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Amanda Testa, is a World Changing Witch, Sex, Love, and Relationship Expert + Trauma Resolution Guide who works with busy professional women and couples to feel incredible in their skin, tap into abundant energy, take sex from a "to do" to something they look forward to, and enjoy better connection and fulfillment in their relationships.  She’s also a mama to a gorgeous 8 yo girl, wife to her sexy hubs, and the host of the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.  

Her methods bridge ancient tools combined with the latest in neuroscience and somatic healing to facilitate rapid and lasting transformation.

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EPISODE 215: 5 Ways To Fire Up Your Libido

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Welcome, welcome to five days and five ways. My brain is a little scrambly today because I woke up with a migraine for the fourth day in a row this week so my apologies there, but you know what? What I love about even when I have pain is I know ways to make myself feel good, and I can still figure out how to focus more on the pleasure than the pain. The beautiful thing is both pleasure and pain originate from the same place in the brain, and so, when you can kinda play and hack your nerves to focus on what feels good, it makes such a difference. This is one of the keys too. I want to talk more about five ways to fire up your libido, but what I love is that, you know, it's not always a challenging thing. 

0:01:00

It doesn't always have to be hard, and even just something like this. I love essential oils. So even just taking a moment -- right now, I'm gonna invite you wherever you are, whatever you're doing, if it feels possible to, perhaps, tune in a little more presently to what we're doing here and maybe, if it feels safe and comfortable -- not if you're driving the car, obviously -- but if you maybe want to drop your eyes closed or just gaze softly down or just kind of let yourself soften a bit. [Deep breath out] Maybe take a deeper breath or two and notice if you can find a place in your body, in your being, something that feels comfortable, something that feels stable, maybe grounded, maybe even good, maybe even pleasurable. If that feels hard, you can even start by connecting to what is, just feeling the weight of your body in the chair, feeling the weight of yourself being held by gravity, just feeling that trust of gravity holding you to the ground. Feeling that support for the ground beneath you, and, for me, my feet are a really good resource. I love to rub my feet together. I love to feel my feet rubbing on the ground. That, to me, feels so good. 

0:02:03

So focusing on what feels good can just help me bring my awareness to something that's pleasurable, right? 

And so, I'm gonna talk more about this in a minute, but as we move into five ways to fire up your libido, I want to ask you a question. I want to understand from you why it's important. Why is it important for you to have your sex drive back, to feel your libido alive and kickin'? I'd love to know your answer. Please post below. I'll also put an anonymous Q&A form 'cause I really am curious. I would love to know why it's important to you, and I think this can be a really important thing 'cause sometimes we can hear all the messages from the world around us telling us why we need certain things or this is what you should be doing or for your partner or whatever, but I want to know the reason for you. If you can just drill down into your own divine self, the part of you who knows what you need and why it's important, what is it for that part? I'm wondering as you feel into why this is important for you, what can you see, perhaps, be different or what would change in your life if you had your libido back, if you felt sexy, if you felt your sex drive alive and kicking, if you felt desire. 

0:03:09

What would be different? What would change? Maybe thinking what would be the best part about that? What would be the best part about that?

I want to celebrate you for a minute 'cause even just being here right now is telling the powers that be, the universe, the divine creative, all that is, whatever you believe it is, it's just making a statement that this is something that I want, this is something that's important to me, and that right there can open up a huge door. So I just want to celebrate you right now for being here because that, my friends, is the number one thing that you can do. Start to connect to your desires, why it's important to you, and why you want this. And so, that's the number one tip: connecting to why it's important to you and feeling what that feels like. What would change? What would feel so good about having that, right? Focusing on the desires and then focusing on what else you want around that, what else would feel amazing about that, right? Maybe even picture yourself in a scenario where your sex drive is on fire, you're feeling so turned on, you're so tingling with energy and pleasure, what would be the best part about that? 

0:04:11

Tell me more about that. Feel into it for yourself. What would you be feeling? What would you be feeling on your skin? What might you be touching? What would you be tasting? What would you be smelling? What would you be listening to? What might someone be saying to you or what are you saying to yourself? What sounds might you be making? Just notice how that feels, and also, I just want to honor if that feels hard or if that feels impossible or if that feels challenging to do. If there's parts of you that are like mm, no, that doesn’t feel true, that doesn't feel realistic, that doesn’t feel possible, and I assure you that there are baby steps you can take to return to your libido. 

