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Amanda Testa is a trusted healer, coach, and guide who’s served hundreds of clients over the years with masterful skills in coaching, pleasure embodiment, and somatic trauma resolution.

After thousands of hours of training in trauma informed sex and relationship coaching, tantric sex coaching, energy healing, somatic trauma resolution, breathwork, yoni egg coaching and more, she’s seen time and time again the magic and wisdom of our bodies.

We all have the ability to return to our blueprint of health, aliveness, pleasure and sovereignty, and you can too.

With her powerful, loving and gentle support her clients find their desire and pleasure again, find safety and bliss in their bodies, and remember they are enough just as they are.

Find out more about her new monthly Pleasure Membership HERE.  

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EPISODE 247: Pleasure 101 - Finding What Feels Good


Amanda Testa: Welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I’m your host, Amanda Testa, and this is a small diversion from our usual thing. I am dropping in with my third of six minisodes on stories about fun and desire and why pleasure is so foundational. So, at the end of this podcast as well, I’m gonna invite you into a really, really fun experience. So, here we go!

Today, I am diving into Pleasure 101. What does it really take? What is the process? Why is it gonna be so hard for us to feel pleasure, and what can we do about it? I just finished up a client session, and one of the things I love so much about doing this work is when clients say to me that they are feeling peace, that they feel pleasure, that they feel light, that they feel more present, that they feel more grounded, that they feel so much more able to move forward in their day with all the craziness that we have to endure in this day and age. There are a few things that can come into play, right?

1:00

I even know for myself; I remember when my daughter was born. She was about, I don't know, a little over a year old, and I was so depleted, so exhausted. I remember tripping over this toy that she loved. It was this loud train thing, a plastic train that made all this noise when she pushed it around, and that thing, [Laughs] I tripped over it, and I was so irritated. I was like, “Agh,” kicking it out of the way, “I’m the only one that ever does anything around here!” You know, just feeling one of those moments, and I remember I looked into the mirror, and I was like, “Who am I?” I didn’t even recognize myself. I could not believe that I felt so disconnected and unhappy because I really wasn't diagnosed with postpartum depression, but I had a lot of feels, right? The hormones just rage, and anyone who is a parent can attest. It’s not easy. Any birthing person could know it is not easy.

And so, I remember just looking in the mirror and making a promise to myself that I would just do whatever it took to find myself again because I was doing all the things I thought were right!

2:06

I was eating well. I was exercising. I taught a workout class for moms, for goodness sake. I was very connected with my family and my husband and my daughter. Obviously, we had this sleeplessness and all of that to deal with but, overall, I thought things were going pretty good, so I couldn't understand why I had just this disconnection to myself. And so, I just made a commitment to do all of the breadcrumbs. I was gonna follow all the breadcrumbs to find myself again.

One of the things that happened across my path was a course with one of my mentors, Layla Martin, and I was like, “Well, this surely couldn't hurt.” It was involved. Part of the process was working with the jade egg and kind of working to get your sexuality back. After having a kid I was like, “Well, that could certainly help!” I remember when I signed up I was so mortified. I was like, “Oh, god. Please don't let anyone know I’m doing this. I am mortified,” A) that I feel like there’s something wrong with me, and B) that I have to take to class to learn about something that I should probably already know about.

3:06

And the third thing, you know, I was just embarrassed that people would think that I was weird or something, right? These are all the thoughts we think when we go to do this work around sexuality.

It’s not easily approachable, and I just want to name that because so many people that I talk to are interested, and they have so much shame, and they are disconnected in their relationships, and they're living a life where they're not getting what they need in this area, but they are afraid to talk about it. They don't feel comfortable reaching out, and I was that person, too. But I was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna be brave, and I’m gonna do this,” and, obviously, it changed my life so much to the point that I was like I need to teach other people about this! I need to scream it from the mountaintops.

So, I got certified, and I’ve been studying this for a decade now because I am so passionate. I see how important pleasure is for people, how important this connection to ourselves is. In the previous two episodes, you’ll hear me talk a little bit more about why it can feel impossible and what things can do to bring you back to yourself.

4:06

But so many of us are kind of taught to martyr ourselves, so of course we don't feel comfortable with pleasure. But I want to just share kind of a few different components that I think are important to address when you are looking to find more pleasure, okay? There are a lot of things, but I want to break it down because I feel like the easier you can dip your toe in the water, the better.

So, the first thing is just strictly physically, right? So many of us have not learned our own anatomy. We don't even know what our body parts are, and, again, I was just listening to a show on Netflix talking about people don't really know the names of their anatomy. They don't know the difference between a vulva and the vaginal canal and the clitoris, how it’s actually more like a wishbone and really large, and it’s not just the tip.

5:02

So, there’s so much there around the anatomy that you can learn to find out more about your own body and what brings you pleasure and how you want to relate to your genitals and what makes you feel comfortable there. Again, these are not easy things to do.

So, you always want to drop in at a level that feels doable. Maybe it’s picking up a book. Maybe it’s getting out a mirror. Maybe you're like, “Hell no, I’m not doing that for a while,” and that’s okay, right? But there are steps that you can take to kind of understand your own anatomy and be more comfortable with your body, right? There are tools that you can learn to kind of move through the emotions that feel hard, move through the shame, move through the residual layers that are standing in the way of you being able to enjoy your pleasure without shame, without guilt. Making time for sensual selfcare on a regular basis, and I talk about this a lot because I feel like these little microdoses of pleasure are so important where maybe five minutes you just breathe and just feel how warm the fireplace is on your skin or maybe you are really intentional about eating your lunch, right? These are ways you can do that. So, the physical is one component.

