[Music] hey philan teers those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist so as you will already have heard in Daniel's intro we have today the distinct pleasure and privilege this episode of discussing Tantra dosm sexuality spirituality healing with Sera leonara thanks so much for joining us s thank you so much for having me here today yeah um so we talked a little bit off mic full disclosure with the idea of um talking about a few things definitely talking about what Tantra owsm means to you uh because it obviously was very those things were very transformative to you and you have a great or origin story around this um and also really talking about how you've used this to work with you know your your clients and people that you're helping now that you have all this stuff uh but first we thought we would like jump in and really go deep or story uh in that you know it's not we like to do this thing because it's sort of how people found their path uh partially because it's not only interesting like how did someone find their path to that place but also hopefully uh because it's helpful to other people and maybe inspiring to people to help them you know kind of go oh this other person did this thing I maybe I can find my own way too in my own way you know the inspiring aspect of the story and uh I was when I was listening to you know some of your things uh which I really love loved um it was obviously it's not an it's not an obvious thing that people are going to become interested in Tantra and dosm and sexuality in this particular culture most people don't go up grow up in tantric dos households so I thought you know we talked a little bit beforehand maybe we'd started a little bit there I mean what was it like in the house where you grew up did you grow up in the house of lot of spirituality uh did you grow up a lot of house where like some of these things were in the air or was it more like you came through this uh like more on your own I'll leave it open but you know that's always kind of interesting you know how did people get to where from where they started to where they are I guess I love this question because I was just talking about it with a friend on a hike today actually and I grew up in the midwest in Cincinnati Ohio um in a Catholic Family very Catholic conservative family and so um I you know it's it's interesting I didn't really resonate with Catholicism at the time as a kid I was I was pretty I was like a very good stent and I I showed up for school and I did what I was told um but for some reason going to church school like I didn't have that same attitude I was kind of checked out and I'd ask my dad questions like a minute okay so all of humanity came from the incest of Adam and Eve and their sons like what's going on here you know and I'd ask him these kinds of questions and it didn't really add up to me um but I would say it was really in my teens around 15 um I started exploring a lot with psychelic and and that kind of popped me open and uh told me my first sense of self that was kind of underneath all the programming and conditioning and um luckily I I mean I feel like I definitely was shamed for my sexuality and in different pieces of who I was growing up but for whatever reason didn't really stick with me I feel like I came out of the the Catholic upbringing relatively unscathed in that sense although I did definitely get imprinted with a lot of like peop pleasing Tendencies and you know being like the good Midwestern girl uh type of thing but psychedelics really cracked me open and what was fun was later on they did start studying tonra and dad and I felt like they put words to things that I experienced in my psychedelic Journeys um and it all started just kind of reaffirming everything that I had experienced I hadn't heard that part about this the psychedelics part I did a little bit of listening to kind of find out parts of this but that didn't come up Daniel is like are super passionate about that we did an episode where I talked about my LSD experience which was transformative but uh uh well okay I mean you want to ask something about that Daniel because it's so much your wheelhouse what do you think well I mean it's always interesting when people use psychedelics I think outside of a ceremonial space which is probably far more common than not you know people are experimenting and I think that there is such a power to that but I think working with it more and more as time goes on is when you do things intentionally there's even more uh opportunity there for Learning and growth and so it's just uh you know but it is they're they're their own teachers that's a it's it's it's a teacher you know they have their own way of doing things and uh I think if if used with the right amount of karma or possibility you know like things can really uh crack open it's it's cool do you um I don't want to out you or anything like that but do you still uh experiment I guess I could say are you still a a a cosmonaut or something like this I was I was definitely a psychonaut for a really long time um and you know and then Shi into plant medicine Iowaska things like this when I was 21 and um so I I got started on it all pretty young and really deep for a long time and I'm 33 now and I've I've been on a long break from it all for I don't know three and a half four years um it's not something that has called to me in recent years I feel very content but I feel like I received so much from it for you know half my life really it shaped in so many ways and I'm I'm super grateful for it and I'm I'm sure I'll get called back in in some form or another um at some point but I I just listen for when the calling comes and otherwise there's there's no really desire outside of that yeah sure yeah and I feel that thing on the karma thing too you're using that word Daniel because sometimes I feel like the karma is sitting there and then something comes and just pops it right so maybe that's a psychedelic when you're a teenager or you could expose to something else and then this the karma is just waiting to go po yeah yeah um okay well I guess like the follow-up like I would ask on that is do you feel like it's hard but do you feel like some of the things that you had the experiences when you were younger that you have the words more for him now like what do you think happened there any words for what the experience your teenager now they have the Tantra were you experiencing the Oneness of things or the underlying Bliss of things or that kind of stuff it was very very much the Oneness the the interconnectedness seeing everything as one breathing Consciousness fracted out into all these different forms um and and experiencing on so many levels and then I mean yeah really the non-dual lens of Tona and and dosm has has been such a huge important piece of my process in my life journey and so I like that really put toward some of what I had been experiencing but didn't totally know how to put words to when I was when I was younger yeah wonderful use of the word fractal the fractal nature of things right the Mandel a scale all right on the Catholicism thing didn't stick with you I guess you said how do you feel about like I think full confession I come from the Catholic background Daniel 2 we all kind of deal with the things of this uh you say you kind of walked out like smoothly transitioning in some ways way around the sex things and things like that what do you think about with the clients that you work with you know tell more of your story but as far as the client part do you think people carry a lot of that baggage that you see and uh oh so much yeah so much yeah I work with a lot of people around religious trauma and it religious trauma is such a wild um it's it's like its own animal you know like I had one client who him and his sister would cry themselves to sleep every night um because they were you know told that if when the Rapture came if they weren't good like they were going to be behind and left here to be hunted and all their family would be gone and they would wake up living in this giant dilapidated Barn uh in the middle of Texas and they wouldn't be able to find their parents in the morning and they would the rapture had happened and they had been left behind and so it's it's like so much bigger than just I'm rejected by my parents or rejected by Society but by by God uh by the Divine itself and it's pretty wild to see yeah how deeply that can become patterned into people and and their trauma and affect their lives on so many different levels that's a profound way to put that I haven't always thought about the feeling of being rejected by God but I guess that's true right people would carry that as well it's not just my family or the church or the community like you could carry that that deep or the source of everything is going to reject me yeah I guess that's part of Catholicism I suppose retrospective you know the way