The Healing Power Of Pleasure with Dr. Saida Désilets

Does pleasure seem frivolous to you right now?  With all going on in the world, maybe it feels selfish.  

In this week's podcast episode you'll learn more about the scientifically backed research that shows how vital pleasure is to a healthy system.   And how now, more than ever, we need to use pleasure as a powerful resource of support so we can do the important work we're here to do. 

In this week's podcast, I'm delighted to talk with Dr. Saida Désilets, a thought-leader and body-philosopher who is renowned for being the founder of the modern Jade Egg movement and visionary spokesperson for sexual Sovereignty. 

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

If you are looking to step into your sexual sovereignty, to own your desire, and live life on your own terms, you are going to love this week’s podcast.  

Dr. Saida Désilets wants to live in a world filled with audacious, sexually sovereign women, living life on their own terms.

As a thought-leader and body-philosopher, she has authored: The Emergence of the Sensual Womanand Desireand has had her innovative method featured in Dr. Christiane Northrup’s bestselling books: Women’s Wisdom, Women’s Bodies & The Secret Pleasures of Menopause, as well as in the books of Dr. Rachel Abrams: Multi-Orgasmic Woman and BodyWise. 

Saida is renowned for being the founder of the modern Jade Egg movement and visionary spokesperson for sexual Sovereignty and is currently contributing to the first-ever medical study on the Jade Egg and its impact on the vaginal micro-biome. Saida has created eight online courses to assist women to successfully embody their sensuality, while enhancing their sexual health.

When she’s not dancing Cuban salsa or Kizomba with her husband, you can find Saida leading Wilderness Safaris for women in South Africa or writing deliciously sensual poetry.

You can learn more about her at dareyourdesire.com, and check out her Shameless Surrender course HERE.

Thank you for listening!  If you enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends!

Join in the discussion on this episode and more in my free Facebook Group, Find Your Feminine Fire HERE.

Listen here or tune in via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or Spotify.

(Find Full transcript below)

Amanda Testa (00:00):

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 everyone. And welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. If you are looking to explore your sexual sovereignty even more and learn about pleasure as a resource, you're going to love this episode today. I am so thrilled to be talking with Dr. Saida Desliets and she is an amazing teacher and guide in the realms of sexuality. She's authored numerous books, including The Emergence of The Sensual Woman, as well as Desire. And her work has been featured with so many leaders in this field like Dr. Christiane Northrup, and others. She's also one of the founders of the modern Jade Egg movement, and truly a visionary spokesperson around this and this contributing to the first ever medical study on the study of the Jade Egg and its impact on the vaginal microbiome, which is exciting. She's also numerous courses and amazing things out there. So I'm just really excited to dive in today. So welcome. Welcome Dr. Saida.

Dr. Saida Désilets (01:18):

Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here, Amanda. And as I said before, we jumped on the recording. Your voice is so fantastic. So I'm really delighted to be having this conversation and to go deep. I think this topic getsa lot of giggles and a lot of kind of crass comments, and I think it deserves a deep dive and a beautiful look definitely excited to be here.

Amanda Testa (01:42):

And I think too, for anyone listening, you know, they're looking for that depth and really, I think now, and we were talking about this before we came on. I'd love to dive into this in a moment just around how important pleasure truly is. You know, often people think of it as an afterthought, but it's so much deeper than that. And I would love if you would share a little bit around your philosophy on that.

Dr. Saida Désilets (02:05):

Yeah, absolutely. So you had mentioned one of my books and when I wrote it, it was many years ago. Doing the deep sexual practices changes you, but nobody gave me a manual of how to be in the world with these changes. So half of the book was based on the art of succulent living, which basically was an argument for making pleasure a leading force in our life now fast forward many years. Cause I wrote that in 2003. So it was a long time ago. So that's where many years now I'm working with colleagues in the female medicine realm, pelvic pain realm and research, and really starting to see neuroscience, especially a hormonal science catching up with this idea that pleasure isn't frivolous. It's an absolute foundational necessity. So I'm going to say it really simply as though, you know, let's just talking with a bunch of school kids because it's really important to make this come across.