6:17

Then there’s also the energetic component of kind of understanding that our lifeforce energy, our aliveness, and our sexual energy are all connected, and you can actually cultivate this energy and allow it to expand, to move, to nourish you, and I think that’s one of the things that I was blown away by when I first started doing this work was I had zero clue that was even a thing. Now, when I learned it and I started practicing it, I was like, “Holy shit! This is insane.” You know, I used to need, like, three cups of coffee to get through my day, and I was like, “This practice makes me feel so alive! I have energy all day!” Granted, I was, at the time, sleepless with a baby who never slept until they were three years old. So, let me just tell you, [Laughs] that was not the easiest time, so I was definitely needing this energy, and I was like, “Man, this is like mother’s little helper with a healthy version of this.” So, you can learn to cultivate that energetic component.

7:12

Then, also, one of the things that I truly believe that makes our connection to our pleasure and our sexuality so important is that there’s also, I believe, a spiritual component, right? We are able to connect to and have this awareness of our divine nature simply by just being alive. We can unleash that power of simply being alive to help us to feel more confident and comfortable in our bodies, to be more accepting and kind to ourselves and our bodies, to feel a deeper sense of belonging and connection. There are ways to activate each of these things because we can systematically retrain our nervous system to release any blockages and limiting beliefs and become more pleasure positive.

8:04

I really do believe and I feel like it’s so important that every single body deserves pleasure. All bodies deserve pleasure, right? No matter what the size, all bodies deserve pleasure. Bodies that are trans, bodies that are non-binary, bodies that are gender-expansive, bodies that are Black or Indigenous or Latinx or of color deserve pleasure. All bodies deserve pleasure, and we need to learn to embrace our own bodies. Believe you me, I know it is not easy. It’s a journey. But there are steps you can take to get there, and I have made those steps, and I know how hard it can be because I struggled with eating disorders for about 15 years of my life. I hated my body for the majority of my life until I was probably in my 30s, and this work was so impactful there because I realized when we have more ability to love and embrace ourselves, we have more ability to love and embrace a collective, right? We see that we are part of something that’s really amazing, and we can see that connection more often.

9:10

And so, I do love that in the work that we’re doing, there’s so much to it, right? There’s so much to it, and I’m not the first person to say this, you know. I’m just standing on the shoulders of giants that have been preaching this for a long time, but I do just want to remind everyone that this isn't a trivial thing. This isn't a trivial thing. It’s painful when you aren't able to access pleasure. It’s not easy when you aren’t able to get the connection that you want from your partner or from yourself. And so, the good news is there’s something to do about it, and the good news is it can be really doable and easy.

I’m super excited because I am launching a pleasure membership. It is called The Pleasure Foundation. Again, I believe pleasure is foundational, and this is super exciting because this is gonna be a place where we can come together to celebrate what feels good, to actually be in practice together around connecting to what feels good. And we’ll do this through practices like breathwork and like pleasure practices.

10:13

Again, the beautiful thing about this work is I make it accessible at any level, no matter where you are. If you’ve never done anything like this or if you just want to deepen your current practice, this is the space for you, and that’s one of the things my clients always tell me is, “I just love the way you meet me where I am. No matter what, you can meet me where I am.” I’ve been doing this work for, like I said, a decade, and I’ve been professionally teaching and facilitating and coaching since 2015, and I value holding these collective spaces because there is a really beautiful remembrance when people come together to celebrate pleasure and to celebrate sensuality because it’s something that we aren't able to do in very many places, right? [Laughs]

11:03

Our culture is not very supportive of women's pleasure, hello! So, this is something that we can reclaim, and it’s super fun, and it can be really fun and accessible, and that’s what I really want to make it. I want to make it feel easy. I want to make it feel doable. I want to let you know that it doesn't have to be scary, and, yes, maybe there’s a part of you that’s nervous or feels afraid, but that’s why there are tiers, and whenever I’m teaching or whenever I’m leading someone, I always give options, right? There are options. You come in, and I’m gonna let you know the way to do this that feels aligned to your own personal sovereignty because that, my friend, is number one more than anything else. No matter what my invitation is, it’s you listening to yourself and learning to listen to your body and learning to hear what it says, what it wants, what it needs, right?

So, I’m super excited to invite you! I cannot wait. Oh, my gosh. This is my favorite thing in the world to do. It lights me up like nothing else, and we are gonna start on January 31st. I’m offering a special offer for everyone who signs up now. You're gonna get it at a super huge discount.

12:09

So, you can find the sales page and find out more information at www.amandatesta.com/tpf (like The Pleasure Foundation). I hope to see you there! If you have questions, feel free to DM me. You can connect with me on Instagram @abtesta, and I can answer any and all questions or if you want to schedule a call, if you have some questions and you want to learn more, reach out. I’m excited to see you there! It’s gonna be super fun.

Thank you so much for listening, wherever you are in the world. Sending you so much love, and we will see you soon!