How to ritualize your nourishmentwith Kiele Jael

Nourishment as sensual self care?  YES PLEASE!  In this weeks pod episode I’m talking with my friend and Sensual Chef, Kiele Jael.  She is the founder of Kiele Jael wellness, and helps women tap into their sensuality and focus on self love through the arts of ancient food wisdom, and sensual cooking. 

As we move into the colder months, now is a perfect time to focus on nourishing ourselves from within, and in this episode Kiele shares some easy tangible ways to create rituals to honor ourselves and nourish our bodies. 

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

In this episode you’ll discover

Why so many women put off their nourishment, and struggle with caring for themselves. How to make cooking a ritual you can actually enjoy, vs. dread. How to tap into the wisdom  of Ayurveda to ritualize your well being. Understanding the Ayurvedic Doshas, and how to use them to support your eating rituals. The importance of digestion and slowing down. Simple tips for more sensual nourishment around food.And, much more!

Kiele Jael is a Nutritional Chef and Sensuality Coach based in Austin, TX. It is her mission and passion to help make the art of cooking accessible and pleasurable for women who give a sh*t about their health. She works with clients in her group programs, classes, and courses, as well as 1:1, and has been featured in Vogue Arabia, Insider, Health Magazine, A&E, and multiple podcasts, articles, and radio shows.

Learn about her upcoming courses HERE.

Follow her on insta HERE.

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts,or Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

5 Ways to make your sex life betterwith Amanda Testa

Looking for some simple things you can do to enjoy better sex, starting tonight?

I so often work with women and couples who just want that desire, that spark back, and especially after an extended period of stress with the pandemic, lock downs, etc, often it feels hard to feel back to normal in the bedroom.

Today I’m sharing 5 easy and quick tips to help you have better sex, starting now.

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

In this episode you’ll discover

Why it can feel so hard to find your libido after this past year.What it means to have a YES or No response, and how to honor that no matter what.A surprisingly easy way to connect to ourselves and our partners and get in the mood.Why it is so important to focus on what feels good and pleasure, versus a goal oriented experience.Why novelty and play are important, and how to take the pressure off. And, much more!

In this episode I’m sharing 5 surprisingly easy ways to make your sex life better.  With burnout and stress on the rise, it can often feel hard to be “in the mood” so these simple tips can help.

Get my free “Get In The Mood” meditation I talked about on the episode HERE.

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts,or Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

From Shame to Satisfactionwith Amanda Testa

Do you struggle to feel confident and satisfied in the bedroom?In this week’s pod, I’m explaining 4 big reasons women struggle in their sexuality, and what you can do to find more satisfaction in your sexuality. 

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

In this episode you’ll discover

Why our lack of pleasure based sex education leaves us in the dark.Understanding that whatever is happening, most likely it is TOTALLY NORMAL.Some of the factors that lead us to feel shame around our sexuality, and how that can show up in ways you don’t expect.Why we struggle with Body Image, and what to do about it. How you can start to feel better about your sexuality starting today.And, much more!

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts,or Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

Making Menopause Magicwith Dr. Anna Cabeca

Do you just wish you had a BFF who was also a triple board certified OBGYN to run all your sex and hormone questions by?

 Well you’re in for a treat in this week’s pod, as I am so pleased to welcome back Dr. Anna Cabeca, aka the girlfriend doctor, and we’re diving into how to make the transition to menopause magical, and still enjoying vibrant sexual health as we move through life’s transitions.

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

In this episode you’ll discover

How to stay grounded when things feel overwhelming.Moving through life’s transitions with grace, even when your hormones are making you feel crazy. Understanding how to balance your hormones, and feel better.  How Dr. Anna’s Keto Green plan can help menopause symptoms, without having to pop a pill.How to keep your sexual spark alive and well as you age.How to care for your “down there” skin, and why it’s so important.Tips to avoid incontinence and improve pelvic floor health.And, much more!

Best-selling author, Anna Cabeca, DO, OBGYN, FACOG, is known nationally as The Girlfriend Doctor and is host of The Girlfriend Doctor show, where she welcomes experts and guests to the show to share their insights on how women can truly thrive in body, mind and spirit. 

Dr. Anna is triple board certified and a fellow of gynecology and obstetrics, integrative medicine, and anti-aging and regenerative medicine. She holds special certifications in functional medicine, sexual health, and bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. She lectures frequently on these topics throughout the world to large audiences.

Her first two highly acclaimed books, The Hormone Fix and Keto-Green 16 are best-sellers. In addition, Dr. Anna is the creator of several popular virtual transformation programs – The Keto-Green Way to Breeze through Menopause, Sexual CPR, and Magic Menopause. She offers Keto-Green nutrition plans to online subscribers, is the founder of her Girlfriend Doctor Club, and the host of the vast Keto-Green community on Facebook.

A passionate health advocate for both women and men, Dr. Anna has appeared on numerous television shows and has been interviewed by ABC, CBS, and NBC. She also appeared in an episode of the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Sought after by various other media, Dr. Anna has been featured as a women’s health, nutrition, weight loss, and hormone expert in Shape Magazine, Woman’s World, First Magazine, InStyle, Huff Post, Mindbodygreen, and others.

Forbes Magazine reported on her success in creating and building a successful business around her flagship product Julva – an all-natural, over-the-counter cream that she developed to treat vaginal dryness and discomfort. Dr. Anna is also the creator of other top-selling health products such as Mighty Maca Plus.

Dr. Anna lives in Dallas, Texas with her daughters, horses, and dogs.

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts,or Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

The Keys To a turned on relationshipwith Alicia Davon

Want to bring back the chemistry and inspiration in your relationship?

If you’re looking to bring back the spark, then listen into this week’s episode of the Find Your Feminine Fire Podcast. Today I’ll be talking with romance and relationship expert Alicia Davon, about how to create the relationship of your dreams, even when life is busy and you feel you can never find the time to connect.

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

Complete Transcript available below.

In this episode you’ll discover

How to make your relationship a priority, even when your schedule feels crazy. How to understand the hidden relationship patterns from your past and how they affect your current relationship. Understanding the unique power you can bring to your relationship, even if it’s just you working on it.  Easy to implement tools for bringing back the spark. Understanding the 4 daily practices that are a must do for great relationships. How to enjoy pleasure and parenting. Some of the “go tos” Alicia and her partner use to stay connected. And, much more!

Over the past 25 years, Erwan and Alicia Davon have successfully taught over 12,000 singles and couples how to

have exceptional relationships. Erwan and Alicia have become the go-to experts for those seeking a higher level of

relationship support.  They specialize in supporting singles in getting into passionate and successful relationships, and

helping couples take their relationships to new heights of romance and intimacy.

Connect with Alicia to get your FREE Love Life Connection consultation call here, or text 415-308-9580 or check out their website HERE.

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

AmandaTesta (00:02):

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.

If you are wanting to bring back the chemistry and inspiration in your relationship, then you’re going to love this episode because we’re going to be talking about bringing back the spark, even when life is crazy, even when you’ve got kids pulling your attention away from your relationship and just being on that treadmill and feeling like your relationship has gone to the back burner. We are going to be talking about some ways to really bring back the spark and chemistry in your relationship. And I am very thrilled today because I’m going to be talking with relationship expert Alicia Davon and we are going to be talking about what you can do to bring back the spark when it feels like maybe it’s impossible sometimes. So welcome. Welcome, Alicia, Thank you so much for being here.

Alicia Davon (00:58):

Yeah. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Amanda Testa (01:01):

And I’d love just to start with sharing a little bit, but if you wouldn’t mind about, you know, what led you to be so passionate about this work? I know you’ve been doing this for over 20 years and you’ve got such great experience along with your partner as well. And I’d love to just hear a little bit more about your inspiration for what you do.

Alicia Davon (01:18):

Sure. Yeah. Well, I was very fortunate to grow up in a really awesome home. I have great parents. It was very stable. I have a younger brother, I had a good, good childhood. You know, it didn’t come with without its challenges and that sort of thing. But I grew up with a very positive sense of the world and of people and have relationships on the whole. And you might say that it was a little bit of a bubble kind of sheltered. I didn’t have a lot of life worldly experience when I went off to college. And so when I went to college, even though I was just two hours away from where I had lived in LA, I went to school in Santa Barbara. It was a shock, it was a huge shock to be in a place where I didn’t get to come home to a warm, loving home after class every day.

Alicia Davon (02:03):

And I didn’t necessarily have the friends that I had grown up with and then all of this, right? So I had kind of a crisis and ended up going into therapy and little by little following the path to working with women and really connecting with women and our power that we have in romantic relationship. You know, I witnessed my parents have a really great relationship. They still do. And there was like a passion and a fire that I wanted in my romantic relationships. And so I discovered that, you know, through starting to work with women, starting to learn about sexuality and it led me to where I am now working with my husband. Erwan, we’ve been together for almost 20 years. He created our organization 10 years before we met. So when I met him, he was already doing this and I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

AmandaTesta (02:52):

And I’m wondering too, I’m sure even in your own relationship, as we all, you know, when you work together and live together in life together, I’m wondering, you know, what are some of the things that you have implemented in your own relationship through, you know, to kind of get through those times where you feel like everything’s crazy and you’re more challenged to make the relationship a priority.

Alicia Davon (03:12):

So nobody’s immune to the challenges that come with having a long-term relationship, adding kids into the mix for many people, then you put on top of it, the pandemic and work and financial issues and whatever health issues, stuff that we deal with on a day-to-day basis. And I can remember a moment when our, it was a little bit after our son was born maybe a month or two in and Erwan and I looked at each other and we’re like, oh my God, this is so much more intense than we thought it was going to be. And even as relationship experts and coaches, and we thought we were all prepared and yes, some of the preparation helped, but we really had to do work to keep our relationship on the front burner. Because even without kids, there’s a drift, there’s a drift to immediacy, to presence, to intimacy, to connection going on the back burner and putting other things that are important. You know, like kids like jobs like health, but putting all of those way before really the source of the relationship, which is the romance. And

AmandaTesta (04:18):

I think it can be so challenging sometimes, especially now after the pandemic. I mean, depending on where you are, some kids are back in school, some aren’t I know as kids age and you have different challenges with finding time for each other and you sometimes feel like there’s never alone time. So I’d love if you might want to share your perspective on that too. Yeah.

Alicia Davon (04:37):

Yes. Yeah. It’s, it’s really one of those things. Like you can learn all of the essential skills in the world and like, if you don’t have time and space to practice them and to really be with your partner, then none of it really makes a difference. And it seems really, really hard. Like I remember when I was a senior in high school and I had this really incredible teacher for English, Mr. Poe, perfect name. And he would always have these POeisms, like all these wise things, he would say that make you think. And one thing he said was, life is a piece of hard sided luggage. If you want to put something into it, you have to take something out. And that’s really how it is with our romantic lives and our intimate lives with our partners. It can seem like we don’t have any time and we are very busy, but if we make the choice in our heart to make it a priority, then we will now for example, this is like a kind of more downer example.

Alicia Davon (05:39):

But look, let’s say you break your leg and then you have to go into physical therapy and you have to rehabilitate it. You’re going to make time every day to do the exercises. Because if you don’t, you won’t be able to walk properly. Now that’s urgent. We don’t often see our romantic relationships as urgent. We see them as they’re important, but not urgent until it gets urgent. You know, when someone’s threatening divorce. So you realize, oh my God, I’m really unhappy. You don’t have to let it get to that point. If you take care of it and devote time. And I’m not saying it has to be two hours a day, but prioritizing what Erwan and I call what you were creating. Pleasure time, you know, it could be 20 minutes a day, half hour, a day. And something else has to give, not saying your kids are going to be any worse off. They’re probably be better off. Even if they have a babysitter or you leave them at school an extra half hour or aftercare or whatever it is. We’re all in different situations. Maybe a little more, less work gets done prioritization.

AmandaTesta (06:37):

That’s so key. It’s funny because I actually did just break my ankle and that has been quite the journey. We’ve my husband and I have had our fair share of health issues this past year, which is interesting, but also realizing too that I think, like you say, like building those foundations in a good relationship to be able to kind of weather the winter seasons and all the things that happen can be so important. And I think too, like you said, it, doesn’t, it’s kind of checking in and realizing how happy are you? Like, are you getting your needs met? Do you feel on a day-to-day basis that you’re, you’re happy because I think that’s often what happens is you get so busy just in the day-to-day going through the routines that you don’t add in that very important routine of connecting with the person next to you in the bed.

Alicia Davon (07:22):

Yes. And it can be challenging, you know? And because on one level, yes, it’s about the time and oh my God, we’re so busy. But if you look a little deeper, it is often more of an intimacy and intimacy issue. Like it’s funny because we could be with our partners for years and you think, well, we’ve been together for so long, gone through so much. It’s easy to be intimate. That many couples find like, oh, I feel awkward, you know, or a wow. Like we haven’t really, you know, intimately connected in months or maybe years, or like my body is different now. Or like, I don’t know, you know? So we, we can have these insecurities that are very normal, very human. And then we just sort of turn away from them and then, oh, there’s the next thing. And let’s focus on the remodel and oh my God, I have to check Facebook and oops time to pick up the kids. It’s never ending. So you, if you want to, you have to be the one to be like, okay, we’re dealing with this. And then that sometimes comes along with facing a little discomfort and awkwardness and you know, that kind of thing. So that’s normal. If anybody listening is kind of feeling that way.

AmandaTesta (08:28):

Yeah. And I think sometimes it can feel so overwhelming. I know oftentimes with my clients, they talk about everything, but the one thing they don’t talk about is their sexuality, or, you know, their sex life or things like that. Things that they, everything else they can talk about. But that’s the one area often that feels more challenging. And I think, you know, what’s so beautiful about it is everything is a learned skill and there’s ways to overcome anything if you have the desire to do so. And I think that’s, what’s so powerful about working on your relationship and investing time and energy there because it is the type of thing where if anything, you want it to flourish, you have to take care of it. You have to water it and nourish it. And this relationship isn’t no different. And so, you know, one of the things that I find so fascinating and often is very eye-opening for people to understand is how sometimes when, you know, there’ll be certain patterns that repeat again and again, in our relationships. And maybe there are things that have been carried over from our childhood or our previous experiences, but I’m wondering, you know, with the way that you work with couples or women in this fashion, like what would be some things that you see a lot and what are some ways that you can kind of work through those patterns?

