Uncovering Goddess Sexuality with Linda Savage, Ph D, Certified Sex Educator and Author
Sex – Tantra and Kama Sutra
Francesca Gentille
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Episode 4 - Uncovering Goddess Sexuality with Linda Savage, Ph D, Certified Sex Educator and Author

Francesca Gentille interviews Linda E. Savage, Ph.D. Author of Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality: The Power of the Feminine Way AASECT Certified Sex Educator Past-President, SDNC-CAMFT Linda has been exploring the healing power of sexual energy for over 30 years and has led women's groups on Awakening Goddess Sexuality and Sacred Feminine Healing for over 10 years. She’s an author and a licensed psychologist in private practice for 24 years.

Transcript

Transcript

“Uncovering Goddess Sexuality” with Linda Savage

Announcer: This program is intended for mature audiences only.

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Francesca Gentille:  Welcome to Sex Tantra and Kama Sutra where we bring you the soul of sexuality.  I'm your host Francesca Gentille.  With us today we have Dr. Linda Savage.

Dr. Linda Savage:  So, an erotic encounter is basically an experience where there is pleasurable touch, there is a connection and you end up feeling good about your self and each other.

Francesca Gentille:  Great chemicals are released during sexuality like in a good long run.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Right.  Right.  And the longer we allow ourselves to bathe in that energy, the better.

Dr. Linda Savage:  I think women really understand intuitively, the sense of ecstasy around sexuality.  Assuming they have had some good sexual experiences in their lives, they have gotten to that place where they just are rolling in bliss.

Francesca Gentille:  Linda is a Ph.D., a licensed psychologist and a sex therapist who has been exploring the mystery of sexual healing for over 25 years.  She is a diplomate of the American Board of Sexology.  She specializes in working with couples on a wide variety of sexual issues.  She is the author of ‘Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality’ - a new view of female sexuality, blending ancient wisdom with current clinical knowledge.

Linda, I am delighted to have you here with us.

Dr. Linda Savage:  And I am delighted to be here.

Francesca Gentille:  Linda, I love that you are talking about in your biography, which I read earlier, about that combining of ancient wisdom with current clinical knowledge.  What is an example of that combination?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Well, a good example that I use all the time is that now we have the FMRI imaging to prove that when one falls in love, your brain is on drugs.  That is a wonderful crossover because the poetry and the experience have been described for centuries.  Now we've got the pictures.

Francesca Gentille:  How does that ‘brain on drugs’ relate to the ancient wisdom or the Goddess wisdom of sexuality?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Well, the Goddess wisdom, or what I call that because it comes from cultures where women were honored, is that our sexuality is the life force.  It is a pathway to experiencing the sacred, the divine.  It is something that can lead us to altered states.  It is a healing experience to the whole body.

When we understand the process that is there - just one piece of it is the falling in love piece, there are several others - then it's like, OK.  We can put together ancient healing and ancient concepts of sexuality which is very ecstatic with experiences that we actually have.  People these days like to know, “Oh, there's proof, there is a certain neurotransmitter that is firing in this state!”

Francesca Gentille:  So, what you're saying is that there is an actual biology.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yeah, there is biology behind the ecstasy.

Francesca Gentille:  OK, that in a sense we can look at it both technically, as in, this is what happens, and then we can look at it spiritually.

Dr. Linda Savage:  That's correct.  What I do is bridge language.  Actually, I'm probably not as flowery as you might be, but I can talk this more sacred language. 

When I work with folks, they are pretty much your average people.  Maybe they are seeking a little bit more because they know I am into this Goddess stuff.  But they are regular folks and they need to bridge the language so that there is a bit of a ground from the context of what appears to be more scientific knowledge.

But the fact of the matter is that helping someone shape their experience and helping someone understand from the context of that help is part of what we do when we work with couples.

