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How have you been domesticated?
One of my favorite things to do is to have deep, wandering conversations with people I love and admire. It feels intimate, expansive, playful, and important. The kinds of conversations that I think about for days or weeks, mulling over new perspectives and confronting new edges.
Leonore Tjia is one of those magical people that I LOVE diving deep with. I first met Leonore years ago when she was working with Amy Jo Goddard and I attended a few webinars. Leonore’s fierce softness made an immediate impression.
Over the years, Leonore’s practice has expanded and shifting into this incredible practice around wildness, movement, sexuality, and the erotic.
So this week’s episode is like a little peek behind the curtain. What happens when two folks who think about, write about, and dig deep into the caverns of sexuality and the erotic get together and dance? This is that conversation.
We talk about wildness, the erotic as an expansive resource we are in relationship with rather than a thing we own, our inner critic, and why so often when we crave newness in relationship it’s not actually new people we’re wanting but newness in ourselves.
This episode is literally an hour of brain sex. Yum.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
Leonore and I talk about:
- How Leonore got into sexuality work.
- Our inner wildness and the ways we get domesticated in our culture. Why is wildness important and what Leonore does to invite that into her life?
- What does it mean to belong, to be safe, and to go deeper into our finding our wildness?
- How can we express our wildness without contributing to violence and harm?
- The problems with people who call themselves healers and leaders in sexuality and spirituality circles who have not investigated, deeply, their privilege, implicit bias, and what it means to wield power ethically. Leonore has a delicious blog post on it here, too.
- Turning outside of ourselves for wisdom and why looking within can offer so much more richness.
- How tempting and easy it is to give away our power because we want someone to know how to fix us instead of having to do the uncomfortable work.
- Leonore has changed the way she orients towards her life and sexuality and it’s created a profound shift in the depth of her life. Hear what it is. It’s so yummy.
- Leonore reads from “Advanced Spiritual Intimacy” by Stuart Sovatsky.
- Sexuality and the erotic as larger forces like nature that we do not own or do but are a part of and relate to.
- Our inner critic – what it is and how it can offer us wisdom, why the ways it protects us can become so dysfunctional.
- Leonore goes over a list of things people have told her their inner critics say about their sexuality and bodies. SO MANY OF THESE are familiar.
- The power of group work and being witnessed in our truths.
- Mythology and archetypes as a way to understand our world and our sexuality thru imagination.
- Often our quest for newness in relationship is because we’re bored with who we have become, not with our partner. So how do we foster mystery within ourselves?
- One of the dark sides of sexuality education is feeling like you have to have the perfect sex life and also like you have to perform a certain kind of sexuality and sexual-ness because people are consuming you.
- Presence versus consumption around our pleasure and sexuality.
- The expansiveness of our pleasure and our relationship with the erotic, and how we police ourselves out of a fear of being broken, different, or left behind.
About Leonore Tjia:
Stay in touch with Leonore at luminoussex.com and on Instagram.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: 40% off pads, tampons, condoms? Stay tuned because Lola is giving Sex Gets Real listeners 40% off. Details in the show notes and it’s sexgetsreal.com/ep248.
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.
Dawn Serra: Hey, you. Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. Oh my God. This conversation with Leonore Tjia is one I cannot wait to hear what you think. Leonore and I regularly have Skype dates where we talk about what’s going on in each other’s lives and practices, and the big huge thoughts that we’re contemplating; around the state of the world, the future of humanity and how sexuality fits into all of it. And this week, Leonore is joining us here and you get to basically be a fly on the wall for one of our geektastic conversations. We talk all about wildness and domestication around our sexuality, the erotic as this vast an ownable resource that we get to be in relationship with. And how, so often, our entry point until learning about sex is about individualism and finding our own version of that and how what’s beyond that is so much more vast.
We talk about internal family systems and inner critics, and some of the ways that our inner critic is actually trying so hard to protect us. We talk about mystery and why so often when we think we’re hungry for new people in relationship, we’re actually hungry for new versions of ourself; and how we can move through the feast and the famine of the erotic and our sexuality in a way that fosters more mystery in our lives. It’s such a rich discussion. I can’t wait for you to hear it. But before we get to that, a couple of things.
Dawn Serra: First off in this episode, you’re going to hear an ad for Lola because they are giving listeners 40% off their first order. It’s all organic cotton pads and tampons. Plus, sex by Lola includes they’re super thin condoms that are very high quality. You can get details about how to grab that discount code, and cash it in at mylola.com by listening or by clicking through too the show notes or heading to sexgetsreal.com/ep248. All of the details are on the page for this episode.
Also, if you didn’t hear last week, we hit 5 million downloads a couple of weeks ago and there is a massive giveaway that I’m doing. Three lucky people will be randomly selected from the pool of those of you who want to participate and help me ring in the 5 million milestone. There’s all kinds of yummy things that I’m giving away from lube and books to discounts and a really fun consent board game. So if you want to put your name and your email in the hat to be considered for the random drawing, helping me to celebrate this 5 million milestone, then you can go to dawnserra.com/five/ and then, of course, Explore More Summit 2019 is happening and registration is now open. You can grab your free ticket to this entirely online conference that I put on every single year at exploremoreatsummit.com. Leonora is one of the speakers and there are incredible conversations happening this year. The kind of stuff that is shifting me in really important ways and I think you’re going to love it.
