Welcome to your Body. Remembers pleasure. I'm your host, Rahi Chun. This podcast is devoted to sexual embodiment, intimacy, and the body's innate capacity to heal, feel, and remember pleasure. If something here resonates with you, you're welcome to explore more writings and resources@rahichun.com. And now let's begin.

 

Today we celebrate the legacy, the light, and the love that is Ka and Jesse, I've been inspired and influenced by Kahan and her somatic sexuality, works for many years, and been blessed with opportunities to connect with her personally in this last year through the Institute for the Study of Somatic sex education that she co-founded.

It was actually during today's interview that I came to learn that she is retiring this month after decades of teaching, training, writing, supporting and leading somatic sex educators from around the world. So I am especially delighted and honored to share this celebration of Kaf and Jesse and all that she represents in her journey of erotic, embodiment, sexual reclamation, and service to the divine nature of ero US discovered through our divine nature, in safe, consensual connected presence with pleasure.

I am very happy today to be introducing Ka and Jesse to the podcast. Those of us who've been in the field of somatic sex education know Kahan and Catherine's work as the pioneering work she's produced over the years. For those people new to somatic sex education, if you start digging around, you'll soon cross her name through her books, her videos, her.

Her trainings, her online courses. She's just really been a pioneer in the field and it's such a delight to invite her to the podcast to spend some time with us today. Thanks for being here, Kain. Thank you, Rahi. And, you're such a leading light in our field, so I, it's such an honor to be on your program and to get to know you a little bit better.

That's what I'm really pleased to be here. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So I wanted to share that in addition to a pioneering somatic sex educator and trainer, as well as a practitioner and author, I wanted to share some of your books that have been influential in my journey as a somatic sex educator.

I dug them off my shelf. I have them right here. There's Science for Sexual Happiness, and you'll see like I've got notes throughout. When I first read this, I was really amazed because I've never come across a book that not only explains the. Neurochemistry of our sexual embodiment, so clearly, but also it's full of just incredible somatic exercises.

Exercises that involve breath, movement, sound, and really inviting the reader to take inventory of our experiences, sensations, safety boundary around our. Sexual exploration. So it is such a great book. And then the other book that I took off my shelf was this one Erotic Massage for Healing and Pleasure.

And I feel like it's like an A to Z around introducing anyone to. Erotic, sensual, safe and healing touch, particularly when it comes to restoring and re imprinting, touch and pleasure regarding our sexuality and genitalia. Thank you, Rahi. I should mention I've republished that erotic massage book last year under the title Intimacy Educator.

Teaching through touch, so it's a little slightly updated. Mostly it's the same book that kind of takes you through erotic massage from my perspective as a sacred, intimate and intimacy educator. Trying to, as you say, talk about re imprinting and developing choice and voice, empowering us to access more ecstatic, experiences with our body, our full embodiment, but with awareness of traumas, imprint and imprint of cultural stereotypes and expectations around gender. And yeah, trying to place the erotic massage practices that we learn as sexological body workers and somatic sex educators in a bit. Of a wider context.

I'm really drawing on Joseph Kramer's work and the sexological Body work training in that book, but I'm trying to just give it a bit more embedding in the context of what our souls are and what they've experienced in the social realm. Yeah, I feel like that's so important.

And I should say, I believe your intimacy educator, the updated version is being made generously available as a PDF on your website. That's right. I decided to offer it as a free download during the COVID Pandemic because I was. Hearing about all these people trapped in their homes with their with their partners getting all fractious.

And to me, like these practices that we do are key to evolving more loving, intimate relationships as well as our personal healing and wellbeing. I'm really interested in and new work that I'm doing and looking at like, how do these. Practices help us love each other better and differently. Yeah, and I feel like so much of that comes from the understanding of that cultural societal context that you mentioned because, we have to understand where we're starting from. And we are starting from a, an embodiment that is influenced by all of these different cultural and relational dynamics and factors, whether it's race, gender sexual orientation, like whatever it is we are holding, we are embodying our, these kind of social norms.

And they're being expressed sometimes as obstacles, sometimes as. Support in our sexual intimacy. To frame it with an understanding of all of the influences that feed our sexual erotic blueprints is really phenomenal. Yes. And yeah, the whole cultural context too, where, thoughts are valued and we're cut off from our bodies and yeah, it's.

