Women’s Anatomy of Arousal with Sheri Winston

 

 

Amanda Testa (00:01):

You’re listening to Find Your Feminine Fire, the podcast where we talk sex, love and relationships and all things that light you up from the inside out. I’m your host, Amanda Testa. Thanks so much for being here today. Hello everyone and welcome to the Yind your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa, and I am so thrilled because today I am talking with one of my superheroes when it comes to sex education. Her book was life changing for me when I came upon it years ago, and I have to say as a 30 something year old woman, I was really just blown away at what I didn’t know about my own body and my own anatomy, and today I’m talking with Sheri Winston. She is the author of women’s Anatomy of Arousal, which is the book I’m talking about today, and she is a holistic sexuality teacher as well as many other amazing things.

Amanda Testa (00:58):

She’s an award winning author, teacher who offers empowering, entertaining erotic education, really for everyone, as well as writing the Women’s Anatomy of Arousal. She has also written another book that I adore called Succulent Sexcraft, Your hands on Guide To Erotic Play in Practice. We’ve had lots of fun with that book and she’s also the founder of the Intimate Arts Center. She offers pleasure centered sex ed for grownups with a wide variety of practical and transformational intimate arts education. She really delights in inspiring people to have a lot more pleasure, fun and fulfillment. Yay to that. Thank you so, so much for being here. I am so honored to have you.

Sheri Winston (01:38):

Oh, thank you for having me. It’s really, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Amanda Testa (01:42):

Yeah, and I know that you have such a beautiful story of kind of what led you to where you are today. I would be so honored if you would share just a little bit about kind of what led you to this work.

Sheri Winston (01:53):

Well, let’s see. I’ll try and give a slightly shorter version of the story, but I actually had a calling when I was about 20 to become a midwife and I spent the next two decades of my life on that path. I, I was a massage therapist. I became a childbirth educator and a Doula and assisted home birth midwives. And then I decided I wanted to go the legal route. I went to nursing school because in this country, in order to be a midwife in almost all states, you need to be a nurse first. So I got a bachelor’s degree in nursing even though I had no interest in being a nurse and then went on to do midwifery school and then did home birth midwifery and then birth center midwifery and that this was my calling and my passion and I actually envisioned that at some point I was going to get burned out on being on call and.

Sheri Winston (02:50):

But what I thought was I would wind up teaching the next generation of midwives and child birth professionals. That’s really something that I’ve. I’ve always taught. I’ve always taught something. Whatever I was doing, I taught it, but much to my surprise, almost 20 years ago now, the midwifery calling came to an end and shifted into what I now think of as my truer deeper calling, which is a being a holistic sexuality teacher. I like to say that I. I just went deeper in to the same mystery, the same pathway. And in fact, I now think of my 20 something years in the world of birth and women’s health as my apprenticeship for being a sexuality teacher because here’s a shock, birth and sex are actually all part of the same thing. They’re not separate at all and everything I learned in birth and about helping women birth was applicable to my own sexuality and then the work I was doing and teaching others. So it’s really been an interesting journey that just keeps coming back around and going deeper in and so I’m so grateful that I have that background because it gives me a perspective that I would never have had if I hadn’t had the amazing opportunity experience gift of being present with women while they birth their babies and being present for those births. It was an amazing thing to do. It was fantastic how all of that came back around. Okay. That was not the short version. Sorry.

Amanda Testa (04:33):

I love that. It makes so much sense and I, I can relate to that experience just opens up this whole other perspective of the power that we hold in our, in our anatomy and our sexuality and everything because I was fortunate enough to have a water birth and be able to tap into my own power, which I would have never in a million years had think, you know, coming along it was always, oh yeah, of course you’ll get the epidural and you’ll need this. Not obviously the beauty of this day and age as you can choose however you want to have your baby. But I think through that experience, just realizing like the true innate power we have and how amazing our anatomy is, it also got me very curious to learn more about that part of myself as well. I think that was kind of one of the things that led to my path as well, just being on this journey of being a sex educator and learning more about a woman’s body and anatomy and I. It’s fascinating.

