Sex Gets Real 256: M’kali-Hashiki on the erotic, safety, and healing

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Is your relationship with pleasure complicated?

1. Check out my new pleasure course which is enrolling now through April 22, 2019 (we’ll enroll again in June!). It’s called Power in Pleasure: Reconnecting with Your Hunger, Desire, and Joy and runs for five weeks online. I’d love to see you there.

M’kali-Hashiki is here! Let’s talk about erotic healing and more.

M’kali-Hashiki works with people’s erotic wounds and erotic breathwork. She has such wisdom and experience in exploring the erotic and also being with our bodies in meaningful ways.

Our conversation explores the ways we touch our genitals, the ways we become erotically wounded, what presence and breathwork can offer us in reconnecting with our pleasure and erotic sources.

We also dive deep into the concept of safety and why safety isn’t available to everyone. When we begin to examine the ways we have to armor ourselves to move through our lives, especially if we experience marginalization by the state, we start to see the ways safety may not be available to us, even in our most intimate relationships.

This is a rich, yummy discussion that I can’t wait for you to hear.

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Episode Transcript

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, welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. Dawn here with this week’s interview with the incredible M’Kali-Hashiki. M’Kali-Hashiki spoke at this year’s summit and does all kinds of awesome work around the erotic. And I am so excited to share this conversation with you. 

Before we dive in, I want to remind you there’s just a little teeny bit of time left to enroll in my Power in Pleasure course. If you would like to join me and about a dozen other people as we spend five weeks really exploring our pleasure and our stories, changing the ways that we interact with body hunger, appetite, desire. Then you will want to check out this course. I am ridiculously excited about it. It’s, I think, pretty affordable considering how much work is going into it. You’re going to get daily emails. There’s weekly group calls so that there’s a community aspect to it. We’re going to really dive in to all of the things that make pleasure complicated for us, that open us up to interacting with pleasure and new ways. And that way you can reconnect with your hunger, your desire, and your joy to have a more rich, delicious experience of life and body. 

So if you want to learn about that and potentially join me, it starts April 22nd, 2019, which is sadly right around the corner. Then you can go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse I would love to have some listeners in there with all of us as we explore pleasure and how that connects us with our power. 

Dawn Serra: I also want to let you know if you support the show on Patreon, first off, thank you so much. Every dollar matters. $3 a month and above gets you access to exclusive weekly bonus content that you can’t hear or find anywhere else, which is a steal because it’s 75 cents a week. And this week M’Kali-Hashiki and I talk about life affirming, body affirming, emotionally affirming sex with a partner. What it is, how you know whether or not that’s what you’re experiencing, and some of the ways that we can access that kind of sex, if we’re not doing it with our partner. So if you want to hear that, you can go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast and if you’re already supporting the show, then it’ll be in the bonus content that you can access. If you aren’t yet supporting the show, you can pledge $3 a month to get those bonus content weeks. You can pledge $5 a month and then also help me field listener questions, so check that out and thank you so much for your support. 

I’m also hungry for your questions. I have an episode coming up next week with some of your questions and then a couple of interviews. I’m working on, actually, a four part interview series that I’m super excited about that’ll air later in May. And in the meantime, I want to get lots of your questions on the air. So if you want to email me, you can do that by going to dawnserra.com and using the send a note feature or you can email me info@sexgetsreal.com that’s the email address for the show. Info@sexgetsreal.com so you can send me your questions and I might feature them on the show.

Dawn Serra: Let me tell you just a little bit about M’Kali-Hashiki and then we’re going to roll around in the erotic and healing our erotic wounds, and safety, and all kinds of deliciousness. M’Kali-Hashiki is a renegade sexual mystic. A tour guide to the realm of eros, and a teacher of sematic erotic possibilities. She holds certifications in sexological bodywork, sound, voice, and music healing and tantric sacred intimacy. A published essayist, a former professional social justice organizer, and an Ifa devoteé. She believes the sexual and the spiritual are irrevocably intertwined. Her politics, spirituality, and lived experience as a queer feminist, polyamorous, middle-aged, fat, kinky, black, femme, dyke trauma survivor inform all aspects of her work. She’s the author of the popular ebook, Turn Your Junk Into Treasure: Five Steps to Deepening Your Relationship With Your Nethers. 