It's a numbing culture that where we're supposed to operate, according to rules and roles, and not pay attention to what's going on in our body sensation. And so these like embodied practices are important. So important. So important. Yeah. And I feel like our educational system in today's day and age, just, further emphasizes that.

Whenever I see, school budgets cutting, PE or art i'm like, no, for God's sake, just keep those, if anything, so I wanted to say that the intimacy educator, PDF. You can get at Cain's wonderful website, ero spirit.ca. That's E-R-O-S-P-I-R-I t.ca, where you can check out a whole range of online courses and books and articles and videos, a lot of which are being made gen available for free.

So definitely go and check that. I should also say that Kain is one of the co-founders of the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education, which I wanna talk about, and the Somatic Sex Educators Association. So what strikes me, Kain, or what struck me is as I was becoming familiar with all of your various transmissions around embodied sexuality, it really becomes quite clear early on the understanding that.

We are erotic embodiment is the expression of life force energy, really an expression of source energy and the explorations that you do or the illumination that you bring to spirit and sex and how. They really are this one in the same expression. I'd love to ask you if I may what were the pivotal influences in your erotic embodiment journey that illuminated for you this delicious, sacred, divine gateway that is our bodies to spirit source.

I think yeah, like in, in my personal journey, I had a lot of aloneness and isolation and like being an oddball and different, and bullied and excluded being like queer and gender queer and just like coming from a family of origin that was. Pretty troubled. And so I learned to listen like to myself and have that kind of self trust and that, like around the erotic was confirmed by I think Audrey Lord.

Uses of the erotic as power. That was a essay I came upon early in life that just it was like such a deep yes for me. James Baldwin was another early influence. And then like finding queer culture where, erotic energy cultivation was. Part of who and how we were and like we were creating like this alternative radical culture that felt like really, oh, yes, this is a deep yes for me to keep on following.

And yeah, in my own personal journey, it wasn't till I was into my forties, I had. A wild misspent youth, I settled down into just living very temp down erotically. But then when I was in my forties, I had started to get regular body work and you'll understand this 'cause you work with energy channels.

It was, it just opened up some energy channels and I just start to feel like this. Wow. Powerful, sacred, very inconvenient, like erotic life force energy and like, how do I find expression for that? And with that, there came a lot of memories of early life trauma. And it was like they were all wound up together.

And yeah. That, the person that I was receiving body work from I wasn't in any way prepared to cope with it and it, didn't Wow. To go well with them. But I was like, oh, there must be something here. I was able to trust that my own journey and be guided by my body and I think because of my early influences.

And just found my way, like with trying a lot of things that, practitioners that were horrible and founding practitioners that were good. I found my way to Alfie Shaw, who was one of the pioneers in our field and Joseph Kramer had wonderful online offerings. And yeah. So from my little rural home on Salt Spring Island, I was able to find.

Through Joseph's online offerings. This whole field of sexological body work that was, it was just starting in those days, but he had this very generous online offering and I was just like, oh, wow, this is it, and, I felt excited by just the convergence and I immediately wove with Joseph and studied his materials and worked for him for a while and helped him bring the first sexological body work training to Canada a few years later.

And then was able to take it because it was right here where I live. And and just found my people where that erotic life force energy could be honored, like as sacred as powerful. And, meanwhile I was practicing, I, guided by his work and found my way to actually having a practice where I could meet people in that way. Wording that appealed to me, that felt really resonant with who I was the sacred intimacy. I couldn't meet people with my touch and with my presence to be like another human soul, like soul to soul. And and help them feel their own sacred life force energy.

As the erotic and, oh yeah. I've gone on a tangent away from your question, right? No, it's beautiful. C Catherine, it's so beautiful so beautiful. It's helping me understand how in your books and in your writings and in your teachings, how that awakening in you, in your forties from. Really present, safe body contact, body touch, awakened what I'm guessing was probably a dormant force.

That's it's a sleeping force in all of us. Just really a waiting for the permission for the invitation for the. The manual really. We've got this treasure in our bodies, but no one's given us the manual. Yeah, and that's what I love about your works is it's so multi-layered and complete in providing that safe space and that sacred space for the invitation to really embody this dormant force.