Alicia Davon (09:36):

It’s a really, really great question. So Erwan, and I have, we’ve been working with both singles and couples for the last 25 years, and we’ve developed a method called the Davon method. And the purpose of it is to support both singles and couples in creating amazing romantic lives and sex lives. So that’s like the bigger picture and there’s five parts. The first part is what you just mentioned. So that’s why I’m bringing in the method, I’ll list the five parts, but then I’ll go into what you just asked. So the first part we call consciousness, which is bringing awareness to our hidden relationship patterns that we’re bringing in from the past, from our childhood, from past experiences. Usually we’re bringing those experiences in like unbeknownst to us, you know, like we think it’s the truth that we can’t trust anybody. men are like this or women are like that, or that look meant that they’re mad at me or they never do.

Right. It’s like we walk around with these experiences, but we’re really seeing life through a template. And that template we call your relationship blueprint was created when we were really little and those are our patterns, right? So bringing awareness, so they’re not driving things and we can kind of stop wondering, like, why do I keep ending up in the same situation? Why do I keep feeling this same way in all of my relationships? So I’ll come back to that. The second part is making contact with your deeper self, whatever you want to call that could be your spirit or your soul or your being like that part of us that exists beyond our automatic patterns. The third part of the method is then chemistry. You know, once you’re kind of clear it out. And how do you create chemistry between the masculine and feminine? The fourth part is called choreography, which is all about dancing through the stages of relationship learning skills to succeed.

Alicia Davon (11:27):

And then the fifth part is cultivation cultivating your sexual potential. So those are the different places we take our students through all in the name of having successful romantic relationships and the psychological piece, those patterns is really, it’s like, it’s so important. It’s the heavy lifting. It’s the part that sometimes we don’t want to go into because it can be painful or it can be mysterious, but we really like to approach it as not necessarily analyzing everything that happened in the past, but just looking at your present experience. Like here you are, you’re with your partner, you’re feeling abandoned or you’re feeling alone, or you’re feeling resentful, or you don’t feel you can trust them or whatever it is. Wow. Like feeling that, where do you feel that in your body, where does that feeling come from? What’s happening? Like getting intimate with our own psychological experience in the moment. It doesn’t mean that like all of it is from the past. You know, some of it is probably has to do with the present, but if you can really get close to your own experience, you have a better chance of like, not just projecting it or lashing out or disappearing and avoiding or just trying to make it all okay. But you can bring it out into the light.

AmandaTesta (12:44):

I find that to be such a beautiful way to tune it and a great way to get into the present moment. Right? When you feel like your partner is doing something and you are triggered beyond belief and you’re about to lose it, it’s like not minute before, it’d be like letting it all unleash, like, okay, what is happening in my body right now? Okay. I feel this burning heat in my chest that wants to go somewhere. Right. It’s the, it’s such an interesting thing to tune inwardly like that, that most of us don’t always, well, we’ve never been taught to do, first of all, most of us, right.

Alicia Davon (13:13):

We’ve been taught and now we’re very guided to look outward, you know, with technology and social media and just distraction coming inside is like a, it’s like a holy act, you know, to be like, wait or, you know, take back our energy, take back our awareness and just feel what’s here.

AmandaTesta (13:31):

And sometimes even just taking those couple of seconds to do that, it just activates a different part of your brain. That can be more problem solving and kind of see things from a more observant perspective versus just that wanting to express whatever you’re feeling in the moment. Yes. Without regard to what might happen after you do that.

Alicia Davon (13:50):

Exactly. There’s a difference between kind of like in the moment communication and like dumping or venting or blaming or whatever. And none of those things are crimes, but our relationships just work better when we have that awareness.

AmandaTesta (14:04):

And so then I’m wondering, you know, after you are, after you have that awareness and you’re able to kind of, you have the consciousness, you have that ability to tune in, you know, it sounds like that piece of taking time with yourself too, is a big part of it for both parties. Right. I’d love if you would share more about that.

Alicia Davon (14:24):

And do you mean taking time to yourself? Do you mean sensually or do you mean just with yourself as you are?

AmandaTesta (14:31):

So you work together, but also individually, right?

Alicia Davon (14:35):

Yes. It’s interesting because we work with a lot of both singles and couples, and even when couples come to work with us, it’s a very individual journey because you have so much to do with why your relationship is going the way that going, I’m not talking blame or anything like that. But if you can really like, oh, what’s happening for me? Like, what am I bringing into this relationship? Especially as women, we have so much power to influence our romantic relationship situation. That’s kind of our department as women, the romantic, the sensual, the sexual. And we have a lot of power. I mean, I notice all the time, you know, if I’m in kind of a funky mood and I’m like, okay, and I’m doing my own thing, or maybe I’m working. And then I go out of the office and I see Erwan and the way I interact with him has everything to do with how the interaction goes.

Alicia Davon (15:30):

You know, if I go out and I’m kind of like being short with him or like just, and I’m annoyed and it’s not even him, it’s just me. It’s like my state. Then he gets a little hurt and like, you know, then it’s all a as opposed to, if I’m like, wow, okay, I’m agitated. You know, like I’m tense. And then deliberately, deliberately can be like, Hey babe, or, oh God, you know, I’m so annoyed or this thing happened or I’m feeling tense right now. Then he has the opportunity to be compassionate and ask what happened. And it’s all a choice, you know, I’m not saying it has to be nicey nice all the time. You know, that drives us nuts, but just being responsible for that.

AmandaTesta (16:07):

And I’m wondering, you know, what, what helps you to do that? What helps you to make that choice?

Alicia Davon (16:11):

Yes, that is like the hugest question ever. It’s the hugest question. It’s for me realizing that I have, and this goes for everybody, you know, anybody listening to this, I have the power to influence the way that things go. I’m not talking like I can control the whole world and what’s happening, but in my own experience and my own relationship, there’s a power. There’s also it’s responsibility to there’s that quote, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. But when you’re willing to take that and not be victimized by, oh, this person’s this way, the weather’s this way, whatever is this way. So I’m going to be this way, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to give it to them or I’m going to be snippy or I’m this and that. But you’re like, oh, I have a say in how this, goes right now, then you have a choice, but the only way you even have that is if you have that awareness of what’s going on inside of you, you know, if you’ve stopped and you’ve said, oh, I’m tense.

Oh, it’s happening? Oh yeah. I wanna blame. Like, I, I wanna, you know, I, I spoke, I saw this hilarious, you who Brene brown is you must now she did. She’s so great. And she did this hilarious, like cartoony sketch thing about blame. And it shows her like carrying a cup of coffee and her husband’s name is Steve. And she spills the coffee. And her first thought is God, Steve. And Steve, like, wasn’t even there, you know? But like as human beings, we just like blame the first person that is next to us. And it’s just a human tendency. So becoming aware of those tendencies, you know, back to the consciousness and you know, oh, I have a choice. And sometimes we have to go through like difficult situation after difficult situation to realize like, oh, I am actually playing a big part in creating this. What do I really want here?

Amanda Testa(18:10):

That’s such a great question. What do I really want

Alicia Davon (18:11):

Here? Yes. Sometimes you’ve got to go through a lot of like crappy interactions and then being like, oops, that was kind of a jerk there. Or like, oops. And not beating ourselves up. Right. We’re human, but it’s just kind of like, what do you want, what do you want? You know? And it’s the same thing with the time issue of making enough time, like everyone. And I have time every single day for our intimate relationship. It’s not super long, like half an hour. And like half the time, I’m kind of like drawn to my computer and drawn to Instagram and I just want to zone out and it’s okay, well, what do I want? You know, that helps.

AmandaTesta (18:47):

Yeah. And like you say, leaving some things on done sometimes.

Alicia Davon (18:51):

Yes.

AmandaTesta (18:53):

Right. And I’m wondering too, you know? Okay. So you’ve made this choice and you really are aware of kind of what’s happening and you made the choice that you are committed to bringing back the chemistry and like putting the time in. So what would you suggest are some ways to start kind of bringing back the spark, especially maybe if it’s been awhile or if you’ve been in an extended winter, what would you, what would you say?

Alicia Davon (19:14):

Yes. So to make this really concrete, cause it’s like, okay, these are nice ideas, but like, what do we do? You know? So when we work with couples, I often say, okay, the first thing is you need to create the time. So that would be blocking off however much time, however many days a week, you can for just each other. And Erwan, and I train our students in four practices that are really great to do daily, if you can, but you don’t have to burden yourself with having to do all these daily, but we recommend that I’ll list them all. But then I’m going to go into two of them that are particularly good for when you’re with your partner. So the first practice is meditation. The second practice is psychological inquiry. The third practice is body practice and the fourth practice sensual practice. So just for the sake of time, I’ll elaborate on two of these psychological inquiry is it can be done on your own or with a partner.

Alicia Davon (20:14):

Erwan and I do this together three times a week and we do it for 20 minutes total, like not very long in the evening. What psychological inquiry is, is a time where you really go inward and you explore your experience like, Hmm. You know, right now I’m feeling, you know, kind of grouchy and like, wow. But I feel this like, you know, fullness in my heart and wow. And this thing happened today and this is how I feel about it. And you know, you’re just shutting off the outside, going inside, doing that with a partner can be really great because often you’re just communicating outward logistical stuff. So like, we’ll set the timer for 10 minutes. And for 10 minutes I have the floor. It’s not really a time to like air grievances about the relationship necessarily. Cause the other person can’t respond or just listening to, you know, like sharing things like, oh, I’m feeling this way and that way, and it can be about the relationship or not.

And then the dinger goes off 10 minutes and then it’s his turn. And we might choose a topic for the inquiry. Like last night, our topic was appreciations, which was very positive. And so you do this with your partner, you know, once, twice, three times a week and you get out of the doing and into the being so that’s psychological inquiry, then there’s sensual practice. So there’s many couples maybe who are listening are like, yeah, I’d like to get my sex life going back again or get that chemistry. And it’s been a while, you know, maybe it’s been months, maybe it’s been years, that’s normal. It’s normal to feel like, okay, I’m not just going to jump in bed and have intercourse like that. I don’t know. I’m like not turned on or that would be awkward or something. So we’ve designed 12 touching practices that couples can use.

Alicia Davon (21:58):

And they range from like, non-sexual clothed. For example, one person lays on the bed on their back and the other person sits up by their side and puts their hands on the partner. Who’s laying down their chest and their abdomen. And you’ve got like new age music playing in the background and candles. And you’re just like, ahh you can just rest and like relax and feel your partner’s touch. And the practices can progress to maybe more sensual touch and can even get more sexual. And it’s a nice thing to do on its own or as a stepping stone to more sensual interaction. So things like these touching practices and the psychological inquiry, you know, you might feel like, Ooh, this is cheesy or awkward, or we’ve never done something like this, but starting to just play with that can get you back into that, that physical, emotional, and then eventually kind of more sensual space with your partner

AmandaTesta (23:00):

And these practices can be fun, actually, if you have an open mind about it, because usually it just might be interacting in a way that you’re not used to or different, which kind of that element of newness or something unique can feel good to do together.

Alicia Davon (23:15):

It really, really can. I mean, we have videos on it and we train people in it and stuff. So people can, who live, who are listening, who want that can totally get that from us. And it is their fun. It is. So it can be very surprising just after five minutes of this nice touching. You’re like, ah, you feel good? Hi honey. You know, it, it’s just, it’s their magical,

AmandaTesta (23:40):

I think too, just having that experience of not having to have an outcome around it, right. Can just take turns being with one another. And there’s, there’s not the pressure which can help your nervous system. Just be like, ah, okay. Yeah.

Alicia Davon (23:54):

Yes, exactly. I like that. You just soften and it’s common that that one partner might be like, I want to have such, you know, it’s been so long, you know, and that’s okay. And that’s sometimes it’s, if it’s in a man woman relationship that maybe be the man and the woman’s life, wait, I need emotional connection to like warm up and I don’t want to feel pressured and maybe the man doesn’t want to feel, so it’s exactly what you’re saying. It’s like pleasure orientation as opposed to goal orientation.

AmandaTesta (24:23):

And I’m wondering too, what would you say if someone is listening and they’re like, well, these all sound like great ideas. Like where where’s the best place to start? What would you say?

Alicia Davon (24:33):

Yes. So the best place to start would be just right where you are. Like, if you’re finding yourself in a situation where you’re like, oh my God, we haven’t even talked about intimacy for months and years and the kids are gone or they’re older. Or like, whatever, just start talking about that. Like just say, Hey, I’d love to connect more or Hey, what do you think about that? You know, I miss you, you want to be positive about it. You know, complaining doesn’t really yield great results. It’s better than no communication, but you might just start by saying something to your partner and are you open to, I don’t know, like learning some new ways to connect. Maybe you are learning ways to connect or you’re like kind of getting into it, but you’re not really sure what to do then maybe you’ll contact us and get the touching practice video. And then you can learn from there. It’s like, you need to start where you’re where you are. And sometimes where you are is like not having talked about it at all. So then you want to just broach the conversation.

AmandaTesta (25:38):

Right. And I think too, like, even if you are having great sex and you are really connected, you can always deepen that.

Alicia Davon (25:43):

Oh yes. And if there does not be a problem there, it could be about expansion.

AmandaTesta (25:49):

Yeah. And I would, I’m curious too, for you, what would be one, one of your favorite ways that you love to connect to now, you had mentioned you have many, you’ve got your four that you recommend that you do, but for you personally, is there anything that you just always as your go-to?

Alicia Davon (26:04):

Yes. I mean, well Erwan, and I have our time in our calendar it’s every morning at nine 15. And we it’s just the best because we get now, our schedule is so interesting because we have a five-year-old, you know, so he gets up really early and I have to get them off to school and this and that, and Erwan like stays up late and sleeps in. Then we’ve got a whole thing. So I get back into bed with him after I get home. And then we do our essential practice and I just love it. Cause he’s usually like dead to the world, just woke up. So I’ll do a little, we call it deep touch on him, where I just put like hand on heart, hand on abdomen. And he’s like, uh, you know, it’s really nice. And then like, we’ll cuddle for a little bit. And then it just progresses into, we have an extended orgasm practice, which is a specialty of ours. It’s a clitoral stroking practice, which I don’t know that we’ll get into today. But it’s, it’s a something that we train people in. We’ll often practice that and it’ll lead to other sex acts or it doesn’t. And we just have a little routine going And even though it’s a little different every day, it’s just the yummiest. It’s the best.

