Episode 95 - SEX WITHOUT SHAME with Veronica Monet
SEX WITHOUT SHAME with Veronica Monet, author of "Sex Secrets of Escorts - Tips from a Pro." She has extensive media credits including CNN, CNBC, A&E, ABC’s 20/20, FOX, Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect. Certified Sexologist & Relationship Expert.
In this episode, Veronica intimately shares with us sensual secrets from breastfeeding, to 3 days of erotic bliss. Uncover how your dog may know more about tantra than you do. Release the negative paradigm of our sex objectifying and touch deprived culture. Discover how to have sex without shame by reconnecting with your natural erotic core.
Transcript
Transcript
Francesca Gentille: Welcome to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex. I’m your host Francesca Gentille, and with me today is Veronica Monet. Veronica, amazing woman that she is, is a certified sexologist, relationship expert, who declares that you can change the channel on your life. She has extensive media credits, including CNN, CNBC, ABC’s 20/20. She offers workshops, presentations and professional advice on sex and anger management, and is the author of a wonderful book, Sex Secrets of Escorts: Tips From A Pro. Welcome Veronica.
Veronica Monet: Hey Francesca. Thank you so much for having me on your lovely show.
Francesca Gentille: You know, I’m excited and delighted because you are a vibrant woman who has just, maybe not done it all, but done quite a bit that some of us don’t always do and has been researching and reading and really gaining a perspective on how we human beings can limit our love life and sex lives in ways that, you know, kind of hurt us and opportunities to open it and even other species, other histories on how we do that. Go ahead. I felt like you might want to say something about your fabulous life and some of the discoveries that you have had about…
Veronica Monet: Actually I kind of get, I kind of get tired talking about my fabulous life, but…
Francesca Gentille: And our opportunities to open ourselves up. You’re, the different things that you’ve found in your readings and research and how you counsel and coach people on how we constrict ourselves and opportunities to open ourselves up and create more harmony in the world, what, how have you found that and what have you found about that?
Veronica Monet: Well, you know, I’ve got a website called sexwithoutshame.com and it’s interesting to me, even to put that website up, how much sexual shame I had to indulge in, you know, ‘cause I found that people who are suffering from sexual shame wouldn’t want to see any sensual photos, you know. And when I say sensual, I’m just talking about the kind of photos that you might…well actually things that are more tame than what you’d see if you’re standing in line at the grocery store….
Francesca Gentille: Really?
Veronica Monet: This is one of the things that I have noticed about our current culture, at least here in the United States. I don’t think this is necessarily the way it is worldwide, at least I hope not. But, and in fact I know it’s not completely this way because I was checked into a San Francisco hotel and there was a version of, oh I think it might have been Vogue magazine – it was one of those fashion magazines, so I hate to exactly which one because now the title of it fails me. But it was a women’s fashion magazine, but it was published in Italy. And it was fascinating to me because there was a picture of this beautiful woman with natural breasts who was feeding her baby on the cover of the magazine.
Francesca Gentille: So you actually saw her breasts and the baby? Oh I love that. I love that.
Veronica Monet: And I thought, my god, this is such an example of I can pick up any copy of Cosmo and I’m going to see breasts just hanging out all over the place. I wouldn’t see any more or any less breasts than what was shown in this photo, ‘cause they didn’t show the nipple; the babies head was obscuring the nipple obviously ‘cause it was feeding. So it’s not about the amount of flesh that’s exposed; I find that people are allergic in the United States to the idea that we’re not having what I consider a violent relationship with sex, that we’ve gotten so acculturated to this idea that sex sells. But I don’t even think it’s sex. As a former sex worker I don’t recognize this stuff as sex. I’m like, “I would never have, you know, been promoting or providing anything that looked like that”. Because most…
Francesca Gentille: Like what?