The theme this year is all around pleasure. We’re talking about all of the things that we can do that expand our access to pleasure, that expand our understanding of pleasure, that get in the way of our pleasure, and really finding new stories and new access points so that we can have more pleasure in our lives without guilt or shame or fear. So again, exploremoreatsummit.com to grab your free ticket to the conference. It starts February 25th and goes for 10 days. You do not want to miss it.
Dawn Serra: Let me tell you a little bit about Leonore and Patreon supporters, also, if you go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast and support the show at $3 a month and above, you get exclusive weekly content that you can’t find anywhere else. Leonora and I, this week, for our bonus chat talk all about how BDSM can be this really beautiful way of actually working through and healing trauma and stuck stories. We’re going to talk all things kink and BDSM over on that Patreon bonus. Check it out. Plus, an exclusive discount just for Patreon supporters on Explore More Summit bonuses. Again, patreon.com/sgrpodcast for Sex Gets Real.
Leonore Tjia is a feminist sexuality educator who helps people create more presence, play, pleasure, and power in the bedroom and beyond. As a trained practitioner of internal family systems therapy, she assists people in recovering the parts of their sexual selves that have been exiled and repressed. Her workshops and teaching bring an ecological focus to sexual empowerment, helping people to reconnect with erotic vitality and step into sexual wildness. Strap in, hold on. We are going big places in this conversation between me and Leonore.
Dawn Serra: Hey, everyone, welcome to Sex Gets Real. And my chat with, one of my favorite humans on the face of this planet, Leonore Tjia. Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Leonore.
Leonore Tjia: Thank you. So glad to be here.
Dawn Serra: As will become evident, over the course of this conversation, you and I love having some really challenging, heady, awesome conversations and I’m hoping that unfolds for listeners to join us for today.
Leonore Tjia: We’re really into having brain sex together, Dawn.
Dawn Serra: Oh my God. We love having the brain sex, seriously. There’s so much that I want to talk to you about. But for people who aren’t familiar with you, would you mind sharing a little bit about who you are and the space that you take up in the world, especially around sexuality?
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, totally. I like to tell people that I’m a field guide to the inner world. I worked in the field of adult sexuality education since about 2011, from a perspective of feminist sexual empowerment. Working mostly with women around a wide variety of subjects around the body and communication, and boundaries and really offering a holistic entryway into what does it mean to hold sexual empowerment in a female body in the 21st century. I worked with a mentor named Amy Jo Goddard for about six years. I now have a private counseling practice that’s based in internal family systems therapy. And I’m actually a co-leader for the American Psychological Association Task Force on consensual, non monogamy. So I advocate for a therapist literacy around non-monogamy and polyamory; and run a variety of different programs and workshops that draw on things like embodiment, our personal sexual stories, mythology as a source of inspiration for our erotic journeys, and really looking at the erotic and our sexuality from a soul centric perspective.
Dawn Serra: Lots of yumminess and lots of really big deep questions.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, we have lots of questions.
Dawn Serra: Yes. You’re also speaking at the Explore More Summit this year. Yes. Last year you did the closing ritual, which was fucking amazing, and we talked all about inner critic work, which I’m sure we’ll get to today. And then this year, we spent a lot of time in our talk talking about wildness and domestication. And while I don’t want to spoil the talk for anyone, I’d love for us to start there. Because so much of of who you are and the work that you do is about investigating this wilderness, this wildness that we carry, that for many of us, it feels really foreign. Can you tell me a little bit about why wildness?
Leonore Tjia: Personally, it’s a metaphor I’ve been hugely drawn to. I grew up in the city and really followed my heart to go live in the mountains in Vermont and became someone who hunted deer from eco feminist spiritual perspective. There’s been a, in my whole life, a search for external and internal wildness just as I, in my sexual journey, I had to work through my own trauma and my internalized homophobia, and the unconscious ways that I had subjugated my own erotic life force. I tell people that in the journey of sexual empowerment, I really know what it feels like to walk through the fire and have witnessed and assisted many people in their own journeys. But in around wilderness or wildness or wilderness, I really come to see that we, in our hunger to express our sexual wildness, we are hungry to reconnect with that part of us that can never be tamed, can never be subjugated. And I believe that that really comes from the soul. That comes from a place deep inside us, really from the essence of who we are. It’s very individual and personal.
In the work of sexual empowerment, we’re naturally encountering and working through the cultural stories about who we’re supposed to be, the difficult personal experiences and traumas that have created these narratives about who we need to be in order to belong and to be safe, and to be loved, and so on and so forth. To go deeper into finding our wildness, what is that place in us that lies beyond domestication, and how do we really express that and create a life that honors that essence even in such an imperfect world? That’s the space that I’m holding in my perspectives and in my work with people.
Dawn Serra: What does it look like for us to really tap into that soul level expression of wildness and the erotic without it becoming another vehicle for harm and abuse? I could see so easily so many, just to speak in broad brush strokes, cis men saying, “Oh, well I was just expressing my inherent sexual needs when I grabbed this human being and made them do the thing.” How do we hold the expansiveness of true wildness without it becoming a tool of violence or oppression?