Sheri Winston (05:32):

Yeah, and the connections are so multifaceted, right? I mean, there’s a, it’s a spiritual journey, but the fact is that just in a biophysical level, arousal and labor are both really the same, altered state of consciousness and once you understand that sexual arousal and labor are an altered state of consciousness, then you can learn how to use all the tools that help you enhance your trance. And so all of the stuff I had been teaching literally I was teaching childbirth classes for over 10 years and teaching things like how do you sound and breath and movement and affirmations and awareness and attention and uh, on teaching all of these things for over 10 years. And I did not realize I was unconsciously utilizing all of those techniques and skills in my own personal sex life for 10 years. And then boom, epiphany. And I realized, oh my gosh, I’ve actually been training myself to have better and better sex.

Sheri Winston (06:42):

Um, at that point, that’s when I started learning about sex more, you know, Tantra classes, tons of sexological information. And it’s funny because at that point I thought I was just learning that stuff again to enhance my own sex life. And Lo and behold, everything I was learning in the sex, world was applicable to birth. That’s when I really started understanding. They’re not separate. It’s not that six gets the baby started and then the rest of it’s a whole nother story. It’s all part of that same journey, that same story. And the more I recognize those connections and work with it consciously in my, in when I was a midwife, and then as a sex teacher, the better it gets for me. And anyone who’s learning these skills because it’s skills. These are skills. Yes. And I love how you say that because it is learned. I think so many of us can think that, oh, we’re just have the experience we have and there’s nothing we can do about it, but I truly believe it is a learned process that we have not been taught properly.

Sheri Winston (07:47):

Right? It’s like learning to play an instrument. Everyone has natural musical ability. All babies loved music and rhythm and melody and uh, but whether we learn how to play the piano or not, that’s the life choices we get. And so yes, sex is natural. There is a part of it that’s in our animal nature and that’s an inescapable and important part of our sexuality that we need to recognize at the same time because we’re human, right? If we were just, you know, tigers, well, There’s, no tantra for, for tigers, right? You don’t go to classes if you’re a, you know, a horse to learn how to mate properly. They just know how to do it, uh, but we’re humans and so we have an enormous component of our sexuality that is learned and once you recognize that, then you have the potential to become an erotic virtuoso.

Sheri Winston (08:39):

So like a master musician and really learn how to play with your arousal and how to turn it up and how to move it and to contain it or share it or turn it down when it’s appropriate to turn it down, which sometimes it is. So it’s just, it’s a whole skillset and that’s not even beginning to talk about the skills and how we communicate and play with other people, which is a whole second level of skill. So, right, there’s that primary level. How do I do it with me? How do I get turned on? How do I get to my orgasm? How do I expand it, and then there’s, how do I do that with a partner? How do I talk to a partner? How do I check in? How do I, how do we make music together? How do we play great duets, trios or whatever you want to play, right?

Amanda Testa (09:29):

Well, I have to say I have so much respect and honor for what you do because I feel it’s so powerful and I am so grateful myself that I came upon your book because it was one of the things that started me on my whole journey and deciding to want to become a sex and relationship educator because I did not even realize what was going on in my own body and I would love to talk a little bit about that because I know you know, your method of explaining anatomy goes so much deeper than what were conventionally taught.

Sheri Winston (10:00):

Yeah. Well, I mean, I’ll, I’ll preface the little anatomy lesson by saying, so keep in mind, I was already working as a certified nurse Midwife, right? So how many years is that? Six years higher education on top of a year to become a massage therapist a year to become a childbirth educator. Um, you know, and here I was a specialist in women’s health and birth when I was already doing all that and I really thought I knew anatomy. I knew genital anatomy, I knew female genital anatomy. I was, of course you know, somebody who had all of the information. So imagine my shock when I first discovered there was stuff I didn’t know about and I credit there’s a book called New View of a Woman’s Body written by Federation of feminist health workers. It’s called an organization. And I came across this book and had a chapter about anatomy and I read the chapter and I went, what? Vistubular bulbs. I’ve never heard of Vistibular bulbs. What are they talking about? No, looking at the illustration. And I immediately went and did my homework because I’m such a good student. I’m like, really, do I do, oh my gosh. And I discovered that I did indeed have these two big wads of erectile tissue that are under the Labia, on either side of the vaginal opening.

