LOVING JUICY, SUCCULENT & WILD with SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy)
Sex – Tantra and Kama Sutra
Francesca Gentille
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Episode 79 - LOVING JUICY, SUCCULENT & WILD with SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy)

LOVING JUICY, SUCCULENT & WILD with SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy), tantalizingly delicious author of "Succulent Wild Woman," "Living Juicy," "Juicy Pens, Thirsty Papers," "Eat Mango's Naked," Transformational teacher and student, Consummate Adventurer of Life, Commited to joy & Self-Love.

In this episode, SARK intimately shares how to get a full cup of love into your life. Reach in to your Wise Voice Gladly Speaking. Get juicy in how well you are loving your self and become radiantly full of it. Reach in - write out. Transform grief and loss into gift and opportunity. Release your Inner Critic Attacks. Become irresistably omni-sexual.

Transcript

Transcript

This program is intended for mature audiences only.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome to Sex, Tanta and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex.
I'm your host Francesca Gentille and with me today SARK also knows as Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy. SARK is the creative priestess of the world in my opinion and she is the author of the Succulent Wild Women also Living Juicy also Juicy Pens and Thirsty Papers and also Eat Mangoes Naked.
SARK is a transformational teacher and an ongoing student. A confident and adventurer of life. She is committed to joy and self love and that path for herself and all of us and I am delighted to welcome you to our show.

Welcome.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Thank you so much. I'm just glowing with your voice.

Francesca Gentille: Well, I with you and your present I remember as a twenty year old in the Midwest finding your artwork, finding your cards and books and feeling like some a window opened. A window of possibility, a window into joy and in my life I sometimes say I am play challenged or I'm joy challenged and my sense is I'm not the only one we come from this puritan work ethic and my sense of you is that spirit has given you keys, spirit has given you a calling to bring you a combination of the deep innocence and the eternal wisdom and I wanted to have you hear on this show and to hear what you wanted to gift to us in terms of how to bring that into our sexuality and our relationships.

So let me ask a question. In a world where people they say there is a no sex marriage the low sex marriage, people are feeling disconnected from their bodies, their succulent, they feel that they love someone but they can't get that spark. What is something that you would say from your thought to help them on that.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Well, I think more then help them to inspire them into a realm of, I really do believe that the foundation of all of it goes back and not just goes back but goes to self love. I've really been studying and practicing the subject for about 4 years now and its so funny how we're taught to love ourselves and we're told to love ourselves and even the Bible says," Love thy self" but we're not suppose to talk about it and we're certainly not suppose to have examples and people living in self love speaking openly.

I want to share with you in New York few years ago and I was in an elevator and there was this man in the elevator who was just glowing, I mean he was just beaming with good energy and I said to him Wow, you have the best energy and he said thank you I'm just so in love with myself and I did the same thing I laughed like can you said that? Like how can you just say that and so of course I stuck to him like a little magnet and I wanted to find all about him and he said he came to a revelation that he realized that if he didn't love himself, he couldn't then love the world and so he embarked on a practice, practices of love and so right after I met him I was so inspired by this. I decided to go home and start my own self love practice and I started by that first morning by deciding to wake up and some moments hugging myself before I even got out of bed and I felt so embarrassed and kind of ridiculous like here I am hugging myself but I tell you it went into the most marvelous expansion that continued to this day where I started rolling around hugging myself, kissing my shoulders, talking lovingly to myself saying " You're such a little darling, I love you so much. You're so cute" All the things we would love to hear from our partner or from our self but not necessarily do.

Francesca Gentille: Let me say something here speaking here, there is a part of a little one inside me. Her ears pricked up when you talked about you're such a little darling and kissing shoulder and yet there was a part of me when you were first speaking that almost contracted and said like you said, its really okay to have self love it isn't accusing one. Isn't self love a betrayal of loving you. Like if I really love myself , am I going to be selfish? And then the other thing that aroused in my mind was all the memories of maybe being spanked or reprehended a sense that you know it wasn't okay to maybe want a cookie to for myself. It wasn't okay to maybe want to make noise if my mother had a headache that somehow I had to constrain my natural joy and my natural tendencies to play to keep someone I love safe. So that my natural tendencies would be dangerous to someone and that therefore I needed to seek my love from them rather then from myself and it almost feels dangerous what I'm talking about. It both feels dangerous and also there's a part of me almost angry like you're suppose to love me. You're suppose to.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Yeah. I'm so glad you asked these questions. This is the perfect time to clarify it that self love is literally the opposite in many ways of selfish because what we're referring to is the purest form of self love. We're not referring to narcissism or self absorption or self centeredness or any of these words we've all been taught. If you don't share the cookie you are self centered.