Leonore Tjia: It’s such a good question. The way that I’ve come to understand this is that because I’ve been involved in so many different communities in which prominent teachers and leaders have exploited their students. I mean, I’ve been involved, I’ve observed, I’ve seen it. It’s absolutely… Our world is rife with it. The understanding that I’ve come to develop is that there’s two different tracks involved. There’s the track at which, how skilled am I at accessing my internal wildness and holding that perspective. And then there’s the completely different track, which is how much have I investigated my own relationship to power or looked at my privilege and worked to understand my blind spots? They’re actually two different things. And it’s really problematic when we have people who represent themselves as teachers and healers, I mean in sexuality and also in spirituality. Because such spiritual abuse is so rife in our world.
When you can have people who are very technically skilled and have developed their capacity as healers are teachers, but they have not worked at the psychological development or creating the external practical structures that are necessary to wield power ethically.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Yeah. You have this beautiful line in a recent blog post on sexual healing and the uses of power that I love so much. And it says, “Our enthusiasm for sexual freedom and liberation needs to exist alongside a piercing inquiry into how we have internalized patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia; how we’ve internalized abusive messages around all kinds of power and how we enact them unknowingly.” Then, of course, that ties to capitalism and charging more money for these things, and build their livings off of these things.
Leonore Tjia: Totally.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think that’s something that a lot of people are really hesitant to do because it’s so hard for so many of us to even get to a place where we can talk about sex, start confronting some of our shame. Even allowing ourselves to fantasize and maybe even enact, some of those fantasies to then have this responsibility, really is a responsibility, to also think, are these fantasies informed by these really abusive systems that I exist in? And then how do we hold that like, yes, and I don’t have to shame myself for it. Yes, it’s natural that that happened and what’s some work that I need to do around addressing and unpacking that?
Leonore Tjia: Yeah. That’s another thing, right? So common to eroticize our own coping mechanisms for living inside ourselves.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, totally. I think you articulated it really well. It’s an amazing thing to be living in time where we are now where there’s so many different teachers and schools of thought and opportunities for sexual healing and empowerment; that are coming to the forefront after a millennia of repression. But in the our current marketplace of ideas and literal marketplace of products and services, I think it is really important that we continually come back to these questions of power and ethics. Especially for those of us who are holding leadership positions or at least presenting ourselves to be in leadership.
Dawn Serra: So that’s something that you and I have personally talked about so much, especially in the past six months is there’s this tendency both culturally, I mean we look at celebrity culture and see this enacted in so many ways. But specifically even within sex positive community and within spiritual community, there’s this tendency to position people as having the answers and we need to go to them for those answers. We’re positioning them as being the experts in a thing. And how, you and I, are trying to really move away from that of maybe instead being stewards or people who walk along beside and offer some questions so that people can find their own answers. Because it’s such a mind fuck to say, “I have answers. This technique is great. I’m going to charge money for it. and then let’s try and cookie cutter this into your life.”
Leonore Tjia: It’s a difficult question. I mean the bar is so incredibly low. The count of sexual suffering and our world is so oceanic and vast. I mean there really is a need for a higher baseline of education from the beginning. But I think what you’re pointing out is just how desperately we often want to fix ourselves when we feel something is wrong. And we’re, as humans, we’re very susceptible to giving away our own power to people in positions of authority. That’s something I think we really need to inquire into in our approaches to sexual healing and transformation on a cultural level is like… I think that ultimately, at least in this space that I’m holding for people, I don’t even really see myself as a teacher but more as a guide in some ways. A guide to unknown terrain and a space holder who’s about creating spaces where people can really, really be witnessed in who they are.
Dawn Serra: Everything that we do for the most part is informed by the culture, the family, the communities that we’re a part of. Most of us have been raised inside of a system that’s taught us we are bad and broken if we aren’t performing at this peak level of success and productivity, and that we can buy things that fix us or at least bandaid problems temporarily to let the pain off. What I find creates so much churn for people is they want to know there’s an easy fix or an easy solution to the thing because if there’s not, then the level of grief and rage that comes up can feel really scary.
Leonore Tjia: Totally. And from my perspective, I’m like, “Yeah, let’s go to that grief and rage.” That’s where the magic starts.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Leonore Tjia: I love that you’re bringing this up because I certainly dwelled for many years and in more of the– I think we’re talking about an approach to our sexuality that’s about fixing, finding solutions to things that aren’t working, which absolutely has its place. I mean, there’s so much that isn’t working. And I know that the years that I spent in that area of things where it was about learning how to communicate better and learning different techniques to feel more pleasure and so on. It was very useful, absolutely changed. But, more recently in my life just speaking from my own personal journey, there’s been a profound in our shift that’s happened as I’ve really changed my orientation from, “It’s not what we’re doing. It’s how we’re being. It’s not what we’re creating. It’s how we’re relating.” Internally, externally. This has represented like a coming into the depth of life in a way that I didn’t know it was possible.
I bring that perspective to the way I’m running my business and really seek to bring that to everything in my life because I don’t want to be someone who presents the veneer of a perfect life, a perfect sexual life or whatever, and then I did this so I can help you have that too. That’s really counter to my philosophy. There’s absolutely a level of dysfunction and pain where really concrete solutions aren’t necessary like helping people to leave abusive relationships, helping people to detoxify themselves of their internalized homophobia and so on. There really are things that require that kind of solution that’s necessary for the empowerment. But more and more I find that the kinds of work I’m doing with people are– Some things like living a human life that’s necessarily impermanent in a body that’s going to continue to change. And that’s very impermanent and frail, and vulnerable; and the ongoing vulnerability of being human and our emotions and what it means to be in relationship sometimes really touch deep human pain that doesn’t get fixed. It just gets related to differently. I mean, this is the realm in which it’s not about what we’re doing, it’s how we’re being with these things. This is actually where I find so much of the erotic reveals itself, not as something that we own, but as a mystery that we get to be part of.