Dr. Saida Désilets (03:15):

Basically our system, every biological creature on this planet, including human beings have an on and off. And when they're on. So let's imagine a switch and it's switched on. Now, we're in a kind of exploratory expanding into what feels good place. And then we have the off, which is contracting away from pain. This is right down to amoebas, like very simple forms of life. It has this open and close. Now we are human beings who are far more complex than amoeba. So we have a few different systems, but let's just look at the nervous system. And we see that we are designed predominantly for rest digest and sex. That's the dominant state because that's when everything is rejuvenating, you're recuperating and all systems are healthily online, like your immune system right now, that's super important. Hormonal system, all systems. And we have a hyper arousal state, which is also very important when we're being threatened, where all the other systems shut off blood just goes straight into the muscles.

Dr. Saida Désilets (04:26):

We're hyper adrenalized. Our vision narrows. So that we're very, we're just like, where do I need to run? Or who do I need to hit? It's like fight flight or freeze. And that state is not intended to be the default. Okay. So there's these two states. Now there's also such a thing as modulation. So it sounds like we shouldn't be in this hyperaroused state that often. However, how are we going to ever get anything done? If we're just chilling, making love, eating and digesting, we never want to do anything. So we need to feel aroused and we need to feel desire and we need to feel it like a calling a yearning, pulling us into the mystery, which is exciting because the mystery can feel like a big saber tooth tiger. So we do need that in order to function, we need both systems.

Dr. Saida Désilets (05:21):

So the idea here is not staying in one or the other. The idea is healthy modulation that we actually can skillfully move from one state to another. And that's where this personal practice becomes so important. And the best part about it is if we do it regularly, we become really robust. And as I was saying to you earlier, resource people are reasonable people and they're creative people and we cannot be resourced and creative and even reasonable if we're stuck in that fight flight or freeze mode. So pleasure then if you understand it, it's, it's the flavor of the parasympathetic system. It's the flavor of our senses fully online. So our sensuality is how we make sense of reality. And when that's fully online, then we're actually getting all the information we need to stay safe. So it's the opposite of what people have been doing. They've been shutting down little girls from a very young age are shut down. They're terrified to be comfortable in their own bodies. They're terrified of their desire sensuality. And then they operate like prey and that does attract predators. So the system's very interesting. We're actually designed to be more functional, safer, healthier, and optimized when pleasure is the dominant lead in our experience.

Amanda Testa (06:59):

And I think that's such a beautiful way of explaining it and how that shows how down to earth it really is. You know, and it's so key because you know, both pleasure and pain also originate from the same part in the brain. And when we can learn how to work with our parasympathetic nervous system to enjoy be in those States, it reduces a lot of that hypervigilance and all the things. And, you know, you mentioned something that I wanted to circle back to around little girls being shut down in so much shame. That's just like epidemic. I feel like for women these days and I find it so crippling in their relationships and just in their self image and the way they feel about their bodies. I'd love. If you could speak to that for a moment, a little more in depth.

Dr. Saida Désilets (07:44):

You know, I want to, I love, I love this topic. So shame is something that is learned. There's a lot of things that we learn we're born erotically innocent. And what that means is that every part of our body that we touch is interesting and has different sensations depending on where you're touching. And we're curious, this is a, there's an innocence to it. There's a deep sensuality to our existence when we're babies and very young. And yet what we have done as a society, I think because there's been pain and there's been misbehaviors and there's been traumas, then people want to protect, especially the girls, but little boys also need protection. And, and we do that through using shame rather than properly educating the young ones about boundaries, about what feels good and doesn't feel good about expressing themselves saying clear, no immediately reporting this to an adult, et cetera.

Dr. Saida Désilets (08:54):

So I want to a personal story because I think stories say a lot I'm, I'm Canadian, born French Canadian. And I happened to grow up on one of the most violent first nation reservations. So I was a minority. I got bullied and picked on a lot in, in these places domestic violence, gender based violence, sexual violence, drug, and alcohol abuse is exceptionally high and where I was even the police wouldn't go. It was too scary that the gangs had the mafia there had too much power. So you can imagine what I was exposed to. And you can imagine what my father is thinking when he's bringing his three year old daughter into this kind of community, but he didn't want to live separate from the people. He's like, if I'm working with the people, I'm going to live with the people, I'm gonna learn their customs.