Veronica Monet: Well like let’s take a beer commercial for instance. You know, a bunch of scantily clad girls who don’t seem to have a brain in their head, and they guy has an attitude like he’s tricking them into taking their clothes off or tricking them into bending over so that he can see them, you know. Just that atmosphere, which is very adolescent and not at all connected to the heart. Not at all connected to the heart. When you see a mother nursing her baby, that embraces so much about life. It’s healing, it’s holistic, it’s healthy…
Francesca Gentille: And, you know, I want to slow that down and breathe that in, ‘cause I think that’s really, really important, is that this idea that you bring up with the breastfeeding mother and being able to see that it’s beautiful, it’s sensual and it has, it’s connected to heart, that… I want to invite us to take that in that this is missing in our culture, that when I had a baby boy and I would want to breastfeed him even under a scarf, sometimes I’d be asked to leave, that there was something so upsetting somehow that I might be breastfeeding even if my child and my breasts were hidden under a scarf, and there’s something really wrong and wounded about a culture that doesn’t accept this kind of beautiful heart spirit connection with the senses.
Veronica Monet: And that is precisely what I’m talking about Francesca is the idea that we’re okay with nudity as long as it’s in a violent context – and I’m using violence in a broad context, meaning it has disengaged us from our spirit and our emotions, and so that it has a predatory sensation to it or an exploitative sensation or an objectifying sensation, that as long as we are not engaging our hearts and our souls then we’re okay with it. We will show it, you know, all over the magazines, you know, at Safe Way or, you know, whatever grocery store you may have in whatever state you’re listening to, you’re going to look over there and see, you know, people wearing nothing but little pieces of dental floss, you can see almost their entire, you know, buttocks. You’re going to see their breasts hanging out to the point where the only thing you can’t see is the nipple, and all of this is really quite acceptable culturally as long as it does not evoke anything remotely looking like love.
Francesca Gentille: That’s so true how overly dominating this kind of, like you said… I think of it also as primal in the worst way, not primal in a good way. Sometimes we will put down our animal, our animal relatives so to speak when we might want to be learning from them – and I think we’ll go more into that in a moment – but primal in that, you know, reptilian brain at the back, you know, the brainstem at the back of our head, which they say is the fight/flight/fuck part of our brain. It’s the part that’s disconnected, it’s not even mammalian, because the mammalian part of our brains is our, in our limbic system, has mirror neurons, we literally feel with one another when we are in our mammalian part of our brains. We almost think of it as a deep empathy and intuition in the mammalian or mammal, the animal part of our brain. So when we’re in this, what we might say is very objective or disconnected way of dealing with one another’s bodies and genitals, you know, we haven’t even evolved to mammal.
Veronica Monet: I think that’s an incredibly astute observation, I really do. And hopefully this will be a wakeup call to all of us that, you know, we don’t want to act like prehistoric dinosaurs here. You know, we want to try to at least live up to what our family pets can produce in the way of empathy and connection, and I think this is one of the reasons that people need, you know, dogs and cats so desperately because they’re not connected to their physical beings. And we’re not connected to each other. I mean we’ve gotten to the point here in America where we are not allowed to hug, we’re not allowed to kiss, it’s so many things. If you’re a teacher and, you know, one of your students falls down and has got a blood broken knee, all you can do is point them in the direction of the nurse, and the nurse can’t dispense a hug either. And yet, we know that hugs are absolutely positively required for our health as human beings, and most everybody in this country is touch deprived. You know, it’s become so taboo and for good reason – I totally understand why our pendulum swung in that direction, you know. I’m an incest survivor and a rape survivor and a trained volunteer for a center against rape and domestic violence, and I was, you know, politically active on behalf of all of that stuff in the early 80’s, so I really get how important it is to have boundaries around anything that might look like sexual perpetration. And – ‘cause I live in a world that’s about ‘ands’, not ‘but’ – and we have definitely gone to the point where it’s like we’re all walking around in little bubbles here, you know, and we’re not getting the tactile sensual connection that as mammals we’ll need or we’ll die. You know, they did experiments on the monkeys, if they were given too surrogate mothers, one mother was nothing but a wire cage with a nipple and had the food, and the other mother had absolutely no food but she had fur, and the baby monkey will always pick the fur over the food.