Sheri Winston (11:34):

Blew my mind, and at that point I went, well, if I didn’t know about that, I mean I own it. It’s my own body and I’m very familiar with my body and have a good amount of sexual experience. So how could I not have known? Um, but if there was one part that I didn’t know about, were there more, and I went on what I now call the hunt for buried pleasure, and I started to try and find all the parts that were missing and basically came up with what is a new map, that understands that women have just as much erectile tissue as men. So erectile tissue is the, uh, mostly what makes up a penis and enables it to go from small and soft to big and hard. We’re all familiar with the basic properties of and magic of the penis. Women have just as much of that expandable engorgeable tissue, uh, as a men do.

Sheri Winston (12:34):

It’s just that it’s arranged differently and instead of being in a obvious and outward part of the body, ours is mostly internal and so who knew this? I didn’t know and I’ve been on a mission ever since to try and get as many people to know as possible because if you own this equipment, you need to learn what you’ve got and if you want to play with it with, or with somebody else’s body, it’s really helpful to know what they’ve got, so that’s one of my big life missions is hopefully getting it to the point where it’s not a secret anymore.

Amanda Testa (13:13):

Yes, I love that because it’s so important to understand your anatomy.

Sheri Winston (13:19):

Before that, I had good sex. It wasn’t like I didn’t have good sex, I had great sex and I have learned to have better and better sex, but when I got the anatomy piece of it, then combined with the skills of breath and movement and all that. Got that all together. Oh Man. Oh woman. Oh my gosh. Everything just expanded exponentially. It’s like a quantum shift in how much pleasure, how easy it could be, how many orgasms, how easily, how long, how full body. I mean, all these amazing learnings came out of that, but it was, and I don’t know if you’ve had that experience, but it was, It was like the light bulb went off in my genitals.

Amanda Testa (14:09):

Yes, I do. I totally understand. It’s the most amazing thing. That’s why I am just so excited for more women to learn and to be exposed to this and to have the information that they can empower themselves to just really expand the amount of pleasure that we are here to receive and achieve and enjoy. Because I think especially in our culture here in the US, it’s, it’s one of those things that women have an uphill battle in a lot of areas and pleasure. Our pleasure. We’re never taught how to tap into that and that it’s important and that it’s something that can really have such a huge impact on so many areas of our lives.

Sheri Winston (14:47):

Yeah, and I, I think there are so many ways were taught to be blocked from that. You know, we’re, we’re not taught that we know anything inside we’re not taught that we’re our own authority. We’re not taught about healthy self loving boundaries. We’re not taught communication skills, you know what I mean? It’s, I mean, I want to keep talking about anatomy, but at the same time, you know, there’s so many things we have to overcome to really free ourselves to liberate ourselves and become as, as whole and powerful and, and part of it is our sexuality because it is connected to everything else it’s connected to our relationship with food and, and our families and our communities. You know, it’s, it’s nothing is separate.

Amanda Testa (15:38):

Yeah, it is. And that’s the beautiful, the holistic part. We know we’ve been taught everything is going to separate spot and it’s segmented, but really it all has to come together. So I love, you know, talking more about the erectile tissue in the, the woman’s anatomy. And I, I think this is an interesting point on a little bit more because I know not everyone listening has an awareness of this and so obviously your book is amazing and I highly recommend it and I’m going to give away some copies here, but I at the end. But I do want to, if you were to give you, you know, what are the most impactful things when you are teaching and in your experience that you have found with women when they’re learning these new things, what do you feel like are some of the most eyeopening pieces of that?

Sheri Winston (16:27):

Well, definitely the anatomy, and I’ll go into a little more detail about that, but I also want to say that it’s about understanding that we need to get our whole mind turned on. Our whole body turned on and our anatomy turned on and not just any one of those things. So I think that’s important to understand for most women, by the way, that can take 30 to 45 minutes to get into the deep arousal trance and your whole body turned on and get your genitals fully engorged. So how do we get those genitals fully engorged? Well, let’s start with where all that erectile tissue is. Keep in mind, like I said, that in our play, we wouldn’t start with the genitals, right? We’d start the mind, we’d start with the non erotic, , the less sensitive parts of the body and then work our way towards the more sensitive parts.