AmandaTesta (27:09):

I think one of the things that’s fun for any of you out there who may be working from home and out. I know my husband is still working from him too. And there are some benefits to that because it’s like getting the creative juices flowing around connection. Right? Like you say, if you make it a priority, then you’ll make it happen somehow some way. And so we just have that as a priority of sometime during the day. And it might have to change the time because our schedules are all over the place, but we just know, okay, we’ll make time to connect at some point. Right. And we do try to do like a little morning coffee talk every morning around seven 30, just to spend 10 minutes, like just checking in which that is a huge thing. Even if I can get that in like some type of regular connection, that’s just to be in, like you say, not like, here’s what we’re doing today, or let’s talk about these things. It’s just to like sit and chat up, like all the to-do list or here’s what I need from you or that kind of thing.

Alicia Davon (28:03):

It sounds very nurturing and relaxing. And it’s so nice that it’s a ritual.

AmandaTesta (28:08):

Yeah. But I think that’s the thing that if you can find these creative ways, like maybe you’re both working from home or maybe like you say, it’s like getting the kid to play with a neighbor or a friend, or maybe they watch a little movie and you go upstairs, whatever.

Alicia Davon (28:20):

It’s not a crime, you know, it’s, it’s really it’s to prioritize. And it’s in the w in the regarding kids. It’s good for them. This is my experience. It’s good for kids to see parents connecting, obviously, you know, appropriately, but just for them to know, oh, my parents have their own thing going, you know, my parents are the center of this life. And kids always fight to be the center of attention and that’s totally age appropriate and everything, depending on their age, I have a five-year-old. So I can say that, but they really do like to see, you know, for parents that are together raising their kids in the same home, the bond, and to know that like, oh, they’re, they’re doing their thing. That it’s good for them.

Amanda Testa (29:00):

Right. This is like a random thought that just popped into my head. But I know people often pass me about this and it’s around feeling, feeling, shame around being sexual when you have kids, right. Because, it could be all kinds of things. There’s numerous things that come up. But I’m curious for you, what could you share around that? Because I do hear that often.

Alicia Davon (29:18):

Yes. It’s very multilayered. So I explored this a lot after I had my son, because, so the shame, so one piece of it, and this is from my own, my own experience and also my own work with other parents of young kids, there seems to be for a lot of women, this challenge of identity, you know, when you have a child, you know, whether you’ve birthed the child or adopted the child. But I think particularly if you’ve birthed the child where you’re kind of like, okay, I’m a mom, you know, and I’m devoted to keeping this being alive. Can I be a mom and be a sexual being like, I don’t know, like, it seems almost like to con to conflict or, oh, am I betraying my children if I’m going off and being sexual and giving, you know, my attention or my body to someone else, or there can be some interesting psychological stuff.

Alicia Davon (30:15):

And most of these things go on unconsciously. So like on the level of awareness where like, oh, I just don’t want to, you know, or I’m not interested or I’m tired, or I don’t feel like it sometimes of course there’s fatigue obviously, but there’s that there can be body image issues. Our genitals may have changed shape. They may not feel as good, especially in the beginning, our bodies on the whole change when we are pregnant and give birth to kids, sometimes it never goes back. Sometimes it does. There’s hormonal changes. So there’s a lot of feelings that go along with that. And then to layer on top of it, this is a topic we talk about a lot in our mastery of relationship, class, female, sexual psychology, which basically the bottom line of it is that we as women to some degree or another, have a split between our sexual selves and our non-sexual selves.

Alicia Davon (31:11):

So like for every woman, there is a place where we’re like sexual, you know, like we have desires and we want, we want to and returned on and we’re interested in sex. And then there’s a part of us. That’s like, it’s a no-no, you know, like it’s a, no-no because of what I was taught in religious school or what I was taught by my parents, or I’ve had really nasty experiences around my sexuality. So it’s better just to shut it off. Cause it’s dangerous cultural messages. So that can come along with a lot of shame when you’re kind of like, okay, I really want something, but I’m not supposed to. And so there’s a lot to unpack there, but that’s like the high level list of what can cause shame, actuality,

AmandaTesta (31:58):

There’s so much there, there really is. And there’s, you know, and I think too, like you say, what I always try to connect to is that it’s a natural, normal part of our existence as human animals, right. We’re animals. And that if you, if your kids see you prioritizing a relationship and having pleasure and enjoying your life, then that will inspire them for what’s possible for them. And I think, you know, it’s normal to, I think sometimes people also have a hard time maybe showing affection in front other kids or whatever it might be. But I think it really does serve it, serves them to see you. It helps them feel secure when they see their caregivers are secure. Right. I think so. Anyways. Yeah. 

Alicia Davon (32:39):

Agree from my own personal experience and what I’ve seen, you know, I would definitely agree with that. Yeah.

AmandaTesta (32:45):

Well, I feel like I could talk to you forever, but I’d love to, you know, just to share it a little bit more where everyone can find you and how they can learn more about you.

Alicia Davon (32:53):

Sure. Yes. Thank you. I know we, I can talk to you forever as well. So for those of you who are listening and thank you might be interested in learning more about working with us. I recommend setting up a free Lovelife consultation. So I’m offering that to those of you listening. And that’s a private conversation with me with you. It can be on zoom. It can be on the phone and we’ll get personal. You can tell me whatever you want about your relationship, life, your sex life challenges, goals. You can ask me questions, I’ll coach you a little bit. And then if it looks like Erwan and I can support you further, then I’ll lay out the different options that we have to work with. People I’ll make a recommendation as to which I think would be the best fit based on your goals. We have all sorts of ways.

Alicia Davon (33:40):

You know, we have our most popular program is called mastery of relationship. It’s online group coaching class. We have private coaching. We have weekend intensives. We have all sorts of things. So you can set up the love life consultation. The easiest way to do that is to text us. I’ll get the text, the number’s 4 1 5 3 0 8 9 5 8 0 that’s 4 1 5 3 0 8 9 5 8 0. And just mention the podcast that you want this consultation, and then we’ll schedule it. And then Amanda also give you a link for people to click. If they prefer to just fill out a form. And then anybody who sets up the consultation, I’ll send you a free video of the five keys to a successful relationship. So you’ll have that to chew on. And our website is pleasurecourse.com

AmandaTesta (34:34):

And I’ll make sure to put all that in the show notes as well. And so, as we close, I’d love to just know if there’s any last words you’d like to share. Or if perhaps there was a question that I didn’t ask and you wished I would have asked.

Alicia Davon (34:45):

Yeah, no, you’re great. You know, you, you asked all sorts of great questions and I don’t think there’s anything left. And I look forward to chatting further with anybody who contacts me. I’ve really appreciated being here. Thank you so much again for being here. You’re welcome.

AmandaTesta (35:00):

And I will look forward to sharing in the show notes. We’re going to connect with you and thank you for listening next week.

AmandaTesta (35:08):

Thank you so much for listening to the find your feminine fire podcast. 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 meat www.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 and the group find your feminine 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 raving review. So I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself. Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

A Women’s Guide To Power and Influencewith Kasia Urbaniak

How can so many women feel “good and mad” yet still reluctant to speak up in a meeting or difficult conversation? 

Why do women often feel like they’re too much–and, at the same time, not enough? 

What causes us, at the most critical moments in our lives, to freeze?

In this weeks’ episode I have the immense pleasure of talking with Kasia Urbaniak, the author of Unbound: A Woman’s Guide To Power, and the founder and CEO of the Academy, a school that teaches women the foundations of power and influence.

Based on insights from her experiences as a dominatrix, her training to become a Taoist nun, and the countless women she has taught to expand their influence, she has a unique perspective on power. Listen in to learn more about how you can ask for, and get, what you want. 

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

Complete Transcript available below.

In this episode you’ll discover

Why feelings of instability and insecurity are arising now.What power really means.What it means to follow what is alive vs. what’s dead.How Good Girl conditioning affects women, and how to escape the Good Girl double bind.How to stop “white knuckling” through your days and life.What zaps our energy, and how to reclaim that energy back. Understanding the skills of power and influence. What causes “The Freeze” and how to move past it. Why it’s vital to desire and dream big, now more that ever. And, much more!

Kasia Urbaniak, the founder and CEO of The Academy, a school that teaches women the foundations of power and influence. Kasia’s perspective on power is unique. Over the course of nearly 20 years, she has worked as a professional Dominatrix, practiced Taoist alchemy in one of the oldest female-led monasteries in China and obtained dozens of certifications in different disciplines, including Medical Qi Gong and Systemic Constellations. Since founding The Academy in 2013, Kasia has taught hundreds of women practical tools to step into leadership positions in their relationships, families, workplaces, and wider communities. Her forthcoming book, UNBOUND: A Woman’s Guide to Power, was released in March 2021.

Connect with Kasia on Instagram here.

Connect with Kasia on Facebook here.

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts,Stitcheror Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

Amanda Testa(00:01):

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.

I’m so excited for this week’s episode. I am going to invite you to tune in right now, if you can.. connect to a time in your life, maybe even this week where you have felt so mad or still weren’t able to speak up for yourself or feeling like you’re not enough and too much, and all the things or feeling like you have to please and always be good, do what’s right at the expense of your own desires. This week I have the immense pleasure of talking with Kasia Urbaniak, she’s the author of Unbound, A Woman’s Guide To Power, and The Founder and CEO of The Academy school that teaches women, the foundations of power and influence.

And I just love the book, and I love all that she teaches based on her insights from her experiences as a dominatrix, as well as her training to become a Toaist nun, and the countless woman she has taught to expand their influence. She has a very unique perspective on power, and especially now more than ever, how important it is for women to step into their leadership and welcome Kasia I’m so thrilled to talk with you today.

Kasia Urbaniak(01:32):

Thank you for having me and thank you for the work that you do in the world. It’s very important.

Amanda Testa(01:35):

Thank you. So I’d love to, to start with, you know, even before we started recording, just tuning into how now, more than ever, it does feel so important for women to speak up and to step into their leadership. And I know for myself that I have spent a lot of time and energy and work reforming my own good girl self, because I was raised in the south in Georgia as a Debutante. I mean so much un learning around so many, so many layers there, but it is so easy. I can catch myself falling into that. And I just love that constant reminder to, okay, what is real inside of you and how can you connect to that and come from that place versus trying to appease everyone else, trying to smooth things out. And so I know there’s probably many women out there listening who can relate this. So thank you for helping us to reprogram ourselves, like get rid of this good girl conditioning so we can be in our own influence and power.

Kasia Urbaniak (02:32):

That was a question, right? I can respond. There was, I actually have this temptation right now to respond to this in a way I never ever, ever have before publicly in an interview. And I’ll get to the thing that I would say normally describing good girl conditioning and talking about what it does and its impact and how it, how it affects our ability to even be heard. Even when we do say the thing we mean, even when we do say it loud, what happens, energetically, how it falls flat,  why it will ruffle feathers unnecessarily besides sexism.

But I think there’s something really important happening that has to be acknowledged. And I wish that we were talking about it like collectively as a society before every business meeting, before every family meeting the fact that right now we’re dealing with a global pandemic and watching through the screens and the windows, our planet falling apart has a very primal, primal, psychological effect that a lot of people won’t take full stock of the full stock.

What this means is if you’re, if you’re familiar with yogic philosophy, the body, the physical body, the material world is represented by the root chakra, right? It’s like the root chakra processes information on a material level, the most material level, it’s also safety. It’s also survival and it’s also home. And when we have simultaneously this feeling that maybe our bodies aren’t safe, maybe other people’s bodies, aren’t safe, our body, the root chakra home is insecure. And when we look at our home planet being insecure, not safe, that’s going to hit us on that level. And the issue is that the real issue is when it comes to emotions and thoughts and communication, having fights with people, trying to get things done, the root chakra is the furthest away from the parts of our minds that speak and think and rationalize. So what that means is a lot of people are going to be having feelings of instability and insecurity, lack of safety, grasping, addiction, gripping, wanting to fix onto an ideology, wanting to know for certain, what’s gotten that feeling of uncertainty makes sense on a logical level.

Kasia Urbaniak (04:40):

We don’t know where we’re going, what’s going to happen, right? But on an energy body level, when I see even people walking around it’s root chakra, perineum clenched, asshole clenched, it’s like the roots been cut and damaged and a lot of the aberrant and wildly inappropriate behaviors and strange thoughts and strange logic look to me like they’re coming from, uh, from a, from a destabilized root chakra. Like we can’t say mommy, I don’t feel safe. Like there’s no way for those deepest, deepest bodily feelings to translate well into thought. And the reason, one of the reasons I mentioned is like, this Academy is a school of power, power, power, but like power. Like there’s one definition of power, which has everything to do with who has the most toys. And that falls flat. It really does like behavioral economics can get economics is, can argue with me and half, right?

Kasia Urbaniak (05:31):

If you’re talking about human power, there are a lot of people who have a lot of toys that don’t have the freedom to live how they wish and are under the influence of the power they have in such a way that they are trapped. They are not actually in a position to transform themselves. Their lives adapt to the changing times or society. And this root chakra mentioned, right? The thing I said, I was going to mention before, good girl conditioning power is in the body. Power is in how you’re able to communicate, occupy space, who you can touch, move, and inspire and who and how and what you can offer that is well used and what you can receive. It has everything to do with relationships, power. Isn’t a feeling it’s not something you experience alone in a room. You can have a high and feel great about yourself, but like power is manifest.

Kasia Urbaniak (06:23):

Power is relational. Power is the result you see the community, you build the work that you do, the synergy you’re able to create with your dreams, desires, fears, synergizing with those of others. It’s a, you know, it’s like movements that happen in our society. Whether they’re destructive or constructive or some combination, the human power is most powerful when it’s embodied individuals acting in concert. And that requires the most embodied individual in the room, tapping into that deepest wisdom and knowing how to transmit it, to get others on board, we’re going this way. And I feel it I’m following. What’s alive. I’m following what’s in, what’s in the life force because that’s going to be the best decision, making the best thing for all involved. The most generative option, always what’s alive. What’s alive. Not what’s right. Not what’s wrong, but what’s alive versus what’s dead.

And y’all know what a dead choice looks like. The good on paper choice, the temporary guilty pleasure, but really screws you five minutes later, choice. Like you feel, you know, what’s okay. And this is where women come in. We are uniquely tailored to feel what’s alive. Even the way that we get erotically turned on. It’s so nuanced because it’s so discerning about what’s relevant. What’s alive. What’s on point something slightly off point game off like game over. So, okay, so now I’m going to bring it back to a little bit more grounded level, right? The conditioning we receive in the name of goodness, that seems like it’s no longer relevant because you can be a bad girl. You can be a business woman, but it’s still just as pervasive as ever. It’s just taken on different masks, different outfits. Like a business woman could be the independent woman.