Francesca Gentille: You know, that is profound, that is profound. And in that same study with the wire mesh figure that had the bottle, that was, the baby had nothing to hug, nothing that was going to get them any tactile sensations, when these little baby monkeys grew up and they were put back into the wild they were actually beat up and bit and aggressed against the other monkeys and actually eventually died. And the ones that had a wire mesh form that was covered with the fur, they weren’t hugged but they at least had some tactile sensation when they went to get their bottle. They were a little antisocial but they could – when they were put back into the wild – but they could still start to communicate and relate. They were in a sense underdeveloped in their capacity to relate to other human beings. And we have a culture of people that in a way were raised with wire mesh monkeys. I absolutely agree.
Veronica Monet: Yeah, yeah. It’s, and, you know, so, and I want to help people to start realizing that they’re not actually being exposed to a lot of sexual imagery. That’s the myth. The myth is that we’re being exposed to a lot of sexual imagery, and almost everybody knows that it feels wrong. It feels violent and assaultive and insulting. And so, you know, we’re like, “I don’t like that.” But, you know, the problem is that we’ve been told this is what sex looks like, and it’s not what sex looks like.
Francesca Gentille: I want to talk more about that, like what sex does look like and how we can feel integrated heart, body, mind, spirit and erotic nature. Because, you know, Veronica and I here absolutely celebrate our erotic nature, loving sensual sexual engagements. So we’re going to come back and talk more about what does that look like and how do we find it and how do we shift our culture, at least shift the culture in our own mind, when we come back from a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors, who we invite you to support because that helps shows like this keep coming to you. And we’ll be right back.
Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex, with the delightful Veronica Monet, author of Sex Secrets Of Escorts: Tips From A Pro, certified sexologist and relationship expert. And we’re talking about what sex really isn’t, that the kind of visuals we see all the time is not sex; it arouses us but it doesn’t connect us to our heart, body, mind or spirit. But what is sex? What, how do we find it? How do we find sexual images?
Veronica Monet: You know, I think that the stuff that we are most frightened about, like that mother nursing her baby, is a window into the sensual, which has love in it. Now I certainly would not say that a mother nursing her baby is sex; it’s not. However, it does have a sexual component to it, and it’s that thing, the part that creates connection and spirituality and life and passion, which would create in us a feeling of being more alive. So if the image makes you feel shut down or ashamed or, you know, small, then I would say it’s probably a violent image. And it doesn’t have to be doing anything; it can just be violence towards your sensibilities as a valuable human being, ‘cause a lot of the nude images that we have thrown at us today are really designed to tell us that we’re less than and try to get us to buy something, you know; “You don’t measure up. You don’t fit in. You would never be able to have sex with a woman this beautiful.” Whatever the message is, it’s always about how inadequate we are and how, you know, if we spend some money we will be happier.
Francesca Gentille: And it was actually, it was actually, I think it was Freud’s nephew that actually designed modern marketing, and he designed it on our complexes. He actually looked at that, like what you’re saying; how are we not enough or afraid that we’re not enough, and then how can our marketing companies actually market to our inadequacies and convince us that we’ll be adequate if we get something else. Great point!
Veronica Monet: I’ll tell you the marketing people, you know, I myself have a background in marketing, so I, you know, I’m not saying all marketing is evil. But there is definitely an evil streak through it, you know, when you are studying ways to market to six month old babies, which they do.
Francesca Gentille: And I also want to slow down that once again, that sensual life force love is that kind of rape and that abuse that happens between human beings happens when we’re disconnected from our hearts, when we’re disconnected from this communion that we feel with others, because I would never hurt someone that way if I, if my heart was open and I felt connected. And the life force, that sexual force, starts in the womb. Little, I had a son and little baby boys, when he was in my womb he would get a little erection because that, it’s just part of a life force moving through the body. And little vulvas lubricate when they’re still in their mothers womb; it’s just the life force. And when we’re connected in the heart….
Veronica Monet: Absolutely.
Francesca Gentille: to one another we celebrate that. It’s not, I don’t own someone else’s arousal.