Sheri Winston (17:25):

But when we were at the point of playing where we’re going to be pleasuring the genitals, it’s good to start with the the parts that are not as sensitive. So what we’ve been taught. What we’ve been regained in our culture, of course, is the head of the clitoris an awesome and amazing ultra-sensitive part. I call it the jewel and the crown, but when we’re playing with the genitals, that’s not the best place to start. It’s too sensitive to start. So if we think of the head of the clitoris as the jewel in the crown and that there’s this whole ring network of erectile tissue, it’ll help us just be oriented. So I will start with the head of the clitoral the part that sticks out. Then there’s the shaft which is underneath the hood and the base of the shaft then splits into two like a wishbone, so those are the three parts of the clitoris and if we were going to start playing with with the clitoral structures, in fact the best place to begin pleasuring is with the shaft because it’s erectile tissue but not as super sensitive.

Sheri Winston (18:39):

It’s protected by the hood of the clitoris, so it’s under layer of skin and so it’s a great area to start with more before one would get to the super sensitive part . That’s the funny thing about the head of the clitoris. It’s easy to overstimulate it. It’s easy to understimulate it. And what’s going to feel good will be different at different points of arousal, so deep arousal it’s going to feel better to have it played with early arousal. It can just be irritating. Okay, so that’s the three parts of the clitoris. Then we had the vestibular bulbs, the parts I just mentioned before, which are two big wads of erectile tissue underneath the Labia, and you can imagine the shape of them is like an upside down comma and just on either side of the vaginal opening and there’s a part where the bulbs can get really big and fat and juicy, and then the top little tail of the comma.

Sheri Winston (19:38):

actually attaches literally physically to the shaft of the clitoris. A great place to start genital play on a person with a vulva is with those bulbs. You can play with them, uh, from the outside of the outer lips. They love broad diffuse stimulation. This is why if somebody has their whole thigh pressed up against your croch and you’re just kind of rubbbing or riding on it, and getting that pressure, it feels so good. It’s those bulbs that are getting stimulated. So that’s a great place to play. And only when all of those more outer parts are juicy and engorged and stimulated, would you even want to be entering the vagina. I say that we have an epidemic of premature penetration. Nothing should be going in the vagina and until the vagina owner has big engorged bulbs, engorged and pleasured clitoral structures and is at high level arousal.

Sheri Winston (20:47):

At that point, it’s going to start feeling good to have something inside and then when you go inside, you can get to the other two areas of erectile tissue. So there’s erectile tissue under the floor that’s in between the vaginal and anal canals and there’s also erectile tissue above the roof of the vagina and that’s what people are calling the g spot, which is not a spot that’s not around a dime sized spot, It’s actually a tube of erectile tissue that surrounds the tube of the urethra. But again, if you’re playing with those more internal erectile tissues and the woman’s not aroused enough or engorged enough, it’s just not going to feel great. It’s either not going to feel much or it’s going to feel irritating. And so one of the things to remember about how arousal tends to operate for vagina owners is it goes from outside to in, outside of the whole body, outside of the person in the connection and relationship. And then it goes to the edgesand then it goes to the more erotic zones and then it goes to the most erogenous and then it goes in. And so one of the things to just keep in mind when you’re playing with yourself or a partner is it, you really have to be attuned to all of those signals and all of that information. So anyway, that’s, that’s the erectile network that women have. And like I said at the beginning, the equivalent of a penis’ worth of erectile tissue.

Amanda Testa (22:25):

Beautiful. Thank you so much for explaining that. And I feel, I know for myself, when I first saw the three dimensional model of the clitoris where it’s not just the jewel as you spoke, you know, but there it is like a wishbone and I people, women are always amazed when they, when they see that a lot of the time. So I know not a lot of women know about that. Luckily more and more learning. But I just think that’s so important too to understand. And I do love how you talk about so many beautiful rituals and ways to engage all from the outside in, in your book, but is there maybe any specific ritual that you really love or that you personally enjoy when it comes to taking that time to get all the brain, the body, the spirit, and, you know, ready

