Episode 50 - BODY IMAGE & YOUR TALKING GENITALS with Charla Hathaway

Transcript

Francesca Gentille:   Welcome to Sex:    Tantra and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex. I’m your host Francesca Gentille and with me today is Charla Hathaway. Charla is a sex and intimacy coach, a radiant being, the founder of the Body Joy Intimacy School in Austin Texas. She leads conscious touch exploration, tantric [xxx] really facilitates spiritual erotic events in her community. She’s the author of Erotic Massage for Sensual Touch and Deep Pleasure, we had her on before on that. And she just released a new book, beautiful, called Eight Erotic Nights:   Passionate Encounters that Inspire Great Sex for a Lifetime.

Sometimes kissing can be kind of the same way. But when it becomes so conscious, just a loose mouth with the air alternately breathing, you’re breathing in that air that’s just been deep, hot, warm inside of him. There’s more than one way to penetrate someone. And then you get that breath back and you’re looking and gazing and then you slow your breath so much that you feel you’re right on that little edge of tingling.

There’s an interesting little tantra, [xxx] event, I do sometimes and we simply walk around the room with our hands over our genitals and you have fun and smile and look but it kind of strips away a lot of the mess we have when we’re holding ourselves between our crotch. We end up kind of laughing, walking around, holding on.

Francesca Gentille:   Welcome Charla.

Charla Hathaway:   Thanks. Where can I get a copy of that book, it sounds delicious?

Francesca Gentille:  Really beautiful! I love the photographs, the couples in it really looked very connected, happy. There was a sense of playfulness looking at the pictures. I feel I could show it to anyone. If my dear mother was alive I could show it to her and yet using it with my beloved it would definitely be something that we could look at, inspire us to go on a journey, reconnect to our own intimacy.

Charla Hathaway:  I think the pictures are the luscious invitation and then the text is really just a clear map of how you build one night, one activity at a time upon another to go deeper and deeper into your journey of loving.

Francesca Gentille:  Today I want to talk about, you and I were talking privately, about how our years have been very intense. And that there’s this level of, you know when there’s an illness, when there’s a death, could be a job loss, when these life sometimes challenges or tragedies open up, sometimes even something great like the birth or a child can be so challenging and really shake up people’s lives, their moods that we remember again how precious life is. We’re reminded again of who is important to us in our life. So we’re wanting to talk today about that deep level and also the technique level. So we’ll be bouncing back and forth between the two of them. And to start there’s a part of it that wants to ask you how did you order those eight nights? Was there a sense of that deepening journey?

Charla Hathaway:  Yes. Yes. There is, like starting with the attention. Giving and receiving quality attention which you might think that would be so simple and yet the half dozen exercises in that first three hours, that first evening, and I do ask people to have a timer because that gives such  power and potency to the evening when there is an agenda and there’s things to experience together. Learning that food of love, attention. That’s the first night, is kind of a foundation, body bonding and stuff. And so then every night after that, Francesca -- oh, to tell the truth and honesty’s an aphrodisiac. And how do you ask for what you what? What’s a compassionate way that could get results? And then into body honoring rituals and body imaging and self-image and mirror exercises and as you feel more confident, as you’ve been sharing, and you don’t really need a soul mate to do this with but you need a good friend who’ll commit to confidentiality and about 24 hours of times, three hours a night, once a week or once every other week, or once a month even, to learn these deeper tools of loving.

Francesca Gentille:  And I love that you map this out for us in these three hour chunks. I’m going to breathe in here for a moment that sometimes three hours, setting aside three hours, sounds like forever. I can’t do it. I can’t find the time to do it. But then we have to ask ourselves what happens if we don’t find the time to do it?

Charla Hathaway:   You know, Francesca, everything else that we want to get good at, we have lots of teachers and we spend lots of time and so this cornerstone of our lives sexual sensuality, it gets thrown the crumbs of what’s left over. So this book, and it’s even before the first chapter it’s so well laid out, you talk with your love and find out what you commit to. And maybe you only want to commit to the first night or maybe you want to go ahead and map it out and put it on your calendars, but you treat that as important as any business or family date you would. And it is carving out that time to enrich something that is going to change the whole rest of your life.  I swear if you do the twenty four hours, plus I have a little eight minute daily ritual that I ask you to do usually three to five times a day which prepares you for your night together, you could even do the daily ritual on the telephone, but if you do these simple tools I know your loving will change and its’ going to be so exciting because the book’s just out and I can’t wait to start hearing from people.