She offers individual sessions and transformational group journeys, helping queer, trans indigenous people of color and allied folk access to their erotic energy for radical transformation fuel. She also offers enstatic breathwork for collaboration and employee wellness to companies and social justice nonprofits. If you’re curious about enstatic instead of ecstatic, she talked all about that at the summit this year. Totally recommend checking it out.

Anyway, as you can hear, M’Kali-Hashiki does all kinds of incredible things around eros, the erotic, ritual, sexual, sensual spaces. And she has a lot of incredible wisdom to bring to the show. So here is my conversation with M’Kali-Hashiki.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, M’Kali-Hashiki. I’m so excited to get another chance to talk to you. 

M’Kali-Hashiki: Oh, this is going to be fun. 

Dawn Serra: It’s going to be so fun. Yes. You do some awesome work in the world. 

M’Kali-Hashiki: Thank you. 

Dawn Serra: You do all kinds of work around erotic breathwork and ritual and presence. For people who aren’t familiar with you, what’s kind of the intro pitch that you share with folks to let them know who you are and what you do?

M’Kali-Hashiki: I help folks heal their erotic wounds by accessing their erotic energy so that they can use that for whatever sort of transformative fuel they want to.

Dawn Serra: And when you think about erotic wounds, what are some of the things that– if someone hears that and they’re like, “Oh, do I have that?” What are some indicators that you might be carrying an erotic wound that might need some tending?

M’Kali-Hashiki: Well, first of all, I think, it’s important to note that when I’m saying erotic wound, I’m using the term erotic not as a euphemism for sexual. It can include sexual wounds, any type of sexual trauma, any sort of trauma that has had a negative impact on your relationship with your body and your sense of self. It doesn’t only have to be sexual trauma, it could also be trauma from some sort of accident. It could also be the ways in which religion and spirituality often– not spirituality, traditional religion often impacts our relationship with our body and our relationship with our sexuality. It could be trauma that you’re carrying from your ancestors. Sometimes folks will come to me with… 

I teach medical students how to do pelvic exams. And in the interview, we talk about presenting complaints. Somebody might come with me with what they think is their main thing. But there’s a lot of stuff underneath that that contributes to that erotic wound. For example, I know I had this client once. It was the first time it happened to me. She came in. She said that she was actually not having sex with anyone at that time, not interested in having sex with anyone at that time. But really felt like she had a theoretical understanding of energy and spiritual energy coursing through her. Being able to feel that, but she didn’t actually know what that meant or what that felt like. And then as we started talking more, it came up there was a lot of ancestor work that she needed to be doing. That being separate from our ancestors and not having that strong relationship and being implicitly or explicitly told by society that that’s nonsense is also a type of erotic wound.

M’Kali-Hashiki: When I speak of eros, I’m talking about the soul and the spirit. Any sort of wounds in the spirit are wounds to the body and the relationship between self and body and self and spirit, those are all about it.

Dawn Serra: I had this really wonderful conversation with Leonore Tjia on the show, a few months ago. One of the things that we were talking about was seeing the erotic as this source beyond ourselves, that was something that we could sip from to experience life force and pleasure. And that it was something that was beyond our bodies, and something that we could really tap into. What is your experience of connecting with the erotic and how that heals us?

M’Kali-Hashiki: Well, yes, the erotic is something beyond self. It’s got different names that are often the same thing. We talked about our creative energy, that’s our erotic energy. When we talk about being grounded and anchored, that’s also our erotic energy. It depends on what we mean by heal. I’m using this definition from Betty Martin, possibly paraphrase. But that healing is gaining access to more of ourselves or the way I would say it is regaining access to parts of ourselves that we may have been cut off from because of trauma. So being able to access the erotic energy that flows through our bodies, that connects us with other people, helps us to gain access or regain access to those parts of ourselves that didn’t have access to because of trauma. And how that healing actually works is very, very individualized. 

One of the ways that I think it can be most profound is people talk a lot about your body is sacred, your body is special. And to me, that includes your pleasure zones. If your body is sacred then that includes all of the body and all of the things that your body is capable of. So I could tell someone on and on and on, we are a sacred being, the universe loves you, thinks are special. But it’s really different when you get to experience that in your own body. The main quote unquote modality that I use of erotic trance is about using the breath and touch to help people actually have that experience of my body is a sacred instrument. My pleasure comes from the divine. 