Dawn Serra: Oh God. That’s such an incredible thing to think about. And it’s so utterly foreign in our neoliberal hybrid individual world that tells us everything is individual and everything is completely ours to own. And this larger collective experience is something we either don’t know about or that we derived. Because we have been taught that like being an individual human being is the peak experience. So I love this concept of the erotic is this greater mystery that we all have an opportunity to be in relationship with and move into different ways of being with, rather than, “I have to find my unique Dawn way.” That’s the end of the story.
Leonore Tjia: The funny thing is that it’s not either or. But it’s surrendering this notion that there’s a right or wrong way to be you is I think the really the necessary step into coming into this. And I’d love to read something that’s been really inspiring me from this book, Advanced Spiritual Intimacy, by Stuart Sovatsky. He writes, “We would like to own various powers and popular psychology supports these aspirations with this encouragements to reclaim or own your sexuality. But the erotic powers of sexuality, love, attraction, arousal, fertility, families and surrender, are entrusted to us or rather among us, and are not owned. Such slogans are merely transitional metaphors or therapeutic work tools to help us recover from domestic violence, depression, sociopolitical abuse, low self esteem or drug addiction.
I think that that’s pretty profound. He writes, often when people have suffered abuse, they need to learn how or when to say yes or no. And this quest for personal power or reclaiming sexuality is about respect, but ultimately no one owns any part of nature. Her nature, spirit or its powers and beauties. If we can discover that the poetry of nature is what we seek through owning it or reclaiming it we will find an ecological balance that will always remain part of the mystery.
Dawn Serra: I had the opportunity to chat with Gloria Lucas from Nalgona Positivity Pride for the summit. One of the things she shared in our talk was that for many indigenous cultures, there is no language for “My land.” Or my home or my food because there’s this understanding that it’s not about ownership, it’s about being in relationship with.
Leonore Tjia: Yes.
Dawn Serra: I’m hearing so much of that in this very decolonial approach of how can we possibly own fertility? How can we own birth? How can we own death? Those are things that transcend the human experience. So if we then can shift that relationship in that way of being, what becomes available to us when we realize it’s so much bigger than ourselves.
Leonore Tjia: Yes, exactly. And this is another layer of really understanding what wildness means in the context of the erotic is, even as– Here in the West, we talk about water or land as a resource and we talk about connecting with nature or something that helps us be more productive. What a sad understanding that is. Such a deep forgetting that water’s not a resource. Water is the source of our life. We don’t connect with nature. We are nature. Yeah. You belong to nature. And it’s the same with sexuality to a certain level. I think, it’s useful to talk about owning and reclaiming our sexuality because, again, the bar is so low and we really need that support. But at a certain point, it is useful to actually surrender those I centered approaches, you know? And to see that these are bigger forces that it’s not something that we own and do and can do perfectly. There are bigger forces that we’re blessed by and that we can choose how we relate to.
Dawn Serra: It makes me wonder if from the youngest of ages, we were invited into this dialogue with the erotic, to see it as something that all of us were in relationship with in a variety of ways and that we needed to be responsible about that relationship, both in how it expressed through ourselves and in how we expressed it with others. To me, it’s almost like I’m having trouble finding the language or the words for what the potential for what that could do for then the ways we grew up and moved into our lives. I mean, it would shift so many of the dynamics that you’re naming around like we have to have this piercing inquiry into patriarchy and power, and misogyny and homophobia. Those things wouldn’t be able to exist if more of us were in relationship with each other and the erotic in this grander way that you’re naming.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, I mean I think ultimately, Dawn, the work that we’re doing is really about helping people to understand and shift their relationship to this dominator culture that we’ve all been in, and the water that we’ve been swimming in for thousands of years and it doesn’t just exist outside us. It exists inside us in how we understand ourselves and how we relate to ourselves, including our sexuality. So what we’re offering people on the front end is about having better sex, having deeper intimacy, having more pleasure and so on. We often do have to speak the language of increasing personal power because that’s the only way people understand sexuality. But on the inside it’s an alchemical transformation into what it feels like to shift out of dominator culture and into a more partnership model or a stewardship model. But I almost fear we’re getting too theoretical in this conversation.
Dawn Serra: Oh my God. I know. Yes. So listener, holding the gargantuan-ness of these ideas is something that we doing, but not everybody necessarily wants to go so deep. So one of the things that we are given being in the culture that we’re in is this inner critic. And many of us have really dysfunctional relationships with our inner critic. We don’t realize often the wisdom that it can offer and the reasons that it’s speaking to this way. So many people come to me and where they’re struggling, and I’m sure you as well and many other sex educators is, “There is something wrong with me. I’m broken. I’m not doing X, Y, Z right. Why won’t my body do this thing? Why are these things so hard.” And really feeling like there’s something wrong or broken about the way that they’re being and the way that they are in relationship to themselves and their loved ones and their sexuality.