Dr. Saida Désilets (09:46):

And my children are going to play amongst their children. And he really wanted to create that bridge and he knew there were dangers. So at three years old, my father started to teach me about healthy boundaries. What feels good? What doesn't feel good to yell, kick, scream, scratch do anything I need to do. If someone's touching me in a way that's not appropriate. And to immediately tell my parents. Now, there was abuse. And I was able to protect myself in many occasions and use that voice except for the first day of school on the first day of school I go and there's a bunch of cute kids. We're all six years old at this point, I think five or six, and the teacher who was an Asian lady, came around and put her hand down everyone's pants and stroked our genitals and told us isn't that nice?

Dr. Saida Désilets (10:40):

Doesn't that feel nice? And I froze. I froze because here's someone I'm supposed to respect and trust she's doing something I don't like. It doesn't feel good, but I don't know what to say. Cause it's my first day of school and I'm supposed to behave. So I go home and I immediately tell my parents, no other child reported it. The next day we had a different teacher. Why am I sharing this? No other child reported it. Shame keeps us quiet. Those children, most likely were also being abused at home or by somebody. So it sort of, here we go again. And unfortunately in that realm, when we start so young with abuse, we don't feel good about our bodies. We don't feel good about our pleasure because we feel aroused and we know it's wrong.Women who get raped often have orgasms and they feel horrible about this.

Dr. Saida Désilets (11:41):

It's a function of the biological body to protect her body. Because if she doesn't lubricate, it's going to hurt that much more. So it's not that she's loving the abuse. It has nothing to do with that piece. It's like a protective response to what's happening in terms of that stimulation. So now let's come back to you have a great life you're, you don't have abuse, which you're still getting shamed, right? Because everyone around you wants to keep you safe. And they think that if they shame you, you're going to behave properly and make good choices. But that's not the truth because after teaching as many women, as I have, many of them were shamed and they still went on to make bad decisions. And then they felt even more shame. So the spiral, the negative spiral of that is, is a very difficult one to break and we can break it and it breaks through what we're doing right now, Amanda, where we're talking about it, it breaks through coming together in community and speaking out loud, which was the original intent.

Dr. Saida Désilets (12:52):

I think of #metoo, before it kinda slid down a slippery slope, but to share our stories and to be held as powerful, even though we were victimized, we're not viewed as victims. We're viewed as powerful women sharing our story. That is a very important piece. And then the last piece of that is to realize that you can make sound healthy, erotic decisions without ever having to use shame. You can be grounded in your knowing in your body and have a strong NO and have beautiful boundaries and make wise choices actually in a better place, going back to the nervous system, because when you're in your amygdala, when you you're in fight or flight and you're freaked out, you're not going to be able to make a creative and sound decision. It's just that part of your brain goes offline. So you're going to default to the most habituated version of yourself, which would probably be like shame or shut down or whatever.

Dr. Saida Désilets (13:50):

So you're going to use that as your decision making process. If you actually use pleasure where you take a few really deep breaths, you calm down your heart rate, you take some space. You're like, I just need a moment. And if you've been doing the solo practice, you're moving your energy very differently. So you're like, you know what? As much as this is exciting, I just get that it's a no. And if the person isn't respectful, you leave or you draw attention, you call someone else over. You're more resourced to be creative and to keep yourself safe than when you're in that shame and shut down.

Amanda Testa (14:31):

Thank you so much for sharing that. And I think you mentioned too, that the shaming doesn't really teach you anything. It just causes more shame and that shame spiral. And I think too, just in general with all that's going on in the world, people, their nervous systems are really out of whack a lot of the time, unless you actively do work to take care of it.