M’Kali-Hashiki: When you have that experience, it goes along. If you read about my body is sacred or people tell you that your body is sacred, that doesn’t always help to combat the messages that we get about our bodies, especially those of us who live in bodies that are marginalized by the state: fat folks, non-binary folks, queer folks, people of color, et cetera. There are a lot of images and messages that we are bombarded with 24/7 about how our bodies are the very opposite of sacred and special. Being able to experience that personally can go a long way to being able to ignore or reframe those messages and those images.

Dawn Serra: If someone’s listening to this and they’re thinking, “I would really like to try and cultivate an experience of my body is sacred.” What are some things that people can do to try and experiment with that?

M’Kali-Hashiki: I think starting with the breath. It’s always about the breath. Starting with trying some different kinds of breathing techniques. I mean, the breath work that I teach is only one type of breathing. There’s all types of breathing. The important thing is to use the breath to stay in your body. And then try to use the breath to be in your body perhaps differently than you’re used to during times of sexual arousal. That can be doing breath work while masturbating, that could be slowing the breath down and being really focused on the breath during sex with a partner. It could be holding your genitalia with a loving touch, not necessarily masturbating, not doing anything. Just holding it the way you would hold a newborn baby or your niece or nephew or your child. Holding it with that loving intention and just sitting with whatever comes up. Oftentimes, a lot of negative stuff will come up and then still using the breath to get to the other side of that. And then see what kind of messages, what kind of feelings are generated by you just holding your genitalia with a loving, sharing and nurturing touch.

Dawn Serra: As you say that, it really makes me think about how rarely, I think, so many of us actually touch our genitals in that way. I’m thinking like the ways we usually interact with them are to clean them or for sexual purposes, but not to just love and care and nurture and hold and be with. And then that feels really special to think about when you say that.

M’Kali-Hashiki: Also, one of the ways that some of us– another way that some of us engage with a genitalia, which is not always pleasant, is thinking about menstruation, right? I use, they keep changing the names of what these things are, menstrual discs, for example. During my period, I’m engaging with my genitalia a lot. But it’s not usually in– I’ve got cramps or I’m hating the world or… 

One of the things I like actually about the menstrual disc is that I have to be more engaged with my genitalia during my menstrual cycle, but not always. [It’s] not always a happy feeling. Other than sex, and all of us are not having great life affirming, body affirming, emotionally affirming sex. But other than sex, once we get to be adults, there’s not a lot of other touch on our genitalia other than hygiene and sex. That’s it. That’s it. And then going to the doctor, which is never fun. Even just cupping it for the space of a few breaths in the morning. And that’s actually one of the exercises that I give to clients a lot is every day holding your genitalia with one hand and then having your hand on your heart portal, and then just doing 10 breaths. This sort of slow everything down and either send energy from your heart and love energy into the genitalia or maybe you got it going on in your genitalia, you want to take some of that energy and bring it up into the rest of the body.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. What a simple practice. But also to hear it, the ritual of that and intentionally touching yourself with loving, caring, nurturing touch. That feels so important. Hearing you talk about it makes me go, “I know what I’m going to be doing in the next few mornings.”

M’Kali-Hashiki: What a way to start off your day. Remembering that this flesh vessel, this mechanical wonder is… One of my other sayings is, “We are all minute manifestations of the divine.” So remembering that this mechanical wonder, this flesh machine also carries a bit of the divine in it. And this is one of the things that I always get so head up about, you can’t say , if you are part of a traditional religion, you can’t say, “Oh, this body was created in God’s image, except for the part between my legs.” That just doesn’t make any sense. It includes the genitalia and it includes the pleasure that can be found in that genitalia. And so, reminding yourself with some touch, making sure that it’s not like unconscious, absent minded touch. Although that could have some effect too. 

I’m actually one of those people where I had to train myself out of– If I’m sitting at the bus stop, I didn’t use to have my hand in my pants, but I would often have my hands cupping my genitalia. I did hold my breasts under my shirt a lot, subconsciously and it was very comforting to me. And then when I caught myself doing it in front of my father-in-law during Christmas dinner, I was like, “Okay, we can’t be doing this all the time.” And so I had to train myself. There’s something very comforting about holding your own flesh. Wherever that is, as long as you’re like, “This is wonderful.” Not like, “Ugh, my.. Ew, my arms is hairy.” And I’m trying to cover up the hair or… Of course, you can’t see me but I have burn scars on my left hand and if I’m holding my right hand over my left hand. And I’m doing it from a way of, I’m trying to hide the scars from the view of the world, that’s very different than, “Let me love up this hand that I often might have bad thoughts about or other people are staring at it. Let me give it some love.” Those are two very different intentions and they carry different energy with them and your body gets a different message.