You do internal family systems work, which is all about investigating these inner voices that we all carry. Because a lot of people listening are probably in those places a feeling like, “Oh, my body isn’t doing the things right. The way I show up in the world is wrong.” How can we start investigating this inner critic landscape?
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, totally. Oh my God. It’s so, so real. I have so been there, too, just years of being blended with that to the point I didn’t even realize it was happening. I think, as with anything, it’s beginning with bringing attention to it of first understanding how does your inner critic show up. Oftentimes it’s not only a little voice inside your head that yields this self talk. But also that ongoing tension in our bodies, I think, is often really related to how much we carry around this, just feeling there’s something wrong with us. I know my inner critic is really up If I lose the ability to laugh at myself, for example. When my creativity is really blocked. I think we have to start by being attentive to what does it feel like when it’s there.
From this perspective and from the internal family systems perspective, the inner critic is understood to be a protective part of us that’s trying to whip us into shape. Because it believes it’s a justified in being so hard on us because it’s trying to avoid the pain of reactivating older embarrassments or humiliations or wounds. My story’s like, “If I work really hard to do things perfectly, then I won’t feel the pain that I felt as a child when my hypercritical Chinese father always focused on the 1% of things that I did wrong.” And that’s like the 99% that I did really well just doesn’t matter. Completely goes out the window and I’m just hyper focused on that 1%. So that inner critic part of me is like, “Okay, if I keep you really dialed into that 1%, then you won’t feel the pain that you did before.” But the attempt at protection becomes super dysfunctional and creates more problems because then other parts of us hate the inner critic, want it to go away. It devolves into this like shame about the shame. Criticism of the criticism.
Dawn Serra: I’m so good in that.
Leonore Tjia: So real. It becomes like we can really live frozen there. Everything is wrong. Everything we try to do is wrong. It’s such a difficult place to be. So the perspective that IFS offers is to notice that when that inner critic is there, often we hate it, we judge it, we want it to go away. We feel like it’s ruining our lives. But the trick there is actually in slowing down with it enough to really check, how am I feeling towards this part? How am I feeling towards my inner critic? And ironically, when we can actually bring some calm, some curiosity and some compassion to it, it always relaxes. Because the funny thing is that this part really does have good intentions even when it’s behavior is super dysfunctional. And so when we start to bring in questions of like, “Hey, inner critic. Why are you trying to do this for me? What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t work so hard?” Then we start to get a sense of why it is the way it is and getting that it actually does care for us because it’s working so hard, even though other parts hate it and want it to go away. And instead of being a monster inside us, it often changes shape into being a protective sentinel part. It’s just working extremely hard in a job that it’s hated for and trying to prevent the detonation of a deeper pain. So when we shift to offering this part gratitude and compassion for what it does for us, it softens and relaxes. Then this internal alchemy is taking place.
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Dawn Serra: So what are some of the things that you have witnessed around the ways inner critics show up specifically around sexuality?
Leonore Tjia: Here’s some examples. Feeling like there’s something wrong with their bodies. We don’t want sex enough. We want sex too much. We’re too slutty or we’re not slutty enough. We don’t orgasm. We orgasm too fast. There’s something wrong with our sexual performance. We compare ourselves to other people. We’re selfish if we ask for what we want. We’re bad at asking for what we want. We’re disappointing our partners. If we speak for what we need, then we’re making them feel bad. If we have an STI, we’re dirty. There’s something wrong with our fantasies. We’re not normal. There’s something wrong with us because our minds won’t even shut up during sex. We’re over analyzing our partner. We feel like there’s something wrong with our attachment style. It’s endless. I have a list on my– there’s an email list. I have an email thing that goes out to people with this list and people have written back to me and added more bullet points and the list keeps getting longer and longer. I think it’s an infinite list.
Dawn Serra: I think the important, the most important piece for me about that is how many of the things of the list that you just read have each of us thought some version of most of those things or even some of those things. And if that’s true, that most of us at some point have felt or thought one of the things on the list, then clearly the problem isn’t us. Clearly the problem is the water we’re swimming in, the way the world teaches us about our bodies. I mean, that’s the thing that I try to keep bringing people back to. It’s like, yes, we say these things to ourselves. And yes, finding some support and new ways of relating to those things are important for our own survival. But beyond that, if so many people are worried about whether or not they’re orgasming the right ways or whether or not their genitals perform a certain way or whether or not they speak up too much or not enough, it’s not an individual problem.
Leonore Tjia: Right. Yeah, exactly.
Dawn Serra: Which is how it feels when we’re in it and that’s super real. Like I am fantastic at shaming myself about the things that I don’t do well because I know I should be doing better because of all whatever. But trying to remember in those moments, one, that it’s going to pass. Two, there’s a reason that I’m talking to myself this way and, three, someone else told me these things were bad. Someone else told me I wasn’t good enough if I did these things. That for me has been really, really helpful in tapping into my anger. They’re like, “I didn’t come up with this shit on my own.”
