32.760 time with you. And just, that's really helpful to hear. And thank you for being vulnerable with us

00:46:39.000 because sometimes we need to be intimate with each other in our conversations to,

00:46:45.260 I don't know, find what's real for us and be able to relate to each other. So I really appreciate

00:46:51.760 that. And gosh, I feel like we need to have a secondary episode where we're just honing in

00:46:57.840 on these topics because there's so much here and it's so impactful. And I think again,

00:47:04.720 like going back to the beginning of talking about what's taboo and hard to talk about and feels

00:47:10.720 uncomfortable to talk about or things we shouldn't talk about, but we need to talk about them.

00:47:17.020 We really do. It's such a big part of our lives and obviously such a huge part of dominant culture.

00:47:22.980 it's almost being like shoved down our throats honestly like sexuality and sex and it's just

00:47:29.460 it's so um uh it's it's so much I mean it's like sex is sex is used to sell everything like

00:47:39.320 vacuum cleaners I'm just like what like what is it not used for to get to get our attention but

00:47:45.240 what attention is it even getting really from us um when it is so sacred and transformative and

00:47:51.460 And it also has led to so much grief and pain and trauma too.

00:47:56.860 So, yeah, so much here.

00:47:59.000 But Kimberly, this has been a really wonderful, deeply moving conversation.

00:48:04.860 And I appreciate your time and your care.

00:48:08.940 And, yeah, I feel very – I don't know.

00:48:15.160 I think I feel all sorts of stuff from this conversation.

00:48:17.580 So thank you for a smorgasbord of feeling.

00:48:21.460 cornucopia yeah it's there's a lot especially you know I've been in this material for a long time

00:48:29.320 and because I do share my own personal experiences which is part of deconstructing authority and how

00:48:36.620 we view authority and and you know how we view some like it's untraditional for a woman to talk

00:48:45.340 about her sexuality especially a woman who's supposedly an expert about things but I

00:48:50.540 so just briefly I think it can be brief uh last week so we're talking in April and last week

00:49:01.200 there was this whole Dalai Lama uh I don't even know what to call it yeah shit storm I guess

00:49:11.400 yes it's a good word for it and if people had a handle on their own nervous systems and their

00:49:19.480 nervous system patterning we would not have seen what we saw which was a projection

00:49:26.080 i mean to the extent that i i was flabbergasted by the extent of free associations and

00:49:38.160 the willingness to dismiss 70 years of a life over one moment and the the same people who

00:49:48.700 beat the drum of decolonization and culture work that this predator prey dynamic and language is

00:49:56.780 so available that it just gets glossed over everything else that's supposedly valuable

00:50:02.080 so to me i want people to have better sex 100 i mean there's not a cell of me that doesn't want

00:50:10.600 that more more connected sex is in part how we do regulate our nervous systems it is a regulator

00:50:19.280 it does give us a broader capacity it shows us where to look it allows us to heal one another

00:50:27.780 without having to have special education.

00:50:30.900 It's healing to be in a relationships

00:50:33.380 where someone deeply cares about your experience

00:50:35.980 and is willing to listen to you on many levels

00:50:38.940 from moment to moment.

00:50:41.040 And it's absolutely imperative.

00:50:44.640 And I'm not just saying in the bedroom

00:50:46.300 because sexuality is much larger than a sex act.

00:50:50.140 It's how we interact with nature around us as well.

00:50:53.720 Not what we're getting from it,

00:50:55.220 but how we're in contact with it.

00:50:57.780 but we will continue this, this whole thing that we're going to take someone out of their position

00:51:04.900 and replace them with someone with a different identity without changing the fundamental

00:51:09.300 structures. We're just seeing how that doesn't work all over the place. So to me, it's quite

00:51:14.780 urgent because I, this is not the world that I want to hand to my child and not just my child,

00:51:22.160 but the next generation of children and, and, you know, God willing the generations to come.

00:51:28.340 And we do have more information and more potential for embodying that information.

00:51:37.420 And so that this last, the second book that I wrote, Call of the Wild, because the last one

00:51:42.440 was Reckoning that I co-wrote with, with Stephen Jenkinson, but Call of the Wild,

00:51:46.740 my hope for that book was that it would give us animal language that would take away the shaming

00:51:53.940 of continually imagining that it's just someone's identity that's the thing that puts them in a

00:51:59.700 category and unfortunately i don't think that book has lived that out yet because in some ways

00:52:05.200 social media is escalating the polemic faster than information can actually be absorbed by a nervous

00:52:13.240 system. But that's really my hope because I do believe that most people are trying to do the

00:52:19.920 right thing. 85, 90% in sexual relationships and relating in general, but we have to have

00:52:27.420 such a counter-cultural, we have to put so many things in place in order for us to support that

00:52:34.300 we could even feel what an oxytocin system is. Because most of the time we're just getting hit

00:52:40.400 with dopamine and cortisol. So we have to have some relationship to what oxytocin even feels like

00:52:46.060 for us to be able to move in the direction of having the kinds of relationships of all kinds

00:52:53.680 that we want.