you say that's really nice that's a powerful way to that people can carry that in some unconscious way I suppose right and I think that's one of the things I really loved about Tantra is it places the divine within all things instead of this this separate thing that we can be rejected from or abandoned by an in between Catholicism and and the spiritual spiritual lens that I have now I had like a short atheist period where I was like all of this is [...] and then you know pelic started opening me up to oh there really is something going on here but yeah like I feel the Divine in me and in you and in all things and it's not this you know separate thing that we have to go to church for to experience and have somebody middleman it and it it just you know it made more sense it it resonated in my body more to feel it in all things MH yeah that's a deep transition too because that that kind of new atheist thing going back to spirituality isn't always easy for people I think sometimes the people when they get in the atheism thing they get a little stuck in it somehow I know was that hard for you or did you roll through that too I think I was a lot happier once I tapped into you know the the magic of what's going on that's interwoven into everything I think the atheism chapter like I was definitely angry and angsty and lost and still kind of finding my sense of self and I I think things started to make more sense and flow better once I tapped into something bigger than myself did you feel the resistance from like your family and stuff as you started to move away where people was that a thing because it sounds like you didn't carry aspects of the sexual aspect but you were trying to be a nice person you know good person or good guy person good boy person was that hard challenge the family I think I I started questioning the existence of God right before my confirmation into the Catholic religion but my my grandpa who I was really close with he was really excited to like help me choose my confirmation name and go through that process with me and I was like you know what [...] it I'm just going to go through with it like it's really no sweat off my back to just like I've already done these eight years of Catholic School like I'm almost done with it it's gonna make grandpa happy I love grandpa so I just went through with it and then you know secretly was like but I don't believe in any of this and he died a year later and so I was really happy that I just you know went along with that but then I I remember telling my dad and he was very crushed um and you know we really didn't see eye to eye on that for a while and then I certainly just started getting weirder and weirder as time went on and you know traveling around the world and um you know working with plant medicine and I I had dreadlocks for a long time and like my family was kind of like okay she's she's on one um and I I think over time like we we've come to understand each other on on a deeper level and you know except es I'm sure the removal of I'm sure the removal of the dreadlocks helped a lot with the relationship with your family I think they were quite pleased about [Laughter] that I I how it was for you Daniel I definitely confirmed for my grandma you know that was a thing you know like this like always like don't do it for your old relatives they were wagging their fingers you know monor o day and all that like all Irish angry Catholics that we were around yeah I never I never I never was made to do that I never did did that actually you know I mean like my family is still totally involved and actually like cousins my age and younger they're very involved in the church right now like very very involved which is even maybe maybe even more so than their parents were you know when when when I was a child um but I think I don't think I know because my mom had sort of um I don't know unsettled emotions about being in the church and she was much more of a Seeker that I had the exposure to like one aspect of the family that was very Church driven and then my mom which was very not at all you know I was like a very counterculture kind of person and so I was able to kind of be in one like have one foot in one hand or one one foot on one road and then another foot on a stream of Consciousness going in a totally different direction and somehow able to maintain but I think that um you know much like yourself Seria like I had difficulties with my family as well you know especially around Mo like intensely emotional times when somebody would pass um then you have to have these discussions with people that just end up coming up about life and philosophy and Divinity and all this other kind of thing and it ends up that your beliefs now are being brought to the surface and I I would love to hear how it was for you but I could say for myself in those moments it really clarified what I was thinking and then what I was trending towards in terms of my own personal belief and my own understanding at that particular time and even though those conversations were not I would say from an observable standpoint were not productive in a sense like there was a lot of hurt feelings a lot of [...] dropped you know what I'm saying um but it ended up being that I was very firm in my belief and even if people didn't believe in what I believed in they believed that I believed it it's a lot of belief words I hope that you know so if if you have some you know further uh illumination on your experience with that I think it's helpful for people who want to you know maybe get away from some of the influence of their family whether it be conscious or unconscious you know sure yeah I think it was interesting there was a period of time where I was incredibly obnoxious and you know trying to project all these things that I was learning and these Awakenings I was having onto my family and get them to understand um and they didn't they didn't want to hear it and it was it was so annoying to them and understandably so you know I think it's important to um not forceful in the way that you project your opinions and viewpoints onto people and I was I was young and obnoxious in that way and I think there kind of became a balance point where I realized it wasn't it wasn't my job to like change them or or teach them anything and then it also wasn't my job to conform to what they felt or what they thought and so there was a period of time that I didn't go home to Ohio for eight years actually I just went back for the first time a few years ago um and so I've I've been becoming closer with my family over these past years but I had a period of time where there there was a lot of friction and I I was like you know I'm not going to travel all the way back here you guys to [...] about things that I'm doing or you know like it's it's fine if you disagree with it but I'm not going to like keep tolerating it so I'll just be over here and and when you can let that go and we can just be as we are you know we can we can spend more time together and I think that kind of shifted things for all of us you know we took our space and now think pretty cool with our differences yeah I think given time that stuff will heal people just need some time around that and some ability to Dem identities of who they are right yeah yeah yeah totally there's an old Pretender song I went back to Ohio I don't know if you ever listened to Pretenders is that a big thing for people from Ohio I don't know I always like Chrissy hind of the pretenders I don't know that song actually oh okay maybe you can check it out later I went back to Ohio and she just talks about what it's like to going back to Ohio I know just reminded oh interesting yeah she's coming to Chicago soon you know Pretenders um okay well I guess like so you were already kind of on this road even because I when I was listening to what you were talking about you really the big transformative window seems to be in your early 20s for you right that's really flip you as that when you were moving from your atheist period back to your spiritual period or um The Atheist period was pretty young I would say that was like uh like eth grade to 10th grade kind of thing was very short yeah yeah yeah that's G make everybody mad yeah totally I feel like I started coming into my own spirituality around 15 with the onset of psychedelics and then um yeah I went down to the Amazon for a couple months uh when I was I guess 20 21 um I was I was doing a school program down there and we were staying with shapo villages and research stations and learning about iasa and seeing it growing everywhere and and like as that was happening I was starting to have some pretty crazy health issues that I didn't I didn't know where they were coming from they were and then I was traveling through Central America and I started doing medicine work and I started studying just every different pocket of healing like I could get my hands on just taking