Francesca Gentille:  That's so great.  Are there common issues?  If you had to, name maybe three to five common issues, if you can, that couples might come to a sex therapist to work with.  Do you hear any themes?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Well, of course, desire discrepancy is the number one issue that comes to us when someone comes for sexual issues.  Sometimes, I have couples that will come and say, “Well, we have problems in our marriage.”  Then we uncover the sexual part.  So desire discrepancy is one of those really fascinating headings around which so many possible dilemmas are occurring.

Our sexuality with another is a dance.  It's a dance with ourselves as well.  But when you add another person you have all these complexities and all these wonderful ways in which we cue each other, and the language we use, all these ways we interact as a dance.  Desire discrepancy is one of those rich areas where you begin to go into this wonderful territory and begin to discover what is happening.

Often people say, “OK.  Let's get to the root of the problem and fix it.”  I try to help them go, “No.  There are all these puzzle pieces, and this there is this valley that I want you to think about going to where it's about pleasure and not fixing.”

So you work with people, and when they glaze over, you begin to use the science.  So they can go, “OK, this lady isn't just off in Lala land.  There is something here that matters a lot.”  So that's why I like to do that bridging.

Francesca Gentille: Let's go a little bit deeper into that desire discrepancy.  How does the Goddess sexuality help with desire discrepancy?

Dr. Linda Savage:  I love the question.  The point of view, not only mine but also of several other folks in the field is that we have two models essentially.  The cultural model is a performance model.  Sex is an act that you do.  Your plumbing functions or it doesn't function.  You either have the desire or you don't.  What's wrong?  Who’s got – whatever?  It's a very performance model.

It is seen as sex equals intercourse.  The goal is orgasm and good sex is a good performance.  If you look at all the vast majority of magazines that are written in the media, it is all enhancing, looking at can you perform better.

Of course, there is a huge anxiety in our culture.  Everyone - not everyone - but many, many folks go, “I don't think I'm normal.  Something's wrong with my performance.”

With Goddess sexuality, what I did when I first wrote the book, and I have continued to teach it more and more, is it says, “No.  If we look at the goal, it is pleasure.”  Often, for men they go, “Sure, I understand that.”  But what they are thinking of is only the orgasm.  Pleasure equals orgasm.

I can't tell you how many couples in Southern California, where you think there is a lot of openness and so on are still stuck in that performance model.  If you start talking about pleasure, or pleasuring, it's all about making orgasms happen.

Francesca Gentille:  Well, if it's not about making the orgasm happen, then define pleasure.

Dr. Linda Savage:  OK.  I like to use the words ‘erotic encounter’.  So they get out of the word ‘sex’ because it is so specifically oriented towards intercourse. So, an erotic encounter is basically an experience where there is pleasurable touch, there is a connection and you end up feeling good about your self and each other.

That makes it very, very broad.  When I first present that idea to couples, they look at me with this blank look like, “Oh, what is she talking about?”  To shape that, to help couples get out of this desire discrepancy, which is often, “I don't want to have the kind of sex you want to have.” - when I first wrote the book for women it was saying, all right, women have a perspective.  We have a way of being.

Now, women are uniquely different of course, but there is a way of being that is a very different model than that every thing is the phallus, everything is intercourse and my job is to serve my man.  That's part of that performance model.

So if you allow couples to open up and go, “OK, wow, that's a pretty broad definition.  How do you pleasure?”  Then we will talk about pleasuring and open it up in such a wide range that is possible for almost anything to happen as long as there is a feeling of connection and there is some touch involved.

Francesca Gentille:  You know, I want to talk much more about pleasure and also more about including the phallus, the penis in pleasure.  I'm guessing that you don't want to exclude it.  [Laughs]

Dr. Linda Savage:  Oh absolutely not.  No, they are wonderful.  But most men and women get really hung up because if it's not working then it seems like the game is over.

Francesca Gentille:  Absolutely.  I'd love to talk about this more after our break when we come back to talk more with Linda Savage, Ph.D. and licensed psychologist and sex therapist on uncovering goddess sexuality after a word from our sponsor.