Kasia Urbaniak (08:02):

A good girl who’s doing everything for everyone. Doesn’t really ask anything of anyone. She’s getting it herself. It’s, it’s silly to expect this kind of conditioning to disappear in a few generations, the entire system of how our entire economic system based on marriage, marrying well, are you going to be the kind of wife that’s not going to ask too much, that’s going to make the best with what she has. That’s not gonna, that’s not gonna compromise the patriarch. That’s, you know, that’s going to be easy to satisfy. So like, even these days, if a woman’s like, yeah, I’m chill. I don’t need much. I’m fine. I’m a pretty low maintenance. Not only is she probably lying. , (Laughter) That’s another manifestation of good girl conditioning, which at its essence really looks like, you know, a Victorian manual for marriage. It’s massively outdated. But because we learn most of our things, not from the internet or books, we learn most of our things.

We catch them from our grandparents and we catch them in the air. Like that air takes longer to change and we can consciously change those things. We can consciously break out of good girl conditioning, but we have to be able to name it because I know so many women who are like, I’m not anybody’s doormat, except if she really, really goes into that deeper signal that we talked about, that we want leading all things on everywhere on the planet, but you really, really, really taps in it can get scary because some of those truths and some of those desires are things that may not be the things they’re supposed to be. If anybody listening, ever had an experience, like how many of us have had an experience where even in grade school, we didn’t have to be told explicitly, but we knew what it was okay to like, and not like, like, and not like what, what music or TV shows or what jokes or whether it was okay to like the teacher and not what that said about you.

Whether you were like able to like members of the opposite sex yet, what that meant about you or the same sex, all of those. And even the most silly things like if you like yellow sneakers, like all of these. And when you start putting at this really early age conditions and very high stakes values on somebody’s desire, somebody’s sense of what’s alive. You’re crippling their primary navigation device through life. You’re cracking their barometer. And so when the process of releasing good girl conditioning comes up, we start discovering things about ourselves that would be hard to look at in the beginning, especially through a moral lens. You know, there’s a lot of really amazing things that happen. If a woman’s willing to look at her desire for revenge, without an acting it, but finding it amusing and, and feeling the incredible passion and energy, even with the most twisted plots and then reclaiming the energy.

So it’s not, you know, actually, if you look at I’ve done this work with thousands of women, but when you start looking at they’re in a safe container, allowing them to go crazy with their revenge plots, what you actually start seeing is a really nuanced training of the other person to crack them and then elevate them.

Because after they’re done with the punishment, they’re sending their molesting stepfathers to therapy, and then they’re making them save all the other women in the world. I mean, you can just keep going. What else, what else, what else it’s like, you have to cure cancer before that’s, before I’ll talk to you, but only, only breast cancer. Anyway, I think right now, especially in this time of uncertainty, it’s actually the best time to start training that and, and, and repairing that inner navigation device, because there aren’t external conditions that are decidedly telling you one thing or another there’s confusion.

Kasia Urbaniak(11:36):

And in that space of confusion and uncertainty, we can start tapping somatically into the feelings and, and, and that training starts on the most basic level. That training starts, you know, from, somebody who’s listening to this, who has no idea what I’m talking about. It starts like day one, setting an alarm on your phone four or five times a day that has the message,  What are you feeling in your body right now? What are you feeling in your emotions right now? One word, right? I’m feeling cold. And that after a period of time getting good at that, it using that as in, you know, decision-making, there’s the whole area of emotional alchemy and a kind of spiritual self-care that has to do with tapping into different emotions for information. But beginning with that, if we can’t feel ourselves and we can’t feel our desires, we can’t feel our preferences and we can’t be okay with whatever comes up, because it means that we’re crazy, you know, screwed up or whatever. If we can’t let ourselves have that, that ecstasy, of a human, if a human beings, daily requisite, daily diet of ecstasy, isn’t met, it goes dark. And that’s what we have. And the dark side of ecstasy of a human being doesn’t have an ecstatic experience. Often enough, you get doom scrolling addiction to violence, screaming fights that would be better solved with sex. Like just really like high-intensity negative experience that reached the same pitch in the negative, that, and out of that, a liberating opening, ecstatic experience might.

Amanda Testa (13:04):

Yes.

Oh my goodness. And I think too, we are so conditioned away from tuning into what we need on that somatic level. Often I think about, you know, my daughter is nine now, but when she was in kindergarten and they would only let them go to the bathroom certain times and drink water at certain times. And I was like, no, you let my daughter go to the bathroom when she needs to go to the bathroom, because that right there is just turning you off from listening to your body’s natural urges. Right. You can’t even drink when you’re thirsty. I mean, I think that making that note to self, like, what am I feeling right now? Oh, maybe I need to go to the bathroom and not sit here for another two hours at my desk. Those are things like a simple thing. But that to me is part of it sometimes. Right?

Kasia Urbaniak (13:44):

It’s, it’s absolutely essential being able to read basic body signals. I think also like that the loss of that, the loss of that, like, if you’re like in a virtual world, in us as a zoom meeting or on the phone, you might forget that you need to drink water or pee, or like, even as an adult, I see a very strong link to that in the death of common sense. When people talk about common sense, what are they talking about? Oh, you know, the things we all agree on, the things we all know. No, no, no, no, because there’s nothing we, that there isn’t such a thing without the sense, the physical sense common sense is about, it may be hard for some people to see the link between knowing when you have to pee and going to pee and common sense. But that common sense occurs to you as knowing what, you know, as a felt sense experience.

Kasia Urbaniak(14:29):

Well, obviously it’s a bad idea to put garbage in the ocean. Obviously it’s a bad idea to treat all your neighbors with hostility, it’s obvious I can just feel, it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel right to put chemicals in baby food. You don’t have to tell me what the chemicals are. It’s just like arsenic in there doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t taste right. Like common sense. It requires proprioceptive anchoring it requires knowing what’s going on inside of you. And if we don’t understand, we can’t tap in and up to know, like, it’s time to sleep. It’s time to eat. Like your nine-year-old has a right to be learning that. But part of the madness of the world is we have a world run by adults who don’t not only don’t know how to do that. There is a heroic reward. There’s a heroic status to those who can bypass their signals, white knuckle things and projected imperviousness to the human condition.

Amanda Testa (15:23):

Right. I feel like right now, there’s that sense in some ways of white knuckling through every day, there’s just new headlines that are just devastating. And I think when you let some of those land on a body level, it’s really hard to be like, all right, well, let me just get to work now. You know what I mean? It’s it’s, there is kind of maybe a collective in some sense, like, oh, you’re dealing with all these things, but I don’t have time to really deal with it. So let me just keep going. And that’s not healthy either. Yeah,

Kasia Urbaniak (15:50):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s also because of the way that we compartmentalize things, like you can’t go to work with a broken heart because you shouldn’t be crying, but like, you know, actually you can do all those things. You can talk and cry. Like you can do all those things.

Amanda Testa (16:03):

I feel grateful to be, you know, I think in the way that I am able to be in my work and show up, obviously can be a little different than a lot of people that have to go into an office or whatnot. But it’s also,

Kasia Urbaniak(16:15):

Yeah, I have a lot of students who are -we had to scrap our planned semester. Cause there’s so many things that it doesn’t make sense to teach right now. I don’t understand how other people are still teaching time management when our sense of time is like, or, or how to succeed. Uh, when our definitions of success have changed, there’s a reason why we’re making fun of billionaires who go to space. Like our values are changing. Like, I don’t know what they’re changing into. I don’t have the definitive. I’m not the, you know, the Oracle who says we’re going in this direction. But like, it’s really obvious that the things that might’ve gotten, somebody really amped up and excited at life hack. It’s just like, what?  What, are we still talking about the old world? And my job might be from the old world, your job might who’s, you know, like, what is the point of doing those things anymore? Is this still, is it still relevant? You know, what’s relevant. What’s not relevant. We don’t know that right now.

Amanda Testa(17:04):

Right. I love, you know, in the beginning we were talking about aliveliness and like, what is that? And how do you reconnect to that? And so amidst everything else, like tuning into your own experience and finding that that aliveness in you in some way, you know, you also mentioned that often there can be so many blocks to that. So curious if you would share a little bit more about that, if that feels okay.

Kasia Urbaniak(17:25):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the biggest energy zappers, one of them is the things that you’re afraid to say out loud, the things that would sound so horrible, you’re not even sure that you mean them because they sound so terrible. You can’t say them, you can’t communicate them because they’re too dangerous. It’s really, really important to find a person, a place where you can say that. And it’s, it’s actually even more important, it’s more important than you might realize to say it to a person. Human beings have had something like this. You know, there’s a lot of groups that have exercises, like clearing exercise. We have things unsaid. There’s, there’s spring cleaning. There’s many different groups that have versions of this, but it comes from a very human primal need. We have confession or some form of confession in churches, the ability to complete the circuit of the feeling, the thought to the words, and without consequence writing those things down and burning them as a substitute is better way better than nothing way better than nothing.

Kasia Urbaniak (18:33):

If you can have a confessional with somebody and say, I’m not meaning anything I say, I just want to go to town on some things, you’ll have a turn, I’ll have a turn, and we forget this ever happened. It releases something bodily, it makes energy available. Another thing is that speech can oftentimes tap into emotions. We don’t know, we’re having a lot of people that are tired when they’re actually angry and they can’t deal with what they’re angry about. Being able to tap into those emotions, liberates a lot of energy. Now the whole process of how to do that and how to convert it into something beautiful and glorious is way more complex than I can give it a single answer, but a cheat is to play with different personas. So if you think about, if I were a bad girl, if I were a con artist, if I were a sexy slut, if I were a something that feels foreign and forbidden, but for some reason feels like it has a draw.

If I was the mistress of doom, if I was the goddess of death, if I was a tyrant, if I was a dictator to fill in the blank, choose one archetype and fill in the blank, what you would do in your own life right now, if you were a dictator, what would you tell everybody to do? How would you punish them? How would, what order would you say if you were a con artist, how much would you charge for this thing that you like what’s too much. If you were a, you know, a femme fatale, who would you seduce and How, what would you, what would you look like on your zoom calls? And, and part of the reason for this is a much more playful way to start, like in the guise of play, which is one of the most healing things to, to start releasing some of these ideas and feelings and, you know, pretend is a very, very it’s the basis on which all our great art operates, right?

Like in that free space. And I, and I would encourage anyone listening to try to actually try, like, what would it be like if I were, if I were bad, what would I do? And see the, sometimes the hesitancy with which all of a sudden, the amnesia, the blanks, and a little bit of pushing or goading, remembering a favorite villainous or something like that, then suddenly there’s this whole emotional arc that develops, you know, from like difficult to playful to while to completely nonsensical. I would never do that. It’s really fun to do some of these exercises in a group too, because when you hear other ideas, there’s a lot of laughter. There’s a lot of playfulness. There’s, there’s there’s approval, there’s approval for the ways in which some of these are expressions of hidden desire and hidden heartache.

Amanda Testa (21:00):

I think there’s something so potent about the group and doing it in community, because I think there’s that, first of all, the permission to go there, when you see someone else or inspired by someone else, also knowing that you’re not alone in what you’re experiencing, I think, and I’m curious, obviously in this day and age, it’s harder to meet in person. Sometimes maybe you have some, maybe you have ways to do it that feel good, but it depends on where you are in the world and what not, but I’m curious, obviously there’s zoom, but you know, for you and gatherings with other women, to be able to do this work, feeling that potency of being in person, doing it, how that feels so much harder when you can’t be like in-person versus virtual, does that make sense? What I’m asking?

Kasia Urbaniak(21:42):

It does. And it’s also really interesting because I’ve had, I’ve had a, a three-year investigation with this because before lockdown, before COVID I was busy writing my book. So there was a, I think a semester or two, where I went online, I taught online only so that I had more space to do that. And I, and so my, the process for me of moving from groups to not groups was in a sense more, more gradual. And I had more interruptions to experiment with and try to figure out how this works. How is this going to happen? Especially around the questions of transformation and community. Okay. Basic fact, right? You can be in a room full of people and not feel community. So it’s not just being bodies in a room, discerning the thing that’s going to make people who are not in the same room feel as connected as possible and feel as in community as possible, became the name of the game.

And I have a feeling that having distilled, one of the things, two of the things that I’m about to say is only going to make the future life gatherings and communities work even better in writing a book, I had to figure out how to do all this stuff that only worked in community, in book form for the individual woman. And one of the main things, especially when it comes to this topic is the biggest, biggest mind-fuck for women is feeling like these things we go through as women are our own personal experience, therefore our own personal failings. So the thing about freezing when somebody says something inappropriate or asks you a question, or, you know, in those terrible situations where something happens that you don’t want it and want to happen, but you didn’t exactly say no. Or you didn’t say no loud enough, or you agreed to something you didn’t want to agree to.

It could be anything but freeze the freeze, right? The most painful thing about the freeze is that when it happens on a low level, very few consequences, you’re in an elevator. Somebody asks you, if you’re married, you answer, you didn’t mean to, right? Like you freeze right on that lowest level, low stakes, the most painful part of it, obviously isn’t that a stranger asked you if of your marital status, it’s the self betrayal piece. It’s the feeling that you let yourself down. Why am I? So we can’t trust myself. I can’t stand up for myself. The moment women start hearing how their lives have been shaped by this phenomenon. And that it’s, that it’s pretty much universal that women freeze in a very specific way, men freeze too, but it’s very different, the very specific way and why that happens and how that happens. All of the sudden the relate-ability right.

The relief to know that I am not the only one sharing this burden. I’m not the only one carrying this burden. And every single thing, it’s like the good girl conditioning, the freeze, the repression of anger, the worrying about being bossy or needy, the pretending, you know, the negotiation against myself before I make an ask, like, I’m about to ask something. I know what I want. And I negotiate myself down before I open my mouth. There are so many patterns that I can tell you, almost every single woman experiences. No, it’s not biological. Cause if it was you wouldn’t be able to change it. And that’s what I’m in the business of doing, you know, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of women no longer doing those things anymore. And not because of some kind of like arduous step-by-step behavioral change, but because of understanding how it occurred and knowing, and knowing a few basic practices to keep stay fresh, you know, because if it’s in the air, it’s going to, it’s going to, if you can, you always stand a chance of falling back into it.