Leonore Tjia: Right. Yeah, totally. It’s so necessary to have spaces where we talk about these things whether that’s in person or through listening to a podcast, the way you’re helping people, Dawn. It’s like it’s one thing to intellectually say to myself, “I’m not the only person who feels this way.” But it’s another to hear people’s lived experiences and the pain that they’ve been through and be like, “Wow, this is really not our fault.” That’s why the collective element is so important in the healing.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, it is. I’d love to talk about that a little bit more. You run some workshops both around this wildness, but also your mythology online calls, and group work is something that I really want to amp up in 2019 and beyond. Because I so want to combat this hyper individualism that has us all feeling so trapped. In your experience, what are some of the things that happen when people get to explore their shame and their healing in groups?
Leonore Tjia: It’s vital that we do it together because this is, as you’ve been saying, it’s not an individual problem. It’s a collective problem. The issue with the shame is that we stay stuck in believing that we’re the only one. So a huge part of the healing is witnessing other people in their own struggles and realizing, “Wow,” as I said, “This really isn’t my fault or this really isn’t our fault.” Oftentimes just seeing someone, witnessing someone tell the story of their sexless marriage and how they felt so deficient, and helpless inside it, and their choice to leave that and choose something better for themselves. That is so healing for other people in the room who’ve had their own experience with sexless relationships. We get this healing through osmosis just by seeing other people doing their own work. We get this tangible benefit as well because it touches the parts in us that relate to that and have been through similar experiences.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Leonore Tjia: And I think that, you know, that Marianne Williamson quote that always gets quoted and self help circles about the more we allow our own light to shine, the more permission we give other people. It’s really about that. As we do our own work, it’s bringing light to the collective elements. It’s collectively dispersing shame and it’s also allowing us to feel valuable in community, which many of us don’t have.
Dawn Serra: Yup. Being able to not only be seen when we have things to celebrate and when we have things that we feel ashamed of is such an incredible thing. And also, I think for so many of us it’s hard to find those places because we don’t even know that it’s possible to do this kind of healing in group. I mean for most of us, the most we can do is find a podcast, a book or a therapist. Being able to find places where we can actually be in spaces to feel the feelings and to be witnessed in our stories, and to get that opportunity to see other people and be with other people in their stories. That’s such a gift and it’s also really rare.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah. It’s life changing.
Dawn Serra: It is. So one of the other things that you use as something that you personally really love to connect with but also as a resource for people who were investigating new stories is mythology. And I love to hear how mythology serves you in this work.
Leonore Tjia: Well, it’s the my first language in a way as a witch and the heathen. I have such a deep love of story, in general, as a way of understanding our world. It’s such an important part of what makes us human. So I started this group, it’s an online thing that meets once a month where I tell people a mythological story and offer some poetry and some readings and then we connect it to sexuality, to our own personal sexuality through discussion. I did this because I really love working with archetypes as a way of understanding ourselves and understanding our world. I think it’s a fantastic way of really employing human imagination, which is like underestimated in its power sexuality. Actually I just read, that reminds me I’ve been reading Octavio Paz’s positive book, The Double Flame, and he talks about what makes eroticism unique for humans is that it uses the imagination.
Dawn Serra: Yup.
Leonore Tjia: And so often, we’re just in our habitual ways of being, we’re in our inner critics, we’re feeling unworthy or we feel like, “Ugh, all of these problems and how do I get out of it?” Often just connecting to story or a mythology or archetype of a sexually powerful figure, raises wonderful freshness. Because then we get to put ourselves into a different gear internally. What if I put on the archetype of the Queen of Heaven who lies underneath the apple tree and admires her wondrous vulva as I was reading to people from the ancient Sumerian poetry. Or what if I put on the archetype of Artemis, turning the guy who was creeping on her from the bushes when she was bathing naked, turning him into a stag. Because she was so in her power about her anger that that was how she enforced her boundaries. These images are really potent. They can be really inspiring for how we deal with problems, issues in our own lives.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I have found one of the things that has been really helpful for people in my own private practice is this tapping into the imagination. Because for so many of us, it’s completely foreign to exist in a body that we don’t actively hate, that we aren’t trying to control, that we’re not trying to enforce or conform to standards that are outside of ourselves. We don’t know how to be in our sexual power because we feel so much shame or speaking up for ourselves in those really vulnerable moments is hard. And I found for so many people that to then fictionalize it, to turn it into a story If you were to write about someone who was fully in their sexual power, how might they be? What would they say? How would they stand? What wouldn’t they apologize for? If you were going to write an erotic story about someone who worshiped bodies that look just like yours, how might they be? What might they say? And to invite people into that imaginary place offers then so many tangible permission slips because now we’ve got new stories that we can consider maybe then trying out in our own lives.
Leonore Tjia: Totally. It’s so important because a big part of sexual empowerment is not only helping people understand what to let go of and move away from, but it’s helping them to develop the vision of what they want to move towards. We really need that inspiration. That visionary element is so important. And story is really helpful and in assisting us to refine that and what to find what truly feels good and nourishing, and fun and juicy inside of us. It’s like the lighthouse that helps us find out where we can move towards.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I’m even thinking being able to create story with people that were in relationship with is also a really fun exercise. If you take turns like texting or emailing a story back and forth that you build on together, that can yield, one, it’s super fun. But two, it can yield all kinds of really interesting information about each other, without having to be one of those intense, we’re locked in face to face quote unquote official talks. That could be really fucking intimidating to have a talk about our sex life. But if we can use our imagination and write some stories, and ask some questions and engage with archetypes and reading erotic Sumerian poetry to each other.