Francesca Gentille:  And I absolutely agree with you. Some of my listeners may know, some may not, that my beautiful six year relationship ended. And it was a gorgeous relationship, we had so much in common, got along so well but it really was really missing this, it was missing this commitment. Here I am, the divine sex goddess and diva [xxx] absolutely the relationship started like that.  I mean, for years we would carve out a good two to three hours at least…

Charla Hathaway:  It’s the nuts and bolts of loving. It’s the nuts and bolts. And I think Francesca that committing to that time together is something that some people don’t do. And we expect somehow to be able to reap the benefits of being able to look into someone’s eyes and to feel that vulnerability and transparency and that cosmic jolt of wonder and we think it’s just going to get sandwiched in and fit someway so I love…this is an erotic map and it’s a commitment to… I suggest twice a month for four months is I think the ideal amount of space because each one of these you’re kind of going to want to savor. And it isn’t about the actual penetration of intercourse or that kind of technique. And actually you agree not to do it on those nights because containment of our energy is such an unplayed card in our erotic game these days. And so we learn to contain and savor that…

Francesca Gentille:  Charla. What does that mean “containment of energy?”  It sounds so enticing when you say it but, what does it mean?

Charla Hathaway:  It means on these nights, the exercises you’re going to do when you are learning to ocean breath together and to kind of stop time into that kind of trance like space and you’re learning to touch from the heart where you’re not touching for agenda or to get someplace but you’re touching for your own pleasure. And when you learn to your admire and anoint your lover’s body and to bond with them together, just laying one on top of the other, you can even do it with clothes on, but tuning into that space where the bodies met… anyway the activities lead you there. And they’re very specifically laid out.  How to sit, how to lay, how to breath, look and the tantric kiss gets built through the whole book from the beginning to actually using the love pulp or the pc’s and to the alternate breathing instead of the same breathing, one layer at a time and by the eighth night you’ve got this fantastic kiss experience.

Francesca Gentille:  I want to go more intimate and more specifically, however I just want to be clear about the containment. What we’re saying is, and I just want to check in, that there’s a sense of experimentation, trying these techniques, feeling the sense of connection grow, feeling the sense of arousal grow, feeling the sense of emotional intimacy grow and yet letting go of it that it has to come to an orgasm or ejaculation that night. It needs a couple hours, you’re going to savor this deepening of our whole pleasure. And that’s what you mean by containment?

Charla Hathaway:  Yes. It’s not spilling out into orgasm. It is learning that our bodies are so capable of actually containing a larger amount of erotic energy than we give them credit for because we get a little bit in and then feel like it has to squirt out, get a little bit in and then squirt. But when you open this vessel of our being into a huger cauldron of wonder, then you find that when you do choose to spill over into orgasm you have so much deeper and more to offer. So these are the building blocks. Actually, there’s even a journaling [xxxxxxxx] and I ask you that night, even after the erotic night, if you happen to be spending the night with your beloved, is to even that night not to engage in penis in the vagina or intercourse sex. There’s just so much! We have just been [xxxxxxxx] ! This is the opportunity to see that’s just one little piece of the pie and tonight we’re going to sample all the other nine tenths of the pie in little enticing ways that you may want to pull back in in your own way. I want to stress this too…

Francesca Gentille:  I want to talk more about this and those nine pieces of pie, or in this case, eight pieces of the pie after a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors. And I just want to let our listening audience know that we have these just amazing sponsors that offer free products and free books and delicious discounts on some of the most beautiful jewelry, ice.com and some of the most amazing lubricant [xxxxx] which I’ve never tried, so I really encourage our listeners to support our sponsors and to get great gifts as well and to stay with us and we’ll come back in a moment with Charla Hathaway and those Eight Erotic Nights. And we’ll be right back.