Veronica Monet: No, and that’s really the key here is connecting to the life force and realizing that life is really one big long tantric experience. You know, I had a female dog who has since passed on, but she was not fixed. And every time she went into heat she would have sex with my male who was fixed. So we never had puppies, but I got to watch their sexuality blossom in it’s own natural way with no interference from me because, you know, I wasn’t trying to make puppies here, it had nothing to do with me and it’s just something they did. And it was amazing to see the affect that it had on my older dog first of all. He had already started to become crippled by arthritis, and as soon as he discovered sex he developed a zest for life that I’ve never seen him having when he was a puppy. And he would get up in the morning when she was in heat and be so excited about being alive that he would literally scream for joy…
Francesca Gentille: And he was fixed. I mean it wasn’t that he was going to fire any…
Veronica Monet: No.
Francesca Gentille: any puppies. It was the joy of that connection.
Veronica Monet: And it was also amazing how tantric it was because, you know, we have this impression that animal sex is just about procreation and copulation, and nothing could be further from the truth. You know, here I am, somebody who teaches sex coaching workshops for adult human beings and I’ve seen how difficult it is to get human beings to breathe and to break free of all of these barriers to their own passion and their own joy. And then to see how easy it was for the dog to just, you know, know that he’s supposed to breathe and to know that we’re looking at probably a good six hours of foreplay before you ever get to intercourse, really was mind boggling for me. I actually have never seen humans engage in that much extended tantra and foreplay in my life.
Francesca Gentille: And by tantra, we’re meaning that the breathing (unintelligible, overlapping)….
Veronica Monet: Contraction of the PC muscles and breathing.
Francesca Gentille: Mm.
Veronica Monet: And lots of foreplay. I was just like, “Nobody told me about this.” I thought… So really as human beings we have this so called advanced sexual techniques that we’re trying to learn, which are really just about us getting back to our roots as creatures on this planet that, you know, that, our connection to this planet, our connection to ourselves, our connection to each other. So it’s not so much that we’re reaching for the stars; it’s we’re trying to reach for our own hearts.
Francesca Gentille: And our own loving primal in a positive way, that mammals, you know, mammals spend so much of their time touching one another and engaging, and I want to talk more about that and continue to nourish our listening audience and support them, the fine pathways to, you know, treat each other as their favorite pet, when we come back from a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors.
Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra, with Veronica Monet. And we’re talking about this easy way, this very primal natural way that we could start to be in tantra with one another. And it sounds easy, but we’ve been inculturated to not touch and to be so confused about our own instincts and to worry how, what are some ways, practices that we could do to shift that, Veronica?
Veronica Monet: You know, I think one of the first things that I like to teach people is to get away from performance and move towards pleasure. So, you know, so many women are worried about, “Do I look fat?”, and you know, “Should I get surgery?” or “Should I have my body this way?” or “Am I going down deep enough on him”, or you know, “What’s my face look like when I have an orgasm?”, and all this stuff is performance oriented. And then men are worried about whether or not they have a hard enough erection or if they’re, you know, keeping it up long enough, and it’s just, it makes my heart ache when I see how much insecurity is out there and how much people are worried about how they perform sexually. And I’d rather people think about this as a vacation from performing. This is a part of your life where you just get to be. And, you know, instead of having a goal and being, you know, oriented towards an objective, to think about just living in the process of being sensual and focusing on, “Does this feel good? Does this not feel good?”, you know. Some days we’re looking for a quickie and some days we want something that’s going to last for several days and, you know, even knowing that a sexual experience could last for several days. And that doesn’t mean that you have to stay in bed for three days. But what it does mean is that you’ve like opened up your chakras and opened up your energy points so that you are having an incredibly slow build to a sexual experience and that you’re not in any rush and you don’t have to accomplish anything.