different classes and workshops and trying to figure out what's happening with my health and tying that to my spirituality like really starting to understand energetic emotional psychological roots of of health issues and um and then yeah it was a couple years of traveling and and trying to figure out my health stuff and then the health stuff finally came to a head um I eventually found out that I had limes disease and mold toxicity and some co- infections and just kind of this whole mess of chronic illness stuff um but through that I lost my my libido and I was also experiencing pain during sex and so I was like well this is a problem I'm 22 years old and at the time I was really bitter I was so pissed off that I had L disease and I was dealing with this I was really in this um mentality around it um but I started I I had actually been dabling in Tantra and dosm a little bit reading some books and things like this I had been curious about it for a while but then started diving deeper into it to address um some of the sexuality piece and then found that was so much bigger than sexuality that sexuality was just a tiny piece of of these lenses um but it really helped with my sexual healing process giving me practices to work with my Sexual Energy to De Armour to move through sexual trauma um as well as I I I really think the non-u lens helped me so much with coming out of this victimhood and thinking this was happening to me and actually seeing wow this is Awakening something really profound within me it's it's leading me to something I'm really passionate about um and I can either have sympathy which there was a part of me very much wanting sympathy feel sorry for me that was kind of getting this cheap high from it um or I can heal and I I can choose to work with this and be empowered but I can't have both like I need to make a good choice here and um and choose to work with this my favor and so that shifted a lot within me and my my whole Consciousness and how I lived my life and interacted with you know bad things that were happening to me so to speak well there's a lot to unpack in that that's a cool [...] story by the way we listen to a lot of people talk and that's a cool [...] story I didn't know you were actually down already in the Amazon doing that exploring before you knew that you know the health things were going on so you were already on a path already right it just happened that this thing kind of cropped up and you know Daniel and I being you know both clinical people ourselves lime's disease is no joke by the by it's it can be really disruptive obviously so yeah yeah sucks serious deal it sucks it it's a very like um interesting from a from a you know physiological standpoint of that it really can affect so many different facets of one's Health that it's almost hard to pin down you know obviously some of the major symptoms like fatigue brain fog which is so common amongst anything but there is this like it almost has like an invincibility around treatment you know and you know certainly would love to hear you know your experience with that if you want to open up a little bit but from people who we've treated from my experience and I have a couple friends who have unfortunately you know had to dealt with this have dealt with this there is such a strong drive to want to improve for obvious reasons that it almost pushes people's sanity yeah to where you're like oh well I read this one person healed themselves by bleeding the tips of their fingers every day so yeah uh of course I'm GNA do that you know and then but on the outside we're like H I don't know about all of that may be something you know what I'm saying but like for the people who are going through it and I'm sure that is probably experienced by people who have chronic illnesses that you're willing to do anything and and that might be even detrimental to you in the process and could even harm relationships but you're not concerned about relationships you're concerned obviously with with one's health so uh if you feel comfortable sharing a little bit I'm sure you know we have uh people who would love to hear a little bit yeah it was it took a long time I guess not as long as some people it took maybe like two years to diagnose um but I I went to like so many different types of practitioners and what was confusing was one of the first symptoms was migrating joint pain and it would just be you know suddenly like excruciating pain in the right wrist and then the left wrist and the knees and people were saying the most idiotic things to me like I went to chiropractor about it and they're like I think you just injured yourself and you don't remember and so a lot of like kind of [...] gas lighting like this yeah um so I I was really infuriated by not understanding medicine well enough to be able to help myself fully but then knowing that I knew my body so much better than a lot of these practitioners that I was working with and they weren't trusting like what I understood about my body um and it was a naturopath was specialized in Lime that that figured out it was lime um in Oregon two years into this process and yeah I was so disheartened by the diagnosis like on one level I was relieved to finally know what I was dealing with and then on another level was just so upset about it and it was it was it was all consuming it was depressing like I went through a couple years of just being really you know jealous of my friends who were traveling the world and I was at home sick and I was so deep in in medical bills um and the naturopathic approach was very intense I mean I was on 50 different types of supplements per day and um you know I did I ozone and vitamin C and glutathione and ardesia three times a week for three months and I did D Venom injections and I mean everything um so yeah it was it was all consuming it was you know financially so exhausting and and then I kind of got in this health wealth Loop where it was like I'd be trying to make enough money to pay for the expenses to tend to my health but then by working too hard I would deplete myself and then make the health situation worse so then I'd be like well [...] it I'm going to stop doing this for a while and then eventually would be like oh well now my health is tanking again so I you know I'd kind of like go back and forth um in that Loop and honestly Chinese medicine was a huge breakthrough um for me in just one having a different mentality about how I was looking at it um I had a Chinese medicine doctor in Colorado who was like you know we're not going to look at this as like we're chasing down the pathogen of lime and and trying to kill it we're going to support your body and where it's blocked your body already knows how to do what it needs to do and lots of people have lime that aren't sick from it that just like have it within their body but their body is functioning so he's like we're supporting the body rather than going on this wild goose hunt to pin down this pathogen and kill it off and that just felt so relieving to me like my whole nervous system so in response to that explanation of like yeah I don't want to be taking 50 things trying to kill this thing off and now my lymphatic system is bog down and now you know like all these things um I was so neurotic about it yeah and I was on a really strict diet and the stress of all of that was so much worse than like like now about it I'm very balanced about it um I'm definitely healthier than I was I definitely still have issues with it I still work with the Chinese medicine practitioner every week but my mindset and my approach to it is so different and I think that's been a huge part of my healing process as well well thanks so much for sharing that seral I mean that's a deep story and I think that it's good for people hear that you you go through those Journeys but you can come out the other end right yeah that's deep to share uh okay absolutely yeah so okay I can like talk about a little bit how this dosm thing was for me so my thing was I was very sick as a teenager too and that experience where your body stops being a source of like enjoyment and becomes this source of like a drag and it was a lot of you have a lot of pain and a lot of discomfort and there's really something amazing about finding a a spiritual path that says you can feel Bliss and pleasure through this whole thing again so is that part of how your experience was too was it something like that definitely I think um when I lost my I noticed I also lost part of my zest for life and I was like oh there's a connection here and and that was really fascinating for me to feel um and to also to ALS also learned that body was just communicating with me not working against me I think was another really huge realization through it because this is how our body knows how to communicate right so if we can learn it's its sematic language and get curious about what he trying to tell me about where I'm out of alignment like that was a really huge piece too is recognizing even you know I work with people a lot on sexual dysfunctions and it's rarely in in my experience actually a medical issue um it's it's more like emotional psychological and once we heal that root that the other piece self corrects and so um yeah I think sorry I don't remember what your exact question was but um well finding pleasure in the body again is like difficult through all that illness right it's such a hor the hassle right yes and pleasure is so healing so like when when you can find that again I think it's it's so beautiful to have that amidst all the pain yeah I have like a psych degree before my Chinese medical degree and I began to get as I was doing the Zen which had a lot of like um what you would call kidney Yang building from the Chinese medical point of view or like Kundalini breathing in it it was a little bit unusual style of Zen it was a lot of like building this energy which is very sexual you know too so I could feel like oh this is pleasurable too and then some of the Retreats I did I came out and I was like I can feel the Sexual Energy going you know even though I was supposed to be doing the Zen thing like you know you spark that Yang in yourself right and you feel it that inner fire um but it was like a big deal for me because I started to think oh wow like part of what in the psychology for me what I began to think was that's one of the most healing things you can find your way back into that sexual joy and pleasure and like Jah deiv if you want to be French about it or something that that joy in life that comes from having that fire and that Yang and that passion that's sexual but also like I you know like you're I think what I really like what you're you're always saying with this creative and inspiring too right you make the connection between those things right yeah it's a creative life force it's what we're made out of and so if we're finding ways to stir that of course we're going to feel more alive we're more connected to our vitality and to this very essence that we were created through yeah my the doctor I studied with from China when he came to the United States he thought Americans weren't happy enough they didn't have enough fire you know it was a very interesting thing he thought this is not that happy of a culture and he had come from China and had grown up in like the cultural revolution and all the internal chaos so when he got here I think he expected to find like a bunch of like relatively comfy happy people and he was like people are burdened and you know the financial things you were talking about with your illness people Financial pressures and he just didn't find it to be a joyful culture so I almost feel like the Tantra and dos thing helps you tap into something a little bit more joyful that's something times the culture lacks does that make sense to you yeah I completely agree with that I I think it helps enormously with that and even just having tools and practices that can help you access that just just working with the breath intentionally I mean that's not something most Americans learn how to do unless they go down some sort of like Eastern spiritual path um but you know the breath is always available to us there's so much we can do to change our state of being right here right now wherever we are and I think that's one of the really things about it too that um most people don't know that they have access to that SOA if we can if Eric if you're cool um H how I mean you know so we're we're clinicians you work we work with people you work with people if if you know you wouldn't mind maybe giving us a little bit of a background or I guess foreground into the work that you do uh now with people sure um I work with a lot of different types of people around a lot of different types of issues I I call myself a holistic sex and relationship coach but it's it's kind of even hard to like narrow it down to that and I say holistic because I I do see our Sexual Energy as being interwoven into everything that we are um and and we're in relationship with everything all the time so sometimes somebody comes to me because they're having like an erectile dysfunction issue or premature ejaculation and were working on things around their relationship with money or their confidence or their body image or their relationship with their wife um or something that happened in their childhood and it's it's all interwoven so I don't see any issue as something that can be isolated to just the bedroom it's always connected somewhere else and so we're getting into every corner of their lives even if they are coming specifically for a sexual issue but some people are coming more because they just got divorced or they're on the brink of divorce or um they're wanting to deepen their connection and tap into like a more spirit spiritual connection with their sexuality um some people have trauma some people have porn addiction so I work with all different kinds of things but we we're always weaving into these different areas of life and I work very somatically working with the body as a map to the unconscious to see where energy is stuck and you know I I think a lot of talk therapy can be kind of more just hitting that tip of the iceberg working on the conscious level and so I'm I'm trying to get deeper and you know find where where are these holding patterns within the body and and rewiring that on a deeper level so we do a lot of practices with the body with breath with meditation I always give them things to do in our time and space apart and it's it's a very deep repatterning um that I find to be really effective and and really cool to see where these different things are root a lot of times people come to me thinking their body is broken and I feel at this point very blessed that I went through the experience of thinking the same about my own body um you know like I I had doctors tell me like oh yeah I have clients who just don't have sex anymore and like you might be one of those people and it was it was such a terrible thing to hear like absolutely so rushing but I was like [...] no that's not going to be me and I I just refus to to buy that narrative and to keep leaning in and trusting my body and getting curious and learning her language and I have lost connection with me liido uh multiple times since since that first time if if I'm like an over burnt out two in my young like my libido will tin and that's my body way of letting me know that I'm out of balance so you know I thinkk my body for that and I lean into what do I need for deeper self-care and um you know coming more into that that Yin field but I think it's it's really helpful for people to see that even if your body has felt like it's working against you for a long time um it's everything everything is is still working the body is incredibly resilient and and can bounce back because I'm sure you guys have seen so much in your own work so how did you get I mean it's a fascinating story because you're uh I guess we'll talk more about what you got from Tantra and dum as we go but we did a little the clinical thing so you were working on yourself and then somehow you transition to working with other people how did you how did you make that that transition move I it's kind of fascinating for a couple of clinicians we got a lot people who are clinical people who listen to this too so how did that work for you when you translate like okay I'm healing myself okay now I'm going to pass this on other people how did that how did that play out for you I went like a very underground unconventional route to it I had different Tantra teachers different D teachers that I studied with very extensively and then um you know one of them was one of the coures specifically designed for working with other people and then I did a um love sex and relationship coaching certification program and um just continued studying from lots of different angles of lots of teachers I workshops on like sematic experience in and parts work and things like this and just taking taking the things that I found really worked for me that I was really curious about and just diving into lots of different things and then weaving them together um into an offering and yeah it's it's turned out to be a really beautiful cocktail of U modalities and I'm really glad they went that route because there was a time where I was like [...] should I should I be going to school for psychology or you know because I I actually didn't I didn't finish colle College I did my first three years and then I had the health issues come up and I and then I you know got taken on this path and so it didn't make sense for me to go back but I did have the Curiosity at one point of should I go and get my degree in in Psychotherapy or something like this um but I'm really glad I didn't go that route because I have friends who are therapists who refer a bunch of their clients to me because they're Limited in what they're allowed to work on in the Realms of sexuality um or they're Limited in their training or whatever ever it is and so they they send a lot of those clients to me and I feel like I have a lot more freedom to do things in the way that I want to um and to design my own path with it yeah I had that thing too when I was doing the Zen I just took like three years I finished my psych undergrad and I was like I'm not going to get this degree that's no I made that decision but then it was like okay where do I go from here I know I want to like work with people I want to try to heal people and so that's a struggle you know if you do want to heal people or help to share these kinds of things you're already kind of in an outof the-box path and you have to kind of find your own way and I think it's it's sounds awesome you able to go through and kind of like okay [...] it I'm gonna design my own path and I'll I'll uh I'll clear this out for myself that's very cool thank you yeah I'm really happy I went that way it worked out well yeah more of a straight line to get to what you really wanted to share with people as opposed to okay I'm going go all crooked just to kind of have it fit and to maybe what might be the more social expectations of what it should be but you seem like an out of the box person at root you're certainly willing to like follow your own path yeah very much so I think it's been a lot more fulfilling to to go that way um I think I would have felt like limited in in you know going through some like pre-carved out path and I I think that what I offer is very unique as a result so do you ever feel scared about it we bring it up because we talk a lot about you know it's scary sometimes to do this thing okay I'm gonna like Blaze my own trail it's a little scary you know how was that for you yeah it's it has been scary at Point um it wasn't scary in the beginning I mean it was in certain ways it was like it was scary to like fully step into myself in that way and like trust myself to hold that space and that was a process of like you know slowly building capacity and not biting off more than I could chew but I I didn't have the fear of like is this going to work out because I was like I know this is what I'm supposed to do this feels like what I'm designed for and what I'm passionate about it lights me up it feels like how I was led here was so on point um I wasn't doubting it and then other people would kind of throw doubts at me people like my dad and um my dad is a marketing professor and like you know always wanted me to be a businesswoman um and now he's like oh wow you know you're a successful businesswoman but you did it a totally different way than I wanted you to um you know he was his finish college but now um now he talks about me to his his marketing students so he doesn't like what I do he he tells them I'm a counselor he's he's very um you know cringe crawling in his skin about what it is that they do and we don't talk about the content of it I think he just hates the idea of his daughter as sexual being period so there's there's that but yeah I know with my dad when I told him I was going to do Chinese medical stuff he looked he he got completely silent and then he said that's about the craziest thing I've ever heard and then more silence but later on work on him what's that does he ever let you work on him oh you know what uh there's a whole dramatic story about he passed away in 2007 so um but like this is like a longer backstory but I got to needle him one time it was during hospice and I poed him out of a coma my one time I got to treat my Dad wow he was we had been that's a really cool story he was unconscious for I share it with students too Daniel and I both teach so I'm like okay you want to hear an acupuncture story I'll share one you know and uh so he was unconscious for days and it's you know so demoralizing and I just did the needles for him it's a special treatment that we'll all just love the name of it's called the Buddhas triangle so you can't love a treatment I used it last night I used yeah yeah yeah and he just popped out of the coma we hung out for maybe nine 10 hours it's awes awesome so the one time I got to treat my dad since you you threw me that question did did he become a Believer after that um he woke up and he looked at his hands with these needles and he was like what the [...] is happening and I pulled them all out and then we just hung out and listened to Rod Stewart or whatever um like Rod Stewart um yeah okay so yeah it's like it's interesting to share because there's a there's a bravery thing to go outside of the path but obviously felt like more like a calling thing so that's probably where lot the source of the strength came from or do you feel like it just came from just already the spiritual transformations in you like you went through a lot to be sick that's kind of scary and then they say okay I'm GNA heal myself and now I'm G to blaze my own trail that's takes courage yeah I think I think a lot of it was that it was such a calling um there's there's been different iterations that have certainly there's been a lot of fear that I've had to overcome um you know just just things like putting myself out there to the world so like when I started posting on social media about what I was doing and talking about sexuality and like you know my whole family is on Facebook and I was just like well [...] it like you know they're going to hear everything I have to say and I I don't really care what they think about it but um you know starting to like put my voice out there and then you know getting on podcast starting a podcast teaching group Workshop I feel like each of these things with a new initiation of its own where I had to push an edge more about just like building nervous system capacity around being seen um and then in the beginning when I started working with clients there was definitely a part of me that felt like I really had to plan and I wanted to know what they wanted to work with in advance and felt like I needed to make sure that I you know had the tools but then what I came to realize really quickly is that if I'm being super present and I'm tapped into my intuition I always know what to do and I I don't need to worry about it and and that's the most important thing and so I learned to really trust myself on a deeper level and you know the the longer that I work with people I've been doing doing this for about seven years it's the more deeply comfortable I become with it and I've I've learned so much from every single client I've ever worked with and then that feeds into what I know to share with the next client yeah one of my favorite psychologists is like Carl Rogers you know and uh we talk about him sometimes on the podcast but he would say things like like that you know you could have a bunch of technical things but in the moment there's sort of just an authenticity that's the he thing it's like okay I'm GNA come from this spontaneous authentic place face and that will probably be right you know that'll probably be the thing to do so it sounds like you had some kind of thing like that happened in your work too you started to realize oh if I as long as I'm in it's the relationship that heals he says that kind of stuff too and it's you know the spontane spontaneity the authenticity is that how it feels to you definitely yeah and being in the body it's it's similar to a lot of the advice I give around people that are having performance anxiety in the bedroom it's like if you're too in your head of course you're you're not going to be able to sense where your energy is and have any choice as to how it's moving through your body it's always the same thing if I was too in my head I was going to be wrapped up in insecurities or fears of dropping the ball or not being good enough and but then like that was irrelevant because my focus needed to be on the client right so if if I was just present in my body and listening everything else from there would unfold as it needed to and I find that's the case with most things in life I would be remiss if I didn't make some sort of joke about um head and balls and such like this but you know we'll we'll leave that it's you know it's too too someone had to say it we all thought it someone had to say it I'm nine leave me alone you all right so that gets to like you know that part of your work too gets to like what you perceive as being obstacles that people have you know so I don't know if it's an easy question to answer or not but like there is there a certain number of lists maybe a list you can give to people are like okay these are major obstacles that people seem to wrestle with yeah these areas of sexual expression sexual Freedom sexual positivity sexual spirituality like there there certain things you're like well these are things I really see people repetitively seem like they have these struggles with you already talked about some of them like being head a lot any other ones that you want to add to that list that you think would make yeah being in your head is a big one especially like we have sex with our bodies right so we're stuck in our heads and you know the the porn addiction epidemic is is definitely a piece of that pulls people into their heads instead of their bodies too um having an agenda I find is really problematic in the bedroom a lot of people are on a very linear trajectory they're very goal oriented thinking that orgasm is like the point or what marks a successful sexual experience and I think when we can get out of that and and with this much more nonlinear way of working with Sexual Energy being curious where it takes us and you know where where we each are in this moment and what happens when we follow this thread of energy so much more is possible we can have such more multi-dimensional Rich magical experiences than if we are like trying to get somewhere or projecting how we think it's supposed to go um and I I think a lot of people have that problem especially you know I wonder what sex would be like if none of us had ever seen it on uh TV movies porn anything like that and if we were just truly tapped into the instinctual draw of our body and to follow that where does this want to take me that that Primal flow instead of these mental images of what is this supposed to look like yeah it really gets into the idea like the doist or the Buddhist thing of like conventional truth right you get these things that are kind of you learn from the culture and you internalize and they you know they kind of take over the show or something right and if you took those things away what would that look like yeah I had really thought of it phras in that way way and it's interesting because I don't know how it is for you know I'll throw it out to the to all three of us but like I think over time what I realized what I really wanted the most wasn't like some particular orgasm that's cool or but you just want to really like you want to share an experience with another person you want to share love and you want to share connection that's what you really want the most but all this other stuff sometimes seems like it's like obscuring the scene I don't if that makes sense to y'all but it does it does I think that's another hang up for people is like sometimes it's a interplay between their egos instead of actually like Hey we're on the same team sharing connection working towards a shared intention of pleasure and play and and connection people forget to play sometimes people can take it too seriously get too wrapped up in in their performance and how they're being perceived um or blaming the other person for not getting what they want out of the experience and so I try to remember like people hey teammates as lovers you're on the same team what is your intention here um and and can you can you come back to that and work together to have an experience that's enjoyable for you both I guess it's interesting because there's part of the Tantra thing like I'm interested in Tibetan Buddhism and some of it's a little technical you know visualizing things and all that do you get into that with people or do you find that to be a distraction when you're trying to do more your therapeutic work or how do you think about that part because there is that like little technical aspect of Tantra or you like you kind of let that go when you're working with patients because the most important thing is to have them be able to be more spontaneous yeah that's a really good question certain practices I find can't people again out of the body and into the head when it's too technical so I try to break things down into like really bite-sized steps or distill it in a way where it's like these are the most important parts sometimes it feels like there's a bunch of extra unnecessary steps where it's more like okay this is the essence of what we're working with and even if I can just get them paying attention to their breathing and relaxing their bodies and and cultivating presence like that can go so far and you don't always need all the fancy Hoops to jump through um and so I I try to like layer it in ways where it's like let make this one facet of it become second nature um so that like as you layer it on it's not so complicated because yeah that's the last thing we want to do is take them out of the body again and back into the mind or feeling like it's this obstacle course or this like spiritual Olympics or this thing they have to get right um I like to just keep it simple and in the body some of the tatra can start to get that Vibe I have to like do this thing perfect or something right like it can create that kind of thing a little bit yeah yeah yeah definitely I I like to try to Veer away from that and just um like try to inspire people to again stay in their body and follow their intuition because that's going to take you where you need to go I think it doesn't need to be such a prescribed of instructions of like do this this and this and achieve this result but more of an invitation of try this and see what happens see where it takes you and maybe time it takes you somewhere completely different um but can can you trust your body in the moment and not be so attached to a result and just see what wants to unfold is that what happened to you in your 20s was that what happened you know I I was thinking about it earlier when you're describing okay something transformative happened for you in that time period you were wrestling with these illnesses uh I know you had the limes disease I know you also talked about you had other kind of infections and all kinds of other things went kind of Haywire at that time and then you got into the Tantra thing were there certain like meditations or exercises you were doing that time were flashing back a little bit but were there things that were particularly powerful you where you had like oh this is one of the things that really made it click for me or was it just refining your body in that more spontaneous way or what was it like when you were first doing that were there certain things that clicked one of the biggest ones was learning tantric massage as a therapeutic practice where you know genitals are often only touched sexually or medically um and so to to work with them therapeutically in a dearmoring way in the same way that if you have a knot in your shoulder and you massage it and you work it out it's like the the genitals can hold so much tension to especially the vagagina and the prostate gland especially um and so to when I was experiencing pain during sex I was in this space of like I don't want to have sex I was just totally shut down to it I avoided it and this practice taught me that the only way around it is through it in every area of life and that leaning into that pain courageously and gently not not blowing out your nervous system not going towards more than what you have capacity for but leaning into it and pushing that edge in a healthy way um was really profound for unwinding a lot of the stuck energy in my body things from sexual trauma things from just all kinds of things within my system that needed to be released and I went into that practice kicking and screaming like I didn't want to do it I was having so many things come up around it and um it ended up being a very beautiful practice for me my my first time went from like literally tears and resistance and tension to orgasm um an orgasm is not the point of the practice it's a potential byproduct even pleasure doesn't have to happen like sometimes it's painful sometimes you're working through points that hurt that have tension and you're just gently massaging through them um sometimes there's numbness and and you're like restoring feeling to those parts of the body but that practice was very profound for me and it it looked different every time I did it um doing it on myself or with a partner and it it taught me so much about what it is to lean into the things that we want to avoid and how much medicine is is hidden in those if we dare to go looking so this was even like sort of like the Yoni massage kind of things like really massaging in that way and letting yourself kind of go through whatever that experience was going to be allowed that to kind of like transform through for you yeah absolutely yeah I was kind of like when I first got interested in the Dos things I kind of went Zen dosm Chinese medicine Tantra that was sort of my blow this but like even to know like you don't think of massaging your own scrotum never URS to you and Chinese people have thought of all of this obviously in India they thought of all of this already so you're kind of like I can do this and they're like yeah and here's how you do it and you're like well this is kind of amazing and then you do discover those I had a lot of like um I like a kind of an undiagnosed appendicitis that dragged down for years when I was a teenager so it was a lot of pain wow and pain in the pelvis you know so when I started really learning these things it was like okay there's areas where there's some residual scar tissue and things I have to work through and some of this is uncomfortable but then you when you work through that you find the pleasure Parts too right and some you flexible with it right yeah yeah I I like how you spoke to that and I think that's that's part of the medicine of this work is like you know I often talk about the scar tissue that gets built up between people in relationship the things that the baggage that isn't dealt with that kind of gets stuffed under the rug and it builds a scar tissue and we have to get in there and massage it out and you know it's it's the same with our bodies it's the same with everything in our lives and so I I think that all the things that I learned like through these practices through my body through my sexuality they translated to other areas of life and so that was a big piece of it for me too is like finding pleasure um in moving through the pain finding pleasure in deeper Connection in moving through conflict with somebody the closeness that can come of choosing to move through that and and and just like you said even all these things that have been thought of that we would never think to do like massaging your scrotum you know there's like it opens up such whole territory I learned about all these different new types of orgasm and then you know tapped into like non-ejaculatory orgasm for men which is one of my favorite things to teach because it's such a mind-blowing fun New Horizon that just changes the game and so it's it's fun to get to explore these new territories that I might not have you know dove into in the way that I did if I didn't have some crunchy [...] to work through so I think that you know if we can stay curious about what's crunchy what's painful what we want to avoid and lean into it it's usually a very worthwhile Journey H how do people work with you do they are you mostly like in person or are you online or you do workshops or how does that mostly online these days um I did do a lot of inperson when I was working in Colorado I don't currently have an in-person office so mostly online right now I used to do a lot of in-person events and I'm hoping to get back to that soon I haven't actually done any since before Co um but I have online courses as well then I work with a lot of people oneon-one or one two if it's couples um and yeah that's kind of the main way that I [Music] work yeah like uh um okay so I guess the other part was you obiously learned a lot from Tantra and dosm yourself do you find that I know it's a weird question but do you find out your clients get kind of find some of those same things that you found as you start working with them some of these more spontaneous realizations of that and how's that played out in the end you know we do this podcast we want people to have happy life we also like to help people get more and more enlightened whatever that may mean for them but you know so how does that end up working in your work do you find that people kind of tap into those deeper parts of themselves totally people people often walk away saying this went so much deeper than I anticipated like wow I got way more out of this than like I was coming here because I thought I wanted to like you know be a a masterful lover and and what I got out of it was so much more than what I could have expected um that's that's one of the biggest pieces of feedback that comes through because yeah people don't always realize how interconnected it all is and then once we start pulling on this thread and we see how it you know tugs on other ones in their lives and how it starts leaving this new tap Stree um I think it's it's really profound to see the shifts that happen for people I mean I've had clients where it's like every area of the their life transforms through our work together from the career to their relationship to their health to their income to their spirituality to even having like a whole new life purpose path open up um you know to their sexuality so many things and it's they they can become totally different people through this work and I think that's that's one of the really cool things to see is it's it's like yeah if you start playing with your your life force in a different way and your your sense of self and you know are whole understanding of existence because I think that's a really interesting thing is if you're ashamed of your sexuality at your core you're ashamed of your very existence because we got here through sex so that's a really big thing to unpack and when you connect people with this understanding of their sexuality as sacred they have a whole new origin story that then ripples out and informs everything that they're doing so it's pretty cool to see what people tap into and what opens up as a result that's a profound way to put that to say if you're ashamed of your sexuality you're kind of ashamed of your being in some very deep way right because that's here right yeah and also I guess you can't feel comfortable with this universe from a tantric or you know some of the DS points of view because it's a yin-yang it's a shivi sh it's a Shiva Shak the universe right there's a sexuality at the core of it so you're always going to be maybe somewhat cut off right right that shame around that area of life yeah yeah yeah yeah what percentage of Americans do you think feel ashamed about this Seria oh wow I don't know a lot a lot I mean even even people that don't think they're ashamed about sexuality they still have pockets of it like one example is think about how grossed out everybody um is to like you know if you mention the idea of their parents having sex and it's like but that's literally how you were created you literally shot out of your dad's penis into to your mom's vagina and go here human and so like let's be real that's what happened that's what we got here I I would like to think that I would like to think that I was coerced to come out you I was a little resistant but okay fine you know heny Miller has that bit in his book he's like why would I ever leave the womb what's the point a whole thing like that the whole chapter about that it's in there and then and then and then when you were birthed I mean you were totally encapsulated by your mom's vagina unless you were born VSC section like me but like the whole experience is very sexual like we we're so close to that that seed of of sex when we're created and so um you know I think even like thinking oh it's disgusting that my parents have sex like they're still that bit of Shame woven into where we come from so it's funny how deep it goes no it's a it's a good very good observation yeah my mom's 84 and you know she's you know heading towards you know the Twilight every years but we talk really honestly about these things and uh you know what was her experience of relationships did you ever think that she was in love with somebody else that you ever want to have sex we talk about these things now that's awesome and uh I I had the thought literally like a couple weeks ago like oh my parents having sex let me visualize that to see if I'm okay with it I was like you know I'm totally fine I was like okay I can imagine them they they weren't pure missionary all the time let my mind go there you realize you're fine you don't die inside yeah well I guess deep part I can remember when it really hit me and Daniel and I have had these conversations like there's a time when you start to realize like wait a minute the whole universe is permeated by this yinyang Shiva Shak thing that's how As Above So Below that's how this whole universe came into existence in a in a TARC sense right it's born of from a Pure Source through a Yin and Yang or a Shiva shaki and they interact and voila we all get to appear the 10,000 so I can remember when that really hit me super deeply in meditative ways and I was like wow okay so that's what we're feeling in this right we're feeling something at the core of everything and I guess if you you get to the deepest part of what you're talking about if you if you're cut off from that then you're cut off from something really Primal right about totally creation right even even like a a spiritual path that's disconnected from sexuality it's like you're you're castrating the you're taking the roots out of it and it's it's incomplete and I I've had a lot of especially male clients come to me that are like I've gone really deep down my spiritual path and and meditation and all these things but like I've still got some major sh with my sexuality and it's time for me to deal with that and I think you don't have a holistic integrated understanding of spirituality until you're okay with your sexuality because they're two sides of the same coin you know