Leonore Tjia: I highly recommend that one. That has served well in seductions, by the way.
Dawn Serra: That’s exactly it, right? It’s a way we can feel connected to each other without having to put it all on the line. Our imaginations can take us to such incredible places and we limit them so much by feeling like they’re frivolous or feeling like they don’t really serve us or even telling ourselves we’re not really the kind of person that has much imagination.
Leonore Tjia: Yes, exactly. Which is ironic because what we’re then doing is using the human power of imagination to imagine that we don’t have imagination.
Dawn Serra: It’s just another way we mind fuck ourselves.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think a lot of this is about mind fucking ourselves in a more enjoyable way.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Leonore Tjia: I think so much of sexual empowerment, in the long term, one thing to address sexual empowerment and desire in the early stages of relationship, when the new relationship energy is flowing and that is all very hot. But lately, I’ve been really enjoying the longer term explorations in a long term relationship. How do we use imagination to turn ourselves on and off? How do we use imagination to find our way out of routine feeling bored with ourselves? So often it’s not even about wanting someone new. It’s wanting to be someone new.
Dawn Serra: Oh God, I’m so glad you said that. That’s something that I want every person listening to this episode to hear, really hear in your bones that often we seek new-ness because what we’re rejecting is ourselves. And being able to find new ways to relate, to go deeper within, to express ourselves can often bring this sense of a liveliness that we haven’t had in a while. It’s about just our inner work rather than seeking these external things as a bandaid.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, totally. Inner work and inner play of knowing how to find that inner renewal. And I think, mystery is such an important element to desire. When someone is mysterious to us it’s often very arousing. And I think it’s important to remember we need to be mysterious to ourselves as well. When we’re trapped in routine, when we’re trapped in, “This is how I do sex a certain way,” or, “This is how I live my life in a certain way.” We don’t have really have arousal there. We need to find ways of being more playful with ourselves and finding new sources of inspiration in stories, in mythology, in art, in poetry. It’s very personal. I think you have to find what works for you. But knowing how to turn yourself on, how to find that, how too rediscover that mystery in yourself of, “I’m an erotic being and I’m different every day.” That’s such a wonderful internal source this power.
Dawn Serra: So often we talk about things as if it’s a linear line or even a wave. And I’m really interested lately in the imagery of an infinity symbol, this weaving in and out and allowing for the ebb and the flow. Our bodies sometimes feel really good and sometimes they don’t and sometimes they’re tired and sometimes they’re energetic. And sometimes our lives have lots of space for creativity and erotic energy, and sometimes they just don’t. It doesn’t mean that some things wrong. It just means you’re in a different part of moving through these really natural cycles. So I love so much of what you’re offering around the mystery truly is always there because we’re constantly moving in and out.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, exactly. And again, coming back to Octavio Paz. He talks about the erotic is always moving between the poles of abstinence and license. So it’s always flowing between these two points in kind of an infinity loop. And he says that you used to be dealt with on a collective scale, culturally, carnival and lent. We experienced that in many different cultures. But as we’ve lost many of these cultural traditions, it’s shifted from the collective to the individual. I definitely relate to that. I know earlier in my sexual journey, a big dynamic that was part of it was I would get into a monogamous relationship, go into it wholeheartedly, end up needing to repress a lot of who I was sexually in order to stay in the relationship. Because I didn’t know how to speak for what I really wanted and needed. And I felt like I needed to be a certain way. So I repressed that, end up super resentful. The relationship would fall apart, we’d break up and then I just go on a bender and fuck a bunch of people. I was on this wild period and then hit the shame wall and then go back into a monogamous relationship. Not great. But even now, interestingly, I mean, I’m queer. I’m polyamorous.
A lot of my work in the last decade has been about creating a life where I really get to express who I am without apology and without hurting other people because they know that and they signed up to be with me. Now I noticed, there’s still an internal dance between. There’s periods of immense erotic openness and feasting and there’s also times of a fasting. And I have to say I’m in one right now and I’m really enjoying it.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. And I think something else that I want to invite all of us to keep circling back to around this is so much of the ebb and flow can feel and honestly be disrupted. We might get stuck in one part of it, which isn’t to say it’s not there anymore; it’s just we’re hanging out without a lot of movement is because we exist inside of a world that expects us to do 28 hours worth of things in 24.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, totally.
Dawn Serra: So parenting and multiple jobs, and social lives and social media, and taking care of ourselves and whatever that means, and tending to aging parents and all of those things. Because we don’t have more collective support where we’re caring for each other. We then end up feeling, “I have to do all these things on my own.” And it’s really difficult to connect with our inner mystery and our inner play when we’re super exhausted. Even offering some forgiveness and some space for ourselves around that. Maybe this particular period in my life is just really intense and that’s how it’s going to be for awhile. But trusting that there is going to be movement in really small ways and that– I love how you’re even saying like, “I’m really enjoying this fasting.” This energetic fasting that’s happening, knowing you’re going to move into feast again at some point. That feels so much more spacious than, “Why am I here? I don’t like it. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m going to resist, resist, resist what’s true.”