But anyway, the main point was that like community exists where there’s true relate-ability and the relief like, and also where there’s function when there’s purpose, if the purpose of a group is to have your, your personal burden lightened, where you’re psychologically relieved to know it’s not just me, because you would spend 30 years in therapy, hacking away at a thing and be isolated and deprived of the beauty of seeing it happen 300 different ways exactly At the same time. And when you have those points of reference, it becomes so much easier to understand the nature of the pattern, the shape of the beast, the way that it operates, the way that it moves, how to tame it, how to handle it. Like until then we’re all by ourselves, having conversations with ourselves about how we suck. And that’s not what we need the opposite of what we,

Amanda Testa (26:02):

Right. It’s that internalized violence towards ourselves that we sometimes will, I will , I’ll speak for myself here, that I could be, I would never speak this way to another human, but to myself, it’s like, okay, let me just be as vicious as I can possibly be. But then that brings back to the point of like embodying those fun alter egos, those other archetypes, like, well, if I really was to embody this totally evil inside of me, what would she do? And she, would she really take this out on besides me? Right?

Kasia Urbaniak (26:33):

Yeah. The thing you think to know about self-attack is that it’s inherited. And one of the counter intuitive moves to do with it is to express gratitude to our ancestors for policing us for our own protection. And, you know, letting them know it’s not necessary anymore. Women don’t need that same kind of thing because that self attack is just like internalized freakishly restrictive care of the woman and the girl and the woman. It’s like, not, it doesn’t work obviously.

Amanda Testa (26:59):

Well, I think that that’s true. And when you were speaking back to, you know, finding connection in, you know, a shared experience can be done in different ways. I personally miss in person. Cause I do. I mean, there is so much to be done virtually and it is so beautiful, but sometimes, and it’s interesting cause there is that, like you say, even, I think I was talking with someone on the podcast recently about how it’s kind of like there’s this, the coronavirus or whatever it might be, right? There’s the pandemic you’re going about your day. You’re doing as well as you can. But in, at somewhere in the back, it’s like, there’s this Hawk in your backyard and you’re a mouse and it’s like constantly flying around back, there’s just a little bit of a threat at all times. I’m wondering, you know, what are some things that you can share to help you reconnect to your own life force your own sovereignty. In those instances, when you’re feeling so much outside chaos,

Kasia Urbaniak(27:52):

This is going to speak to only a percentage of people, but it’s worth trying, let yourself freak the out in rage, like, close the doors and just roar the lion’s roar. The energy of anger. Again, this is not going to appeal to everyone, especially when you’re tired, right? When you’re exhausted. But the feeling that you might be under attack needs to be processed. Yes, it’s most insidious when it’s constant and low grade, but when it builds up the impact that it has on our bodies is like an actual attack. The purpose of anger is not to kill your enemy. The purpose of anger is to reestablish yourself as an individual with a right to be as you are. What do I mean by that? A lion’s roar, a lion roars to say, I am, it’s not anger. It sounds like that. Like anything that can get you into your root chakra, grunting kind of raw primal, right to exist as you are I’m here.

This is my territory. I am like hot blooded. I don’t know if that’s not going to be anger for everyone, but whatever can get you into that. Whether it’s a certain kind of music, whether it has to do something with your hips, it’s, it’s that, that frequency of energy, that’s very earthy and primal. And sometimes like, like arrgh, because human beings are the ones who can take information and turn it into a threat, more abstract, you know, somebody can insult your clothes and you can feel like your right to exist is compromised. Make you angry. Anger is supposed to be to defend you to like establish your beingness here. Like I even noticed that music is less Basey than it used to be. Like, we need that bass note. We need that bass note. So if you could think of anything, I mean, for some people it’s going to be exercise, but I’m not going to say exercise because that tends to have a really restrictive, disciplined kind of controlling energy. Yeah. I mean, can we all get in a circle around a fire and pretend we’re wild animals?

Amanda Testa (29:54):

Yes. I think that accessing that primal part, that wild nature can be challenging for the good girl. Right. Because it’s not, what has been taught is how you are to be as a lady, but it’s so freeing and incredible what happens when you are able to get into that part of you. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like you come alive. Yeah,

Kasia Urbaniak (30:15):

Yeah. Yeah. And there, there are more delicate ways for the good girl to go into it. Find some hip hop that take a walk around your house, like stomping your feet, like you own the place. I mean, the body so important that way, this is like the most fun part of the academy and the live classes, especially is all the persona play. When you have, when you start embodying different aspects of yourself and different personalities or making them up, naming them, costuming them, giving them fictional backgrounds.

Amanda Testa (30:48):

Yeah. And two, when it comes to influence, you were talking earlier about how you can lead and how you can be led through connecting with someone’s body and their embodiment of their belief or whatnot. I’m wondering, I think it just feels so important. And there was a point in your book that really struck me. I just remember reading this part and it gave me chills and just the power of when you’re truly in your life force. And I think it was a story of a Taoist nun who had whole army turn away just from her presence. And I don’t know the backstory of that, but I just love that visual and just that potency of what’s possible there. Yeah. Yeah. And so I’m wondering, you know, what does it take to try to hold more influence? Like if you, what are some of the ways that we can do that?

Kasia Urbaniak  (31:33):

We’ve talked about some of the ways to liberate some of the pre-existing energy and breaking good girl conditioning. And what that does is it makes more energy available, right? More options, more possibility, more range, less limited, less limited sets of behavior, less habituation. Okay. But in terms of power and influence with another person, one of the main stumbling blocks that we get into is not understanding the structure of power dynamics. So the Toaist Abbott, she was able to stay rooted, right? Really, really embodied had access to her own wellspring of natural energy connected to her own source, which you know, that is, that is a noble pursuit. Like learn how to do that. Just remove as much as you can, of the things that are in the way that were, that you inherited. Right. But then when it comes to the projection of energy and the receiving of energy, the power dynamic, like the simplest way to understand it is that the structure of a power dynamic is the structure of attention.

And that can sound really abstract, but it’s really easy to understand in the context of something like the freeze, somebody asks you, do you like threesomes? Are you free tonight? I know you like it, don’t you. Right. And you’re there going uhhhh , What’s actually happening is somebody put their attention on you. The way women are conditioned on an energetic level is put attention in first. They take things in first, their attention goes in. So when you have somebody nail you with some unwanted attention, the instinct is going to be to go inside and check yourself, look for an answer. Right. And that’s what, that’s what part of what makes the freeze happen. If you ask a man an inappropriate question, nine times out of 10, what is he going to do? He’s going to go inside to look for the answer. Is he going to go inside? No, he will immediately go outside. Why are you asking, what are you talking about? Who the hell do you think you are? Are you looking for a date? You seem pretty desperate, aren’t you? That will be like this. It doesn’t need to be taught, right? That also has, you know, there’s pluses and minuses. If you have a default state of attention in, in a stressful situation, it’s also going to mean that, you know, if your default is out, nobody can get in.

But when we’re talking about just this default, just this default for women, those few seconds in the freeze can determine her career, her safety, her life, those few seconds matter. So we spend some time training how in those difficult situations to break through the freeze and put, put attention out, right. To put them on the spot. And then that’s, that’s just, that’s just the beginning and the articulation of the principle itself, because actually most of us have trouble occupying an inward attentive state fully and an outward attentive state fully. And it’s really in terms of relations. It’s really one or the other that does have the magic. When a human being fully present, when a human being is fully present and embodied, their natural inclination will be to do power dynamics 100% correctly Right. And any time two people have had one of those amazing conversations where they stayed up until Dawn and felt like more intimate and more connected and more inspired than ever they were doing it.

Like we’ve all done it. What it looks like is being able to take turns, occupying a self aware state and an other aware state of attention in and attention out. And it’s easy to see why it would be really good to be fluid in both and fluent in both in a situation like the freeze somebody puts you on the spot. You’re frozen. You actually don’t know that your attention is inward and that you’re seeking the solution inward. So you’re going even further inward. And you’re wanting to say something, but you’re thinking about what you say, instead of putting your attention, energy follows attention, the woo kind of energy, right? The woo kind of energy follows attention. When you put your attention out fully it energetically lands on the other person in a way that even the most numb person can feel. Dogs can feel it. Kids can feel it.

Humans can feel it, whether they know it or not. And when another human being is contained by your energy, they feel safe enough on a less than conscious level to submit, surrender and listen. And until some of those character qualifications are met, they can’t fully let themselves receive the energy and understand and sink into it. The trouble is because of the way men are conditioned. There are, they’re actually thicker. They need more pressure. It doesn’t mean they need more attack. It doesn’t mean they need harsher words. They need more pressure in order to crack. And the thing is that my, my dual education, as a, as a dominatrix and a Taoist nun, somebody who is studying the energy body, but also looked at what it took for some of the most armored men to crack and surrender, it was never an implement in the dungeon. It was never a harder or softer stroke.

Sometimes it had something to do with whether I could get inside their heads with something I said, but fundamentally that was only working if my attention and energy was there to find the thing and the actual act of just having my attention and energy. If I just looked at them and said, you’re here, you’re kneeling, you are here looking up at me. I’m not saying anything clever that, that containment, that location, that the way that, and so without understanding that one of the things women need to learn is to do this fully. And I always get these objections. Yeah. Have by attention’s out all the time. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. I don’t mean serving all the time. I mean, when you want to influence, when you want to contain, when you want to move selectively doing this, not having your attention on everybody’s needs all the time, because that’s not the dominant state of attention.

That’s scattered and outward. We’re talking about specifically for getting through to someone and not knowing this ends up exacerbating sexist situations, or that’s not the right way to say it. Like it creates a difficulty in something.. like a woman in a meeting, right. We know about this example of  woman says something in a meeting and a man repeats it and gets all the credit. A lot of the time what’s actually happening is this pack of animals around a table is needing somebody to put their attention out dominantly enough so they all feel contained enough to surrender, listen and follow. The woman being trained her entire life to never do this. Even when she speaks with a degree of authority, not putting her attention out, owning the bodies of the men in the room, they won’t shift into a surrendered state. So on some unconscious level, something’s itching, something’s itching and incomplete, and it becomes irresistible for a man.

Who’s familiar with this itch to scratch it by repeating the same thing, but in a dominant state of attention to like drive it all the way home. I’m not saying sexism, isn’t, it doesn’t exist. And I’m not saying that men shouldn’t like, look and watch. We should be aware of stolen ideas and stolen credit, but what the individual woman can do is, what I’m interested, because I don’t want to wait for all these things to change, So I want to be able to say, this is what you do to increase your chances of being heard and getting through that, just because a woman uses the inward state as her default, the submissive surrendered state as her default doesn’t mean she’s mastered it enough to get it to be a nourishing, empowering, and powerful experience because that’s another thing to be able to go inward. And that’s, that’s, you know, some of the earlier exercises, even though they seem outward, like if I were a bad girl or confessing or getting in touch with your darker sides, to be able to go inward and to read those signals and to know what you want and to be able to just speak it, plainly just admit it to yourself.

That’s, that’s a surrendered state. It has a magnetic quality that makes it easier for people to serve and for you to receive. So like when you get into that state where somebody is giving you a massage and they’re sort of like reading you, that’s a really good surrendered submissive state. We now have this thing that also is if a woman is wants and needs and is receiving that she’s somehow lesser. And that she’s somehow a weak woman. There’s so much power and magnetism in the state of fully being saturated with what it is that you want and fully ready to receive it. We are really quick to reject offers of things that we even want even dumb things like, can I help you with that? No, I’m fine. Right? Like, it’s almost like, no, I’m not going into that state. I’m not going into that state.

So we hover in this really powerless smush, this really powerless limbo between full dominance and full submission in terms of states, right? Not in terms of like whips, not ropes and webs in terms of states of attention and energy that we never fully connect with the influence, the other person and influencing them getting through to them. Uh, even when I was training dominatrixes they felt all of them when I train them, all of them, what I, first thing I tried to teach them was how to put their attention out. Even they who were inclined to do that kind of work were reticent to cross a man’s boundaries in a way that a man is never, even to this day, even with me too and all that stuff, I never reticent.  They don’t, we don’t occupy this space the same way so long as we feel squeamish about like moving into somebody or moving or moving away from someone, moving into ourselves in the presence of another, if you want to, if you’re getting a massage and you want it to be better than deepen your state of receiving deepen your sense of feeling that you have a chance of transmitting to them, guiding them wordlessly to go deeper and better in the ways that you like.

If you’re in that state, you also won’t mind using your words. When you have to, you won’t have to think about the right way of saying you’re doing it wrong because that’s not where you are. You’re just in the next hot spot. Oh, what about there that, yes. You know, I’m talking about massages, but it can be like the house of your dreams, that promotion, it’s all, it’s all, you know. And the greatest part is when you have a really confusing, stuck dynamic or an argument that happened 75,000 times, the same way, you can try saying something from a dominant state, at a submissive state, and oftentimes switching between the two and really stuck spot will have this kind of jiggle function that sets something loose that removes a block and creates a connection, gets things moving forward. But see, this is the thing like we are having human beings are at this state right now, where we have to like, learn how to do the things we knew how to do before we can name them.

Kids know how to do this. You watch kids playing, they do dominant and submissive extremely well. They switch all the time. They’re fluid about it. You know, I’m the king, you’re the queen. And you know, next, next moment, I’m the villain. And, and like, they don’t even let reality get away, get in the way of the energetic need. That’s presenting itself. I have the magic shield. It can penetrate it. Can’t be penetrated by bullets. Now it can like, we’re, we’re changing the, the rules only to accommodate what’s alive and keeping things alive. And like, you know, now I’m trapped and you are, you’re the prison guard. Like that’s how they play. They play fluidly and we have trouble with that. And we get even more in trouble with that when we carry the baggage of our gender training.

Amanda Testa

That’s so interesting. Just thinking about that. He has with kids and how it is so challenging. Sometimes as adults, we have to retrain ourselves. And like you say, even, you know, in, you were talking earlier about, you know, kind of playing with that attention and some ways to do that. And it really is so interesting to note for just how you are at either one. Right. I think, and like you say, are you able to really surrender deeply and to receive and like really be in that space? Or what about it might feel hard or challenging and how can you work with this pieces that feel like they can’t fully be there, let go, go in whatever it might be. Yeah,

Kasia Urbaniak (43:23):

Right. Yeah. This is the part that was that I do miss about live classes because in a live class, you know, we could have a student come up in the world in front of the room and receive a compliment, for example. And like, you can see somebody’s energetic state and whether they’re receiving even behind the “thank you.” Cause you can feel the, thank you that’s kind of like a pushback. It’s not ungenerous or unkind. It’s just, thank you. It’s like I’m full, I’ve popped. I’m I’ve received the compliment, but now I’m giving you something back or I’m pushing you away. And the thank you. And again, like in presence, you can feel it more easily. Somebody who says thank you in a way where the words thank you as part of what they’re drinking in will oftentimes summon the next compliment. Uh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, and also you’re an amazing cook. Ah, yeah. Okay. Let me take that and thank you. Thank you. Like you can feel it and you can see it in the eyes, the eyes that take in and the eyes that shoot back. I mean, even saying thank you to a compliment for some women is a major achievement instead of arguing with it or trying to explain it away, you know, oh, this isn’t me. This is my makeup artist.