Dawn Serra: I love the invitation to be present and mindful if that’s available to you. And also if that’s not available to you, touching yourself with a loving, nurturing touch, even if you’re not present, that’s still something.

M’Kali-Hashiki: That’s still something. Oftentimes, for folks who are doing that unconsciously, it is a form of comfort that they’re doing.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something else that I think is so challenging for so many of us, and I know I’ve had a number of people write into the show over the years around this, and we’ve talked about it, is we live in a culture that prizes business, productivity, rushing, achieving the goals and doing whatever you have to do to get to that end point. And so much of the work you do around erotic breathwork, and ritual, and healing is about presence and slowing down. That can be so uncomfortable for us, even for me, and I try to practice this pretty regularly. 

There are certain days when slowing down is actively agitating. For you and all of the work that you’ve done, what are some of the things that you’ve found help to create spaces where we can slow down or have a little bit more presence if we’re someone that rushes and isn’t present a lot?

M’Kali-Hashiki: I think sometimes, it can be helpful to try to do things in community and whether that community is a community of two or maybe it’s just you and your good buddy and you’re going to hang out and take things slow. Or just being in each other’s presence or whether that’s an event that you pay for that you go to that is about creating the space to be slow, to be present. I don’t think that we can necessarily always do it on our own. And also I think it’s important that if we are doing it on our own and we’re having– So every day I meditate or whatever before I go to work. And one day or tomorrow I can’t sit still. I can’t concentrate, I’m agitated either because I’m too focused on the stressors that I know are going to happen that day or because sitting still makes it harder to ignore that I’m unhappy, right? Or that my current situation is not supportive to me. 

When I slow down, it’s harder to escape from that truth. That it’s also important to be generous with ourselves, right? If I can’t be present or I can’t really slow down or the slowing down makes me agitated, that’s okay… For right now, that’s okay. I haven’t done anything wrong. It doesn’t mean that I’m a failure at meditating. It doesn’t mean that I should never try it again. This moment, this day, this doesn’t feel good to me and so I’m not going to do it or I’m going to do it for a shorter period of time, et cetera, et cetera. That’s okay.

Dawn Serra: Imagine having an unapologetic relationship with your pleasure. Being able to say, “Yes, I want that.” And to know you’re worthy of the wanting, if you’re anything like me and so many of the people I work with, somewhere along the way, you were taught to distrust your hunger cues. To deny or to feel shame around your desire, to ignore or contain the things that make you feel good, to feel like you had to earn your right to pleasure. And it’s not your fault that your body and your pleasure feel foreign, complicated, and distant. It’s a feature, not a bug, of the culture we live in. That’s why I created Power in Pleasure: Reconnecting with Your Hunger, Desire, and Joy, an online five week course and community to help you discover, befriend, and prioritize your pleasure and your body. Because you deserve pleasure, joy, desire, hunger, satisfaction, and presence.

You deserve to savor and feast on your life, the food you eat, and the way you exist in your body. Because the problem is not you. The problem is not your body. The problem is a culture that taught you to distrust your desires and to look outside yourself for answers. So let’s join together in this gentle exploration of pleasure and what it means to you. Plus, the stories that you carry that may not be yours to carry. If you want to learn more about my online course that’s launching in just a few weeks, go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse There’s a link in the show notes. Join me. Your pleasure matters.

Dawn Serra: And thinking about that, you said this really wonderful thing before we started recording that I’d love to pull in here. Because so many threads of what you’ve already shared relate to this around so much of the work you do is around healing erotic wounds. And often, rushing is one of the ways that we’re surviving and leaving ourselves. This invitation to be really generous and kind, maybe slowing down and being present is hard because it’s hard. 

You were talking about so often we talk about safety without really thinking about who has access to it and who doesn’t. And you mentioned relative safety as something that you’ve been circling and chewing on for a while. I’d love to hear a little bit more about relative safety and who gets to be safe and who doesn’t. 