Sheri Winston (23:16):

for pleasure. Oh Wow. That’s so many answers to that question. I mean, I think so, going back to the holistic sexuality model that I developed, it basically posits that we’ve got tool kits of the mind, body, heart, and spirit, and that we can learn to use those toolkits in any way that works for us. So a transition ritual could have a spiritual component if that’s how you’re wired, if that resonates for you, if, if the spiritual, if you’re just kind of, that doesn’t resonate for me, you can still do it transition ritual. It’s just more of a, uh, just a slightly different perspective on it. But it’s, it’s about designing something that will help you turn off your thinking brain. Um, if you’re having partnered sex shift from, you know, we’re a, we’re paying the bills together, we’re doing the housework, we’re raising our kids or we’re working shift from our, um, we’re friends, we’re buddies were companions into were lovers.

Sheri Winston (24:25):

So how do I turn off my brain if I’m with a partner, how do we get connected back into our, our erotic and sensual space? And so we can design a ritual that works for us. So things that work for me, I have a hard time turning off my brain. It’s very busy in there. Uh, so I need a space. I need a sanctuary. I can’t have a pile of dirty laundry in my visual field that just, you know, I can’t have my phone nearby, I can’t have any of those sorts of distractions. So for me it’s very helpful to have a space that, you know, even if I need to throw, you know, a piece of fabric over a pile of laundry, taking a little time to set the space is very helpful for me. Maybe light a few candles, music. It needs to be warm enough that right now it’s been roasting hot, so it needs to be cool enough. Right now I think I need to be the comfortable body temperature. I get cold more easily than my partner who is a man and there’s that tendencies, so I need to be warm when it’s cold, when it’s cold. I made, you know, I need to be, you know, whatever. I need the air conditioning when it’s hot, you know, but I find there’s actually a funny study. Women are more likely to have an orgasm if they’re wearing socks.

Sheri Winston (25:54):

That is funny because I do love my socks on. I did not know there was a study about that. It’s about our feet being warm because if my feet are cold and distracted and my erotic energies easily distractable so I can’t have cold feet. So keep my feet warm. Right? I mean it’s just sometimes it’s really simple transition rituals that were. I love water so it’s always great for me to go take a shower. And if, uh, if my partner wanted to light some candles or burning incense or just something that shows me, it’s not just that he’s making this space nice, but he’s making that little effort to make it special for me. That touches my heart. There’s a heart skill there, right? Our heart skills and how we love and so, and how we give and receive. And so, uh, for partner sex, anything that helps me feel loved and cared for, it’s going to be good.

Sheri Winston (26:49):

So that might be an example of how a partner can do that. Just go in and light a few candles, clean up a little bit put on some lovely sensual music. And then I’m a very touch oriented person. So doing some massage, it’s always great start for me because my back hurts and my neck get, you know. So massage is multifaceted because not only is it going to help get those knots out of my shoulders, but it’s also another way for my partner to say, I’m, I care about, I care about your whole body. I care about how you feel. I care about your wellbeing. Like it’s not just that I want to have sex with you, so doing some kind of bodywork and massage is a great way and then one other thing that I really like is some dancing. I love to dance and just put on some sensual music or even to some upbeat music and dance for five or 10 minutes is also a great transition for me and all of these things help turn off my thinking brain, which is key for many of us in how to get into our body, get into our erotic pleasure.

Amanda Testa (28:06):

That was just. There’s a lot, but I love that transition ritual though. That’s something I’ve implemented in my life and it is a life changer. I mean it truly is and oftentimes I know as a busy mom and there’s people out there that are busy, but there are certain things you can do on your own to even before maybe your partner joins you or maybe you don’t have time for that, but just having that understanding that, yeah, you can’t just turn on and off like that. There’s a process to it and understanding that, and it’s different for everyone, right, so finding what works for you and then making that into a ritual or routine that you can tap into.

Sheri Winston (28:44):

Yeah, and I will say that one of the benefits for finding the things that work for you, it’s also sometimes when you don’t have a lot of time, you can have like a quickie ritual, right? So it might be that you sit and do some deep breathing, sounding and pumping your pelvic floor muscles for a minute by yourself or with your partner. You’re do it together a minute, literally a minute, two minutes and breathing together, sounding together, maybe holding each other, looking at each other’s eyes, and that shifts everything. So maybe you only have 10 minutes that happens where you have busy lives. I do recommend that we take enough time so that they can play sessions that last, you know, considerably longer, but on average in the US, most couples, their entire sexual play session from beginning to end 12 minutes.