Dr. Saida Désilets (14:54):

Yes, absolutely. And so, well, let's talk about what's happening right now. We've suffered for quite a few months in conditions that are just not good for human beings, isolation constant state of fear or terror around the unknown extra stress. If you're suddenly in isolation with a bunch of people, maybe that some of them you don't like, or it's just overwhelming, you don't get any space or maybe you were one of the first responders that was completely overworked. And you just had those stressful conditions whatever it is. There's a lot of stressful conditions for way too long, right? So now we're under resourced cause we can't get outside. We, we are not having our fresh air. We're not eating the best food. We're not having the best exercise. We're not feeling seen. We're not being expressed. Human beings need these things.

Dr. Saida Désilets (15:47):

Even introverts need human contact and connection. So we are severely under-resourced population. And then you throw on the fire, riots, and protests. Nobody is in sound of mind to deal with the pain of those who are expressing themselves. And so we're not being able to have a creative and healthy solution-based orientation to the challenges that are coming because we're just done. And that's when you've been in that arousal state, that sympathetic state of nervous system for far too long, you're burnt out and maybe even depressed. I mean, there's, there's many factors because everyone responds to this differently. So I've been calling that the Post andemic Re-emergence Syndrome where people just don't know what to do with another person. And they don't even really know who they are now in relationship to other people because they haven't for the majority. Most of us, haven't had an ideal setting where we could take care of ourselves in a great way.

Dr. Saida Désilets (17:02):

Some of us have, I have to say I'm very blessed because I actually got stuck in Hawaii. I wasn't meant to be here, but Hey, pandemic, Hawaii, not a bad place to be, right. It had its stressors as well. But you know, I could come into the backyard and get some sunshine versus being stuck in a tiny apartment in a city, let's say so. So how do we deal with that? And I really feel like the entire conversation that we're having, if we truly want to be part of a change is going to last a change that regards every human being, as sovereign with respect, with curiosity, with connection, we want that, which state of being do you think that's going to be more accessible in, right? Yes. The pleasure or pleasure is online. So the thing that I would love to communicate with everybody, even if you don't have a personal practice at this time, at least do some basic things to regulate modulate the nervous system away from constant distress, into calm and connected.

Dr. Saida Désilets (18:18):

And so one of the ways I can share, if you like a simple technique, this technique comes from a lot of research. It's a vagal toning technique. So it deals with the Vagas nerve, which is very, very important. It receives a lot of information from our gut and other areas of our body. And so it's communicating to the brain, are we safe or not safe? So if the Vegas system is relaxed, then the signals are telling, Oh, actually we can stop being freaked out now. So it actually plays a really important role. We just don't talk about it that much. So vagal toning is the, it's the training we need for that healthy modulation back and forth from arousal to relaxation. So that that's great because vagal toning ends up my favorite term. It's a lot of my work is relaxed arousal. I just think it's fabulous.

Dr. Saida Désilets (19:10):

And it's something that we get, excuse me, through constant practice, proper practice. And it's also what we can get through vagal toning exercises. So a very simple one, if you can breathe, you can do this. Okay? You don't need any other training. If you're breathing right now, you can actually do this. Cause it's a breathing exercise, very simple. So I'll get everyone who's watching and listening to put their hands right down on their belly. And we're going to do deep diaphragmatic breathing, which just means belly breathing. So as inhale, inhale through your nose and imagine expanding your belly with a big full in breath. And as you exhale, I want you to make an O shape with your mouth and let the breath out really slowly.

Dr. Saida Désilets (20:00):

Let's do two more of those big breath with the belly And slow exhale with the O shape of your mouth. One more time.

Dr. Saida Désilets (20:28):

That almost instantly tells your nervous system. It's safe to relax. You need to know that it's safe

Dr. Saida Désilets (20:37):

So that you can shift into parasympathetic. The sound that slight sound is also vibrating the Vagas system, the vagal nerve. So you want to do that with that slight sound that I was doing, you can do this anywhere. You can teach it to kids and elderly. And if someone's even paraplegic, can't move their body. They're still breathing. So you can teach them this breath. And imagine if we spread this, Amanda, not to just 50 or a hundred or a thousand, but a million or more people who are self-regulating just even with that one simple technique, I'm on fire trying to get this out to everyone right now and just giving it away, giving it away as much as I can, like let's take responsibility to self regulate. So that that Post Pandemic Reemergence Syndrome that causes us to be really quite fragile and unable to creatively meet the issues that are arising.