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Francesca Gentille:  welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex.  Today's guest is Linda Savage, a diplomate of the American Board of Sexology.  She specializes in working with couples with sexual issues and is the author of ‘Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality’.

Linda, we were just talking about pleasure and expanding pleasure so that it is much more open for the couple.  Would you talk a little bit more about that?  In fact, maybe give us a picture or a window of what a pleasurable encounter might look like between you and your husband.

Dr. Linda Savage:  OK. One option, because moving into the space to be able to be sensual and sexual is a piece of it - Tantra calls it making the sacred space - an example in my own life is that we have this wonderful built in Jacuzzi tub in our own private bathroom. For us to take the time to relax both into ourselves and into each other, it's big enough for both of us to just relax into this wonderful tub.

Now, I personally don't care for sex in a bathtub.  But I love connecting with my husband, looking at him, talking about whatever we are excited about or things that are going on.  We don't use this as our time to deal with issues.  This is the time to talk about our hopes and dreams and wonderful stuff and begin to move out of our day-to-day and into, “Wow this feels good.  This feels good being with you.”

And then shift, obviously, for me it would be getting out of the bathtub, into some kind of touch or holding or even eye gazing that has this feeling of being seen and being known.  Sometimes, and this is often common for couples, get into massaging and playful tussling.  There are all kinds of ways to move into being with each other and getting into pleasure, just sinking in and surrendering into your own feeling of, “Aaaahhhhh”, and then giving and receiving in a way that each person is feeling part of the scenario.  That's always an interesting part of the dance.

So that's one example of moving into pleasure, which is a personal as well as a shared experience.

Francesca Gentille:  So what I'm hearing in the ‘moving into pleasure’ versus the ‘goal oriented’ sexuality is that it sounds like it's slowing down and reaching for that goal, reaching for that orgasm, reaching for that intercourse and really taking a little bit more time.  You mention necking, maybe bathing, talking about things that you enjoy together, touching, caressing, holding, looking into one another's eyes.  Just really bringing back a sense of maybe sensuality, also some of those things that we more naturally do when we first fall in love, under those drives.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yeah, it's building that connection, that sense of ‘here you are, here I am’.  I also see couples do role-play as a way to moving into that space.  So, again, there are different styles.  Maybe one wants to put on sexy clothing and act out a play.  That works well.  Some couples do all kinds of fun role-play.

Francesca Gentille:  Would role-playing be like Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra or do you mean dressing up in leather with the whip?  What do you mean by role-playing?

Dr. Linda Savage:  It could be any of the things that titillate the sense of, “Hey we are really going to have some fun here.”  That's another way.  There is connected sex.  There is role-playing sex.  There is going into your fantasy kind of sex.  There are a lot of ways to move into it.

But for me, if you lose the purpose, which is to be in your own pleasure as well as to be available to pleasure your partner, then it's not rote, ‘we do this, we do this, we do this, orgasm happens, and boom we’re done’.

Francesca Gentille:  It becomes more of a total experience, of connection.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yeah, yeah.

Francesca Gentille:  How long would you suggest that a couple set aside, because this is going to take time?  This is not going to be the five-minute quickie, in and out thank you ma'am.  How long should a couple set aside to really explore this together?

Dr. Linda Savage:  This is always a great question, because when I work with couples, often both of them are working and they have kids.  So, to be realistic about it and not set up even more anxiety with people who go, “Oh my gosh, now I've got to set aside –” You know, there is nothing wrong with the hug, hello kind of sex, what people call quickies. 

But if that's becomes routine then you are losing the sense of self.  So my thought is, if you had Sunday afternoon, three hours let's say, that's not a terrible amount of time, you might have to schedule that.  You might have to actually go, “OK, we are going to spend this time.”

To me, it's not how often you do it but it's that you do, on some regular basis set aside that time for each other.  Then you don't get into eating and a movie.  Because often the ‘date’ that people do is, we go out to a movie and then we have a big meal.  And now we just don't feel like much of anything, because we don't have any energy.