Sheri Winston (29:43):

I think that should be your exception and should be your quickie, that you have occasionally to squeeze in some fun time, um, and that you have other times where you take that hour or two or three or whatever you can find and carve out of your life. But it’s great if you only do have 10 or 12 or 15 minutes. How can you make it really amazing, awesome and a fabulous quickie. And so our skills come into play whether we want to speed it up or accelerate or when we’ve got the time to really slow it down and be leisurely, go really deep.

Amanda Testa (30:20):

Yeah, I love that. And I think one of the things that I hear a lot from women is they don’t even have sex on the list a lot of times. And I think sadly, it’s probably oftentimes because they aren’t aware of the extent of joy and pleasure that can come when you really can tap into the orgasmic pleasure that we have available to us.

Sheri Winston (30:42):

I think first of all, our, our concept of arousal and how long it should take and it’s supposed to take his is a little distorted. So I, I think, um, uh, when I’m teaching this always gets a big night say that most women, it takes them 30 minutes to 45 minutes to get totally thoroughly and deeply turned on. And I will see women were there with the male partner. I’ll see him, give him an elbow. Are you listening? Did you get that? See, I am normal. So I think for women, particularly women who partner with men at, we started feeling if there’s something wrong with us because it can take us that long,women who partner with women, its not an issue, They really understand that about each other. So I think having that framing that that’s a beautiful, lovely, delicious amount of time to take for pleasure is really important.

Sheri Winston (31:44):

I also think that when we develop our skills, our erotic skills, we can get more deeply aroused much more quickly. And when we’ve got that mastery, then it makes it a lot easier to feel like we can squeeze in a quickie, we can put that on our list because if I feel like it’s going to take me an hour and my partner feels like it’s going to take for an hour, right? If we’re both feeling that way, we’re probably not going to necessarily want to have that on our schedule as much it’s gonna start feeling like work. So again, developing that erotic mastery gives us that freedom to go, Yay, we have a whole hour to spend luxuriating in all this pleasure, or to go, well I’ve got 15 minutes, let’s see what we can do with 15 minutes. So it’s good to have that flexibility, but also not feel like is there anything wrong with taking that time and also know that that can feel like an impediment, that it takes that amount of time. So it’s kind of multifaceted. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. Definitely.

Amanda Testa (32:56):

So thank you for sharing all that. So when it comes to, you know, really becoming more proficient in our orgasmic mastery, so to speak. What else can women do?

Sheri Winston (33:05):

Practice, practice, practice our solo sex, the sex we have with ourselves is key to really developing our orgasmic proficiency and our, our mastery of our erotic capacity. And so um, self pleasure is our learning laboratory. It’s our rehearsal hall, it’s our self care spa, it’s our meditation space, right? It’s all of those items. So I very much encourage women and the same sort of framework of it’s okay to have a quickie with yourself. You’ve only got five or 10 minutes, go for it. And it’s also really important to take some time where you really take your time with yourself. And so that’s number one. Play with yourself. Play with yourself a lot. Play with yourself in different ways, and then practicing your skills. So say you want to learn how to use your pelvic floor muscles to enhance your erotic experience. There’s an infinity of ways to play with those muscles.

Sheri Winston (34:14):

Play with them while you’re dancing, at your pilates class, while you’re doing yoga. Play with them while you’re having solo sex, while you’re having partner sex, play with them when you’re in the shower, play with them when you’re driving your car, put on your favorite music and dance with your pelvic floor muscles, so that’s how you develop mastery of that one thing and then play with your breath. Play with sound, touch internal vision, external vision, your awareness, your attention. All of these things are learnable skills, so take time and practice just the way. If you want to learn how to play the piano, you’ve got to take the time to practice. So practice play, practice more, play play by yourself, play with others.

Amanda Testa (35:07):

I think that’s so powerful. A sensual self care practice, Sexual self care practice has transformed my life and I am a huge proponent of that and I love you know because you have such a well rounded health background as well. How do you see this affects women’s health overall?