Dr. Saida Désilets (21:40):

And we're like I said, under resourced, it will support that transformation. It's not going to happen overnight because our systems have been taxed. But the more we do this throughout the day, whenever you notice I'm holding tension in my belly, just do a few of those breaths. Maybe someone sharing something with you, that's you starting to feel upset about it. Do some of those breaths. Now, if you don't want to sit there with an O shaped mouth, just exhale with your mouth slightly open during that conversation slowly. And if you put your hands casually over your belly, it's going to remind you to do that deeper. Diaphragmic breath, that belly breath, it's, it's a skill of liberation. It's a skill of transformation. And it's a skill that all of us have a responsibility to practice. At least that's how I feel about it right now.

Amanda Testa (22:36):

I love that. And that's so simple. And I think too, for those that think pleasure sounds so intimidating. That's an example of how it doesn't have to be. It's just these simple things. And of course, if you want to take it further, you're more than welcome to. And I think sometimes when you're in these stressed out times, it's harder to think to go from feeling so overwhelmed, wanting to be sexual or to feel even your desire alive like that. The steps to get there. Yes. Get there when you're already in this relaxed arousal. All exactly. Exactly. Well, let's talk about that because,

Dr. Saida Désilets (23:13):

There is also a misnomer. So first of all, when we say pleasure, we almost instantly jump to the act of intercourse. There's like so much more available. Okay. So we need to actually bring to the table of casual conversation, the greater range of what pleasure is. And if we are moving in a direction of desire, it doesn't have to immediately lead to genital masturbation. I mean it can, but it doesn't have to. So for example, I have a stable solo cultivation practice I do every day is non negotiable. One involves nourishing my adrenals. So there's some deep type of diaphragmic breath. I do specifically to flush, the excess cortisol out of my system. It's really simple. It sounds complicated, but it's super simple. And then I actually breathe into my ovaries. So I focus as a woman. I focus for them. If you have testicles, then you would breathe into your testicles.

Dr. Saida Désilets (24:13):

But for those who have ovaries, you breathe into the ovaries. And then I do a short breast massage. So that whole thing might take minimum four or five minutes and cultivating pleasure and telling my system helping my hormonal system. And that's super baseline. I mean, I prefer to do a lot longer practice, but if that's all I have, that's how I start my day. And I end my day in the dark. I turn all the lights off. I either have no sound on or something relaxing on and I'll just put my legs, my feet up against a wall, like all the way up in a cushion under my butt. And literally just lay there with my arms over my head or on the side. And those are super simple things that help again, restabilize the system so that I get into that state of relaxed arousal.

Dr. Saida Désilets (25:06):

I am aware. And if I then choose to self-pleasure or make love I'm resourced now for that experience to actually be rejuvenative because sometimes self-pleasuring can be incredibly depleting. People write to me all the time. They're like, why am I so exhausted after my orgasm? And it's normally because we're using that level of pleasure to resolve tension. So we want to be more responsible. We want to resolve our tension first, enter a pleasure practice from a state of softening openness connectedness. Now that's not always possible, but this is more of the advanced work. And so anyone who's listening to this who's done started to dabble and is curious. And then that's where we're headed with this so that it becomes as staple as brushing your teeth, eating good food, getting some exercise, et cetera. Right. And I think that's, what's so beautiful about a lot of these practices is that they are they're simple.

Dr. Saida Désilets (26:07):

We just have never been taught them. You know, I think as a woman, when I first learned some of these practices, I was just, why is no one ever taught me this? They should be, you know, sung from the mountaintops. And that's why I'm such a fan of your work. And because I feel like it's just education that every woman needs access to. All right. But I agree. Right. I agree because I have had clients as young, as 11, where they were very mature and their mother wanted them to understand they didn't know what to do say when their period was going to come. And just to understand what does it mean to be a woman? So simple things, young women becoming blossoming into womanhood all the way to, I think she was this radical woman, but she was 90 years old and she was aroused 24 seven.