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Francesca Gentille:  Welcome to Sex:   Tantra and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex. Talking with Charla Hathaway on Eight Erotic Nights:   Passionate Encounters that Inspire Great Sex for a Lifetime. It was not setting aside this time that ended my relationship. When we did set aside this time it built our relationship and deepened it, transformed it and I want to thank you Charla for bringing this up. I wish we had time to really go deeply into all of the eight erotic nights but the time goes so quickly and I’m thinking we may have time to go more deeply into two or three. If you had to pick two or three for us right now, what would they be and where do you want to start?

Charla Hathaway:  That’s good. I’m glad you don’t want to do all eight with me, Francesca, the breathing would be too heavy on the radio. So, taking a deep breath on that…one of the ones I have really liked – you know, I got to test drive all these with my beloved, was talking genitals. Our genitals are so really articulate and often have a great sense of humor and we sit back and actually let them do the talking, we find amazing stories that they have and there’s just kind of a gratitude and appreciation we can have for, not only our own but when we hear our partner’s genitals talk right as if the penis is a person, like “Yeah.  My master treats me this way but he doesn’t appreciate me enough like this and I would really like him to pay more attention to me in this way.” That kind of thing, they’re just wonderful.

Francesca Gentille:  I’m going to stop you. Let’s check in right now. Let’s go there. So. Tuning in to, in our case, we have two vulvas talking here. So if we’re going to tune in to our vulvas, what would your vulva say right now, about life, about ….?

Charla Hathway:  My vulva would say that I am so happy because I’m right with my beloved and you caught me at a great time, we happen to have just had a wonderful night of loving and sharing too about sex, a really wonderful talk about where we want to go. So my vulva’s really full and happy and kind of a little sassy like “Yes! I I’m going to make sure I get what I need! I’m not going to go into this mind-reading and guessing game. I’m going to help out. I’m willing to say what it is that I’m wanting in this moment.” So it’s feeling just really strong and happy and fun.

Francesca Gentille:  And if I were going to speak for my vulva…you know, when the divine closes a door somewhere, he or she opens a window. My relationship with John ended and I began to see someone wonderful and then he left the States for seven weeks so if my vulva would speak right now she’d say that she’s a little lonely and that she wishes that I would take a little bit more time with her. My vulva’s saying that she wishes I would get out the lotions, potions, and toys and have a more [xxx] relationship with myself.

Charla Hathaway:  Wonderful, wonderful! Isn’t she…isn’t it nice that we can tune in and ask that part of our body, as you could ask your heart or any part really that is only another aspect of yourself?

Francesca Gentille:  And I love that… I miss that the guys aren’t on the phone with us so we could say “well honey, tell me what your genitals are, if they could speak, what they would say?” And I love that. And it can be very surprising what someone is from the waist up and how they represent themselves to the world, whether that’s shy or whether that’s tough, when you check in with the truth of their genitals it could be something very different.

Charla Hathaway:  Yes, yes. There’s an interesting little tantra, [xxx] event, I do sometimes and we simply walk around the room with our hands over our genitals and you have fun and smile and look but it kind of strips away a lot of the mess we have when we’re holding ourselves between our crotch. We end up kind of laughing, walking around, holding on. So sometime early in our life I’m sure [xxx], don’t touch there, don’t hold yourself there, don’t do that. So when we can be again an intentional community and play with those taboos, it’s fun.

Francesca Gentille:  ….with our beloved in those nights, cupping our own genitals or the genitals of our beloved or our sweetheart, and I love that you bring it up as something that’s fun and playful because I think, you’re the expert of our eight erotic nights here, my sense is that it sometimes gets in the way of pleasure when we’re so pushy towards pleasure. When the only time I ever touch the genitals of my beloved or I’m touched genitally directly, saying, “Hey baby, hey baby.” When you say it like playfully…

Charla Hathaway:  Yeah. I like eight erotic nights in the way that every morsel that we chew and taste and savor complete in itself.  It’s great to sit down and eat a whole feast maybe at one time but to chew slowly is such an art and so that takes that event of like the genitals talking to each other, speaking and I like to end that exercise with asking the genitals “What do I need to pay more attention to? What would you like to tell me? What gem of wisdom have I not listened to from you?” and just what your ears have told you about the lotions and the potions and get out and spend some time with me.”

Fracesca Gentille:  So I love that one! What’s next?

Charla Hathaway:  There’s another wonderful one, talking about things getting in the way of our erotic energy flowing, is body image.  So we just get right in front of the mirror and we speak to every part of our body with our beloved behind, comfortably sitting, not talking, only listening, and we go through each part and maybe there’s a little story, or a disappointment or an adoration or admiring the different parts of our body and it kind of diffuses all that tension that we all hold in our body images which keep us numbed and keep us from flowing and being fluid and juicing out from our body. And then I think that once we’ve at least disclosed with our lover there about our bodies then we can relax them and a relaxed body in loving -- we know where that goes.

Francesca Gentille:  Let’s go there. Let’s go there. So. I’m having so much fun with you and I just adore you and I know I can go to these places with you, which is such a delight. That you’re such a juicy, rich woman always filled with life and a very courageous pleasure activist you are. What about that? So let’s imagine that we’re separately together here, looking in front of our mirrors, how would you model, are you just…is this just saying, “I love my breasts but I’m afraid of the cellulite on my thighs?” How would you model revealing this body image?

Charla Hathaway:  That’s a good question. Because I’ve kind of set up this particular mirror exercise as sort of looking at your body as this temple that of course holds everything joyful or sad or anything that you’ve ever felt and it has been with you every inch of your way and it will be the final temple that you say good bye to for everything we’ve really known in this life. So when you look at it that way, if you could find a little bit of that appreciation for having earned…I mean, I think there’s a great correlation between cellulite and sexual enjoyment and believe the more cellulite you have the more enjoyment you could easily have. That when we got these sleek twenty year old bodies we know about that much. And so look at the wisdom we have garnered and gathered as cultivators of our bodies and see that when we look in the mirror and see that our breasts may not be as perky and the cellulite be there, but when we’re really able to see it for what it is and appreciate the fact we are there in that… I think especially with a lover looking on, when we then crawl in between the sheets with that breast and that cellulite, we’ve kind of just taken away that veil.

Francesca Gentille:  So we’re saying that we want to speak from the positive so I’m going to invite you to really ….and then we want to go to break one more moment and then come back again.  But I want to invite you to say it as “I”.   So, as I look at my breast or as I look at my butt, model for us how might we say something about our body, noticing in a way how perfectly imperfect it is. Using an “I” statement, how would you say that?

Charla Hathaway:  I’d say that I really have a hard time living with my wrinkles and being going on 60 is not the easiest thing in the world and I don’t maybe have the same kind of firmness in my tissues that I used to have but just by saying that out loud and looking in the mirror and being honest with what is in my body and seeing my lover know that I have the courage then because I feel that same love for me, just the way I am. And it’s a way of disempowering the shame that we can hold over that keeps us trying to trip or pretend or hide something about ourselves.  And the whole body, including our assholes, to turn around in our backs and to include everything within our body community. Not to say partition this. This part is okay to talk about, this part is a no-no. No. As the tantra teaches us, the whole way to god and spirit is through our body and all our body and equally all of our bodies.

Francesca Gentille:  I love that. We’re going to go to a break and then come back and learn more of these gorgeous, gorgeous techniques, Charla. And we’ll be discovering more of them after a word from our wonderful sponsors. 
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Francesca Gentille:  Welcome back to Sex:   Tantra and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex with Charla Hathaway, I just want to get right back in with her and just thank her again for this and this deepening that I feel is happening with these exercises. In the last few minutes, do you have something else that you’d want to gift us with? I mean, we want the whole book, but that you want to share with us?

Charla Hathaway:  What I like is so often, Francesca, we go so routine into that touch is habitual and we wonder why we’re not fed by it. So we and somebody almost else has orchestrated for you really kind of a potent time frame, new things to try together. Already it kind of puts you both on an exciting edge of being there together for something new. When I tried the tantric kiss -- I got to road test all these with my beloved, I was so happy -- I mean tears came into my eyes because we just… Sometimes kissing can be kind of the same way. But when it becomes so conscious, just a loose mouth with the air alternately breathing, you’re breathing in that air that’s just been deep, hot, warm inside of him. There’s more than one way to penetrate someone. And then you get that breath back and you’re looking and gazing and then you slowed your breath so much that you feel you’re right on that little edge of tingling. Inspiration. I’m up in the clouds someplace and your whole body is just like tingling with that feeling and the timer is set! Yes. You’re going to be doing that for eight minutes or whatever and you’re just staying with it, you get in a new place.

Francesca Gentille:  I would have to agree that I’ve been very blessed with my beloved, my wonderful ex-beloved and my current beloved, being men who I think bring to me what I call the magical kiss. And that my sense of it is that I love you for the deep breath, the slow breath and going slowly. There’s this sense of instead of just smashing the mouths together, although that can be a fun kiss at times, to have this just exquisitely slow anticipation of each moment of a kiss and I find that my beloved is bringing that to me in this very gentle, confident, slow way with this wonderful deep breathing you mentioned, it allows me to surrender and there’s pheromones right there at the top of the lip that go directly back to the reptilian brain and it’s incredibly bonding and arousing.

Charla Hathaway:  Yeah, it’s wonderful too that everything doesn’t have to end in:   boom. Intercourse. Oh, then after this, he’s going to want to stick it in or whatever. No. After this, the timer will go off, and you will simply be there breathing together and you get to actually enjoy the feeling of your body from being very deeply satiated and then if you add a little bit of that pc pump to it you can feel that excitement…who’s in charge of  your turn on? What can you do just by pumping your own pelvic floor…?

Francesca Gentille:  What is a pc, for those who might just be tuning in? What is a pc muscle and how do we pump it?

Charla Hathaway:  [xxxxxxx] I don’t know. Anyway, it’s your pelvic floor muscle all around the anus and the vagina and it’s called the tantric love pump. And you can take that juicy stuff that you begin to feel in your genitals -- I can almost feel it now, just talking about it -- and if you squeeze that a few times and you get to squeeze it up into other parts of your body and you can realize you’re doing this and your partner’s cock is not even in you. This is just something that because you’re there and sharing the space and  feeling and you’ve allowed this time, this whole delicious evening and this is just one stepping stone in it,  of a sexual experience slowing down to the speed of love.

Francesca Gentille:  This sounds amazing. Owning our own arousal, deepening into it. And it is often the complaint we hear from women:   they want it to be slower, they want to take more time, they want to be teased more.  A big portion of our listening audience are amazing, wonderful, delicious men wanting to be more fully fabulous lovers that they are. What’s in it for the guy? So why does he want to slow down?

Charla Hathaway:  I tell you, if you come back and you tell a guy, maybe he’s hot for sex, and you go “Oh god! What I would really love is if somebody rubbed my feet for an hour!” If that man was astute, listeners, and literally got out a little hot wash rag or a little tub for the feet and lotion and spent thirty minutes on each foot -- he’s going to get the most fantastic loving and he’s probably not even going to need to wait a night. There’s something about us when we’re heard and seen and so deeply nourished for what we want. If guys just knew this, the mileage they got out of doing the kinds of things that they think “Oh. Well. That’s not really sex”, they would be so paid back. And what I like about the book is you can take turns so each exercise you’re taking the turn, receiving and giving it. First it’s the kissing game. Sometimes I get bored kissing even if I’ve got a great kisser for a boyfriend because it’s always done his way. “Oh dear, what’s wrong with us? I’m bored.” Well, if you’re bored well he’s probably bored too and what you need to do is take a little initiative “Well honey, I’m going to set a timer”, you need a timer for this book, “and for five minutes I’m going to kiss you,  I’m yang, queen of the universe, and you simply with a soft mouth and face receive.”  And so you can just show him for five or ten minutes and you’re active and he’s passive and then you switch roles and it’s a chance for the woman to be more active more of the time, because we tend to take the traditional role of passive.

Francesca Gentille:  This is so great and I wish we had more time but we’ve actually run out of time. I think we might be a little over and I just want to thank you Charla, for giving us these beautiful tips of time and attention and talking genitals and honoring bodies and deep kissing and there’s more. If you, listening audience, want to know more about Charla, get transcripts from the show, order her book, you can do that online with us at www.personallifemedia.com and also at www.bodyjoy.org. For orgasm, as Charla says. And you can also email us there. We just want to thank you, our listening audience. Thank you Charla, for being with us.

Charla Hathaway:  Francesca, thank you. I just feel all energized and juiced just knowing this beautiful goddess was on the other end of the line with me. Thanks dear.

Francesca Gentille:  And I want to thank you, our listening audience for being with us on Sex:   Tantra and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex.

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