The truth is all of us love our self at our core and our essence and we don’t talk about it very much because it really almost balefulness like what you just said. Like if you declare that you are so in love with yourself people will laugh, get angry or get scared and I m convinced that if we lived in the world where people were greeting each other and saying Hi, how well are you loving yourself today? And people really answer that question thoughtfully and with great love. Loving ones self cannot take away from any love that there is and that's just an abstract love when we love ourselves and engage in this practice of hugging our self in the morning. When they get out of bed, they are so much more present to their partner because they fill themselves from the inside and they are not then seeking something from their partner.

Francesca Gentille: I wanted to just jump in here for a second to and reflect what's there for me because I think I'm not the only one is that what comes out of the sense is this is revolutionary. This is really revolutionary; the world doesn't work like this. This is revolutionary and this is creating a new pair dime, might even be healthy and that the other thing that comes up is my partner the one, my partner is they're hugging themselves they're pressing themselves, they're saying this is what I really wanted, love do, love myself today. There is a part of me that says it won't be me, like why do they want to be with me?

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: And just so you know or many of us receive massages and you know what happens when you receive massages, you massage yourself. You massage your shoulders, you massage your feet. We engage in certain practices of self massage and at some certain point you're kind of ready for someone else. I mean you're ready for someone to get into the shoulder blades and down into the glutei muscles. That's where there really isn't, we're not going to love ourselves that we don't need someone else. I don't believe that because it's different. There is no way that we can touch and love our self the way our beloved can.

Francesca Gentille: And what I'm hearing you saying. I'm just going to breathe that in. it's beautiful that we are interconnected there are ways that another human being can give to me that I could never give to myself and yet at the same time in giving to myself something arises, a fullness and what you're pointing to is a contract. I think an incautious contract in our culture that says, "I am going to over give." I'm going to not take care of myself. I'm going to over give it to you with the understanding that you wont take care of yourself and you'll over give to me and that somehow we'll both be better guessers and be able to figure out what the other person needs without ever having to ask and there is this sticky contract of we might even say codependency versus true interdependency and I hear you pointing towards a beautiful interdependency.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Absolutely and when I was ready to receive my beloved partner my prayer to the universe was I am now experiencing myself as a full cup of love and I want to find another cup of love to share overflow with. I no longer wish to attract a half empty cup that wants to be constantly filled.

Francesca Gentille: I'm breathing now into and what I want to hear more from you and innocent deep wisdom is what about the practices of self love so that we can be that full cup ourselves.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: I have to admit there are times in my life I have been the empty cup. We have all been the empty cup and we all will continue but we can identify. We can say I'm feeling kind of half empty right now. Let me engage in some self love practices and I'll call you back.

Francesca Gentille: And then also how can we contribute lovingly to another person, to remind them, to support them, to become the full cup again without making them wrong and without depleting our self and I want to get more of that after a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors and we invite you to support our sponsors because they help shows like this continue to be in the world and we'll be back.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome to Sex, Tanta and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of Sex with Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy. SARK who is the author of succulent wild women, eating mangoes naked and several other delicious book committed to joy and self love and teaching us that path.
SARK that journey that we're on, let's go to porn pathway. I am noticing that I am the half empty cup. Something has happened now I'm very depleted there's a tendency to say to the world around or to my partner fill me up. What are my practices to come back into my own fullness?

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Great. Well first is awareness which as we know is about 80%. So to be able to identify that you're feeling half empty and then having the partner that's also engaged to self love practice so that the partner can help you with that awareness so that they're not automatically trying to fill you to get something. They're going to help and they're going to assist you in recognition so you might say and you might sometime say " Gosh, I'm feeling depleted. I feel half empty. I'm not in the mood to do any of myself love practices. Can you just hold me?"

