Episode 32 - SEXOLOGICAL BODYWORK & SEXUAL CONFIDENCE with Danielle Harel, PHD and Celeste Hirschman, MA

Transcript

Francesca Gentille: Welcome to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex. Today I am so honored to have with me Celeste Hirschman and Danielle Harel. These are two amazing women teachers, instructors who are sex and intimacy coaches. Celeste has an M.A in Human Sexuality and Danielle has a Phd, a Doctorate of Human Sexuality and an M.A in Clinical Social Work. So these are the educated women I’ve enjoyed talking with them in the past and I know you’ll enjoy what they have to say.

Celeste Hirschman: Sexological bodywork is a form of adult sexuality education that basically brings people into a state of erotic trance where a tremendous amount of transformation and healing can happen.

Young children or babies were totally connected with our bodies and we are asking for what we need in different ways, crying, murmuring, talking trying to get our bodily needs met. So over time people tell us, “No you can’t have that. No you need to wait to do that. No it’s not OK for you to touch yourself there” and we begin to distance from this bodily response and this bodily needs. Shame comes in when we feel like we’ve done something wrong to ask for those things or to touch ourselves in those ways.

Danielle Harel: So many people use different kinds of ways to go out of their bodies and erotic trantra offers them an opportunity to get inside of your body and experience an amazing—experience yourself fully from your body. Through full connection of your body with erotic touch and breath, you can really experience mind blowing experiences.

Francesca Gentille: Male or female I think we’re really drawn to vitally of confidence. It’s just very, very, very sexy and for a man, how does this kind of breath work build his confidence? Does it literally as we say in the Chakra world, putting energy into his will center, his third Chakra in the belly. How does that actually build confidence for him or does it help him prolong his erections without orgasming so that he feels more confident about himself as a lover? How does it build that confidence?

Francesca Gentille: Now Celeste and Danielle are just multi facetted women who have so much information and they’re currently instructors at the Institute for the Advanced Studies of Human Sexuality. One of their main focus these days is sexological bodywork. Ladies what is sexological bodywork?

Celeste Hirschman: Sexological bodywork is a form of adult sexuality education that basically brings people into a state of erotic trance where a tremendous amount of transformation and healing can happen. We’re brought up with so much shame in this culture around sexuality and this is something that works directly with the body to release shame, and to create new ways of experiencing joy, enjoyment, pleasure, arousal, excitement in the body. It’s a certificate in California and so bodyworkers come from all over the country and all over the world and all over the state to learn how to do this and also sex educators of old times.

Francesca Gentille: Do you have to be a sex educator or a bodyworker? If someone said, “I just want to go through this program because of the transformation that’s going to bring me” or “I want to learn more about this for myself” can they do that as well? Or do they want to go to a sexological bodywork?

Danielle Harel: It depends what their goals are. You experience amazing amount of transformation in two weeks. It’s an eight week program, six weeks of it is home study and two weeks is intensive. The institute just started sexuality in San Francisco and people have amazing transformations.

Celeste Hirschman: In answer to your question, yes you need to have some background in bodywork or some interest or background in sexuality education. You call us and we’ll do an interview to get into the class and we would be able to decide whether or not it would be a good fit. It is a professional training. Some people come there because they want to have personal transformation and a lot of people do because they want actually it to actually be part of their professional life.

Francesca Gentille: Couple of things that sounded really fascinating. One was releasing shame and in your experience what would you say are some of the top flavors or concepts of shame that most people in the west get acculturated with?

Celeste Hirschman: You are asking about the main ways that people become shameful in this culture?

Francesca Gentille: Yeah what are the messaging like, “Don’t touch yourself. You’ll go blind if you masturbate.” When we’re talking about shame, our listeners would love to hear what is that? What are the concepts? What are the things that people are most likely to hear in this culture that bring them shame? May hear it either from parents or peers or media messaging.

Celeste Hirschman: Shame is basically the interruption of joy or enjoyment. When we start out as young children or babies we’re totally connected with our bodies and we are asking for what we need in different ways, crying, murmuring, talking trying to get our bodily needs met. So over time people tell us, “No you can’t have that. No you need to wait to do that. No it’s not OK for you to touch yourself there” and we begin to distance from this bodily response and this bodily needs. Shame comes in when we feel like we’ve done something wrong to ask for those things or to touch ourselves in those ways.