Dr. Saida Désilets (26:54):

She's excited. I don't know what to do with all this energy. And I'm like, perfect. Let's harness it. So the spectrum of what's available to us to our entire life. I want you to understand this as a listener, especially if you have a female system, because I deal more with female systems, we have a female endocrine system and your running female hormones in your body. Then the thing that makes you start to menstruate and what's necessary for that to be more pleasant, let's say is the same thing that's going to help you conceive and have fertility. It's the same thing that's going to bring the baby into the world. It's the same thing that's going to help your body recover post-birth, it's the same thing that's gonna help you go through perimenopause. It's the same thing that's going to help you have a vibrant post-menopausal existence.

Dr. Saida Désilets (27:50):

And it's the same thing that we use to live our most expressed life and have fantastic pleasure and orgasm and connection with our beloved. It's exactly the same. So why are we not as a society, pleasure oriented in our education to young people. If this is a life skill, not a sexual skill, a life skill, something that's translatable in many moments of life. Something like imagine just a simple thing. If everyone was taught as a kid, if you're feeling upset, breathe like this, it will help you relax. And then they just have this skillset. And now we have all these people who just understand when I'm getting upset, I need to breathe deeply. I need to move away. I need to take some space. I need to find out what's happening and then come back to the conversation or the experience. Right. and we don't do that.

Dr. Saida Désilets (28:52):

It seems very odd. So I'm just excited for everyone who's here because wherever you're at on your path, you're here in this moment and you are saying, yes, this is important. And I want to tell you, there's a lot of science now backing this. Okay. So I want to share something amazing from neuroscience, which is so throughout my career, I started to notice that one of the links that get severed for all of us, it doesn't matter who we are, is the link between our genitals and our heart our conscience and our feeling nature. When we refer to the heart, I don't just mean physical heart. I mean, the part of your emotional being that generates joy and respect and love and connection. Study the heart math Institute, that field of the heart is so important and the heart actually informs the brain. So if we regulate the heartbeat, we regulate the nervous system.

Dr. Saida Désilets (29:49):

It's really amazing. So I found very early when I was learning sexual practices, something was missing for me, nearly every teacher I met, they had a lot of magnetism, but they were behaving in ways that I just couldn't respect, let's say, in their private lives and sometimes in their public life. And as I progressed and got more and more experienced and more and more advanced and really did the work, then I realized they're missing the heart-genital connection. And it's a crucial connection. And so that practice is simply noticing the area around your heart, spending some time breathing and softening, open that area, instead of love, because people are kind of confused around the word love. I often say profound respect, because if you have that, then you're in the state of love. And then starting to send that quality down with your exhale, feel like it's heat or warmth flowing right down and wrapping around the genitals.

Dr. Saida Désilets (30:57):

So you're, you're kind of sharing this connected, respectful state with your genitals. This is a state, but I've even had to train some of the top sex therapists PhDs and sex therapy PhDs and sex research doctors. They couldn't do this, this one simple practice. They could not do it because it is severed at a very young age, but we can bring it back. So neuroscience, I just read a very recent study is now saying that brain plasticity. So neuroplasticity, the ability for us to change and become something new to shift patterns and habits and even body stuff to actually get younger and more vibrant. Like all of that stuff, we need plasticity for that. You're you create hyperplasticity. A lot of it when you willingly and intentionally invoke that state of love or deep respect, like it's so obvious thousands of years with these other trainings, they have these lineages, they know that, but science is now demonstrating in a measurable way.

Dr. Saida Désilets (32:11):

The impact of that, the impact of relaxing your heart of intentionally loving your body intentionally, if you can't think the word love and just deep respect, and that might even be triggering, but that's okay because that's the journey that we need to go on as we shift, because in the beginning you mentioned sovereignty, we all must shift out of this woundology victim place that we've been entrained live in, into sovereignty in this act of connecting heart and genitals of self-generating respect is a first step in that direction.