Doing self love practices doesn't mean you don't need someone or you don't lean on them or you don't ask them for anything. It means that you for the majority fill yourself from the inside. I wrote this book A Succulent Wild Woman, a succulent is a plant that literally gives itself its own nourishment. It saves water from the environment and then feeds water to itself when it needs it and so I think of people as succulents and how can we stay, how we can keep that succulent inside so that when we are half empty, we're aware of it and then we can start doing some of the practices.

So, let me share one of my favorite ones. Many of us get overwhelmed by negative thought patterns so repetitive negative thoughts or overwhelm sometimes people call it being crabby, kind of view that everything's wrong. Often some of us are subject to, in fact most of us are subject to what could be called inner critic attacks and that’s where the critic inside start saying you never could do anything right. All the voices that we all are familiar with.

So one of the ways I've established to work with that energy is that #1 be aware of it and #2 there is a physical practice I engage in and there is always different kinds of yoga and dance and other things like that. This is something with just me and a piece of paper, I invite people to do and it's called the mad pages and you literally write fast list of everything that’s upsetting or causing you to feel angry or frustrated. Sometimes I write at the top I feel angry, upset and worried about and then I put a colon and I do a fast list and sometimes its 6-8 pages and I do this from the tinniest thing up to the largest.

I just do it until there's nothing left in my mind to be upset about and the practice of doing that is really powerful, even though its for an instance or so it can, it separates those thoughts from your mind and puts them on the paper which makes them separate from you and it starts to develop new neural pathways in your brain. You don’t even the next time engage so quickly in the same kinds of thoughts. So really is a fairly simple but a deep way to start retraining your brain to be able to aware when you are thinking repetitive negative thoughts. You then fold up that list and address it, I usually address mine to the universe and I put my name in sense of do whatever you want but put the list out of your sight.

Now of course they'll stop and come back very deeply because they've been established over a long period of time and habit and that’s when I do this part 2 of this process which is wise voice gladly speaks.

So you take another paper and write Wise Voice Gladly Speaks and you read through your list of things that were upsetting you and you call upon the wise self. Some people might call them inner being. Some people call it source energy. Some people call it the universal spirit. It doesn't matter whatever you call it but just the part of you that’s wise and nurturing and supportive, we all have one and if you're not aware that you have one. This is a good way to bring it out. So you go through the list and you just start answering each of the things that previously made you upset with that wise self and its really powerful what starts to happen in the beginning if you're not familiar with this you might feel kind of fake like you might be writing things that not necessarily feel true to you, very quickly you'll start experiencing that something's riding through you that's your wise self and you basically answer. You answer and comfort, remind and support through each of the items on the paper of things that have upset you and then you take that list that had previously upset you and you might say out loud this is no longer true and you rip it up and you recycle or burn it and then you keep the pages that say wise voices gladly speaks.

Part 3 of this self love practice is to keep daily what I call glad pages and these are all things to be grateful for glad about and appreciate and I do this everyday and it's really made a tremendous difference in my spirit, my attitude and my ability to be to really feel like a full cup much more often.

Francesca Gentille: Susan as I listen to this I can see this practice, this pathway to get the critics thought out, to get the worry thoughts out and to vacate the space for this inner wisdom to come through and then focusing them the appreciation. I mean for some of our listening audience they may have trouble in their life, sadness, grieving, loss, job loss and sometimes relationship problem. I could see doing mad page just about one's relationship because it feels like it's in a place.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Subject specific exactly.

Francesca Gentille: And then focusing on what the wisdom self has to say and what in the sense of gratitude has to say I could just see its like sunshine and rain and lovely manure to our relationship. It's going to grow something beautiful.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Yes and it also gives people an opportunity to work privately with their emotions so that when they are with their partner they don’t need to dump the same material onto their partner and basically say here help me fix this.

Francesca Gentille: And yet there is fixing so there's a point where after I've done my mad pages and my wise voice speaking, gladly speaks and the glad pages. Now if I bring in what I harvested my partner they're going to be able to take it in. It's really I've harvested that the fruit of this versus giving them the manure to begin with.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Exactly and you've done, you've taken responsibility and you've done your work which if both people in the relationship are doing their psychological work and their growth work, they will come together and like you say share the harvest of that work.