So when you're focusing on your desires, that's a really important thing because it actually takes you into a place of focusing on what you want and allowing your brain to wrap its head around the potential of that happening, right? When you wrap your head around the potential of that happening, you often can let your body and being know that that's actually an okay option. That actually can be okay. You can have that, and you can still survive, right? 

0:05:06

There might be parts of you that think no, no, that doesn’t feel good. That feels scary. That's something you can do is spend more time with those pieces, and know what they might need to feel okay with moving forward because, oftentimes, there can be a lot of fear wrapped up in that, right? And so, I just want to honor that too, if that's what you're experiencing.

So the other thing, number two, is I'm gonna take your desires a little bit further. So when I talk about desire when it comes to a sexual nature (your libido, your turn on), there can be a lot of things that can stand in the way of connecting to that, right? And so, what are some baby steps you can take to connect to the things that light you up, connect to the things that feel good, connect to the things that make your body feel good, connect to the things that make you feel good? I want you to just take a moment now and make a list of what some of those things are. What are the things that make you happy, that you want, that feel good to you? Just think about what some of those can be. Maybe it's taking a walk in the sunshine. Maybe it’s snuggling with a loved one. Maybe it's petting your beloved pet. 

0:05:59

Maybe it's taking a bath. Maybe it's feeling the hot water running on your neck when you take a shower. Maybe it's smelling something that smells good, as I do that right now. Maybe it's just enjoying a glass of water, and on that note, I'm gonna remember to hydrate myself a little. Maybe it's putting something beautiful in your space that you can look at, that pleases your eyes. Maybe it's making sure that things that surround you feel good to touch. I really am such a sensual person that I love to dress in things that feel good or have things around me that feel good that I can touch and bring my awareness to. My desk is full of all kinds of beautiful amazing things that I can look at and touch. It makes my day so much more pleasurable. 

So those kinds of little things, again, as I mentioned in the beginning, we can redirect our brain to focus more on what feels good, and the more we do that, the more we open our pathways to pleasure, right? Now that you’ve kind of connected to some of those things that light you up, I want you to make a commitment to do those things more often than you think you need to, right? Do those things more often than you think you need to because some of the surprising things that will kill your sex drive are stress, feeling stressed out, having horrible things happen, right, all the world's events that are just traumatizing. 

0:07:08

I was listening to a podcast the other day, and they were talking about how we are not meant to hold the traumas of the entire world. We are meant to be with what's happening in our community and our family on a small scale, but now because of the worldwide web and the interconnection that we have, we can see all the sufferings of the entire planet, and that is extremely heavy on our nervous system. So stress, trauma, those things can kill your sex drive. So that's why it's important to really connect to the things that make you feel good.

Number three -- this is my third tip -- is understanding your nervous system and really doing what you want to nourish your nervous system because when you do that, you are going to find yourself at a more baseline level of desire and receptivity, actually wanting to, because, frankly, one of the main things I see with overwhelmed women and really busy high-achieving women that come to work with me is they are burned out. They do everything for everyone. They are working their asses off. They are busy from dawn 'til dusk. They are doing it all. 

0:08:08

Bringing home the bacon, frying it up in the pan, never letting them forget their man or woman, right? It's all that, and it's exhausting. Not to mention all that we've been through. We're kind of coming out of the other side of it, yet there is a lot of aftershock, and I think, now, what happens a lot of times when you're moving into the world is that all of those aftershocks start really kicking in, and you feel them and you're starting to feel the repercussions. Like, maybe you've put on a brave face for so long and now you're just like ah, I can breathe, and when you breathe everything comes rushing in. Let me know if you can relate to that or if that resonates with you.

Yeah, so the reason why nourishing your nervous system is so important is because we want to create a wide foundation of support for ourselves. We want to be like a 300-year-old tree. If a storm rolls through and there's a 300-year-old tree, most often than not, a really deeply rooted tree is gonna just wave with the wind and be able to withstand, right? 

0:09:03

If you think of a baby little sapling, if a big wind gust comes, it might just blow it right out of the ground, and it's gone down to Kansas. So this is the same with us, right? The more we can cultivate the things that ground us, that make us feel good, that can keep us in our window of tolerance, that we are gonna have more ability to handle the things that come our way with more ease and with more ability to respond. 