So to me, I like either midmorning or midafternoon.  Obviously it's got to be at a time when you don't have a lot of work stressors.  For some couples it means getting the kids with somebody to watch them so that you really have that time to do it.

Now, Goddess sexuality, if you look at the ancient model, wasn't necessarily practiced with everybody doing it all the time.  But typically, as much as we know about it is that they would have certain festivals during the year.  And part of the purpose of those festivals was to renew the abundance of the land and to renew the connection with the Goddess, which they saw as sort of the ‘all mother’.

So there would be three-day festivals where pretty much everything that was happening was a little bit like Mardi Gras.  People were expected to have these wonderful ‘making love’ experiences.  They would go off into the fields.

So in a way, I think having time set aside at certain points of the year, whether it is your anniversary or whatever, works really well.  So we're really encouraging people to periodically and in a way that works for them to have a good three hours their own little Mardi Gras, whether there are costumes or not where they can -

Francesca Gentille:  Or a weekend, an overnight.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Or a weekend, an overnight.  Some people say they don't have the time or they don't have the money.  I often think, you know, do you have the time to have a divorce?  Do you have the money to hire a lawyer?

Francesca Gentille:  Right, right.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Sometimes this is a priority; it is a glue for the relationship.  Honestly, it's the process of making that happen that builds the excitement, because you want to build some excitement.  You can get a little cabin in the woods.  You can borrow a friend’s house.  There are lots of ways that it doesn't have to be in a $400 a night hotel.

In fact I often think that people do that sort of thing, spend a lot of money on a vacation and then end up disappointed, because it didn't really fulfill the intention.  So it can happen and it doesn't need to be expensive.

Francesca Gentille:  It can be simple.  It can be, just hiring a babysitter to take the kids for a walk out to the park for a couple of hours, and have fun in one's own bedroom or one's own living room.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Exactly.  Right.  That's how I work with couples - it's not your job to seduce me or you've got to come on to me.  As a team you conspire to create a wonderful little time aside and build up that sense of, as a team we are creating this.
It's an ‘our way’ rather than ‘you're the one who is going to make it happen’.

Francesca Gentille:  Let's talk a little bit more about that, Linda.  If I were a man, I might be thinking, “You know I like my penis.  I like to have intercourse.  I like my ejaculation.  Are they saying that I don't get to have intercourse or I don't get to have ejaculation or what's in it for me as a guy?  If I'm spending my time and my money talking, of all things, looking into one another's eyes, what's in it for me?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Oh boy.  Often when I talk about the performance model.  I see the guy's eyes get big, and he's like, “What do you mean?”  When you look at the ancient patterns of the God and the Goddess the concept is being sacred partners together.  We're talking about quite a lot of lovemaking as part of it.

What I see when there is allowing this buildup, this teasing, this allowing you to get fully into it and more and more aroused, and touch and all of that pleasure - and I hear this from guys that practice Tantra all the time - is that they have actually much more a full-bodied orgasm.  They actually have experiences that they never thought they could have.

It's not that they can't do that.  It's that there is this rush to do it and that this is what we are doing here so let's just get it done.  I see both men and women with that let’s rush and get it done.  What they are missing is that 90% of the real pleasurable experience, the ecstatic experience of the sexual encounter.

Francesca Gentille:  So what you're saying is that from a man's perspective right now, what he gets out of this is that he gets more of his body pleasured.  He will have deeper, richer orgasms.  He may, through training or experimentation discover ways to have full-bodied orgasms or, I think what they call, injaculation where the body is going through an organic bliss state.  There is not ejaculation so he can keep going and doesn't have to concern himself with his refractory period or however long it takes to have an erection again.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Right.  Yeah.

Francesca Gentille:  When we come back, I want to talk more about what's in it for women and what both men and women individually can do to support this Goddess sexuality, after our break and a word from our sponsors we'll be back to talk with Linda Savage, author of ‘Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality’.