Francesca Gentille: So many people say that they want seen, felt and heard. They want their partner to get them and I think that their partner needs to get them this dumping and I love that you've given them another alternative to still be seen, felt and heard in a way that honors both people and when we come back from a break and a word from our sponsor what I want to talk more about, when our partner is that person that's had a death, a job loss, an illness so now they're the barebelly cup that's half empty, how do we fill them without depleting ourselves? When we come back from a break and a word from our fabulous sponsor.

Welcome back to Sex, Tanta and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex. Talking with the amazing Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy also known as SARK, author of many books of deliciousness including juicy pens and thirsty paper and also living juicy and is committed to joy and self love for all of us.

We were talking about, what do we do, let's say we do have a delicious practice of self love our self and we're feeling pretty full but now someone we care about, a dear friend, a family member or a loved one has experienced an illness, a death, a job loss. Something where they are now the half empty cup or below half. What? How can we support them without over giving well honoring that they're truly depleted?

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Exactly. Well, I just finished my 16th book which is called Glad for the Grief and its transforming grief and loss into gift and opportunity. So we can be one of the change agents. First of all we're all going to be moving in and out of loss all of our lives and that’s why I wrote this because again self love is the foundation. So, like you just said, when you're feeling full how do you stay centered? How do you help someone else without over giving? And I think that’s the deepest work we can do actually and it's very easy to get knocked off balance or drawn in especially if its something dramatic like someone loosing their home, someone loosing their job, someone very ill, it’s a time of crisis.

So one of the best gifts we can bring to a time of crisis is our own full self because when we over give, we are not self loving and that is not contributing even if it feels like we are contributing "Oh, I'm really helping the person now, I'm listening to them and they're really upset and I'm feeling worst and worst but its okay. You see it's not okay. If you're listening to look you start to feel depleted it really is completely appropriate to take a break, to tell the person I really want to be present to what you're saying, I can hear how upset you are, I need to schedule, I would love to schedule another time with you. Let me come tomorrow morning and have coffee. There is the self care continues regardless of what has occurred to ourselves or to someone else.

Francesca Gentille: And even if we're living with them?

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Especially if we're living with them.

Francesca Gentille: I adore you and I so want to be able to take this in and right now I'm full. I've just reached a capacity where I'm literally not being able to take that in which isn't against you and I'd sure do that if I can't take that in so maybe a little bit tomorrow.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: A primary disservice if we listen without being present because first of all the person in their inner being knows and it's energetically felt and second of all we're depleting ourselves which means that we are then off balance. So now you have 2 people off balance.

Francesca Gentille: I really just experienced this myself. My mother died last year and I was pryingly the most empty cup and my beloved and I started a relationship and his first tendency was just to give everything to me but then he couldn't hold a center while I was spinning and eventually he said," I need to take some time sweetheart. I need to go and do that things that sooth me or fill me and it's not against you and it's so that I can in fact be here for you."

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: And I first responded in anger I just want to say that. You weren't always being blessed.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: No I mean it's true. Listen if we're talking about all these things it's in real life time. So I'm not a full cup all the time and I'm half empty and get crabby and call out for help and say fill me, fill me and then I have a partner who says " let's talk about that. What's going on right now?" Who doesn't automatically fill because she's learning and practicing that herself? So everybody's learning and practicing. There's nobody who has achieved total self love or else how my wonderful teachers say to me. They just look at me, smile and say, " Not booed or yet?"

Francesca Gentille: So here we are. We're noticing if its our partner that’s depleted and if we're feeling more full but notice that unable to notice our own limits then we reflect those limits out, this is just not against you this is in fact so that I can be in fact more fully for you later and a little bit and with more sincerity, with more presence and then what can I? Is there a question I can ask my beloved is there? A suggestion I can gently offer that helps guide them back into themselves without feeling like I'm pushing them back into themselves.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Yes, I want to speak to that. But first I also want to say that sometimes when we've established boundaries and we don’t want to over give and I'll speak about myself. I initially when I started doing this work I started just making giant walls. Basically it wasn't a boundary it was a wall. It was like you're overwhelming right now I can't listen to you wall and that is very unsaddled and scary especially to someone very close to you and so I've learned to say whatever I can offer instead of what I can't.