Amanda Testa (32:51):

I love how you said too, that science is backing up a lot of this ancient wisdom. Yeah. Kind of like prove it in some measurable way for, for people out there that are skeptical. Exactly. Exactly. I I'm a geek. I really am. I mean, I I'm, you know, I'm known as the pleasure doc, because I have a, a PhD. And I obviously devote my life to this, which I think is kind of a funny term.

Dr. Saida Désilets (33:18):

But then I was like, okay, I'll accept that. Because there is authority in, in a lot of experience and a lot of research, but I'm very skeptical. Of everything. And I don't, except just the first thing that comes to me and this ability to discern is also a sovereign person. Uit's an attribute of a sovereign person. We're not discerning when it comes in, in the realm of sexuality and sensuality and information where I call it the MCegg movement where there's everyone, literally I know where you've been trained by what you're saying. I know what books you've read. I know what school you went to. And it's pretty much all outdated. So you have to be discerning because people are saying the weirdest stuff now. And because it's the realm of sexuality, we don't care that there's no standard. Right. Why it's ridiculous.

Dr. Saida Désilets (34:19):

So it's so important. Do the work, if you don't believe what I'm saying, it's okay. But go and do the work, go and start to research more deeply arenas of where sciences is examining the impact of pleasure. Look at it. In terms of neuroscience, look at it in terms of psychology, like depression, PTSD, look at it in hormonal research, all of that fertility, one of the best trainers in the world, he was like mr. Olympic for a while, he said giving the exact same exercises, the results of a client would go way off the charts if he had them entering a state of joy first. So he would do these laughing exercises before the training. That was the only thing different than he was doing and having these massive results. So you could also research pleasure and fitness. I mean, there's, there's just a lot of information available.

Dr. Saida Désilets (35:19):

Be discerning because it's your body, it's your life. And if you get good information, you'll be more encouraged to actually have a regular practice. Cause you're like, wow, there's really honest benefits. I mean, don't take it for me. I've been doing it for two and a half decades. And I can't imagine not having a pleasure based practice. Cause I think I actually would go insane. And I tested that Amanda I've literally said, okay, I think it was in 2010. One of my teachers said, you need to be abstinent. I'm like, what do you mean? Like no sex with your husband and no masturbation, no self-pleasuring whatsoever for four months. Now you have to understand something. I came out of the womb masturbating. There's never been a day where that's not happening. So I was like, are you kidding me? Four months? I did it. I went through extreme pain the first two weeks, like physical pain from energy blockage.

Dr. Saida Désilets (36:21):

Like there was no more blood flow, proper blood flow to my genitals. There was like a lot of problems happening in that area that a lot of pain was building in that area. And then at the end life looked great and I lost all desire. I didn't feel interested in anything. And I suddenly could have compassion for women who would come to me and like, I don't have a little bit, I really don't care if I ever have sex again like that, that kind of like place a lot of us can go to right after that four months, I did my own personal pleasure based practice immediately, including the Jade egg. I immediately brought it back. And within one week everything was back online and purring and like, Oh my God, I can never not do pleasure practices. I do not want to live. Like I just lived those last four months.

Dr. Saida Désilets (37:17):

That is a horrible way to live. And it's optional. Right? It's optional. I really want the listener to understand this feeling flat-lined and crappy and depressed. And like there's nothing beautiful to look forward to. Or there's just not your orgasms. Aren't as great as they used to be. That is optional. Yeah. It doesn't have to be that way. The unfortunate part is it does require a bit of investment in ourselves of time of connection with ourselves.

Amanda Testa (37:55):

I think that's so interesting to note how it only took four months is a long time, but so many go through longer periods of that. And I can, you just know in my own life, before I started doing this work, I didn't even realize this was something that was even out there. And so I can tell the difference if I go through periods of not being connected to myself in my practice, it is a big difference in my overall health and everything.

Dr. Saida Désilets (38:19):

So I love that you are so invested in putting all the dots together and doing the research to understand like, why does it make such a difference in your overall health? Well, it's obviously an important part. It's an important system in our whole, self right? Yeah. What, maybe we could you share around that? You know, how, yeah, exactly. Taking care of your, your sexual health, it affects your overall health.