I want to just talk a little bit about your window of tolerance because I know I've talked about this before, but if you're not familiar, basically, this is a place where you could easily move throughout your day. You might have ups and downs, you might cry, you might get upset, but then you come back to a place of regulation and feeling good pretty quickly, right? You can easily come back to feeling centered and feeling grounded. That means you're in this window of tolerance, this place where you can be resilient. Now, what can happen in our busy lives is we can tend to, maybe, go in one of two ways. So maybe we have a lot going on, and we're up here all the time, like, "Ah, I've gotta do this. I've gotta do that. I can't even breathe. I've gotta go take the kids here, and I've gotta go run these errands, and I've got this huge presentation to do, and I've got 15 clients I need to follow up with. Oh, my gosh, there's so much, and I'm just gonna keep going and going and going," and then, that's a hyper state, right? 

0:10:13

There's a lot of anxiety, potentially, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot going on, and after that for an extended period of time, eventually, your body's gonna be like nope, and it might crash down into hypo. This can also be another state depending on how your nervous system naturally reacts to things. When you're in this hypo-state, it can drop down below, and then it's like, "Ah, just like lethargy, and I just can't even get out of bed, and I'm just exhausted, and I just can't even more, and ah, I never want to come out of my hole, but I have to pay my bills and I have all these other things." Then you kind of can go up and down from this hypo place to this hyper place. What we want to do is to get to a place where we can kind of be with all of the things that cause the triggers, that give them opportunities to complete the stress cycles, and to learn ways to come back down into a place where we feel good, right -- to maybe come back up to a place where we can feel good. 

0:11:06

And so, those are some important skills that you can learn, and oftentimes, when it comes to sexuality, it sometimes needs to start there because if you're not in a place where your nervous system is functioning optimally, then it's gonna be hard to connect to your libido, right? So that's why it's important to nourish your nervous system, and I love teaching clients about that. It's a big part of what I talk about so much because it's really important.

The other thing is understanding what is happening within and what is happening without. Oftentimes we can get a little bit confused of what's happening inside of ourselves and what's happening outside of us, and this is where boundaries come in, right -- creating boundaries that support you to keep in what feels good and to keep out what doesn’t and move towards what you desire and move away from what feels like it's depleting, right? When it comes to pleasure, one of the things that actually can happen is that we don’t really have the capacity to hold more pleasure, right? 

0:12:01

Our nervous system can't handle it, so that's another reason why it can be hard to handle when we have a bunch of arousal energy coming up. Our body might shut it down, and it might not know what to do with that energy, so that's part of the process, too, in working with the nervous system. Not only are you learning how to come into this place of regulation, but you're also learning how to healthily expand your potential for arousal so that you can actually stay with it and be present to the sensation versus shutting down. So, again, that's another reason why that is important, so I do like to address that because, oftentimes, that's not something people talk about when it comes to turning on your desire, and it's a big part of it.

So the fourth thing that I want to talk about is creating a sensual self-care routine, and I really love that term because part of what we need to do to take care of our nervous systems is to create a sensual wellness practice, right? We have to learn to touch ourselves, to be with our bodies in a way that feels good. Again, you can start wherever feels comfortable for you, but the intention is that, over time with loving care and loving touch, that you find a way to be with your body in ways that bring you pleasure, that you find a way to view the beautiful aspects of your body and really see the divine magnificence of it, no matter the shape or size, no matter any of that stuff, right? 

0:13:22

And so, how you can do that is creating a regular sensual self-care practice where you, on a daily basis, take time to drop into your senses, you take time to touch your body in a way that feels good, and, if possible, even doing some self-pleasure practices. That can take a while to build up to, but that's okay because a really important part is how you touch your body. Are you able to even do that, and if it feels hard, what are the things that are in the way, and that's sometimes when, you know, you might want to work with a professional or reach out to me to kind of get to the place where you can touch your body in a way that feels good and not have shame about it and not feel bad about it but actually embrace it as a way to nourish your sexual energy, to nourish your aliveness. That is your connection to yourself, and it can only take sometimes as little as five or ten minutes. Once you kind of have cultivated a practice, it doesn’t always take so long to tap into that energy.

0:14:09

As I mentioned this morning, I woke up with a terrible migraine, and I've had one pretty much every day this week, and I know it's hormonal and there are all kinds of things that I'm working with to get to the root of it, but, at the same time, I know what makes me feel better. So, for example, this morning when I took a shower, it's busy in my house in the morning. I don’t have a lot of alone time, but I do make time to do practices for myself, and it looks different every day, but it's important to me. And so, today I didn’t have the usual time because I was helping my daughter do something else this morning. It looked a little different, and so, when I was in the shower, I used that ten minutes to make it a pleasure experience, right? I luxuriated in every part of the shower. I listened to a transmission from one of my teachers, Layla Martin (I love her), and just connected to my divine goddess nature within, and gave myself a luxurious breast massage. I mean, it was amazing the difference when you can connect to what feels good and what lights you up. 