But I love that. I love that. I love how it happened, and I love that you dove right in. I love that. It sounds like you just voraciously, drank up, ate up, read up everything that was available. You I really let it change me, I just was fortunate and also courageous enough, I guess to just let it like completely change my life and, that happened gradually where I just. Started to practice like a couple days a week, and then I got I was like, wow, this is working and I love it, yeah. On your website, there's a wonderful page of videos for people who are visiting, and I love.

The breath meditations, the breath meditation videos that you both guide and demonstrate through your own body's practice. And I was curious, Kain, like during the journey of both embodiment and as a practitioner holding space for others, I'm curious what kind of the biggest ahas or turning points were for you?

Because I, as I saw one of those breath videos, I wondered, oh, I wonder if. If the infinite access to our erotic potential through breath, I wonder if that was like a big aha for Kain or, or what others whether it was or not. I'm curious what those kind of junctures were for you in your journey as a practitioner.

I think getting connected to a culture of that not only permissioned, but with Joseph's teachings, it's he's like very insistent that this is what you've gotta do of like self pleasuring and devote yourself to a discipline of self pleasuring and recognizing the role that breath could play in that to really bridge with the autonomic nervous system and, and to give more access to more joy and more ease, like more excited. Excited arousal, but also more calm, peacefulness, and yeah, breath. But for me also, it's been very key to find practitioners. At one time it was like I really needed to have people that. I hired that I knew and this is still important for me to occasionally do to just hire someone to like work with me because then it's like a hundred percent about me and help me get through these portals to something more. Joyful, like we come up against these barriers, like and, we need sometimes a teacher guide to to really take us through, but also to have exchanges and have people that weren't my, I didn't have joint bank accounts with and wasn't trying to make home with and everything, but to Right.

To have like exchanges with other people on this journey of erotic empowerment Yeah. To support me in this sort of, counter normative practice of cultivating ecstasy. And then to feel like the relational joys of that. That can be, how we can cultivate a real. Beautiful friendships and intimacy and enjoyment of the erotic together, in ways where we're really feeling like safe and grounded and empowered.

And we know that, nothing's expected of us that we can't give with full heart and like we're really in that practice. And, to have those month after month and year after year of having that kind of relational. Experience, I think. That's what really changed me.

I that's like a totally walking into a totally different world. I just hear so many exciting, important themes that you mention there. Certainly. The consistency, the regularity of the practice. It's it's learning to play exotic, exquisite music through the vessel that is our body, and it does require that kind of devotion and consistency to become familiar, not only to the kind of wide range.

Energetic, physiological, chemical, emotional parts of our body, as, 'cause they're changing day by day and year by year as well. So it's really becoming so familiar with them that we can sense and intuit and start to listen to, how they're changing and what their needs are.

But the other thing I hear Kahan that was really important was having. A space and a time where you're just receiving and not responsible for anything else. Yeah, I'm sure all practitioners have seen this, but with clients who are in relationships, it seems rare for people to have the shared experience of one person having no responsibility, but just to receive sensation and inviting their partner to just give and explore and isn't that transformative for couples, right?

Yes. It's yeah, just teaching to. Take turns. Don't always try and make it like a high intensity, same time. Interaction like. Right where your attention and kind of your sensory awareness is split, but where you can be a hundred percent devoted to just receiving. And what that can open up in the body.

Oh yeah. Which it's, yeah. Which it sounds like was, a real instrumental role played in your journey just to make sure you had those experiences of finding practitioners you felt safe with to receive from? Lucky me, I have vulvodynia, so I have like genital pain that really inhibits me having any kind of penetrative sex, that kind of had to be off the table. And I think that's another reason why it's my pain, which is, I've struggled with through the decades, but but I call it now like a holy pain because it, it made it essential that i, for my body and my being, it's there, there's like a contraction and a closure and. My body was guiding me you need a different kind of setup. And then when I found it like this, take turns and have a long, like whole body massage and then go into some creative genital stimulation that's prolonged. And that's that's really touching all of the.