Amanda Testa(44:33):

Yes. Right. So good. I mean, I feel like I just want to keep talking. I love all your wisdom and I’m wondering, you know, maybe if there’s one thing,  or if there’s a question that you really wished I would have asked that I didn’t, or just any last insights you’d like to share.

Kasia Urbaniak (44:50):

Yeah. I think, I think these days it’s more difficult than ever for women to allow themselves to desire big and dream big and even take note of what they want when it’s the attention is really being hijacked. But what we don’t want, like what we want less of, or what we need or the break that we need or the context that we need. And it’s, it’s a shame because it’s also exactly in this time of uncertainty, there’s also, this uncertainty also means that there’s something happening. And this is metaphysically difficult to, it’s difficult to talk about like a rational person, but the structures, the structure of manifestation, the structures of reality are softer. This is a really good moment for anybody who actually really knows what they, what they love, what they desire, what they feel passionate about, what they want to create. It’s a really good, there’s a lot of space on this level of creation.

So long as you’re able to do it without a lot of support from material reality right now. Okay. So that’s a really fancy way of trying to say, do whatever you can right now to find the breadcrumbs of desires, to find unrealistic dreams, the things you have no way of knowing how you would ever make happen, the things you want to have in your life, divorced completely from how you would ever make that happen. Don’t make it a goal because material reality is in flux right now. So how things will happen. We don’t know that. And that’s a plus not a minus. If you have this brilliant signal, this shining magnet in your energy field, what’s going to happen in the next year or two, we’ll be way faster than what it would have happened would have taken decade a decade, a decade and a half before this time, take advantage of the crumbling onus of these times and make the invisible dream as solid for yourself as you can, without, without engaging in any of the activity to make it happen.

I wouldn’t say this during normal times, because it sounds like irresponsible, magical thinking, like believe that something’s going to happen no create in your mind’s eye and embellish it regularly and add to it and build that crystal mansion inside yourself right now, like not five years ago, and divorce divorce in every single way from, from the labor involved in making it happen, all the energy needs to go into what it’s going to look like and feel like, and times will change and then times will change again. And there’ll be a time where, you know, matter will collect around it or circumstances will align. And I’m saying this, I feel this really, really strongly about these times is the way in which they’re unique. So if you get Unbound and you’re reading the chapter on desires and and harvesting them, honing them, finding them all and all kinds of like unlikely places. Remember that, that actually right now, there are things about that, that I’m saying that aren’t written in the book because these times are really unique in terms of desire.

Amanda Testa (47:49):

MMM and that feels good to think into and to feel into. And I love that invitation. So thank you very much. I’d also love if you could share where’s the best place for everyone to connect with you. If they want to work with you and learn more, get the book, all that good stuff.

Kasia Urbaniak(48:04):

My website is my name, but it’s easier to reach it through www.Weteachpower.com. I’m on Instagram. And my book is called Unbound. A Woman’s Guide To Power from Penguin. And it’s really, really, really comprehensive. It’s a very, very thorough manual for training to become the woman who creates the world of tomorrow, like training now to create the new for ourselves and for each other.

Amanda Testa (48:31):

Thank you so much so important. And I feel every person listening needs to go out and get the book and really practice what it is inside so that we can have embodied the influence that we need to bring what we want to our existence. Right. Thank you so much. And I’ll make sure to, to put all that in the show notes so that you can connect with Kasia, and thank you so much again for being here. We will see you all next week. 

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. 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 www.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 group 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 rave review. So I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself. Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

Finding Rhythms of SupportIn Stressful Timeswith Amanda Testa

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, tired and exhausted at all the collective chaos and want to feel more vitality and empowered safety, then listen in to this week’s episode.

In this week’s pod I’m talking about the power of surrender, and creating routines to tend to your needs so you can move into fall feeling less stressed, and more turned on.

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

Complete Transcript available below.

In this episode you’ll discover

How to reconnect to your vitality and aliveness when you feel stressed out. What stands in the way of our healthy routines, and what to do about it. How to feel grounded when things feel out of your control. How to revamp your daily rhythms to feel more empowered. What it means to create fertile ground in your life.Anxiety reducing practices you can try today.And, much more!

Amanda Testa is a World Changing Witch,  + A Pleasure Revolutionary,  who is passionate about supporting you to have the deeply connected relationships of your dreams, to live free of shame and full of confidence, energy, and orgasmic joy.

As a sex, love and relationship coach and trauma resolution guide, her mission is to support you to take up all the space, to show all of your authentic self, and to shine, shine, shine in all your perfectly imperfect glory.

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts,Stitcheror Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

Amanda Testa (00:15):

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and just really getting tired of all the chaos in the world, wanting to feel more vitality and empowered safety in the midst of all the struggles. That we are collectively experiencing then listen in. In this week’s podcast, I’m talking about the power of surrender and creating routines to tend to your needs. So you can move into fall feeling less stressed and more turned on. And this is your host, Amanda Testa. I know from so many conversations that I’ve had recently, there is a bit of exhaustion I’m feeling, a collective feeling of exhaustion. At just, the continual tragedies we are experiencing on this human plane. And yes, it’s normal to be feeling all the feels right now. And I know for myself on top of everything as well, dealing with personal healing and recovery from my broken ankle and just really having to surrender to that process that it can be a challenging thing, especially when we are wired in a certain way.

Amanda Testa (01:21):

Right. And I know for myself, I typically am one, it likes to go, go, go and do, and be outside and be playing with my dog and spending time out nature. And because of my injury, I’ve been a little bit grounded, so to speak. And fought it at first for sure. You know, I was upset and I cried. And then I started to surrender to the, “what is” that’s right. And trying to find the depth and potency of the experience that I was in. And I think when it comes to surrender, that is a big key is realizing that we don’t have control. And I know we like to think we do, but we really, we don’t have control over much. Right. We can do all. We can to create a sense of security and wellbeing for ourselves, but we really in the big picture don’t have control.

Amanda Testa (02:12):

So what can feel helpful though, in those experiences where you’re feeling overwhelmed, where you’re feeling, I don’t even know what I could do to help, or I don’t even know I’m just shutting down because it’s all too much, that there are some things that you can do to kind of reconnect to that vitality within yourself. And I want to share a little bit about that today. Something too, that I think can be interesting. I shared about this a few months ago on the podcast around how to have a more orgasmic summer and the different ingredients of orgasm and surrender being a big one, being a big part of that, right? Surrendering to the unknown, to that depth of expansion. And as we are moving into fall, I think this can be a beautiful time to kind of look at our routines, our rituals, and where things are working and where they might not be, because one of the things that can really support our health is to create those predictability cycles.

Amanda Testa (03:15):

And yes, we can’t control things in the big picture, but when we can create rituals and routines that support us, it can help us feel more grounded. And I think right now that can be such a powerful thing. And especially with fall and this season of change coming upon us, it’s not quite fall yet, but almost that, you know, the back to school time, if you have kids that can feel for me, it’s always just kind of this refresh. I just noticed this time of harvest and gratitude and shifting gears, and can also feel kind of celebratory a little bit when you have that time to yourself again, after the kids go back to school, and I’m going to share a little bit about one of the archetypes I love from one of my mentors, Rachael Maddox, and you might have be, have listened to our episodes before when she talks about, you know, kind of her Rebloom method, and as a ReBloom certified coach as well,

Amanda Testa (04:11):

I really love archetypes because I think there’s such a, something we can all connect to. Right? Even in last week’s podcast, we talked about the archetype of the unicorn and I like this archetype of the groundskeeper for this time of year and the blueprint, So basically when it comes to the groundskeeper, when it comes to these archetypes, there’s certain imprints, traumatic imprints that happen in our life. That can cause us to have a hard time. I mean, there are certain blueprints that happen that we’re just born with, right? We have these blueprints of health within us, but then what happens in our life can leave traumatic imprints that make it hard to really live into that health. And so what we want to do is we want to breathe life into the health, into that blueprint so that you can feel more whole and that you can, you know, bring this process of Reblooming into vitality and pleasure and all the goodness that life has to offer.

Amanda Testa (05:13):

When it comes to the Groundskeeper, the blueprint of health in the groundskeeper, that innate goodness that we all have access to, is vitality and empowered safety. So within that, you are devoting regular care for your health, your wellbeing, your thriving, you know, really taking time to prioritize your physical, emotional, and mental and spiritual wellbeing. And you’re also, you know, making care to keep yourself at safe distances, from things that are unhealthy, you know, maybe there’s behaviors or people or situations that you are doing a good job of keeping safe distance from, right? And you also have a vitality that enables you to be fully you, be your authentic, full self you are able to share who you are fully and being able to transform environments around you with that health, the more healthy you are, the more that it spreads around you. And you’re able to, you transform the environment around you into one of more health, more prosperity, more peace.

Amanda Testa (06:20):

And we can all use that in this world, especially today. And so what happens, you know, often throughout our lives, as we can have these imprints, these things that can happen to us emotional or physical violence that can cause that blueprint to feel far away sometimes. So if you’ve had any of that history, then you can possibly respond in a couple of ways, right? There’s kind of the way our nervous system responds, is typically one of two ways. And the hypo response is kind of when you shut down or feeling more kind of numb, right? So maybe you’ll find yourself moving towards addictive behavior around food or alcohol or cannabis or technology or Netflix or all those things, perhaps it’s even bypassing pain and focusing only on what feels good, maybe a little spiritual bypassing thereperhaps even dropping down into depression or illness, or perhaps clinging into relationships that might not be as healthy for you.

Amanda Testa (07:21):

And also just really internalizing that violence towards yourself. That would be kind of that hypo response to that imprint of emotional or physical violence. And alternatively, we could be on the other end of the spectrum, the hyper response where it’s more like we have these high energy outbursts, maybe you have outbursts of anger and you don’t know where they come from, or aggression or frustration having extreme highs and lows, you know, perhaps carelessness you know, taking in this cycles of external violence, taking it out on others, you know, perhaps you are more angry, perhaps there’s more yelling and things of that nature and really what you can do to help bring yourself back into that healthy vitality, that healthy empowered safety, where you’re taking care of yourself. And you’re really making sure needs are met is by kind of looking at your rituals and routines periodically.

Amanda Testa (08:23):

I love to do this quarterly at least because I notice for myself things change, right? And our needs change as we move through life and the year. And so really looking at your day-to-day experience and kind of weeding and watering, if you will attending to the fertile ground that you need and noticing what needs to be taken out, what needs to be moved around. And I think this is such a beautiful practice because often just taking that time to look throughout your day and say, okay, in the morning when I wake up, what kind of things are going well, what kind of practices, what kind of things do I do in the morning that feel really good? That make me feel good. That make me feel, you know, like I’m taking care of myself. That make me feel healthy. That make me feel whole and remember, and remembering to continue to do those things.

Amanda Testa (09:13):

And then maybe on the other hand, what are some things that I’m doing that aren’t healthy like today I was not making a very healthy choice and I immediately got on my phone. I was trying to look something up that I was, I don’t remember dreaming about next thing ou know, I’m Facebooking. And so no. Okay. That is not a very healthy thing for me. So I, I need to weed that out of my morning or I need to pull that behavior out of my morning. And don’t do that when I first wake up, I’m also noticing, you know, in your environment, maybe things need to be changed and cleaned up. Maybe some decluttering, maybe some rearranging, maybe some freshening in your physical space, right. Perhaps any kind of, of environment or relationship that might not be serving you maybe needs to be, be looked at.

Amanda Testa (09:55):

Right. And also noticing what might you could add in right where you could water some more where some other really healthy practices you could put into your morning, right? Maybe it’s drinking a glass of water before you get it a bed. Maybe it’s hugging your loved one that’s in the bed with you. Maybe it is taking a moment to just connect with your own body. Maybe it is, you know, just saying something loving and kind to yourself, right. It can be anything, but it’s just going throughout your day and noticing what’s working, what’s not, and that is such a powerful practice. I know it can seem so simple, but it can really be transformational because we could create these cycles of predictability that help our nervous system to relax, especially when it feels overwhelming when it feels hard. And this so connects to our overall sexuality as well, because when we are in a place of overwhelm or chaos or shut down or whatever it might be, we’re not going to be able to access those pleasurable states, right.

Amanda Testa (10:58):

It’s really hard to feel pleasure or to want to engage in pleasurable activity when you’re totally numbed out. And so when you can take the time to look at your, look at your day, look at your month, look at your week, whatever it might be and really tune into what are the things that encourage me to feel good about myself? What are the things that help me feel vital? What are the things that make me feel safe and doing more of those things, you build up that foundation of resilience and feeling good. And it can be starting in the smallest way is because that builds and builds and builds. And then you feel more capacity to be, oh yeah, you know what I do want to be out and about? I do want to spend time with my lover. I do want to enjoy some delicious, you know, sun on my skin, whatever it might be, but we have to kind of build that health and our bodies and our systems to reach those higher levels of pleasure.

Amanda Testa (12:04):

And when you’re having a hard time, that can feel challenging. So if that’s, you know that’s okay and we go through cycles, as I’ve mentioned, numerous times here on this podcast, we go through cycles and it can be very normal to be in a winter. We’re very normal to be however you are. And also knowing when that kind of feels like it’s an extended period where you might want to look at some ways to invite more help then right. And sometimes we can’t do it alone. I know for myself, some of the things that are really key for me are spending time with my community, spending time with friends, doing things that make me feel good, being around people that make me smile and that I love right. Spending time outdoors as much as possible, feeling the sun on my skin. And that’s been challenging too, because we have really terrible air quality right now.

Amanda Testa (12:55):

And so he could probably hear it in my nose. I’m very stuffy and it’s been giving me a headache. It’s so thick with smoke outside. It’s hard to breathe. So also being aware of when things pop in that keep you from doing your normal rituals, what you can do to shift, because that’s another aspect of surrender, right? When things don’t go our way, when things are out of our control, what do you do in that case? Right. So for me, what is it it’s wearing a mask when I’m outside. So I can feel less pollutants going into my body. It is, you know, instead of spending as much time outside as I I’d like and spending a little more time inside, but I’m making up for that need of connection, which I get through nature by petting my dog or snuggling with my family. And to me that still gives me that connection, that I’m looking for something outside of myself to connect to.