0:15:01

It brings your body alive a little more and, really, that's the intention of a sensual self-care practice of creating that sensual wellness routine so that you can find ways every day to activate that in yourself and to cultivate that. That is a beautiful thing, and it's so much fun once you get the hang of it. It can feel really hard at first, so I want to just name that if that's you, and you're like oh, I don’t know if I can do that, that's okay too because you can get to a place where you can do it if it's important to you, right? It's not important to everyone, but there are people who do want to have a good sexual energy aliveness practice, that they want to have a way to awaken that libido and aliveness and let it flourish you in the ways that it may. 

I think, sometimes, what can often happen is people want to get their sex drive going for someone else (for their partner, for their relationship), and that's an important part of it, right? When I first got into this work, that was one of the reasons I signed up for my first sexuality class I ever took. I was like, "Well, I mean, it couldn’t hurt. Things in the bedroom are a little challenging now that I just had a baby, so let's look at that," right? I remember when I signed up, I was so embarrassed. I was mortified. 

0:16:00

I was like please, god, don’t let anyone know that I'm doing this, but it was so amazing because what I learned at the other side was it had zero to do with pleasing my partner and everything to do with coming home to myself, coming home into my own body, learning how to feel good in my skin, learning how to touch myself in ways that feel good, and then from there, it awakened all these new pleasure pathways in my body. It opened my heart more to my partner, and so, now, my husband and I have a much deeper relationship because of my own process. We would have never gotten there had I not done my own work. So, oftentimes, yes, you can do this together with your partner, but oftentimes, it's individual work that you do on yourself first, and then things change when you work on yourself, right? Usually there is a change and a ripple effect around you. So hence the importance of a sensual wellness routine.

All right, and now I'm gonna go to number five. These are some fun, applicable things that you can start doing right this minute. These are some of my favorite holistic sex tools. They're simple tools that you can use to just start feeling more pleasure in whatever you're doing. When it's coming to your libido and activating your libido, we've talked about a few things now, right? 

0:17:07

We've talked about why it's important to you. We've talked about connecting to that desire and following those things and really learning to give your body and your being yourself, doing the things that light you up, doing the things that feel good, doing the things that make you happy, doing the things that nourish yourself because you can nourish your nervous system that way, right? Nourishing your nervous system is important, right? We talked about that. Then, finally, creating your sensual practice, your sensual self-care practice. 

Number five is using holistic sex tools. Now, these are just simple things that you can do when you're having sex or when you're in an intimate experience, when you're self-pleasuring, whenever you're doing something that feels good. I love these because they are all readily available without having to spend any money or do anything else.

Number one is your intention, right? Having the intention of I am going to be open to the potential of my sex drive coming alive. I'm gonna be open to the possibility that this could be the best sexual experience I've ever had. Even just telling yourself that can change everything because we can get ourselves in a loop of, "Ugh, here's what's gonna happen. This is gonna happen, and then I'm gonna get touched here, and then it's gonna hurt, and then I'm gonna be not into it, and then I'm gonna get bored, and then it takes too long anyways, so I'm just gonna let me partner do what they want and have fun, and then I'm gonna be done, and then I can go back to reading my book," right? 

0:18:18

So those kinds of stories aren’t gonna serve you at all. So it's kind of working with your intention. Like, what is your intention? My intention is to be open to connecting to something that feels good. My intention is to be open to having a heart connection with myself or my partner. My intention is to have the potential for my sexual energy to come alive. My intention is for my libido to awaken from its slumber a little bit, right? So having an intention is a very important thing. So when you move into whatever you're doing, there is an open mind and a curiosity.

Number two: focus on your breath. Slow down and focus on your breath. Oftentimes, we don’t realize how we're breathing, and especially when it comes to our sexuality, maybe we have different breathing patterns that we might not even be aware of. 