We are getting that messaging all of the time. What happens is we get more and more distanced from our own sense of erotic embodiment which is our sense of ourselves of embodied, passionate, aroused, excited human beings and as that distance happens, we have less and less potential firstly to hear our bodies’ messages about what it needs. Secondly to really live our lives from this amazingly embodied enjoyable place.

Sexological bodywork and all the sex and intimacy coaching that we do is inviting people back to that place where they’re really connected with their life force, their motivation, their purpose, and the messages that their body has to give them.

Francesca Gentille: That sounds so beautiful and it reminds me that some of us may feel this when—I think one of my first lover asked me, “Well what do you want?” A very sweet lover, “What do you want? What pleasure can I give you?” I felt just like a deer in the headlights. I was frozen and I had no idea what pleased me. I was frightened. Frightened to even ask so that’s that place of shame I’m guessing that we’re talking about.

When we are saying that erotic embodiment, that what you’re talking about is that freedom that if somebody were to say, “What do you want right now?” That we can easily look inside our own body and say, “Oh I want to be tickled or I want to be caressed or just held or breathe with or would you like me like this? Or touch me like that or fuck me like that” We just feel connected in joyous asking so that’s what where we want to get to right?

Danielle Harel: I love how you describe it Francesca, it’s so beautiful and pictorial. Unfortunately many women and men in our culture don’t have this freedom of asking themselves, “What do I want now? What feels good?” We are looking into opening them into this possibility of feeling amazing about their body, feeling relaxed and so full [xx] of fluid and open with their sexuality and their bodies because we are sexual human beings from the minute we were born to the minute we die. It’s a shame that so many people in our culture just go without being connected without their sexuality.

Celeste Hirschman: I think what shame does is actually is it causes us to compartmentalize our  sexuality and sort of put it away and those are the moments when we separate from it that it becomes shameful or uncomfortable or perverted. I hate that word but in some way we aren’t integrating and so if we really integrate our sensual selves and our pleasurable selves into our body then we aren’t at a distance. It’s like sex is just part of who we are and part of the way we live. It’s about sensuality, living our lives from an enjoyable sensual place.

Francesca Gentille: When I hear you speak, what opens up for me is it’s not just the erotic embodiment, some people can’t ask for a glass of water. They’ve been trained that it maybe shameful to even ask for anything.

Celeste Hirschman: Exactly. Just to listen to our bodies at all until we try to think through every problem and we end up in our brain and totally disconnected from our bodies. Unfortunately a disconnected brain tells us lies all the time whereas if we reconnect with our bodies we actually hear our bodies responses. “Oh there’s a tension response. There’s a relaxation response. I feel something in my heart. I feel something in my stomach. I want something. My pussy or my cock is telling me that I want something.” If we don’t listen to those responses, and we just try to make decisions from our brain. “It would be good for me if I do this or I’m not suppose to do this or I’m suppose to do this.” Then we are totally not paying attention to our own needs and desires.

Danielle Harel: I want to add to this because I hear many couples worrying about fighting and how do I tell my partner that I don’t like something about what they do to me. I’m not even talking about sexuality, I’m talking about ever other kind of disagreement and when you go to your body and you share your experience and [xx] talk from yourself and people don’t understand exactly, what does it mean to talking for myself? What is using the word “I”?

When you go to your body, you check in, you say, “I have this tension in my stomach when I hear you say this and this and I feel discomfort coming from this place.” Bring down the tension in the conversation because you speak and share from your experience and it’s a different place. You can’t argue with this experience and it invite your partner to come closer to you and feel what’s going on with you so it opens the possibility of compassion in relationship.

Francesca Gentille: Compassion and connection comes out of that. When I hear that, it comes out as if I’d say, “You know I’m just feeling sad right now when you said that you didn’t want to have sex with me. A part of my stomach felt tight and I’m felt sad.” Without blaming or shaming the other person that I’m having a feeling.