Francesca Gentille: Oh,[xx] or something so I say?

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: So here's your partner really upset. I just need to talk to you I really need to talk to you right now and now you're telling me you don’t have time and that's all they hear. They hear the wall that you don’t have time. You could then say, "I have fifteen minutes right now and I want to listen completely and fully to you for fifteen minutes and then I want to schedule time tomorrow afternoon where I actually have several hours. How does that sound?" And the person will usually say, "Okay, okay just listen to me for 15 minutes. It doesn't seem like enough though." And then they'll start talking and it really is remarkable how long 15 minutes can really be and how much someone's complete presence really affects the communication.

Francesca Gentille: And what I hear you saying that I want to point out to our listening audience is that this 15 minutes of presence is a very different way of communicating then a normal conversation. If you and I are girlfriends you say you're having a bad day and I say yesterday was a bad day for me and then you say your car is having problems and I say I know a great mechanic let me give you his number. So I'm listening for how do I have something in common with you and how can I help you fix you or change you and that's very different from what you're pointing to which is you say when the car is broken and I just breathe, I just take it in and listen from my heart. That's your day. It’s a rough day for you and the car broke down and unless you make a specific request you have a mechanic or how do I feel when you say that. I'm just there to take it in and that's the kind of listening you're pointing to.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: I offer this phase to help to think of it this way. I call it compassionate witnessing. So you're witnessing someone with compassion and there's plenty of time for problem solving or solutions and like you said if the person specifically asks it. The compassionate of witnessing is something we all resonate to and desire even if we don't know it where someone can just listen and be there for your experience because when we can be there for our own experience we can begin to transform and change it. If we can't be there, we can't transform or change it.

Francesca Gentille: I'm going to breathe that in because even as you said there's something that opens up in me. I agree that there is a longing to be received in once presence as witnessing has brought something. Sometimes it disappears right then. We might have the charge or be upset around it.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Yeah. Let me give another example. With my partner recently we both realized, we both went through some difficult things at the same time. That’s another one, simultaneous difficult things. So we were both having difficult experiences and we both wanted to share those experiences but we were almost engaging in what could be called story topping. Oh you car broke, my car blew up. Your bill for electricity was this well mine was this and it was almost competitive and we realized it quickly and luckily and I just said to her, "Gosh do you feel like anyone's home right now? Is anyone there? And I don’t mean home physically. Is anyone energetically or spiritually present right now? And we're both trying so hard to be witnessed at the same time that nobody was being heard and I think that happens often with couples. It may not be as dramatic as I've described but one person is distracted and yeah so you got your car bill and it was really high oh, that's a drag. We're not really present and we're not really listening and we might spend an hour in the company of our partner when if we spent 15 minutes compassionately witnessing we would feel much close and intimate to our partner at the end.

Francesca Gentille: That is gorgeous and Susan I could listen to this for hours. Your wisdom is so succulent, so juicy I recommend to all our listeners that they get your books, listen to your podcast, work with you if they are in an area if you offer something and how would they find you and find out about your events, find your books how would they do that?

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: Well they just go to planetsark.com and I did launch just a couple of weeks ago response to this own unique subject. I launched my unique blend of therapy, coaching and mentoring and I've named it Couching. So I'm doing couching on the phone all over the world right now and absolutely delighted to offer that service so you could, that could be found on planetsark.com and I do want to mention that I do have an inspiration phone line which is completely free. I've had it for 15 years and the number is 415 546 3742 once again 415 546 3742 and about 15,000 people call from all over the world. I sing, I read a poem and I talk its about 5 minutes and I change it about every month and I really recommend that to everyone as well.

Francesca Gentille: Beautiful. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy: I loved it. It's so succulent.

Francesca Gentille: And for you our listening audience I just want to say how much we appreciate you, how much I appreciate you. If you want to learn more about SARK see her beautiful picture, connect to her website, read her bio and read about me and my picture and my bio and get your transcripts about the show and find out about my work you can do that at www.personallifemedia.com and I want to thank you all for being on this journey with us.

Sex, Tanta and Kama Sutra, bringing you the soul of sex.