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Francesca Gentille:  Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex.  Today we are back with Linda Savage, who is a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists as well as a diplomate of the American Board of Sexology and a licensed psychologist.

Linda, we were just talking about what was in it for men to delve into this Goddess sexuality and expand their sense of pleasure.  Is it the same for women or is there something different that women get out of this?

Dr. Linda Savage:  It is and it isn't.  Women naturally recognize, it is an odd thing to say, but I think women really understand intuitively, the sense of ecstasy around sexuality.  Assuming they have had some good sexual experiences in their lives, they have gotten to that place where they just are rolling in bliss.  They have experienced that.

Sometimes men may cut themselves off from that experience.

Francesca Gentille:  Why would they do that?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Huh?

Francesca Gentille:  Why would they cut themselves off?

Dr. Linda Savage:  The theory is that they get flooded with oxytocin and it makes them sleepy.  OK. [Laughs] That's one theory anyway.

But once the idea is there and you get to play with it and explore it, it can go on.  But for women it is being able to surrender to the self.  Our sexuality does not belong to someone else.  It's something we give even though our culture says that we don't give something, the guy gets it.  It's really a deep experience of your own ecstatic nature and sacred dancer. [Laughs]

And, by the way, dance is one of the ways that women can really move into that wonderful state.  But for women it's also that sense of connection.  Both men and women want to feel good about themselves. We all believe we should be sexual beings, or most people anyway.  So there is that good feeling of, “Yes, we had this connection.”

But, for a woman it is also an enlivening of the life force.  All of the benefits are amazing.  I wouldn't even get technical and medical about it.  So, for both men and women there are tremendous benefits. 

But it's not just, “Well we had sex, and now we're going to be healthier.”  It's that we allowed our whole body to get into an ecstatic experience, where it just feels good.  And we allow that magnetic energy, it really is, it generates a magnetic field that is very healing.

Francesca Gentille:  So what we're saying for both women and men is it that it awakens the body and it revitalizes the body.  Literally, we feel good.  There are great chemicals are released during sexuality like in a good long run.  There are endorphins and –

Dr. Linda Savage:  Right.  Right.  And the longer we allow ourselves to bathe in that energy, the better.

Francesca Gentille:  And I've actually heard studies as well say that women who have, I think it's more than three orgasms a week, look 10 years younger than their counterparts.  So it can be youthifying.

Dr. Linda Savage:  I love these studies.  I always think how the heck do they get these, but yes, sex makes you young.  But you know what the newspapers then go, OK, have sex three times a week.  So guys say to their wives, “See, we are supposed to have sex three times a week.”  And they miss the point.

To me, it's not just that you again do this wall-sucking thing, it's that you do generate this really delicious energy.  Orgasm is only a piece of it and if you don't give it time to build, the orgasm is pretty short lived.

Francesca Gentille:  Exactly.  And yet I like to think in a way, it is a spiritual practice or like working out or anything else. If I had to wait until I wanted to work out in the gym I would never ever work out at the gym.  I always have another reason.  But when I work out then I feel better because I get the release of endorphins, and it feels good in my body.

I actually look at sex that way.  Being a mother myself, and being very busy, I schedule it, I slow down, like you said bathe, take some time talking or looking into each other's eyes or caressing.  And pretty soon I'm in the mood.  I don't worry about starting when I am in the mood.  I trust that one of the outcomes of this more Goddess sexuality that you're talking about is that the mood will happen along the way.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yes, because you're allowing yourself time to surrender.  That's the word I love, surrender to your own body.  For mothers in particular, it's critical, because there are so many other demands.  Literally, I hear women say, “I don't want anybody to touch me, leave me alone.”  You're right.

Trusting that you can create that space with your partner - sometimes it takes therapeutic work to get through some of the long-standing irritations between a couple.  For some people it may take a little bit of, I want to say consciousness-raising work. 

But yes, for women it is allowing themselves that time to really have that wonderful experience and to trust that their partner will touch them in ways that allow them to feel this buildup and to feel more excited, not immediately let’s go for the genitals, let's rub and get it over with, which often is why I think there is a lot of disappointment.