I often hear men talk about that they’re afraid to tell a woman that they’re attracted or they like her and that they feel rejected about that but it’s very different. I had someone recently tell me, “You’re so sexy and enjoyable and it’s just great to be around you.” And just like a little present, just like giving me the present of his experience without any, “Therefore you have to have sex with me” or “Therefore you have to be my girlfriend” or anything else has to happen. He was just giving me the gift of sharing something.

Celeste Hirschman: Yeah I think someone’s generosity can come out of that. Desire is so beautiful and people feel like they are not suppose to have desire but we always encourage people, have desire, feel how good it makes you feel good in your body. It doesn’t mean you have to try to get something from someone else necessarily. Just like see, “Oh my God when I see that person, I just feel this filling, joyful sensation in my body” and you can just enjoy that. It doesn’t even have to go any further and then if it’s reciprocal then it can go further. People put away their desire because they’re afraid, “Oh they’re going to think I want something from them” but just like you said, you can just give that gift to somebody like “You’re so beautiful” or “You inspire me” or something like that and it doesn’t have to be, “And I need this from you back.”

Francesca Gentille: I want to talk more about this after a word from our sponsors. I want to talk about the erotic trance and more about how the body tells us lies. So yummy! When we come back from a word from our sponsors and I just want to encourage our  listeners that if you love these shows to please connect with our sponsors who we pick out very, very beautifully and very carefully for you and who also give you the listeners great discounts and this help these shows survive. So we’ll be back after a few moments from a word from our fabulous sponsors.

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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex. Here today with Celeste and Danielle instructors at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Human Sexuality and also the lead instructors for the sexological bodywork program, sex and intimacy coaches and we were just talking about—we’ve covered a little bit about erotic trance and I wanted go get back to that and also how the mind can sometimes tell us lies. Let’s start with the mind telling us lies. One more example of what that can look like so that we catch ourselves when it happens and how we can switch into the body and then from there move into what erotic trance is and why we would want it. Can you give me an example of the mind telling us lies? How would I notice and how can I shift?

Celeste Hirschman: I think one of the biggest lies that our mind tries to tell us is, “I’m not suppose to feel this way.” A lot of times our mind would say, “No you are not suppose to react this way or you are not suppose to respond this way.” But the truth is we are feeling that way and we feel it in our bodies and we actually accept it and embrace what we are feeling instead of  trying to make it go away then we can relieve whatever is happening in our bodies. When we try to push it back down what happens is resentment builds, anger builds and then we get more and more disconnected from our own self but also from our partners because we are holding these feelings in our bodies instead of releasing them and sharing them with the other person.

So not listening to our minds when it says we are not suppose to be feel this way or we shouldn’t share these feelings or there is something shameful about them but actually saying to your partner, “I feel it in my stomach. I feel this tension in my stomach when you say you don’t want to make love to me” like the beautiful example that you gave. What if your partner just takes her hand and just places it on your stomach and just imagine what it feels like in that moment and then you’re sharing a compassionate, empathetic moment and that might be just as connecting if not more so than having made love and you can move on from there and relieve whatever pain is happening. If not you are just going to hold it and crunch down on it and our bodies get more and more tense and we get more and more disconnected.

Francesca Gentille: That’s very different than smearing our emotions all over people. I think many of us have concerns, if I don’t shut down my sadness, my anger, my fear, my resentment, instead I’m going to go, “I’m so mad at you Celeste and Danielle. You said you were going to take me on sexy date and you didn’t and I hate you.” I’m afraid there is nothing in between either smearing it all over you and shutting it down and you are giving us a third alternative. You’re saying just notice it, just breathe into it and just say it.

Celeste Hirschman: Just own it. Take responsibility for it, right? It’s not somebody else’s’ emotions, it’s yours so just say this is what’s going on for me right now. Not, “You did this” or “You’re awful” but this is what my response is so it’s taking responsibility.

Danielle Harel: I also want to add another clue that how our mind overtakes us instead of invites. This is an opportunity when you hear this chatter to go and check with your body what you really feel, is when you have this, “They are doing it to me” like blaming someone else for your feelings or for what’s happening in your body so when you start have this chatter in your head that says, “He did it. He made me angry. He made me pissed.” Just go to your body and check what hurts, what needs like, what needs attention and then when you go even to the person that you are completely angry at and just tell them, “Oh I feel really hurt” or “I feel clenched or pain” and not spill all your emotions. Just invite them in is an opportunity for connection.