Amanda Testa (13:53):

And sometimes we really need that external. We need something outside of us to attune, to, to feel good. And so if this is something that is intriguing for you, I actually am going to be hosting a mini retreat on creating fertile ground where we’re going to go a little more deeply into this practice and really learning for you, what you need to support yourself. And that is going to be coming up on September 25th. So be on the lookout, if you want to learn more, make sure you’re on my email list. I’ll be sending out more about that. Or I’ll also post it in the show notes here. And just, I’m curious as you listen, even just now, as you tune into for yourself, maybe something has stood out right now, maybe something has stood out like, yeah, you know what? I know these are some things that are doing in by day that I need to perhaps shift.

Amanda Testa (14:58):

And I love this beautiful affirmation around this archetype of the groundskeeper. And so I’m going to read it and you can just let it land. However, it feels most resonant in your system. And if you feel like it, you can repeat after me or just noticing how it feels to hear these words. I am fertile ground. I am fertile ground. I tend to all of me, I tend to all of me, I move myself where I need to be. I weed and water accordingly. I am empowered safety. I am so alive. And just noticing how that feels to receive and that possibility of that healthy blueprint of vitality and empowered safety and making that commitment to yourself to devote regular care for all the parts of you.

Amanda Testa (16:16):

And also knowing it’s totally normal that we have different responses to life because it is, it’s a, it’s a, a journey and really there’s no goal at the end. It’s just, how can I make the most of what is presented to me so that I can live a pleasurable life so that I can enjoy my family and my friends, my body, my feminine fire, my sexuality, and I really feel everything. Everything is important, right? All that we do. And the little things add up. So thank you for listening and I will look forward to seeing you next week.

Reconnecting with your inner unicornwith Elizabeth Claire De lune

If you’re craving an energetic reboot, deep connection to desire, or a place to prance in all your glory – grab your glitter. Let’s ride.

In this episode I’m talking with the amazing Elizabeth Claire De lune Sex, Love, and Relationship coach with a Ph.D. in Folklore and a passion for magical realism,

And we’re diving in to reconnecting with your Unicorn Blueprint to fully reclaim the power that’s lost when we externalize our magic, projecting it onto big stories “out there” instead of realizing the truth of it “in here.”

Listen below, or tune in via: Apple Podcasts,Stitcher orSpotify.

Complete Transcript available below.

In this episode you’ll discover

Why unicorns are such a powerful piece of mythology, and how to connect with those qualities within yourself.What does it mean to work with archetypes?Find out the 5 Blueprints of the Unicorn.How your Unicorn Blueprint can connect you to your inner sovereignty and power.How to access magic in a way that resonates with you.How to be more unicorn in your own life. And, much more!

Elizabeth Claire de Lune is a Sex, Love, and Relationship coach with a Ph.D. in Folklore and a passion for magical realism, and is devoted to awakening epic support for your beautiful dreams. (In a trauma-informed, body-wise, and glitter-forward fashion. Because #fastest #funnest #obviously)

Since 2007, She’s studied the function of myth, legend, and archetype. She taught it as a university professor, and now uses it today as a coach.

Elizabeth is passionate about bringing mythic-level magic into your world by reconnecting you with your Unicorn Blueprint –the unique design of the magical being you came here to be.  

Connect with her and take her Unicorn Quizz HERE.

Find her on Instagram Here.

Listen to the episode here or tune in via Apple Podcasts,Stitcheror Spotify.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

Amanda Testa (00:01):

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. Hello

Amanda Testa (00:20):

Everyone. And welcome. If you are craving an energetic reboot, deep connection to desire, or a place to prance in all your glory, grab your glitter because today we’re going to be talking unicorns and magic and how to really reconnect to this unicorn blueprint inside of you, So you can reclaim the power that’s lost when we externalize our magic, projecting it out there and realizing the truth that it’s inside. So I am so thrilled today because I’m going to be talking with my friend and amazing colleague Elizabeth Claire De Lune. She’s a Sex Love and RRelationship coach with a PhD in Folklore and a passion for magical realism. Welcome Elizabeth. Yay.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (00:58):

Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here

Amanda Testa (01:00):

And I just love her work and how she really weaves this unicorn folklore into transformational work. And so we’re going to talk all about this goodness today. And as we dive in, I would just Elizabeth Love for you to just say hello and share a little bit about why, why you’re so passionate about uniforms.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (01:20):

I love that you guys thank you so much. So you already mentioned that I’m a sex love and relationship coach. I arrived to the coaching field from academia and I studied folklore and got my PhD coming from that world. And so it’s really amazing to have a way to kind of combine all of these areas that I’ve been interested in into something that’s really meaningful and really supportive for other people. It’s something that I realized when I was teaching is that my real actual deep desire was to work with people who want transformation, right? Who want something different and who’s like, I can match them in their and their desire. So it’s really an exciting time of expansion for me. So, yeah. Was there something else that you asked me? I forgot

Amanda Testa (02:11):

How you arer weaving it all together and why in particular unicorns, which I just have to share because I, as a kid and forever was obsessed with unicorns obsessed and I had my whole wallpapered in unicorns, all the posters, all the figurines, everything. So I, and now I have a daughter who also loves unicorns, which is pretty fabulous, but I love how, you know, it actually, it’s not just something for kids. And so there’s really a lot of power in this mythology. And I would love if you would share a little bit about why. Yeah.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (02:41):

Oh yes. Thank you so much for that. I also loved unicorns as a child. I also had the posters and like all that probably from the same era and got super excited when they started to get popular again. And the unicorns actually showed up kind of back in my life, but a really important transition period, which we can possibly get into. But the unicorn, I think of it as an archetype, right. As a myth. And what I mean by that is there is an idea that is a sort of pillar of the way we understand our humanity, our world in the way we relate to others and to our world. Right? So when you think about archetypes, you’re thinking about the queen, right? The sorceress, the priestess, the lover, the magician, right? And these are parts of ourselves that are alive, but we maybe aren’t fully embodying them or fully attuned to them.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (03:31):

And when you do archetypeal work, you use that blueprint of the archetype that exists in collective consciousness to help you embody that more in your life. And so the unicorn archetype is something that I’ve been just really called to develop and work with for not quite a year or maybe about a year. I think it was late summer that this really started coming, ripping through my world. And what unicorns represent to me, are there five qualities that I work with there’s sovereignty, right? Which to me is the way that you hold dominion over who you are in relation to other people, other things, and how you’re able to create, get, receive the necessary supports to create the life that you want. Right? So you have autonomy of the life that you’re creating.

New Speaker (04:23):

There is uniqueness, right? And so that’s one of the key qualities of being a unicorn.When we say something is a unicorn, we mean it’s really special. It’s unique. It’s one of a kind it’s difficult to find is another way to put that. And that’s something that I believe we all have, right? So you, Amanda, the way you are right now on the planet, like regardless of your spiritual beliefs, like some people believe in reincarnation or like different ways of thinking about what is the soul, what is, how are we animated on the planet, right. Even if you were to come back, right? Like you still wouldn’t be just like this, right. You’ve never existed before. You’re never going to exist again. And not, none of us are going to, and in that sense, we’re all unicorns. Every single person already is a unicorn. And it’s just like remembering that and knowing that and embodying that, because that brings just a huge wave of self-worth, positive self regard.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (05:21):

And we need that when we’re creating the magical glittery life of our dreams, there is healing is the other quality, third quality, which is, and this is all pulling from the myths, the collective global myths of the unicorn. And then also the way it shows up in popular culture, like, what do we mean when we say something’s a unicorm. Healing, which is knowing that, you know, your own wholeness, youre innate wholeness, remembering of your divinity, if you want to put it that way, right. That you’re a divine soul having a human experience and not outsourcing your power to other things, places, people, right. When you actually have it all within you, the fourth quality is goodness. So this is a big one, that it was one of the pathways into the unicorn world, from the focus of my work previously, but suffice it to say, right, that there is this quality of goodness to unicorns that they’re pure, that they’re light, right?

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (06:24):

That they bring a beacon of hope in some way. I, this is like goodness quality. And I’ve worked with a lot with the women. Who’ve had a history of toxic relationships, been through a lot of darkness. I really am deeply called to transformational portals, to initiatory experiences. And without the perspective of, oh, but I’m like innately good. And I am like the shining light that is leading myself out of here. We can get stuck in those, in that darkness and that unawareness unconsciousness of whatever we’re experiencing. And then the last quality of the unicorn is fierceness, which like you see that associated a lot within contemporary culture, you know, it’s like a, a bad-ass sort of kickass unicorn. You also do see it in and myth and legend as well that they can typically, you know, don’t approach a unicorn because they will run you through with their horn.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (07:21):

And that was absolutely part of the mythology as well, that there is this, all those other qualities is this goodness, there’s this pure love delight often, often motherly feeling to unicorns, but they will protect their own fiercely and just run you through with that horn if they need to. Right. And so there’s this fierce quality, right? And that’s a really fun quality to work with. It’s more of like a fiery Kali like can be kind of a Bitch energy to use a few other archetypes, right. That are adjacent to that aspect of the uniform of just being a boss and knowing how to go get claim, create cut through like cut through things, is that quality of the unicorn. So with this understanding as an adult, I retroactively look back and I’m like, oh, this is the calling, right? This is the calling that I think we all feel to this creature, to this archetype because it’s right there represents this thing out there that we want to be, that we are externalizing and like, wow, how can I do and have all these things? And so what I teach people how to do is to use the blueprint that we all have access to through collective consciousness and to embody it in yourself and in your own body instead, so that you can be a unicorn in your life.

Amanda Testa (08:44):

So good. I appreciate each one of those qualities. And I think that this play of that magical creature that we all have access to. I think that’s, what’s so powerful to realize because we can think, well, I see this, it must be so easy for that person. Or of course this person can do that, but, but realizing that we all have access to those aspects. Okay.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (09:08):

Yeah, yeah. And that we externalize it because we don’t think we can have it. And so it’s just a process of figuring out how to, know, that’d we get to have it too.

Amanda Testa (09:19):

And I know, you know, you mentioned some of your work has been around, you know, kind of recovering from toxic relationships and this and that. And I’m wondering how, how do you kind of help people move through that, using this like blueprint in action, so to speak.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (09:35):

Yeah, absolutely. And the, one of the thing that popped into my mind to share when you asked about that is that healing aspect of the unicorn. And there’s this really beautiful story that I’m sure you probably know from your childhood and, and anybody listening might also know which is that. And actually it’s a Zoroastrian legend because in that tradition, there were, I forget the word that the, at the moment there’s like sacred and profane animals, basically those are Durkheim terms, but there was some there’s another term. And there were the legend where the water source for all of the animals was poisoned and nobody could drink from this water source and daily, it was getting poisoned and army like the whole animal kingdom. And so the unicorn is one of the sacred animals would come and she would dip her horn into the water. And that would clear the water and heal the water, eliminate the toxicity, the poison of the water with just by touching her horn.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (10:37):

And she had to do that every morning because it would get poisoned overnight. And in the morning, all the animals would be able to drink from the water source again. And that’s there. They can live, right? You need water. It’s the basic thing. So it’s that same kind of concept, right? Of people who have been steeped in a toxic environment and it gets into your system, it gets into your body. And I know you work with trauma and I work with trauma as well. And I think that’s a really beautiful metaphor for understanding how trauma affects your body and how it is in your cells, right. And how it’s in your neurological network. And a really passionate interest of mine is how to help people resolve that and go through the stress cycles and so forth in the, the attunement and the blueprinting processes to shift into health, right, and shift into a true, healthy blueprint by moving out of those patterns.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (11:30):

And so the unicorn can be helpful for that specifically because it’s the speaking of healing and goodness, and the other piece that’s really relevant too, is that goodness part, because a major question that I see folks having, who have been in those relationships is questioning whether they’re the toxic one, they’ve been gas lit, they’ve been pulled into dynamics, toxic dynamics, abusive dynamic, where it can get confusing. They start to blame themselves. They’re like, maybe I’m the bad one. Maybe I’m the narcissist is a question that people often arrive at. And my litmus test is like, if you’re even asking the question, you know, it’s not you and helping them return to that. Goodness, because it can be confusing because the gaslighting, the type of dynamics that occur in those situations. So I found these tools to be really helpful for humans in that particular circumstance.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (12:24):

I’m kind of branching into helping a wide array of people, but that’s very much still my path, like my passion and a lot of my one-on-one clients are still in that realm, but it’s right. It’s like helping remember those parts of yourself that you’ve forgotten because you were in those circumstances and what I’ve found. And you’ve probably seen this as well in the work that you do is that when we feel stuck, you often what helps us shift or something feels really huge. Right. So when working with a client, if it’s ever, like, I cannot shift out of this, it feels so big. So overwhelming. I can’t touch it again. Right. That’s the thing that helps us go in is the concept of something bigger than ourselves. It could be a divine, something that could be a natural support. It could, right. Often it’s a sense of something sacred or divine. And so using again, the archetype of unicorn is a really lovely efficient way to do that precisely because of what they represent.

Amanda Testa (13:24):

Ilove that. And I’m wondering too, say, someone’s listening and they’re like, yeah, I know that feeling of being stuck or wanting that return to goodness. And I’m wondering maybe if there is one little practice or one little tip that you could offer around kind of remembering those parts of your past self that you want to reawaken.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (13:43):

Yeah. I love that. I love that question. Ah, so this tuning into what feels right to share around this. The thing that’s coming to me is,starting to attune to what your unicorn self or blueprint might be. So I kind of use the word blueprint and I talk about your unicorn self and like your unicorn as if it’s not you, but it’s just you. Right. But a lot of times it’s easier when it’s externalized. So a really helpful practice is if you’re feeling super down or crappy or stressed or stuck is to visualize. If I had a unicorn, I had a unicorn guide. If you want to use that term or unicorn Valiant animal of some kind, what would they look like? And you can meditate on it. You can just close your eyes and see, what do you see? What comes up in your psyche?