0:19:00

Perhaps we stop breathing or perhaps we hold our breath or perhaps we clench or perhaps we aren’t even aware of what our breath is doing so when you can kind of focus on your breath, that is a way to drop into your body. So even if it's just taking two minutes before you move into an experience. Maybe you do this with yourself before you move into an experience. Maybe you do this with your partner, but just taking a few minutes to just breathe and focus on your breath, maybe inviting in a breath pattern that feels good and supportive, maybe that means slow, deep breathing to you, right? Maybe you want a little more activating breath, and you can do a little bit of fire breath where you're breathing a little more rapidly in and out of the nose. Kind of like [Rapid fire breaths in and out]. That can be an activating breath, so that might not be good for everyone. If you have any health conditions or anything like that, you might want to not do that activating breath, but the great thing about it is if you do it -- you know, maybe just do ten breaths like that and take a break, and do ten breaths more. That's pretty gentle, but it can kind of activate you a little bit to kind of get things a little more awakened, right?

0:19:59

You know yourself more than anyone else. That's why with breath sometimes -- with everything sexuality -- it can be really helpful to work with someone so that you can get a little more nuances for your particular problem, but if you're someone who tends towards, you know, maybe being shut down or just not interested, then maybe a little activating breath can be good. If you find yourself as someone who is super anxious and stressed out and it's really hard to drop into your body, maybe a slower breath could be good for you, right? Breath is such a beautiful tool around that. 

Then, also, don’t be afraid to make sounds. Whatever you're experiencing, just sound it. Sometimes that can be a fun practice to do throughout your day if you have the sound privacy to do it. I love doing it in my car. Just notice what is going on in your body right now, and if you could make a sound what would it be? Then make it. [Laughs] Even right now I invite you to do that! If you could make a sound, what sound would you make? [Deep sigh out] That sounds about like what my sound is right now. [Laughs] Also know your sounds are beautiful. Whatever sound you make is the perfect sound. I'm actually going through a little thing right now where I'm working with my own sound because I had to have some mouth surgery, and I feel like I talk differently, and it's bothering me. 

0:21:02

People say they can't notice it, but I notice it, and it is irritating me so I'm working with that -- loving my sounds, loving whatever is coming out of my mouth. Then, letting yourself move, letting your body move more. Again, we can get so stuck in these cyclical patterns when we have sex or when we pleasure ourselves, and we can get stuck doing the same thing again and again, and so, the more we can kind of play with different ways of being, using those holistic sex tools of intention, breath, sound, and movement, it really helps you drop more into the experience, be present to what is happening, and be open to something new. A lot of these are learned skills, right? 

This is something I can help you in more detail with. If you have questions, let me know. If you want more support around creating a sensual wellness routine or if you want more help around any of these items, let me know what you'd like more information on, but I think these are really great starting points. You’ve got a lot of beautiful things. Even if you just start with what we we've talked about today, that is gonna give you a lot more clarity of why this is important to you, right, and what little things help you feel good so you can start doing more of those so you can just open up in general your whole body and being to more experiences of what feels good. 

0:22:12

That can really help awaken libidos 'cause, often too, there can be hormonal things, this, that, and the other, so it's never a bad idea to also talk to a healthcare provider but, also, I want you to know there's so much you can do holistically, and that's why I think it's important because many times there are things happening that we can do, right? We can focus on what we can do. We can focus on what does feel good. We can focus on where we do find pleasure. We can focus on touching ourselves in different ways to explore what we might like, right? We can get to the root of why it's important, we can focus on our desires, we can create our sensual wellness routine to nourish our nervous system, and we can use our holistic sex tools.

So these are some starting points. I know that it sometimes can feel overwhelming when you're facing these kinds of challenges, but I want to let you know that if you make a commitment to yourself and start doing little, teeny things every day, less sometimes is more. The less pressure we put on ourselves, the more we make it fun, simple, and doable, the more changes we're gonna see. 

0:23:12

So I'll invite you to have fun with these. As always, I'm here to support you if you need more help in this area. I also want to share with you a get in the mood meditation which is one of my favorite little practices you can do before sexy time, before self-pleasure so that you can take a moment just to drop in and be with yourself and kind of get in the mood. It's called amandatesta.com/getinthemood. So you can enjoy that! 

I will look forward to seeing you very soon. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Let me know what questions you have. You can post them in the Find Your Feminine Fire Facebook group. You can email me directly at info@amandatesta.com. Please share with me what you need support around, and I will gladly talk more about it on the podcast and in the group. I'm wishing you a beautiful day!

[Fun, Empowering Music]

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.

0:24:00

This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. 

I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself. 

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]