Francesca Gentille: Very nice. Just whenever we noticed, “They made me” “They made me feel someway” is to just check and say what am I feeling? Not only what am I feeling in terms of angry, sad, scared but how is my body feeling. Is my back sore? Is my neck tight? Great, great stuff.

Erotic trance you mentioned that early on and I was so intrigued. What is an erotic trance and why would I want it?

Danielle Harel: For many people they use different kind of ways to go out of their body and erotic trance is an opportunity to get inside of your body and experience yourself fully from your body. Through full connection of your body with erotic touch and breath, you can really experience mind blowing experiences. Sometimes we have clients to come to us just doing breath work and breathing and opening and say, “Oh my gosh I never experienced something like this. It almost feels like being drugged without the drugs.”
So if you are taking different, amazing, mind blowing experiences, this can be one of them.

Celeste Hirschman: So you can start in a really, really basic way to do this by just putting your hand on your chest and starting to breath into your chest.  You want to bring the breath in like suck it in with your mouth and then let it drop out. The in breath is like pulling in and out breath is like [breathing] and start by breathing in your chest in that way and just connecting with the sensation and whatever is going on with this part of your body.

Then  you are going to bring the breath a little bit lower down into your stomach [breathing] then begin to really expand your stomach. You can even put your hand on your chest when you’re breathing into your chest and then put your hand on your stomach when you’re breathing into your stomach and let your stomach really open and relax and release with this kind of breath [breathing].

Finally you are going to get all the way down and you are going to put your hand on your pelvic floor, so on your genitals and connect with this part of your body and really begin breathing into it in that same way. As you breath bringing your breath a little bit faster and a little bit faster until you are [breathing] but you are inviting your breath to go all the way down into your body and relaxing your pelvic floor and relaxing every part of your body and letting yourself connect with it and then [breathing] you’re breathing like that.

In the end when you’re breathing like that and you can do it for 5 minutes, you can do it for half an hour. Your body will tell you if you need to stop or take break or relax but can really breath like that quite for sometime. The more you breath like that, the more you move into trance and then in the end you do this beautiful three big breaths into your nose and out through your mouth and then you crunch your whole body, you hold your breath and you squeeze every muscle in your body and then you just relax it and release it and then you can feel the sensation shooting up through your body or sometimes it’s like a spreading feeling.

You can do this with your clothes on, you can do it with your clothes off, you can do it while you’re masturbating and that brings you into this erotic trance and that’s part of what we teach in the sexological bodyworks session. We teach you how to become a facilitator of it and it’s also what you would experience if you came to a sexological bodyworker.

Francesca Gentille: This is tasty stuff. This is very much that altered state of sexuality and sexual expansion that people long for. They sense it’s out there and I want to talk more about that. Not so fast, I want to talk about this after a word from our fabulous sponsor and a brief break and also for people who want to connect with our delicious sponsors to type in the word “Tantra” when you’re working with our sponsors and that really supports this show. We’ll be back in just a couple of minutes.

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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex with Celeste and Danielle who can be found in www.celesteanddanielle.com. Professors of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Human Sexuality and we were just having this wonderful run through of the breath work of erotic trance. Is there a way that we can find out more about this or help one another, guide one another into this when we’re working with someone? Give us more.

Danielle Harel: We find breath and [xx] everything that people do. Men want to be confident and women are attracted to confident men and this kind of breath work really help men open and connect with confidence and you can download it from our website celesteanddanielle.com the breath work and practice it and open this connection and your power sensor in  your body to this experience.

Francesca Gentille: Male or female I think we’re really drawn to vitally of confidence. It’s just very, very, very sexy and for a man, how does this kind of breath work build his confidence?. Does it literally as we say in the Chakra world, putting  energy into his will center, his third Chakra in the belly. How does that actually build confidence for him or does it help him prolong his erections without orgasming so  he feels more confident about himself as a lover? How does it build that confidence?