Sheri Winston (35:26):

Well, sexual arousal and orgasm, again, it doesn’t need a partner and just arousal, orgasm are good for everything. This is the irony If it wasn’t sex, doctors would be saying, you know, minimum seven orgasms a week, but it’s a, it helps us relax it. It reduces stress. It’s a, it’s an antidepressant. It’s good for us physically. It’s good for your cardiovascular system. It’s good for your hormones. I mean basically every health benefit that you would get from meditation, exercise, stress reduction, all of those things you get from sexual pleasure. So I mean, what’s not to love? It’s free. It’s not fattening. I mean, what more do we want? It’s right there. We can have it anytime we want and what stops us is really what we need to look at, what stops us from giving ourselves more pleasure, what are those messages? And it is an important component of our sexual liberation is freeing our mind and our heart that recognizing the, the negative messages, the things that block us.

Sheri Winston (36:46):

So, you know, go ahead and practice breathing and sounding and pumping your pelvic floor muscles and notice the thoughts that come up. Oh my gosh, I’m being too loud. Oh, that’s an interesting thought. Nope, no judgment. Just, that’s an interesting thought. I think that might be keeping me from really allowing my sounds of pleasure to come out or wait, what if somebody hears me? Oh my gosh, the neighbors will hear me, the children will hear me, my parents will hear me, somebody will hear me, and and what? They’ll know you’re having sexual pleasure? And then you know we really start also healing the shame and that’s kind of a. just as key as practicing your breathing in pelvic floorr muscle movements is a practicing and freeing yourselves mentally. So in all of these again, learnable skills, we can learn to reprogram our thinking we can learn to free ourselves from shame. We can learn how to do all of these amazing virtuoso type erotic experiences if you want to. Don’t have to do, you can. It’s all learnable. All learnable.

Amanda Testa (38:07):

Oh, that’s so much. Thank you so much for sharing all that and oh my goodness. So much good stuff that you’ve shared today. Thank you so much for your time and I’m curious if there’s any, any last words that you’d like to share or if there’s any question that I didn’t ask that you wish that I would’ve asked?

Sheri Winston (38:25):

I’m having a great time talking to you and I think we could probably talk a lot more about pretty much anything we talked about. I think the thing that I would want to leave people with, I think that’s most significant, just comes back to the idea that nobody is broken. Nobody got short changed when they were giving out the goodies, What happened to you happened to you, what you learned in the past you learned. But right now from this moment on, you can start consciously learning how to have more pleasure and that’s a choice and you make it one little step, one little choice at a time and you don’t necessarily learn how to have amazing mind blowing orgasms the same way. You wouldn’t necessarily learn how to play Mozart on the piano, uh, you know, in one lesson. But if you are patient, if you recognize that it’s a process, it takes time and self love, but if you do one little bit and then another little bit and then another little step, little step in a year, you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve gotten.

Sheri Winston (39:40):

So be self loving and, uh, and go do something pleasurable right now. Right this minute.

Amanda Testa (39:49):

Yes. I love it. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. And where can everyone find you? They would like to learn more.

Sheri Winston (39:59):

Go to my website, www.intimateartscenter.com. There’s blog posts. There’s videos. You can see there’s a bunch of blog posts about the anatomy where you can see my, my illustrations and facts of the anatomy. So there’s lots of information there and all kinds of freebies and some free webinars. All kinds of great stuff you can get on my email list. You can get my books, you can get them on Amazon Womens Anatomy is also available in audio book by the way, which I got to record my own audio book.

Sheri Winston (40:38):

It’s so much fun and we actually have a Spanish version coming out probably the end of this year, which I’m really excited about so you can get the books there. I have online classes and courses, which is a great way to sort of have a class with me in your own home at your own pace and I’m available for consults and such and it’s all there at www.intimateartcenter.com. Beautiful. Thank you so much and thank you so much for your work. It has been life changing for me and I’m so grateful to be able to talk to you in person today. So thank you so much.

Sheri Winston (41:13):

Thank you for letting me know that it’s, it’s, it’s my mission, so I guess I’m doing a good job.