Francesca Gentille: That’s, lets, you know, slow that down a little bit too – I love that three days. I vote for three days. And that everything becomes essential connective experience; the way we cook with one another and caress if we’re passing each other by or what we’re wearing in the kitchen or not wearing, maybe we’re just wearing an apron. And that there’s that sense of being connected and almost teasing and breathing each other in and, whether we’re having intercourse or sitting here watching TV, we’re in the preciousness of that moment and feeling that my hip is against my lovers hip and almost feeling that tingle right there. And that’s what I hear what you’re talking about when you say it can be three days of a sexual tantric experience. Is that close?
Veronica Monet: Yes, yes. And then of course also just, you know, following the tantric suggestion of not actually culminating in sexual intercourse until, you know, some extended engagement with each other so that if you are like aligning your heart chakras and breathing each other breath and gazing into each others eyes, time stands still, and you’re not necessarily worried about “What are we going to do?”, because you are in this place where you’re just being. And you can almost become one person. And if it, you know, eventually leads to sexual intercourse that’s fine, but it’s actually such an ecstatic state that you don’t really care about intercourse, you don’t even care about orgasms.
Francesca Gentille: That sounds so beautiful. And I know for our listening audience, let me also add that sometimes we might want to give our partner or date, our wife or husband, a little warning and that warning could be, “Honey, tonight I’m turning off the phone. I’m unplugging the computer. I’ve gotten a babysitter”, if we have kids, “And when you come home be prepared to relax - nowhere to go, nothing to do – and that we’re just going to be in timeless bliss with one another.” So now I know that this is going to happen, or now my partner knows that this is going to happen; otherwise if I start slowing them down, they might feel like, “Well why are you slowing me down?”, versus, “I’m slowing this down so we can be in extended pleasure with one another.”
Veronica Monet: Absolutely, yeah. It’s unnerving when you aren’t used to being that connected to your partner. It can be unnerving, and you know, like, “Why? What are you going to do?” You know, we’re so used to doing things, and I want to encourage people to stop being human doings and start being human beings, you know. And one of the things that really helps with this is just meditation. You know, it doesn’t have to be a tantric meditation, but if you practice meditation at all think about actually doing meditation and even prayer. But you can do meditation from whatever spiritual pursuits you have in conjunction with your sex life so that you’re bringing those things together and letting them, you know, please excuse the pun, but basically cross fertilize each other, so that your spirituality is connected to your sensuality, and your sensuality is connected to your spirituality. And if you think of it as this beautiful continuum instead of like, “Okay, well over here’s where I do sex and over there’s where I go to church”, you know, if you start seeing that these two aspects of your life are really able to inform each other and certainly tying your spirituality and your meditation and your prayer to your sexuality is one way to open your sexuality to something far more profound, far more loving and far more connected.
Francesca Gentille: Veronica, what a blessing you are to our listening audience, to your clients and always. And how would people reach you and find you and get your resources and your book? How would they do that?
Veronica Monet: Well I’d invite them to come over to the website right now; it’s called sexwithoutshame.com. Sexwithoutshame.com. And, you know, obviously you can read there about all of the workshops and individual sessions that I offer, but the most important thing is to go up to the right hand corner, click on newsletter and subscribe to my newsletter. I’m getting ready to send a newsletter out this, today as a matter of fact. And I only send it out once a month, but it contains in it television shows and radio broadcasts and links to YouTube where you can watch videos where I talk about various different tips for couples. And I’ve got a podcast, and there’s, you know, MySpace and Face Book and Twitter, and just so many different ways to interact with me, and I also have an office in Nevada City California, which is Northern California, where I meet with clients face to face. And then I work with people over the telephone from Miami to Seattle, so… But if you sign up for that newsletter it’ll all be there, and then you can figure out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. And the newsletters an interactive thing so an opportunity for you to participate in a lot of the contests that we’ve got going right now, we’ve got the 101 day sex channel.
Francesca Gentille: There sounds like so many things that I just want to welcome and encourage our listening audience to get over there. I want to thank you – welcome you, thank you, for bringing this to us. And also needing to complete for today and saying to our listening audience, if you want to find out more about Veronica, see her beautiful picture, get to her website, her resources, find out more about me, see my beautiful picture, get to my website, you can do that at www.personallifemedia.com. That’s www.personallifemedia.com, Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex.