Episode 80 - The 8-point Enlightened Guide to Sexual Healing (Part Two) with David Cates

Transcript

Announcer: This program is intended for mature audiences only. Expanded Lovemaking is sponsored by Audible classics, best sellers, business books. Download your free audio book from over 40,000 titles. Sign up for our risk-free trial at AudiblePodcast.com/special. Join today. Cancel any time in the first two weeks and keep your free book as your gift. You are going to love being an Audible listener.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Welcome to the Expanded Lovemaking show. I am your host, Dr. Patti Taylor of Expanded Lovemaking.com. I teach you how to make exquisite love.

This is Part Two of a two part series, so today we are continuing our discussion of the 8-point Enlightenment Guide to Sexual Healing. Sex is the creative life force energy, but at times it is true: stored memories open up. They are doorways to other experiences of reality, and they can be opened. Emotions of all kinds are stirred up. So, if you are going to be the one to help lead your partner through these experiences, how do you do so in a way that honors both yourself and your partner?

Here to continue our discussion is our guest, David Cates. I'm going to tell you a little bit about David Cates. We've discussed him already, so I'll just going to say briefly he mentors sexual healers and teachers after a long career of his own in private practice as a sexual healer. He has facilitated hundreds of workshops on sexual healing, tantra and personal growth. And he works with people in person and over the phone, in Hawaii and the Bay area of California.

Let's continue on with some of our conversation here in the 8-point Enlightenment Guide. There are just so many beautiful things about the guide that I really love. I want to talk about the healer for a moment. What are some of the requirements if you are doing the healing? What are some of the properties that you need to do in order to not get sucked in, too?

We had some examples where, to get sucked into the other person's problem - maybe, we can go this time to an example where, before we were working with a woman and we had touched into her vaginal G-spot.

Maybe, this time we'll work with the man for a little bit. You are giving him a prostate massage and, maybe - I don't know - you touched his prostate. And suddenly, some core issue came up for him. How do you as the giver of this experience hold your center while you are doing the giving? 

David Cates: That is an art, Patti. The biggest thing is to be able to be out of your own way, like not be concerned about your own feelings or thoughts so much. You are just witnessing and paying attention and really closely observing the person that you are working with. So, it's not about you; it's about them.

Dr. Patti Taylor: OK. Number four in your points is: don't get trapped in the story.

David Cates: Oh, yeah. When anyone is remembering any kind of sexual abuse situation, trauma, rape, even something that was uncomfortable that they never resolved or addressed before, often what will happen is that the person will begin to spin a story about it rather than simply being in the moment with the feelings and sensations that are occurring. The stories can get really horrendous, and it's really easy to get sucked into them and lose track of the potential for healing and transformation that exists in this and every moment.

Dr. Patti Taylor: So, what do you do to really stay, to help navigate and be the guide for that person?

David Cates: The first thing is again, everything comes back to the body. This is an event that happens in the body. It's the healing that happens in the body, and it’s the conversation that happens with the body. So, a lot of times what the person's mind is telling you is pretty far removed from the reality that is going on in their body. And it's not always very useful information.

Dr. Patti Young: What might you do physically to help them through? First of all, what might their bodies be doing, and what might you be doing to their bodies to shift things?

David Cates: Well, if you go back to the example of giving a prostate massage to a man, I find that the trigger point is usually the center not the prostate. In fact, if you can get in past the sphincter and start stimulating the prostate usually the resistance and the reluctance turns to pleasure and gets kind of overridden.

Dr. Patti Taylor: So, it's the center that tends to be the most latent, the center of the canal, right?

David Cates: Well, the whole, the rim, the sphincter muscle, the outside of the anus. For men, what works hard is to hold it together a lot, and this translates prostorally and physiologically into clenched anuses in most men.

There is a huge amount of shame in being open and know on some subconscious level that when they are penetrated in that way there is going to be a flood of sensations and emotions. And they're not going to be in control, and they're not going to be able to hold it together, and that's really frightening for most men in this culture.

Dr. Patti Taylor: That's interesting. What would be a good way to start working with that if you wanted to actually start exploring that?

David Cates: Well, I think that there needs to be some kind of desire on the man's part, at least, on a scale that would be at least to willingness and possibly to curiosity before I would begin to do any of this kind of exploration because a lot of men just are not ready.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Do you think it's something that would be to their advantage? You know, if it looks like a guy is going, "I would like my wife to shift somehow. I don't know how. I am kind of blind to my blind areas, sort of by definition. I know, I think I'll try some anal massage. That will get things moving." Does that sort of make sense?

David Cates: It really does. I don't think it's that silly at all. A lot of what happens with anal massage is being able to open up to receive. If you are a typical man running around in your life trying to get things and make things happen, all that effort is pouring out of you, and most men are just not very good at just relaxing and opening and being able to let life in and let life be.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I love what you're saying. I really do, and I think it's very beautiful. If I am hearing you correctly, even around the anus rim there is so much story and that if it's possibly new for a man that there could be so much richness just starting there.

David Cates: Absolutely, yes. Like we were saying before in the first episode, you begin where there is movement and relaxation in the body, and you kind of keep going where things start to tense up. And that's the rich area to work on.

Dr. Patti Taylor: OK, good. We're going to take a break. We are talking with David Cates. This is Dr. Patti Taylor. Please stay with us. If you want to find out more about David, you can go to his website, DakaCoach.com, d-a-k-a-c-o-a-c-h.com, and we'll be right back.

Announcer: Listen to Sex, Love and Intimacy, a podcast providing weekly audio workshops for your pleasure and connection on PersonalLifeMedia.com.

[commercial]

Dr. Patti Taylor: We're back. This is Dr. Patti Taylor, and we're still talking about the 8-point Enlightened Guide to Sexual Healing. Let me talk about something. In Point number eight your clients are living, breathing miracles. Do you have any examples for the men of some kind of miraculous transformations that you've seen from doing this work?

David Cates: Transformations with men?

Dr. Patti Taylor: Yeah, with men.

David Cates: I would say the single biggest thing that happens, Patti, is that when men begin to really look at their own sexual healing and their own sexual awakening and you explore their body in new ways that might previously have been taboo for them, they are going to get a much, much stronger sense of what's going on for the women in their lives.

I believe that if you want to know how to make love to a woman the single, most efficient way to find out is to allow yourself to be penetrated and to realize that all the things you go through when someone else is in control and inside your body, this is what your women go through, too. So, to have that kind of first hand understanding brings a whole new dimension to your lovemaking.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow, that's a pretty powerful statement, but it is true, isn't it? The best givers make the best receivers and vice versa. I think it's kind of a statement of our culture that we're taught to be one or the other, givers or receivers. I find it the same even in expanded orgasm that they teach people how to give an orgasm but not how to receive an orgasm. I'm up against that myself. I'm trying to change that, of course.

David Cates: You rebel, you.

Dr. Patti Taylor: You can't do one without the other, really.

David Cates: No, there are two sides of the same circuit. If you want to get the full potential flowing to the circuit, you have to have both ends open.

Dr. Patti Taylor: That's right. Women need to learn how to be givers just as much as men need to learn how to be receivers. Why are you so passionate about healing and working with sexual healers? What made you make the shift from doing a private practice on your own?

David Cates: Well, Patti, to be honest, a lot of it is age. As I get older, I think more and more about how many people I can impact and how much I can get the message out there. If I am working with a sexual healer, then he or she is going to go out and impact hundreds of people over the course of their lifetime. If I'm just in private practice, there's only so many hours in a day.

Dr. Patti Taylor: And I also think there is a huge need for healers to be healed.

David Cates: Very, very much and especially, I would say more so than in any other area I know with the sexual healing because most of the sexual healers that are certainly in America right now, there's kind of rebels. They've grown up on their own. There's not really a lot of comprehensive training that you can get. There's not a lot of support.

There's not a lot of professional networks although there are beginning to be, but you tend to have these idiosyncratic rebels who are going out, giving their gifts and doing their things in the world. And what we were just talking about a moment ago, they turn themselves into givers, and they forget how to receive.

Dr. Patti Taylor: There's no training for them. The question I have gotten so often myself from sexual healers that I'm guessing you probably get, maybe, as one of your top questions - tell me if I'm wrong - is how do I shield myself from all of the toxic energy that I'm getting as people release all of this energy?

David Cates: Oh, that's a great question, and I'm going to go into some possibly spooky area with that, if I may.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Please.

David Cates: Because it's my experience that the clients that come to us are very accurate reflections of ourselves. They are very accurate reflections of what's working and not working in our lives, the areas in which we are healed and unhealed. A lot of the work that I do with the sexual healers in my mentoring process is to help them get through their own issues so that clients can stop bringing those exact issues to sessions with them.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow, that's a beautiful, beautiful answer, right. So, they are attracting people in who are the perfect mirrors for them.

David Cates: Exactly.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I love that. I love that. How would that work though? I guess in a relationship, I'm thinking now about our listeners, if you were to apply that at the listener level would the same thing be true? If I say had a partner and oh, I can't handle that when my partner goes there and I trigger that kind of thing from him because I'm reacting when he goes into that kind of pain or whatever. Then, when I heal that in myself then it's no longer a problem for me? Would that be the same kind of thing?

David Cates: I think that's an overview of it, yeah. What I've noticed in couples, Patti, is that there's a lot of really deep unspoken agreement about who is going to take care of what part of the sexual relationship. Just like they balance chores in their everyday household, in the bedroom there's a lot of learning how to cover up and avoid and deny. Or on the opposite realm, to push too hard at things that aren't ready to be pushed at. So, there is this confusion.

Dr. Patti Taylor: How do you fix that? What do you do about that?

David Cates: Well, if you want the quick way, the quick answer for that, is to take 100 percent responsibility for everything that's going on in your sexual relationship. Everything that you are putting off and saying it's the other person's fault or problem is an issue that you're not addressing in yourself.

Dr. Patti Taylor: These are beautiful, beautiful answers. They are gorgeous. We are going to take a break. Please stay with us. This is Dr. Patti Taylor, and we are talking with David Cates. You can find out more about him at his website, DakaCoach.com, d-a-k-a-c-o-a-c-h.com. Please stay with us. We will be right back.

Announcer: Listen to Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra, a weekly Internet audio program from PersonalLifeMedia.com. Learn ancient secrets that turn on the soul of sex at PersonalLifeMedia.com.

[commercial]

Dr. Patti Taylor: We're going into the final segment, David. I thought I'd just find out a little bit about your work and talk a little bit about technology unless there is anything else you wanedt to talk about. I am having a great time with you. Does that work for you?

David Cates: Yeah, I really appreciate this opportunity, Patti. I love talking about this stuff, and I love talking about it with someone who really understands where I am coming from. The bonus is that it's going to go out and all these people are going to hear it.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Aw, thank you so much. Great. Well, let's get going then. OK, super.

We're back and this is Dr. Patti Taylor. We get the pleasure of talking with David Cates today who is a professional, professional, as they say. He teaches sexual healers how to heal other people and themselves.

I want to talk now a little bit about just a few other topics. For example, how do you think technology is changing our attitudes and opportunities about sexual healing?

David Cates: We're in the middle of that right this moment, Patti. We're using the technology to get information out. I think the single biggest thing that is happening is that all of the secret, shameful things that people used to think only were happening to them. It's becoming more and more available to find out that, hey, 90 percent of the U. S. population is going through the same damn thing. You are not alone.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Isn't that amazing?

David Cates: It is. It's just brilliant how we are waking up and how the technology is helping us do that.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I know. It really is. I just have a little story for myself. When I wrote Expanded Orgasm which was, I guess, in... Even in 2002, which isn't that long ago, I had to go through a huge - I don't know - personal evolution because people would go, "Oh, you wrote a book. What was it about?" I had to sort of grow up and deal with it, like people's reactions or what I thought they would be. And, well it's about expanded orgasm and like, how am I going to tell my family or this and that.

For the most part, people went, "Wow, that's amazing. Let me tell me about my last orgasm." Even then, it was semi-OK, and nowadays it's like no big deal. Everybody is talking about it on the bus, on the subway. It's a commodity now. People have changed so much, even in seven years. It's like tantra. It's like tantra perfume out there.

I'm surprised there isn't not anal massage kits in the local bookstore. There probably are, right?

David Cates: Maybe, the local drug store.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Yeah, but it is a good time and it's got to be helping, right?

David Cates: I believe it is. In fact, a lot of the people who were finding me when I was in private practice wouldn't have found me before because they wouldn't have known that this was available.

Dr. Patti Taylor: It actually blows my mind because I remember living a secret life for a very, very long time. Like, what do you do - mumble, mumble, mumble? It is mind blowing, isn't it?

David Cates: It is, yeah.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Yeah?

David Cates: I front my front that I was doing, and this is what I was doing behind the scenes.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Exactly, all of that sacred, initiated intimates. I would like to talk a little bit about your practice in our remaining time. Can you just tell us a little bit about what you do?

David Cates: I have been blessed to be able to switch away from the private practice, and now there's more and more sexual healers and tantra practitioners and sexual educators in the United States. And they are beginning to band together, form associations, get to know that they are not alone in the world and network.

So, there's a rich pool of people who are wise enough to want to continue their own education and to complete their own healing. They know how important that is for themselves in their own practice in creating more ease in their lives.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Would you say the field is expanding, exploding, shrinking? How do you see the field of sexual healers?

David Cates: I see it expanding. I wouldn't say exploding quite yet. I'm not quite sure. I feel like there is a quantum leap that's coming up, certainly that I'm feeling. In my own work, the next phase, I'm working on a book to put the tools of sexual healing out to mainstream America, just sort of release it into the general population. I think that it is going to become more and more normalized and less and less of an esoteric thing that you have to go to San Francisco or New York to experience.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Give us the story of one of your favorite sexual healings that you did?

David Cates: Oh, one of my favorite ones that totally dropped me to my knees and gave me such a huge confirmation of my choice in this. I was at a sexual healing conference, a conference for sexual healers, many years ago. Everyone in the room was a healer.

Again, we were doing a workshop, and I was doing what was billed as a yoni G-spot massage. During the massage it became way more than that. We didn't just pull out a volume. The whole bookshelf got knocked over, spilling everywhere. I had the support and the privilege of being in a spherical of healers.

There were 22 healers around me and the woman that I was working with, we were on a mattress on the floor. We all knew enough to hold the space and keep the energy moving. This woman went into memories of being repeatedly sexually abused as an infant, and it was so powerful. Everyone was in tears. She was regressed back to the stage of three months old, six months old. I was down there on the floor.

The only way that I could connect with her and mirror back to her was baby talk. I was like, go go ga ga, just right there with her mirroring and mimicking every sound that she was making, encouraging the expression and the relief. During that event I felt like she turned her body on in a way that she never had before, even though she had been sexually active for her whole adult life.

At one point she looked up at me and just started screaming. I had my hand on the outside of her yoni. She put her hand on top of mine and just started screaming, "She's mine. She's mine. She is mine" and she claimed ownership of her own sexuality in a way that had never occurred to her before.

That was just so profound and powerful, and that's a miracle when something like that can happen, and we can hold space for each other and witness for each other going back into the archives and bringing something, an incredibly painful story forward into the light in a way that opens everyone's hearts and creates room for all of us.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow. That's a great story. Let me ask you something. I'll bet you've seen that replayed, how many times? Not exactly that, but things like that.

David Cates: Things like that, hundreds of times.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Hundreds of times. This is the stuff of life, isn't it?

David Cates: I have yet to meet a single woman. Well, that's not true. I've met two women in my life who felt that they had never compromised their sexuality in any way with anyone.

Dr. Patti Taylor: How many women have you met, thousands, of course? Thousands and out of that you've met two, so this is the stuff of life.

David Cates: Truly. This is who we are and what we do in this world right now. This is how we're living, and this is how we're healing.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Right. This is why I love your 8-point Enlightened Guide because I think it is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful, sane, deal with it, love it, own it, be sane with, just be in the flow, grow from it, learn from it, be present to it. It's real. It's here, and just work with it. That's what I love about it because it is part of us.

David Cates: I've heard of it. You've totally got it, Patti. Thank you.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well, thank you. Thank you for making it available to people, and we're going to close out the show pretty soon. So, I would like to invite you to just show something enlightening for people to take into their day or evening.

David Cates: I think the simplest and most enlightening thing that anyone can do at any moment is take a deep breath and feel all the way down their body into their pelvis and just be grateful for the miracle of being born and being alive in this world.

Dr. Patti Taylor: [Inhales] OK. I took my deep breath.

David Cates: I heard you. I heard you do that.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I heard thousands of listeners take deep breaths with us.

David Cates: Woo hoo.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Yeah, woo hoo. Thank you so much. We have been listening to David Cates. You can find out more about him and his amazing show. It's so beautiful. It's so touching. It's really special for me to have you on my show today. You can find out more about him at his very, very beautiful website, DakaCoach.com. It's all about being on the front lines of the sexual healing revolution.

Even if you're not a sexual healer, just imagine yourself what it might be like to be one for a little bit and go check out his website because I think we're all sexual healers any time we're with a partner because you'll never know when you touch someone. You touch all of someone. You touch their heart, their body, their mind and their soul. Touch, touches everywhere and every touch. I think it is so important that we all learn what people like David have to teach us.

So, thank you so much for coming on our show.

David Cates: Thank you, Patti. My pleasure.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Thank you. Before I end, I am just going to invite my listeners to please take five minutes to fill out my survey. That's survey.personallifemedia.com. I did it. Please do it, too. It helps me learn who you are.

Please send me email: [email protected]. For text and transcripts you can go to PersonalLifeMedia.com and visit me, Dr. Patti Taylor, at ExpandedLovemaking.com to join my mailing list, too.

Thank you so much. This is Dr. Patti Taylor. That's all for now. I remain yours in ever expanding lovemaking, and I'll see you next week.

Announcer: Found more great shows like this on PersonalLifeMedia.com.