Dr. Saida Désilets (38:43):

Well, it doesn't just affect your overall health. It will. It does. I mean, like I said, the way that the body is construction as a physiological biological creature, is it all functions, optimally all systems. When we are more in that relaxed arousal place, a healthy modulating nervous system is a highly functioning human being in every way imaginable. It will also help you go through some, sometimes you go through periods of distress and intensity. That's just inevitable in the human experience, we're going to have mess human life is messy.

Dr. Saida Désilets (39:21):

Oh my God, it's so messy. So having a practice that I call it marinating in our own essence, when we take the time to marinate in that essence and really know this part of ourselves, then we have more tenacity when faced with challenge or mess or, you know, these things that come up for us that are inevitable. And we get over them a lot more quickly and they don't have to turn into trauma because we're, we're processing more quickly. We're understanding what's happening and we're moving the system to release any of that kind of triggers that can happen in difficult moments, but it's not just you that benefits. So I want to make this very clear. And this has happened with multiple multiple clients because a lot of women who do this work are mothers. Their children will come to them and say, whatever you doing, thank you.

Dr. Saida Désilets (40:18):

You're way more fun to be around. And if they don't say that the mother notices that the attitude of the kids improves and then her relationship with her partner improves, or if she doesn't have a partner, her relationship with her immediate, like people who are immediately always under her sphere, why? It's called limbic resonance. So mammalian beings learn non verbally from each other. So when we're little tiny babies, our mom doesn't say, this is how you sleep. And this is how you digest. You learn it. It's your proximity to her body to limbic resonance. So her digestive system teaches yours her ability to fall asleep and sleep well teaches yours, et cetera. So you have this learning that you do, that's non verbal. So the state of being that we're in, not the state of being, we'd like to be in because a lot of people virtue signal and they like to be like, I'm super spiritual and I'm awesome.

Dr. Saida Désilets (41:21):

But actually they are quite, I hate using the word, but toxic inside, they don't love themselves. They hate people that can't stand. Like there's a lot of stuff on, right? So, that is what gets transmitted. What you embody the most is what gets transmitted. So when you have a pleasure based practice and you have self-respect and you generate joy for no reason, just for being alive for breathing, that's what gets transmitted because that's the marinated essence that's what's influencing. So you influence everybody with that state of being. So not only are you benefiting, you're now a change maker in your world, surely because you're now more embodied in your lived experience in your lived truth.

Amanda Testa (42:12):

So beautiful, powerful. Thank you so much again for being here. And I just am so grateful for all the wisdom that you've shared today. I'd love if you would just let everyone know the best way to connect with you and learn more.

Dr. Saida Désilets (42:24):

Absolutely. I want to encourage everybody. First of all, if you haven't read the book Desire, find it because it will help you understand that desires, is not just sexual. It comes in six different, very powerful forms, but there is definitely an erotic component. So the book covers all of that and it's a small little pocket book. It's very easy to read and that's desire the book.com. So just the information on that book and my website dareyourdesire.com. And there is something I'm doing, Amanda. Maybe you can provide a link. I don't know it's up to you, but it's called Shameless Surrender. And it's a six hour course that I did live, but now it's, I'm offering it as the recordings. And normally it's been a couple hundred dollars to do that, but it's I'm, I want to give it away because I think it's like $37. I just want as many people doing this work as possible because the more we can embrace being shameless, the more we can embrace surrender, the more we can embrace that it's actually natural and healthy to feel good. Then the more, like I said at the start, resource will be, and we are transforming the world through that. So yeah.

Amanda Testa (43:40):

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to share the links for how to connect more with Dr. Saida and as well as the Shameless Surrender classes. Those sound amazing. So, yay. I'm just honored to have you. You're such a wealth of knowledge and I just think you're an amazing teacher and leader. So thank you.

Dr. Saida Désilets (44:02):

Such a pleasure and bring me back when my research is published because it's, I cannot wait to tell you what's going on. I can't say it right now, but it's going to be a really exciting episode when we are going to get back together.

Amanda Testa (44:14):

Yes. Thank you. And thank you everyone for listening. We will see you next time. 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 invite you to reach out. You can contact me@amandatestthe.com slash 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.