M’Kali-Hashiki: …In many ways. I’ve always been in the nonprofit social justice arenas, what have you and there’s a lot of talks of safe space, right? Like, “Oh, this is a safe space.” it’s In larger group settings, safe space for who? Who gets to have access to that safe space and who’s safe space comes at the expense of someone else’s safe? So there’s that piece. And then there’s also the piece of– I was working with a client, a fat black woman who was a survivor of some sort of sexual trauma and was wanting to.. was recognizing how her hypervigilance was interfering with her ability to get close to people, right? Specifically lovers, but all kinds of people. We started doing this thing around letting the body know that that time, that that experience wasn’t happening now. That the body did not have to be on sentry duty against that kind of violence because the body is not in that situation any longer. 

We first start with thanking the body for doing what it did to get us through that experience. And now it’s like, “Hey, we’re not there in that…” … is not necessary. I was using the term safe and then at some point I was like, “Wait a minute.” In this country, and actually in some places in the world because anti-blackness is global, but in this country in particularly, once you leave your house– and I’m just making also as a fat black woman, there is no safe space. There is no place where my body… If I’m just going about my day doing my regular activities, there’s not necessarily any space outside in the world in which my body, my psyche is safe. If I’m trying to tell my body that it’s safe, my body’s like, “What are you talking about?” The body then says, “I can’t depend on– I can’t trust you to know what’s safe and what’s not safe because you’re clearly lying to me right now. We’re never safe when you’re trying to tell me we’re safe.” So then the question is how do we find places of relative safety? How do we create spaces of relative safety? And, again, what does relative safe mean? Do I expect to be demonized, physically assaulted, shamed, mocked for any of my identities? That’s not safe, right? That’s clearly not safe. 

M’Kali-Hashiki: Can I find a space where… I’m a queer fat black woman, I’m counting on my fingers, a burn survivor. Let’s say we’re going to take these five identities. My burns are actually visible whether or not people can see them, and paying attention is another question, but my burns are in visible parts of my body. Let’s say, definitely closer to the accident. I was definitely more aware of my burns and it felt like more people would stare at me and felt completely comfortable to say shit to me about my burns. So then I discovered a community of burn survivors, right? 

I can go to these events. I can go to these conferences and know that that identity, I’m going to be safe in those spaces. But if those spaces have not had dealt with their homophobia, their transphobia, their racism, and their understanding of white privilege which, let me tell you they have not, then there’s a way that I’m still not safe. I’ve got some relative safety because in this one part of my identity, this burn survivor place, I know no one’s going to point at me or mock me or make me feel bad or tap me on the shoulder in the airplane and say, “Hey, something happened to you. That must’ve been a hard part of your life,” which just happened on my last flight. I know that nobody is going to do that. but I’m still not completely relaxed. I’m still a little bit on guard because I know that the likelihood of some sort of microaggression around race or gender or sexuality is likely to happen. I’m in a place of relative safety, but I’m not still completely safe. I can’t say to myself that is a safe space. 

M’Kali-Hashiki: A lot of times, the folks at those events will say, “Oh, you know, this is a safe space.” And it’s usually white men, “This is a safe space for people.” I’m like, “Yeah, buddy. For you, maybe. But not necessarily for me.” The question then is how do we try to create little oasis of safety and can– So we have our little oasis of safety and then can we broaden those oasis to make them larger.?When I leave here later on today, I’m going to a book club that are all black folks. Mostly queer, not all queer, but all black folks. I never read the book, I don’t go there for the books. I go there for the comradery and the safety of being in a large space with other queer, mostly queer, black folks. It’s a broader place of safety. When we go back to the five pieces that I just talked about: there’s lots of women, everyone’s black, there are other fat folks there. I can’t remember… Lots of queer folks. No one else, as far as I know as a burn survivor, but because so many of the other of my identities feel safe there, I don’t have to be vigilant about thinking that I’m unsafe as a burn survivor. Also, I know these folks and have known them for a while. 

I make time for that. I don’t make time to read the book, but I make time to go there because I know that that is a place of safety and a place where I get to do some healing, i.e. regain access to parts of myself, that I can drop my guard a little bit. I got the actual quote, but there’s definitely this sense that the more sites of marginalization that your body occupies, the often the harder or the more intense your armor, your guard. And so your body is carrying this immense amount of tension because you’re on guard all the time. That tension is exhausting and a lot of times it’s so unconscious that then, we wonder, why are we fucking tired all the time? 