Francesca Gentille:  One of the things that I've often thought about is that men often touch women the way that they want to be touched.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yes, a lot of friction and a lot of rubbing.

Francesca Gentille:  Exactly.  I've asked my beloved, if I walked up to you and just grabbed your penis and said, “Oh, you've got a great cock and do you want to fuck?”  and just went for that, that would be fine for him.

Dr. Linda Savage:  A lot of guys go, “Yeah, I would love it.”  But I have some cases where essentially that has happening with the woman is just like, “Let's do it and get it over with.”  Eventually the guys do start feeling like objects.  [Laughs]

Francesca Gentille:  See, but they've never had that experience in our culture.  My sense is that men have this secret longing to be sexual objects, and that's why they often reflect that to us.  I agree with you that probably if they had been raised with people just grabbing them all the time that they would come to a point where they would say, “Well can we have a longer time?”

It just depends in what you're depleted as to what you long for sometimes.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Correct.  Correct. 

Francesca Gentille:  Is there is something that each partner can do individually, if they are coupled or if they are single that will help them deepen into this expanded Goddess sexuality even with themselves?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yes.  I believe the most ecstatic kind of experiences are really your own personal enlightenment experiences.  You may have them with a partner present, but you are having that experience.

It could happen in an individual.  Ray Stubbs describes an experience he had out in the desert many many years ago.  He has written books on Tantra and so on.  He had a heart orgasm and it went to all his chakras and he wasn't even touching himself.  It was just this amazing ecstatic experience that moved through his body.  And now he has practiced for many years a lot of Tantric concepts.

So for men it's a little harder.  Men do self-pleasuring, and they have a good old time.  But there still is a tendency to rush to orgasm.  And there is still a lot of heavy friction, and it let’s run for the goal here.

Francesca Gentille:  So, what would you suggest for men?  You mention words like heart orgasm and chakra.  Let's start with our men first.  If there are any men listening, they are now getting ready to get in bed with themselves.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Right.

Francesca Gentille:  And they want to try this.  They are open-minded, experimental, let’s try this.  How should they touch their bodies?  What are their chakras?  What are we talking about here?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Well, all right.  If we want to create a wonderful experiment it would be first get into some deep breathing.  That’s a way to get in your body to start with.  Just breathe and expand your diaphragm and really allow your body to feel your breathing.

Next, what you could do before you do any touching or rubbing is to actually do pelvic rocking.  I’ve found that is one of the most helpful ways for men and women to feel that energy because when you do pelvic rocking, you can also squeeze the pelvic muscles. 

Men often know how to do that because they can move their penises and make them dance and stuff like that.  So that pelvic rocking and squeezing gets that real groin feeling going before you do any kind of touching.

Francesca Gentille:  So at this point he’s not touching himself.

Dr. Linda Savage:  No.  He’s breathing and doing pelvic rocking.

Francesca Gentille:  What do you mean by pelvic rocking?

Dr. Linda Savage:  OK, so – well let’s see.  It’s one of those exercises we do in jazzercise – oh, not jazzercise – you know, in exercise class.  So you would rock your hips all the way back as if you were arching.  You can bend your legs a little bit.

Francesca Gentille:  But, you’re lying in bed?

Dr. Linda Savage:  So you rock back your hips as if you were arching.  Then you squeeze your buttocks so that you are rocking your pelvis forward.  So if you have an erection, it would be moving towards the flat of the bed and then up again.  Or if there is no erection, which is fine, you are basically arching backwards and then tucking I guess is the best way to describe it.  When you do that with the breasts you begin to feel that tingly thing that I’ve described.  And you begin to feel this energy. 

Now, the next step for men is not to just completely focus on the genitals because if you say, “Oh, I got the tingly feeling, now I’m going to start rubbing.” then you’re going to move into whatever the specific touch that works for you to move you into orgasm.  So a lot of this has to do with allowing the energy to build, instead of with anxiety, which is an early pattern.  Men want to get it in before the girl changes her mind or before the parents come home.  There are a lot of ways rushing has become part of their pattern.