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (14:37):

What is your uniform like? Do they have a name and then noticing how do you feel in the presence of the unicorn and attuning to the unicorn , What would it feel like if I could lean against this unicorn, if I could pet this unicorn’s mane, if I could. Right. And so spending, basically using the unicorn as a resource to just notice in your body, how does it feel when you’re attuned to that kind of archetypal goodness and support and little by little that helps your nervous system actually attune to goodness instead of the Stucky goopy, toxic stuff

Amanda Testa (15:12):

I love that so much. And just spending time thinking about what is the know criminally, what is yours? I think that’s so beautiful. It actually last night, funnily enough, my daughter just has recently been really kind of afraid to go to sleep. She’s just turned nine. So they have all these big brain developments then. And I think there’s a lot of big questions coming up and a lot of questions about death and feeling afraid of dying. And these things are coming up all the time. And so last night when we went to bed, one of the things that always helps her is thinking about all the things that she loves and right. And so then I was asking her to tell me about her favorite unicorn. And it’s so funny like what do the wings look like

Amanda Testa (15:50):

What color is the horn and what color are the hoves? And she’s like clear sparkly, but it’s just so funny to listen to her. And then it really, it’s such a powerful resource because I think it’s like you say, when you can connect to those universal things, it makes it easier. Right. It’s not like you’re coming up from scratch is something that’s there. It’s, it’s more, your brain is more able to connect to it. Yeah.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (16:12):

Sometimes, right? Yeah, yeah. Right. The human psyche, right. It’s expansive. And the way that it makes connections, like, as we know doing body level work, a lot of times, it’s not really a rational thing. And there’s, there are things in the subconscious that come up and those it’s like, I think of it like a Rubik’s cube. Right. Which I’m not a Rubik’s cube expert. So that’s maybe why I can use that metaphor because I’m just like, I don’t know, turn this around and what’s happening. But like, it just seems so confusing. Like I could never intellectualize my way to figure out a Rubik’s cube. I think mathematicians can, but for the purpose of this metaphor, it’s a mystery for me. Right. And I don’t know the answer, but my psyche does, my subconscious does my body does the sensations in my body do. And all I have to do is follow those. And my body will like, Rubik’s cube me back to health because that’s where the body actually goes by this towards healing.

Amanda Testa (17:07):

I like that Rubik’s cube analogy is helpful. Right. I think that’s one of the things that can feel hard when we’re going through challenging times or feeling like really stuck is that it sometimes feels like there is no health or there is no goodness or it feels just so hard to find, but it is there. Like we all have that within us, no matter what we’ve been through that core of goodness and original essence or health, whatever you want to call it, it’s like there. Yeah. It just sometimes takes a little time to reconnect to it.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (17:37):

Yeah. And I was coming up for me too, is to also share that if there’s no shame in externalizing it, right. That’s part of the process. It’s not like you need to push yourself to be in a place of embodying your most unicorn self. Right. That is a natural process of sometimes we don’t have that available within us. And so we find it outside of us. And in my view, that’s literally the way that it’s meant to be like that is part of the evidence of the interconnectedness of all things and humans and nature. And we’re meant to attune to natural cycles, we’re meant to atune to “what do the animals do?”, Right? Like how do they handle this situation? Or is there a type of animal on the planet or a cycle on the planet that I can attune to that helps me get out of where I am or feel better where I am, because you don’t need to be a monolith of everything we get to be supported by those external things. And there’s nothing wrong or worse

Amanda Testa (18:39):

About that. Right. And this day and age, it’s important to do that because we do get so disconnected from the national environment. You know, we don’t have a lot of, most of us don’t have a lot of everyday interaction with those natural rhythms and routines like we used to. Right. I think people are becoming more aware of that and tried to do more of it. But for me, I know, you know, like creating a garden and being outside and I love nature and that’s one of my biggest resources. So I live in Colorado. As many of you know, I broke my ankle a couple of months ago, so I’m just finally being able to walk again. And that has been so hard to not be able to use the things that normally like my normal go-tos I haven’t been able to do. And so finding new ways to connect, maybe it’s sitting in the backyard for awhile. It was just really just allowing myself to be out there without thinking of all the things that I needed to do out there.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (19:35):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely true.

Amanda Testa (19:38):

When I’m hiking, I don’t just, I’m there for some reason when I’m in my own house or my backyard and I’m like, oh, I need to go get to the garden, but I can’t get over there. I need to get back here and do this weeding. So it was such a good exercise of just being and like focusing on the good versus what needed to be done. Where can I find beauty in this experience? Like, oh, this beautiful petunia next to me, I love purple. You know, those kinds of things, little, little things like that could be. So I think sometimes we don’t realize how powerful those little things can be. Like the little steps really are the big things.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (20:09):

Yeah. I love that. Love that you brought that up and it’s, I mean, first of all, I’m sure you could ride a unicorn with a broken foot. So just inviting you, if that feels good to you, but second, the, a big piece that I’m really also passionate about and that’s that I’ve seen be really effective and helpful is that everyday piece that you mentioned. So I like the term magical realism because I came from academia. I taught magical realism was one of my kind of first passions, but I also love, you know, everyday magic, like practical, magic, practical mysticism. Like these are things that I feel are really aligned with the unicorn archetype and what it’s about, which is when you think about magic and when you think about fantasy or magical realism, just to use that term since it’s kind of where I orient from, we think that it means it’s about something that doesn’t exist.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (21:03):

We think it means it’s about something that is not every day, right? It is like, wow, this is a once in a lifetime. Like I find this unicorn in the woods and I’m, you know what I mean? Like as if it’s something that is not usual, but magical realism as a movement was always about reality, it was a way of describing a reality. That was so unbelievable that it’s like this reality is so beyond that we have to describe it in this way. Right? So from the literary movement, from Latin America, that was what it was about. And there’s a whole bunch of social stuff, political stuff tied in with that, which we don’t need to get into, but it’s super interesting and same goes for like magic. When you talk about just magic, the practice of magic, and there’s a whole bunch of different sects of magic and witchcraft and ways of talking about it.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (21:56):

So just creating a whole bunch of space and permission for it to mean different things for different people. But what it means to me is the ability to create our world, right. And to change our reality, not in a bypass disconnected way, but through these practices, like you’re talking about where you have a shift in the way you relate to your world, you have a shift in the way that you view your connection to other people, right? So like a really perhaps like a better like concrete example of this would be, I think a lot of times when we’ve been through really difficult stuff, and this is something I’ve learned by working with a lot of women with this toxic relationship history and my own journey out of that history is it can really be something that defines you, right? You’re a survivor of this kind or that kind, you’re an actual victim of often really difficult perpetration and just really shitty stuff that I hope I can say, shitty on your podcast, beyond what even you can imagine humans could do to each other, right?

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (23:06):

Your, your, and, and we don’t want to bypass that. We don’t want to not process that. We don’t want to pretend like it didn’t happen. Right? But you reach a point in your journey where it stops being your narrative about who you are. And you’re able to have come to a place of peace about it so that you can, alchemize it turn that pain into power. And then it’s like just turning around and looking the other way. And it’s not that the, that sunset behind you, isn’t there. Right? But it’s like, you’re going towards something different. You’re going towards your north star, your you’re growing into something else. Right? And so it’s not a bypassing, it’s an integration. It’s a shifting into this is these are experiences that helped transform me into who I am. And that’s different from these experiences are who I am.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (24:02):

And it’s those shifts that, that we make a lot of times through the every day. And that to me is magic, right? Because you start to create a different reality. You connect with different qualities of people. You make, there are things that you just realize, you know what, I’m no longer available for ABC in relationships. I’m in tune with my body. This doesn’t feel good anymore. I know that I have worth. And so I now have the resilience within myself to say, Hey, don’t treat me that way. Or I don’t talk to me like that, or I’m not available for this kind of communication. And if it continues, I am going to have to stop our communication. Right? So you gain those very practical abilities to change your reality through these daily practices. And so we say magic, it does not just like Harry Potter,Like pow pow you know, , it’s hard work, but it, to me is the way that we bring things from the unmanifest the imagined the archetypal, the desire world into your actual world. So I hope that I explained that if not, no,

Amanda Testa (25:09):

No, that, that made sense to me. And I’m wondering, is there one particular every day you know, something that you do every day that you love that really helps you, that would feel okay to share?

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (25:22):

Yeah. I’m I’m a sensory person. I think you might be. Also since we have a lot of the same trainings I just, that always really, really helps me. And I’ve spent enough time knowing what senses are especially good. I’m pretty strong, like scent person and touch person. So I make space in the morning for myself. I do something it, my morning practice varies a lot. Just I have like a rotating things that I do based on what I feel like doing, but I have a, a unicorn Oracle deck and I have a Tarot deck that I really love. And I, it sounds a little cliche, but I’m sure many people will relate, like to how grounding it feels to just pull a card in the morning. And I combine that with something sensory, like in my office, I have a really lovely, like sheep skin rug that feels so good to sit on and I like touch it.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (26:19):

And it helps me feel really grounded and cozy. I love cozy, and I have incense that I burn that I use. I’ve used it for so long for so many rituals and sacred practices that as soon as I smell it, my body is like sacred. It just establishes sacred space for me. And so in burning herbs and things, whenever your sacred herbs are of choice, if that really helps me just ground, be more present in my body, notice my sensations, I pull a card or multiple cards and attune to those. I put on music. That’s another thing I do have my playlist that I really like. I have a unicorn quiz as well. And I, you get a playlist as a part of your quiz results. And that’s why I do that is because I think music is so good for archetypeal work. So like touch, smell, sound are really helpful for me in combination with that card in the morning to just start my day. It makes a huge difference.

Amanda Testa (27:14):

It’s so true. I think that, you know, whatever it is for whoever’s out there, it’s just finding that thing for you. That helps you connect. Cause it’s it’s night and day, I can tell from these past few months have been not ideal. And I haven’t been able to do the normal things that I do. So it’s been interesting trying to the difference when I can reconnect to it. It’s amazing. And so, and it, and like you say, you do your, your, your body can have those cues. It’s like, Pavlov’s dog, right? It’s actually scientifically proven if you put yourself in a state and then you have some kind of trigger, you’re much more easily to go back into that state. So if that’s relaxation or feeling grounded from just a scent can be so such a soothing and nourishing tool. I love that.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (27:55):

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good one. I just have to say, I

Amanda Testa (27:58):

Just love all this. And I’m very excited to have a little time with my unicorn fantasy this afternoon, I’m really gonna spend time with that because it’s, I was doing it last night for my daughter, but I’m like, wait, I want that. I want to connect to that my own. And to be able to as well, like you say, take it, let it take me on a ride or who knows where it will take me, but I’m open.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (28:18):

Yeah. I love that. Do it. And I’m so not surprised that you were doing that with your daughter last night. Cause it happens that way. I swear, like I ran a challenge a while back and people were like walking down the street in New York city and taking a picture of a construction. And it was like unicorn construction company. Somebody does a call with me and then who I’ve never met before. And then they DM me later. They’re like, I went to the store after our call and look what I found. And it’s like a giant blowup unicorn. Right? They are there and they want to, to be of support, right. That it’s the whole natural world, right? It’s the archetypal wisdom of the human psyche of the human condition. It’s there to benefit and to serve us and the unicorn. The unicorns absolutely show up if you, if you tune in. So I, I want to report back. I want to know.

Amanda Testa (29:09):

I just love talking with you in a minute. I want you to share more about where everyone connect with can connect with you. But I would love to first, if you would just share maybe if there’s any last words you’d like to leave the listeners with, or if there was perhaps a question that you really wished that I would have asked that I did not.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (29:23):

Hmm. Okay. Would be, yeah. Yeah. The, the last piece, it ties into where we’re going, but it feels really alive for me to share. Is that right? We have these wounds that we operate from unconsciously. Right. Kind of what I was saying before about letting past experiences define us. Right. But they can get kind of reified into our personality or like misinterpreted into like, this is who I am or like, this is what always happens to me. Or like I’m unlucky. I, things never go my way. Like I can never make a man stay. I always get abandoned. I right. They become a part of our identity and I call those things, the unicorn wound. Right. And they’re typically wounds around those five qualities right. Of specialness uniqueness, like how we’re trying to prove ourselves to externally to be validated like, oh, you’re, you’re so good that, of course you get these things.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (30:22):

So you’re so good. Like of course I never want to leave you you’re. So this and the right, like all, and it’s just seeking of external validation of our worth.. And a lot of times we’re operating from that place, but the main kind of message that I feel that I am sending into the world. I want everybody to hear is that though your, your unicorn self is already good is already whole, is already sovereign is already healed, right? Those things are already true for your being the blueprint of who you are. I call that your unicorn blueprint. And it’s just a process of remembering that. And that’s what I am really passionate about helping people do. Because when you create things from your wounds, from the unicorn wounds, it is on this like shaky foundation. It has a lot of needs and requirements that can never be met externally. Or are definitely going to get let down because that’s just what it’s like to be on the planet. Versus when you’re in your unicorn blueprint and you have that pillar of confidence, self worth it, of knowing of health. Then when you create things from that space, it’s different and it’s there, right? It’s in your body, you already have it. And it’s just a matter of remembering.

Amanda Testa (31:42):

So good. Yay. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. I am just thrilled for this amazing, this amazingness that you’re creating and I’d love for you to share where everyone can find you and learn more about you and yes. Tell us all the things. Yeah.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (31:56):

Yeah. So I’m on Instagram, mostly. That’s where I hang out these days. It’s cosmic unicorn academy. My place of unicorn creation is called the unicorn academy. You can look me up on the internet, www.theunicornacademy.org, but on Instagram, it’s @cosmicunicornacademy. If you search the unicorn academy, it’ll come up though. And that’s a great place to find me. I’m also on Facebook, under Elizabeth Clair de Lune Clair de Lune, like the song. And I have coming up a masterclass, a free masterclass called the unicorn wound. That is about what I had mentioned around the understanding what your wounds are, where they come from, what do they mean really to giving yourself some of that nourishment that you need to transform those. And then we’ll spend time attuning you to your north star. Your unicorn blueprint and how to awaken those pieces within you to get you on the path, to take the next step on your path towards your heart’s desire, your mission.

Elizabeth Claire De Lune (32:56):

I work with a lot of like creatives who are doing things in the creative community or entrepreneurs. I have a real passion for parenting since I’m a parent as well. So a lot of times people are just like, how do I relate healthily? How do I transform my home life? So it’s all around those, those kinds of things. You can find the link to sign up for those on my social is also the unicorn academy, a unicorn quiz on my social, as I mentioned previously, and then coming up, I have a really fun, extensive class on all of the unicorn blueprint. Those five archetypes that we talked about, those five flavors of sovereignty goodness healing, fierce and uniqueness that will then begin in September. That helps you attune to what those are for you, and how you can weave them within your life in all aspects. So in all those links and everything are on my social.

Amanda Testa (33:49):

Beautiful, and I’ll make sure to put them all in the show notes as well. And thank you so much again, Elizabeth, and thank you all for tuning in and we’ll see you next week. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. 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 www.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 and the group 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 raving review. So I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself. Thank you so much for being a part of the community.