So making spaces where I can drop some of that guard and just breathe more easily. Those are places of safety, of relative safety. Then the other thing I want to say about places of relative safety. For some folks, the community that they can find on the Internet, even though it’s not in flesh base is safer, relatively safer than the places in real time, in real space. In meet spaces as they say that they can find. So sometimes it’s about having an internet community. It’s not always about you have to be in meet space with folks.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something that really strikes me as you share all of that was specifically when you said often it’s white men that will say, “This as a safe space.” And your experience is, “For you, maybe.” I think that’s such an important thing to name. Even in our most intimate relationships, the way you and I experience the world and thus experience safety for multiple reasons is going to be different. I might be the person that’s got some more privilege and some more ease and moving through the world and I feel safe in our relationship. And so I assume you do too. I think that can often be this unnamed, unspoken, nebulous place of disconnect and even a little bit of anxiety or resentment of, if the person who’s moving through the world feeling more traumatized or is actually being more oppressed by the state because of their body; there’s going to be a different feeling of safety when I come into relationship with you. I think that’s so important that we can’t assume that how safe we feel inside of any given relationship is how safe other people feel.

M’Kali-Hashiki: Exactly. I think that’s something that folks who often have more privileged, that’s gender privileged or cis privileged or white privileged or class privileged is this something that they often don’t want to think about. Sometimes it comes from a place of caring and love. If I want my loved one to be safe, and so I just pretend like it’s safe for them and make sure that I’m always thinking of their best interest, then that means that they’re safe in this relationship. And that’s not necessarily true or they could be safe in the relationship and that doesn’t negate the lack of safety they have, even being with you and being out in the world.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m thinking about. Even if I feel relatively safe in this particular relationship with this particular person, but in my day, I move through the world and felt unsafe a number of times. Maybe I was cat called, maybe somebody called me a really derogatory name. Maybe the sexist thing happened at work again. When I come back home to that relationship, even though there’s a general sense of safety, I have felt unsafe all day. And so that can even change those dynamics of now if you’re asking me for sex or you’re being playful, but I’ve got all that armor that’s been exhausting me all day. The way I’m showing up is going to be… It’s going to impact us and leaving space for that, I think, is really important.

M’Kali-Hashiki: Yes. Being aware of that, figure out how to move past that. And sometimes the person who is the recipient or, recipients that what I want to say. Sometimes the person that is experiencing that lack of safety in the world, they want this relationship to be that oasis, that place of calm. Sometimes they don’t want to acknowledge, “I’m feeling all this shit that I had just experienced in the world today. It’s still with me as I enter the home or as we hang out or whatever.” And I don’t want it to be because I want to be in this relationship and take all that other stuff away. I’m investing in this relationship because I hope it will make up for the lack of safety in the rest of the world. And that is also not the best– that’s not going to be the best of the relationship. 

Both folks have to be cognizant of and acknowledge the difference in access to safety and what that means for when we are together, when we are sharing space, whether that’s meet space or we’re like talking on the phone, how we’ve been unsafe in our daily life that day, that week, that month will affect how present we can be in the relationship. It will affect what we need, what we’re looking for in that relationship. I was going to say both, but it can be all. All parties need to acknowledge and take that into consideration.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think that that is something that’s so invisible and that’s so few of us have the language for. But that is actively impacting every relationship that we’re in. Being able to kind of give some language and help to reveal that a little bit, I think, will be really profound for a lot of people.

M’Kali-Hashiki: I definitely think that’s– Sometimes, you can’t necessarily navigate that on your own. I have a friend who does couples therapy and that’s one of the things that she calls that out for folks, and helps them to together to figure out how they’re going to navigate those different levels of privilege in their relationship. And maybe the fact that, one person with privilege has not been acknowledging how they– The privilege that they’re used to experiencing in the world and then they think that they should be experiencing that same level of privilege at their partners expense. This is not necessarily something you can always sort of navigate on your own.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Oh, I love that so much. I feel like I’m going to be thinking about that for weeks. So coming back to the erotic. I think a lot of people, as you said at the beginning, and you have these beautiful definitions for erotic, sexual, and sensual. I think culturally we tend to code anything erotic as explicitly sexual. I think for a lot of people, connecting to the erotic is really foreign and/or they’re doing it and they don’t even realize that they are because it’s not explicitly sexual. 

For you, what does it mean to be connected to and channeling the erotic? How do you show up in your life, in your interactions, in your pleasure when you have that strong connection to the erotic as a source?