Celeste Hirschman: For basically for men who are really in their bodies and in their sensual and sexual powers are much more confident and as you’re in touch with your body. So the breath work actually—we don’t really talk about Charkas but what it does is that it connects your whole body all the way from the cock up to your head and when you really feel centered in that power without spilling it out all over somebody else but you’re just holding it from that powerful confident place then women are really attracted to it.

So doing the breath work which we have on our website to boost your sexual confidence breath work gets them into their body. And then when they’re going out to meet women or to go on a first date or even to be with a partner or lover that they’ve been with for 20 years. If they’re coming from that place, they’re just going to be that much more attractive, and irresistible because they’re growing with their own erotic power and energy and they’re in touch with their bodies.

When you’re in touch with your body, you invite your partner to be in touch with their body. Two figure coming from that deep place down inside of yourself and you’re bringing them just by being there into that deep place inside of themselves.

Francesca Gentille: That’s a wonderful tip for our men. Women complain sometimes that men go into a needy place, a needy grabby place and that’s such a turn off. So this is the solution to the needy-grabbies, this is the place of empowered radiant confidence. Many of our younger or ageing women who are getting a sense of getting out of their body, losing their confidence, sometimes when we’ve had children we get out of touch with our bodies. This sounds like this would be great for our women too who are feeling disconnected from their own power center and their own bodies. To become that radiant light that just draws men to them as well.

Celeste Hirschman: Yeah one place that we are going to be working on that with the breath and a bunch of other techniques is that we are starting a women’s group for six weeks at the beginning of next year in February and we would love to invite women to come to that group and really learn about their own erotic, power, beauty, confidence and sexuality. And also how to be in relationship and intimate with men and what men want and they want and how to get what they want out of a relationship. So we work with women a lot out of that confidence as well.

Francesca Gentille: And then you have a course for men.

Celeste Hirschman: Yes.

Danielle Harel: The class for men, it’s called Become An Extraordinary Lover. We have three levels in this class and we teach men how to be this power out to meet women from this place and we teach them the eight qualities of extraordinary lover that help them really practice those qualities. We don’t only teach them and send them out in the world but really help them practice it and develop the skills in class. They also have an opportunity to work with women models and have some feedback on their touching and technique and we had women calling us afterwards that send their partners to the class and saying. “Thank you so much. He just touches me differently and he looks in my eyes differently and it was amazing experience. I’m so happy. I can’t believe it was only a one day class.”

It’s really transformational for men to take this class and amazing for women who sends their partners to this class because they really enjoy and reconnect at a different level afterwards.

Francesca Gentille: For people who for whatever reason is not able to come to class or work with you—hopefully they will because you are so wonderful and yummy—but if they can’t and there’s a lot of information on your website. What other resources would you suggest your website and what else for people to continue in developing this for themselves?

Celeste Hirschman: Even just the breath work that we’ve talked about so far in this podcast, doing that together with each other and breathing facing each other or lying down next to each other with your eyes closed. You can take turns and witness each other. It can be really beautiful. One person is breathing and other person is just touching their chest, and then touching their stomach and then touching their pelvis bringing them through the breath and just watching them and feeling their sensuality.

People can start working with each other. Couples can start working with each other now to just breath together and connect with their bodies and listen to their bodies and then report to each other. What’s going on in my body right now? Right now I’m feeling a tingling sensation in my stomach and it’s moving down my legs. Really getting into our own sexual selves together because usually we don’t talk very much about what’s happening in our body during sexual or sensual experiences so beginning to verbalize things and starting to each your partner about your body, that’s something people can do right away.

Francesca Gentille: You’re beautiful, divine, delicious sexological bodyworker professors goddesses that you are. This has just been so wonderful and I really want to encourage those who’ve listened to look you up. You can get a transcript of this show more information about you, your bios, pictures, etc. at www.personallifemedia.com and definitely support these beautiful ladies and this show and tell people about it. I wanted to thank both of you for joining us and giving us this beautiful doorway and pathway into that erotic embodiment to living that erotic life that we are meant to live. Thank you so much.

Celeste Hirschman & Danielle Harel: Thank you.

Francesca Gentille: Thank you our listeners for being with us on Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra bringing you the soul of sex.