Leonore Tjia: And especially being someone who’s professional work is in sexuality, we can put so much immense pressure on ourselves to have the perfect sexual life.It’s a secret dark side, isn’t it? Our work is about telling people that their sexuality is fine no matter what. But how often do we judge ourselves? We’re not doing it right.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. The people who listen to the show now are different than the people who listen to a show back in the beginning. And part of that is because way back in the beginning, the show was all around my sexual experiences and Dylan’s sexual experiences, and us going to play parties and all these things. I just reached this point where it was like, “I can’t continue just being this performative sexual being going on all these things and continue my life and my development. I need to really shift the show where I can still share myself. But it’s in a very different way.” So it is more generative and I still have feelings about that. I’ve gotten a number of complaints that are like, “We never hear about your stuff anymore.” Well that’s, I’ll share it when it feels good. But I also get to keep some stuff for me. I think a sexuality educators, we often feel like we have to make that performance very public.
Leonore Tjia: Totally. Which is another complicated edge of when you are doing something that you love, but it’s complicated by you have to turn it into a brand and into something that makes money. A lot of the humanity of it easily gets lost. And I’m really not about that. I’m really actually in helping people to find and defend their humanity.
Dawn Serra: Yes, please.
Leonore Tjia: I mean you might not find a lot of spectacle here, but I’m really, really into the humanity.
Dawn Serra: And, to me, that’s so much more interesting over the long term. Spectacles are fun, but they’re fleeting. And to me, I’d much rather have something that… There’s still so much fun and play for me but it’s in this much more– I want to use that word feast again. I feel like I’m feasting on the opportunities rather than mindlessly consuming them and then feeling empty on the other side.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah, totally. Exactly. And I think, it’s interesting because in my own journey of… I’m queer, I’m polyamorous, I’ve had a very high sex drive for most of my life. I was sexualized very early. So having a precocious entryway into sexuality and then doing work in it professionally means like I’ve identified with it or been defined with this for a long part of my life. And for most of my life, I have fiercely, fiercely defended my right to explore sexuality outside the constraints of hetero monogamy and of this very, very narrow cultural ideal of how we’re supposed to be sexual or how we’re allowed to be sexual.
One thing I appreciated about the age that we’re living in is there’s such a diversity of narratives that are coming out now about the many, many different ways that we get to be sexual beings and why we have the right to defend our autonomy in exploring these things. And it’s so necessary because I wouldn’t be who I am without this. I think there’s some alternative universe in which I am working in a law firm, engaged to some guy, totally repressing my desire to be with women and really hating myself, honestly. Because that’s what it felt like. All about the exploration and the defense of autonomy, and also it’s so necessary in finding our own humanity. We also need to be attentive to the ways that we become more interested in seeking out new sensations and consuming experiences than we are able to really be present within what’s happening, and how we have the potential to really use anything as avoidance…
Dawn Serra: Yes. Oh dear God. I think that’s one of the things that human beings are so incredible at is really using anything at all. We can use literally anything in our world as a numbing mechanism.
Leonore Tjia: Our powers of imagination are really incredible.
Dawn Serra: Right. And sometimes numbing is about survival. I just want to be really compassionate that sometimes numbing is literally about surviving and coping something. It’s really terrible and that’s okay. When we have a little bit more choice going on or a little bit more space to really be able to like, “Okay, I’ve noticed that I’m numbing in a lot of these places. What might it be to feel through some of this stuff that can feel really scary, and explore what’s on the other side of that.”
Leonore Tjia: Totally. And I think that that freedom opens up a lot of permission of seeing what’s possible. I’d say I’m in a fasting stage right now in my human relationships, but I’m enjoying a very erotic relationship with the earth and with life and with my creativity. That’s feeling very juicy and enjoyable.
Dawn Serra: Yes. And I think that’s also something that’s just.. As we come to a close, I’m like, God, I could talk to you for four more hours. It’s thinking about– and this is really what the summit’s about this year too, is there’s so much expansiveness. There’s so many pathways available to us to engage with the erotic, to engage with each other, to feel into our bodies and the depths of the pleasure that we have. Yet so often, we limit it and police it and force it into these super narrow confines because we’re so afraid of being othered, of not being lovable, of being left behind, of not knowing there’s alternatives. So even within your fasting, feeling this expansiveness, like that to me feels so exciting.
Leonore Tjia: Yeah. Also we another big reason why we police and shrink back from this because we’re afraid of the ecstasy. We’re afraid of how big the, the pleasure, the desire of the ecstasy feels, and it’s because we’ve forgotten that we are that ecstasy.
Dawn Serra: Oh God. Let’s leave them with that. For people who want to stay in touch with you, how can they find you online?
Leonore Tjia: You can find my website at rewildingtheheart.com and I have my little inner critic email course there, if you want to sign up for that. You can also get access to my writing, my monthly mythology group, and hear about all the other work that I’m doing. And so that’d be the best place rewildingtheheart.com
Dawn Serra: Yay. I will, of course, have the link to that in the show notes and at dawnserra.com for this episode. Leonore, thank you so much for being willing to go to these enormous theoretical places and to offer such practical, real lived experience. It’s been so fun.
Leonore Tjia: Oh, it’s so great. Thank you so much for having me. So much appreciation.
Dawn Serra: Yes. And to everybody who tuned in, please head to dawnserra.com if you have any questions or comments. Follow Leonore in all of the places and I will of course talk to you next week. Bye.
Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com had to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses.
As you look towards the next week, I wonder, what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?