M’Kali-Hashiki: When I am connected to eros, when I feel like my erotic energy is running strong through my body. There’s nothing blocking it. Number one, I just have more energy for life. I don’t feel as drained as often. I see the humor in a lot of things. When I’m strongly connected to eros, I feel like I’m more generous with my own feelings. And when the people I love let me down, which people that you love will always let you down, and you will let down people that you love. So I feel like when I’m strongly connected to eros, I’m more generous and forgiving of myself and others. When I’m connected to eros, it’s easier for me to say no to the things that are going to harsh my mellow, right. That’s not going to sustain my joyous feeling. That’s going to take a lot of energy to sustain, so I’m going to say no. 

And then of course, if I am having sex and I’m connected to eros, and I’m having sex with someone who I feel good about and who I feel safe with, then the sex is better. But that’s way down on the list of benefits of being connected to your erotic energy. Good sex is way down the list. A better sense of self. I like myself more when I’m strongly connected to my erotic energy. I’m less likely to focus on the parts of me that I consider flaws when I’m connected to my– They don’t necessarily disappear. My burn scars don’t go anywhere. I’m able to do a reframe, for example.

If I’m really connected to eros, my left arm is the entirety of visible scars, I’m more likely to wear short sleeves and sleeveless tops and not be hunched over when I’m doing it, right? Instead of thinking, “Oh, these are ugly pieces of my skin, I’m more likely to think, these are the symbols that I’m a fucking badass’ and was able to survive some shit that other people were not able to survive.” So I’m more likely to see them as badges of courage and badassery than as scars or something that takes away my gorgeousness. One of the challenges is how do I remain connected to my erotic energy? And when I can tell that I’m depleted or I can tell that I’m feeling like it’s an obstacle, something blocking it, how do I rectify that? And that can be challenging. 

M’Kali-Hashiki: It’s about figuring out do you know the things that make you feel replenished and maybe that language is foreign to you. The idea of replenishing your erotic energy. What does that mean? What are the things that you can do that make you feel good in your body or make you feel comfortable in the world? Maybe you need to go to the park and watch some dogs play. Maybe you need to go swimming. Maybe you need to go to the club and dance. Maybe you need to put on some music and dance at home. Maybe something about dancing makes you feel more at home in your body. If you have the resources for it, maybe you need a massage, maybe you need to go have a massage. Or if you can’t pay somebody else to do a massage, maybe you and a buddy can give each other massages or paint each other’s toenails. Something that makes you feel good about yourself and making the space for that. 

Dawn Serra: That just feels so expansive. So much of everything you’re naming is about being connected to the erotic allows you to be more grounded in worth, agency, perspective, generosity, connection to others. I mean, there’s so much richness in that and I love how you’re saying “Better sex is great but it’s pretty low down on the list of all the other things that I get that impact every aspect of your life.” I know. It’s so big. It’s so big and so exciting. 

So you said something earlier and I would love for us to pop over to Patreon in a minute and talk about exploring this concept of life affirming, body affirming, emotionally affirming sex with a partner. Because I think a lot of people are going to be really curious about that but before we do that, can you share with everyone listening how they can stay in touch with you and find you online?

M’Kali-Hashiki: Well, my website is fiercepassions.com. FIERCEPASSIONS. The translation of M’Kali-Hashiki is fierce passion but somebody already had that URL. So, fiercepassions.com I got a Facebook page facebook.com/FiercePassions/ and Twitter, I had to go through cycles with Twitter right now. I’m not really that involved with my Twitter and I have on IG account, @fierce_passions. I’m learning Instagram, so I’m spending a lot more time there. 

I do blog posts on my website about some of these issues about reclaiming the self after trauma or how spirituality involved in erotic healing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. On the website, if you sign up for the newsletter, you’ll get information about webinars and in person events. So I’m based in Oakland and I spend half the year here and half the year in Belize. The in person events are fewer and further between, but there are lot of cyber courses, as I’m calling them, lots of online stuff happening. So that’s how you can find me.

Dawn Serra: Awesome. I will all of those links. So you can easily click through in the show notes for the episode and of course at dawnserra.com. If you have questions or comments, feel free to head to dawnserra.com and send me a note. I love featuring your voices on the show. If you support the show on Patreon at patreon.com/sgrpodcast you can pop over there and here the bonus chat that M’Kali-Hashiki and I are about to have. Until next time, I’m Dawn Serra. 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 Head 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 on old story, revitalizes stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?