So, let that energy move through the body, as they are breathing and doing the pelvic, and then begin to touch in peripheral ways.  Not touching specifically the genitals, so the thigh area which is very close to – some men are sensitive in their nipples and just touching in ways that raise energy.

You feel that energy moving.  As you breathe, imagine the energy moving upward through your body instead of pooling specifically in the genital area.  It’s pretty amazing that men will allow themselves to prolong the experience in that way.

Then they can move into the kind of touch that feels good but let it go slow.  There’s no rush here.  See how they can let it feel good and last.

Francesca Gentille:  So once again they would want to put some time aside, more than five minutes.

Dr. Linda Savage:  [Laughs]

Francesca Gentille:  15 to 20 minutes.  Put some time aside with it and after the breathing and the rocking just begin to touch and explore their own body.  Still kind of for a while it sounds like avoiding the genital area.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Tease it.  Tease the area.  It's a very delicious experience, if you tease as long as you know it's going to go somewhere eventually.  A lot of men find that very anxiety producing.

Francesca Gentille:  In what way?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Well, as I said, early experiences are -wow, I might lose my opportunity if I don't get it in and we get it on.  So, allowing your self to say, “I'm here with me.  Nobody's going to abandon me.  I'm here.”  Just allow yourself to let it go slow.  There is fear it might not happen somehow.

Francesca Gentille:  What do you hear from men when they practice this?  What do they discover when they start slowing down and developing this ability to expand their arousal, the time they have arousal, awaken sensual feelings in their entire body?  What do they report after the experience?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Well, most of the people I've talked to about this are already practicing Tantra.  It's not common that I have men who just come in as your regular guy who wants to go there.  So I tend to work more with the couple part of that rather than the individual.

But the men that to do practice this and work with it are the ones that say they have the most amazing body sensations and all over experiences even without an actual orgasm.  Then do when they move to that final thing the orgasm is so much more fulfilling, because it's not so pooled in one little area.

Francesca Gentille:  How is this similar or different for women?  If the woman wants to deepen into her delicious Goddess body sexuality, how would you describe it?  Maybe we should take a brief break and then you can come back and tell us more about how it would be for the women.

We'll return right after this break; a few words from our sponsors with Dr. Linda Savage, author of ‘Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality’, member of the Board of American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, licensed psychologist.

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Francesca Gentille:  Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex, with our fabulous guest, Dr. Linda Savage, Ph.D., MST, AASECT.  She is an amazing couples therapist, author of ‘Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality’ and is about to tell us how this self-pleasuring might be different for women or the same for women, as it is for men.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yes, well, I have a lot more opportunities, because sometimes women will come to me as individuals and have had a not great experience. So they want to reclaim their Goddess.  They want to reclaim it.

The pelvic rocking and breathing is absolutely something that is true for women and the self-pleasuring and allowing, giving themselves permission.  There are a couple of other pieces for women that are helpful.

One, for many women there may have been some violating experiences in their past.  So guided imagery to make it safe is one of the things I often start with.  I have a meditation called ‘Your Secret Garden’.  They imagine going to this garden, which is your special garden and it has boundaries around it.  That helps women begin to give themselves permission for their own private and enriching experience.

The other piece that I think is different for women is that women have a lot of issues with their yonis – that is the female genitals.  I like the word yoni because it isn't fraught with all of these sometimes negative connotations.  So I have some practices for women to begin to love and own that aspect of the self and understand how beautiful they really are.

I think that's different.  For men often, unless they have issues with size, they are pretty proud of their family jewels etcetera.  For women that's often the case.

But other than that, the breathing and the rocking and the squeezing of the pelvic muscles is a very important part of it.