our sexuality and our spirituality is what makes us F minut it's the conscious and the unconscious the body and the spirit and the masculine and The Feminine and I I think that's that understanding of all of these polarities of two sides of the same coin is one of the other most profound things that I've received from tanten ISM and understanding how they work together and can complement one another and harmonize even though they're total opposites because I did have a point where I was like how the hell are men and women ever supposed to work together it's it's like this cruel Cosmic joke we're total opposites what is it and these these teachings helps me understand like how they work together to generate energy and how they they click together perfectly and the whole universe is designed that way you know look at like the pollinators and the flowers and even look at Hardware where you've got like the m masul and The Feminine part and like our our whole world is designed on these building blocks and when you understand how they work together I think everything just makes a lot more sense so I would like to I would like to kind of wrap here but I want to do it for a reason because I if you're cool to do it s I'd like to have you on and Eric I'd like for us to do a little bit of prep work and maybe s for you as well to do uh to do an episode we'll do foreshadowing live foreshadowing I mean it'll be recorded but we're doing it live for right now um to do an episode on cultivation practices like sexual spiritual cultivation practices you know from from our own work and and from things you know using various levels of of teachings on Tantra and and all of its various definitions and try and put because I feel like and again I don't want to go too deep into a rabbit hole because we don't like to do that at the end of things um I feel like the word Tantra the definition of it in the way that it gets used now is not necessarily the classical way in which it was passed forward and that like some of the more kind of traditional ways in which it gets in which it gets used now are missing and it only is it's only sexual it's it's a completely sexual practice only but like to why I like what you're saying is that like no it's it should be both like it shouldn't be only spiritual or only sexual I mean that's literally the definition of the word is to weave so I would like to continue the conversation but like Begin by begin with that as an opening you know begin with the the sort of like contri spiritual sexual practice as a as a mainstream of our conversation if you're if you're good to come back we'll put you on the spot here yeah absolutely so great okay I would love to come back s you were a friend of the show after at hello you friend to the show I looked at your videos and I was like this shit's awesome so just to give a shout out to I don't look like you're doing as much YouTube stuff anymore that what I've seen But like I did like I'm gonna do some research I looked through your YouTube things and it's so refreshing to go to something where you're like oh I'm interested in that and I'm interested in that one I'm interested in that one because you're go in these very deep things right in this very and authentic way and so anyways you know you're always invited you're a friend I appreciate that no you you guys are so fun to Vibe with this it's flowed so naturally and um yeah and thank you for that I do want to get back on the YouTube videos eventually but one of my biggest things I've learned from all of this actually is just you know I heard somebody say one time that autoimmune disease is when the spirit gets ahead of the body and kind of leaves the body back in the dust and I did a little bit of that with building my business I kind of um went too hard and was like in full-blown young creation mode and then this past year and a half I've really like come back into the yin and and in this just ation period of refilling my cup and now I'm like coming coming back out with a more balanced pulse and so that's part of uh being on your podcast getting myself out into the world again and it feels really good I did notice that because I was looking kind of at your social media and I was like oh it looks like you know s's gone a little Yin she's retracted a little bit you sort of talked about that on your on the gram and you could say like okay so I was like oh that's that's great she's coming back out again and we get to like uh you know be part of that too so I was I was very happy about that we we trying to be balanced but this is definitely a Yang Den for sure like there's no sure well and you're men so that makes more sense for you but like I I was kind of acting like a man for a while and like I needed to like come back into my femininity and and just recharge and and it feels really good I moved from Colorado to Asheville North Carolina like I'm in a much more place now Asheville's great it's lovely he super nourishing hydrated oh yeah my son Aiden just did a chess tournament down there like last weekend it's really beautiful oh really yeah um yeah I guess the other thing you know I just want to give a shout out to your YouTube thing with this because it's the the relationship part again I'm just getting into it but I really like that you're open to all kinds of relationship attitudes too you know I was just listening to one of the ones you did where you're kind of talking more about poly things I was like that's good because you don't always see people being open to all the different ways that people could be so just to give a shout out to that too you know for people who might be listening and interested in that you know uh there's a real openness to what you're doing doing and it's great yeah and we'll I'll leave I'll leave links uh s to all of your stuff in the description of this video whe you're watching on YouTube or in the podcast if you're listening to it on you know apple or wherever Spotify or pod addict I don't know there's a lot of different places that we're we're broadcasting out of so let me just uh give you guys one more one more moment here any parting shots Eric and then we'll we'll we'll let s say something before we close it off no I'm really glad that we got got to talk about all the different range of things that we talked about and there's obviously still more to say so hopefully we'll see you at some other time s it's a blast thanks yeah this this was so much fun you guys I really appreciate you having me on and I look forward to dropping in more with you guys yeah no totally you're welcome back and and I will follow up with you and get you back on uh sooner rather than later because there is something to be said about keeping that you know kind of conversation moving forward so uh we look forward thank you for coming on today um Eric always thank you for you know working with me on this on the the spaceship you know um and uh yeah it's nice because I always say doing this kind of thing S as you know and Eric as you know uh and audience if those people you know if for some reason people feel uh I don't know inspired by this conversation or any of the other I don't know several hundred that we have um to to to do a podcast like totally do it even though there's like three and a half million of them or something else like this it gives a a really great reason for people to connect who normally wouldn't like I could I couldn't find you know Sera if I wanted to you know on a random day right let alone to be like hey can we just talk on the phone and like get to know each other a little bit she's pretty cool she I think you might be like yeah that sounds interesting dude give me a call I got you know I'll be uh you know whatever I don't know you had a cat so I'll be cleaning my kitty litter box tonight at like 7:50 to 8:05 so call me we'll chat while I scrape poop um but you know in this way we get we get a chance to talk about things that are meaning like we we leave with our own life story first with people who are interested in it and we lead with our passions and I don't know outside of like a dating environment or with like a really good friend where you get to lead with your passions and one of the things about having a podcast is that we get to interact with people where we're leading with our passions and they're leading with theirs and we get to meet in the middle and and you know have meaningful conversations so um to the podcast Gods hopefully Inspire other people right I mean that's yeah people hear story they start going wait a minute this is Mak some Wheels turn maybe I can pursue some my own inner authentic feelings of things you know yeah this person did it why not me you know that's right why not you uh so thanks for coming thanks thanks again for coming on uh we look forward to seeing you uh on the next one and uh for Sera and Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys on the next one peace [Music]