00:53:10.400 I've been waiting for hours

00:53:16.120 On a long road

00:53:19.000 Like a cold stone

00:53:22.360 When the night shows its power

00:53:28.360 You gotta behave

00:53:32.200 Gotta keep safe

00:53:40.400 I really want to feel into what the overarching themes of your work, well, the years of your work

00:53:58.900 and your thoughts have brought you. And in A Hand in the Dark, a letter discussing your work with

00:54:04.960 Steven Jenkinson, you write, quote, there are so many one-offs these days, when our podcast,

00:54:11.100 when our interview summits, when our, quote, masterclasses, what happens if we dare to spend

00:54:17.060 more time together? What happens if we dare to circle back? What happens if we sit next to

00:54:23.420 someone and their body of work and give it time to develop so that the encounter works on us

00:54:29.400 and in us, end quote. Yes, I just want to ask what happens when we devote ourselves to something

00:54:38.020 in this way, or what have you seen in yourself or in others? There's so much there. When you

00:54:44.340 were just reading it, what struck me was sitting next to a body, and I heard that body really

00:54:51.340 loudly before I heard the body of work. And just for me, my life has become kind of increasingly

00:55:00.460 isolated. I started working online about seven years ago. And then I was ready to really move

00:55:07.400 away from being online. In fact, I moved to New York City to Brooklyn in September 2019,

00:55:13.320 because I was really wanting to be around more strangers and have exposure to just people and

00:55:20.320 being next to people in different ways. And then my life got rerouted back to suburban San Diego

00:55:27.620 in June, 2020, when I learned that my daughter was going to go to school online if I stayed

00:55:34.860 in New York. And so as a consequence, I still feel that even though we're maybe quote post

00:55:42.780 pandemic, that I spend a lot of time alone if I'm not really deliberate about creating ways of

00:55:48.960 being with other people so there's the being willing to engage longer than one meme or one

00:55:58.120 hour and then there's the willingness to gather which is becoming it's going to become it has

00:56:05.960 become and it will become even more important for us to be very deliberate about gathering because

00:56:13.320 there's less routinized ways for us to do that and it's becoming less comfortable even though

00:56:21.860 mentally we might know that we need it it's getting harder for us to actually do because

00:56:27.660 we're getting out of practice so on the bigger level for me it's looking at ways of living and

00:56:38.800 structuring my life so that I just am around people more of the time and also that the people

00:56:45.720 that I work with are around more people because Stephen Jenkinson has this phrase provisioning

00:56:52.520 the loneliness and in some ways the work that I do with nervous systems is it's about being

00:57:01.000 a translator of your the signals that your body is sending you but many of those signals that

00:57:07.900 are being center because we don't have mammalian proximity. And so there's some ways that it feels

00:57:15.660 like a half step for me to be educating people online and helping them kind of, in some ways,

00:57:23.720 like feel better about something that's not optimal at all. So I'm constantly kind of running

00:57:30.760 those two tracks about how effective is this? Am I provisioning the loneliness by offering this?

00:57:37.020 And, you know, I'm teaching a course right now called Mother Circle, building mother

00:57:41.720 culture.

00:57:42.480 And I have women joining from all over the world.

00:57:46.400 And in some ways, it's really magical and really powerful.

00:57:51.400 And in other ways, I'm really advocating for them to take whatever it is that they're

00:57:57.060 learning and share it locally.

00:57:59.880 So that's kind of a broad view.

00:58:03.300 Yeah, this feels so timely and needed.

00:58:07.020 and such a huge part of our healing culturally, collectively, individually, bodily, spiritually.

00:58:15.260 So yeah, thank you again. And I hope to connect soon.

00:58:22.620 Thank you so much.

00:58:29.800 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast. The music you heard today was by Lake Mary and

00:58:35.520 Katie Gray. For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, and Julia Jackson.

For The Wild - April 10, 2024

KIMBERLY ANN JOHNSON on Pleasure as Pathway [ENCORE]

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