Francesca Gentille:  Is this the kind of information that they can find a lot more of at your website or in your book?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yes.  Absolutely, yeah.  My website is www.goddesstherapy.com  I have those exercises in the book and I have couples exercises.  So it's chock full of a lot of very practical information as well as some wonderful stuff about the ancient cultures that worshipped the feminine.

Francesca Gentille:  People who are in Southern California can always look you up or see you.  For people who live in another part of the country do you have any suggestions on resources that they can search for - either other books or websites that they can go to or even something to Google?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Well, I imagine that you could Google goddess sexuality.  There is also tantra.com, which is a great site.  There are wonderful DVDs; there is one on sacred sexuality that I often recommend for couples to watch to get the idea.  I think it's called ‘The Ancient Secret of Sacred Sexuality’.

As far as finding a therapist, because sometimes you do need a third party, I would say definitely for some couples it's important, you can go to AASECT.org and they have by region, ‘find a therapist’, someone who is at least trained and has some experience with sexuality.

There are a ton of books.  I warn against the ‘how to’ cookbooks.  Those are the ones that I get concerned about because if it's all about positions and rubbing better or harder.  Then unfortunately it takes you right into the performance model.  So that's my recommendation.  Just keep in mind that this is a whole body pleasure experience that includes connection to the partner rather than perform better.

Francesca Gentille:  Linda, I'm so enjoying this deepening expanded, more full body Goddess version of sexuality that you're discussing.  Is there anything else in the last few minutes that we have that you would really want to leave us with?

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yeah.  What I see as the cutting edge of the future and I see people who are interested in listening to this program, who already want to explore sacred sexuality are people who also are in this forefront of what I think of as kind of a new wave or movement.  It has to do with the partnership model.

We talk about people with partners.  But the real concept of partner where I am their meeting you eye to eye as an equal with my own perspective.  I am going to stay in my truth.  You are going to stay in your truth.  We are going to really work with this is a partnership.  That is a very new idea. We have not in our culture had models, I don't think in any culture in the last 3000 years, of true co-equal partnership.

A lot of men get a little scared when I talk about this.  But again what's in it for them and is a real partner - someone who is there, who is not just going through the motions.  I don't mean only in sexuality, I mean in every aspect of their life.

It is not just, “Oh, no big deal”, because we don't have good models for it.  But we do have lots of information coming recently; good couples therapy and good books about couples work that have helped in this partner model, which is really a very exciting movement that is happening right now in our country.

Francesca Gentille:  And you're talking about partnership in a new way.  People have been are raising children together for thousands of years.  In one way they have been partnering, but you are really talking about partnering on a totally new level.

Dr. Linda Savage:  That's absolutely on a conscious level, on a co-equal level, where you keep working through and you stay right there.  You don't just accommodate or you don't just hide part of yourself.  You are really showing up.  For women that has been tough.  We have had a very different model.

That's why I talk about Goddess sexuality, because women are going to need to get that sense of the strength of their divinity, their feminine divinity in order to be there.  It's not the same as, “I'm going to go bust your balls”.  It's not at all.

Francesca Gentille:  It's really a courageous honesty for both men and women.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Both men and women, absolutely.

Francesca Gentille:  To reveal their - for men, the edge might be to reveal more of their feelings.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Absolutely, and being vulnerable.

Francesca Gentille:  And for women, that growth edge might be to reveal more of their boundaries or more of their opinions.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Yeah, and what they really want.

Francesca Gentille:  It sounds like there is a point when you're cooking a new relationship stew here where things might be a little unformed or a little uncomfortable, but by having each person really walk that courageous edge of revealing themselves in a new way that something even more amazing and beautiful will be created.

Dr. Linda Savage:  It's very amazing.  It's very growthful, very growthful.

Francesca Gentille:  Well, I just want to thank you so much Linda for joining us here today.

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Francesca Gentille:  We have had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Linda Savage, marriage and family therapist, licensed psychologist, who for over 17 years has been treating couples with relationship and sexual issues.

Thank you for joining us on Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra.

Dr. Linda Savage:  Thank you very much.  I have enjoyed it.

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