Anatomy and, guide to, to feel the pain and the armoring and then, it'll gradually release and gently open and, to have these. Embodied experience. They just are not accessible in any other way, and for my body, it was just like, okay. This is really like a huge difference, like to access, just the technology of our body, which is also. The technology of the spiritual and the accessing this amazing energy that flows through us when we can cultivate it. Wow. Tell me a bit about you and your journey.

Rahi. I want to know more about like how did you come to these practices and Oh, sure. Sure. I just, I did wanna, I did wanna reflect back that it is amazing that the Nia invited such a vast exploration of terrains that may never have been touched into or explored otherwise. Yeah, I probably would've just, found.

A much more kind of ordinary sexual experiences if they'd been accessible to me. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So my journey essentially I came out of my mom's womb with very crooked legs. She massaged and lotioned them every day until they grew straight, which took about three years.

So that was my first language was receiving that kind of touch. And so naturally expressing love to my parents, I was massaging them a lot, growing up. And then, yeah, I think it was that combination of. Of touch with presence. 'cause I was really drawn to meditate different forms of meditation when I was in college.

And so I found that, I mean we call it presence, but that unconditional presence with the intentional touch, what that. Does as far as unwinding or reconditioning the touch receptors and the recipient? I didn't know it at the time, like what was happening, but changes were happening in my partner and I didn't, I wanted to know what was, what actually was happening.

My path first took me to different Daoist consciously circulating the energy practices. And that led me to different tantric practices. And then I was off to the races and wanting to know everything I could. But I would say like a turning point for me, I guess both as a embodied person as well as a, practitioner came from just recognizing how, malleable and how genital tissue can go from pain to pleasure. I was blown away my first tantra residential training where we did inter pelvic release work. There was no expensive machinery. We weren't at a medical facility. It was just unconditional presence.

Breath, freedom to move and presence. And my partner who had survived incest as a child, she had all this pain and armor, and by the end of the week she was feeling so relaxed and so pleasurable that I was like, everyone should know how to do this. This is they should teach. I was, don't you feel this way?

I'm guessing you feel this way too, Catherine, which is why you wrote your phenomenal books. Yeah. Everyone should know this. Yes. It just gets so exciting to see what seems like miracles happen and it, it's like we have all the tools within our body to. Recondition to re imprint to rewire new associations.

And I wanted to ask you like, I'm imagining like as a practitioner there were so many kind of mind blowing ahas over the years. Do you recall ones that were really just changed your trajectory as a practitioner, as an educator? One I recall was the first time I ever taught a workshop.

I developed this intimacy educator workshop. I had worked one-on-one and I didn't want to do workshops. The first years of practice, I really enjoyed the one-on-one work, and that was wonderful. But I got some requests for people wanted more training, like, how do I do this? Four sex workers that knew each other.

They were friends and they asked me like, can we come up and stay there and do a residential training with you? And I was like why not? We could make this work. And I got a couple of other people to come and we had this six day training that I designed and I just, yeah, I'll never forget. Like at the end of it and after we went out for dinner and just walking home and it was like.

Oh yes. This is what I'm meant to do. Wow. And it was a change in my practice from the one-on-one work to really including more teaching and bringing these groups together and that there was something like so magical about this, intensive where, you bring together people like.

As strangers and then they weave this through these practices of oh, how do we understand the ways that we endure unwanted touch and and start to self witness and really like practice welcoming each other's choices and practice, like knowing our own desires and trusting them enough to voice them.

And then practice being, introducing the erotic to that and. Integrating a sense of the erotic as sacred, as wanted, as welcome and, and then to see that happen and the changes that happen in the people and in me over, a several day period I was like, oh, I was born for this.

Oh wow. Wow. Yeah. That, that's been a, such a wonderful ride in my career, to just go more into the teaching and, yeah. I've had. That for the last, 12 years or so. And that's been so wonderful. So that's a memorable. Wow, that's really what an important, what a such a blessed juncture from having resisted, giving workshop.

'cause you were so enjoying the one-on-one. And I totally related with that because I really enjoy one-on-one sessions, but there is, I don't know how to describe it. It's like a mysterious alchemical. Energetic, collaborative, something that happens in a workshop with a group of embodied beings where, as you said, all everyone's past sexual experiences come to the soup to be recognized, to be witnessed, to be honored, to be transformed.

And it seems to me that the power of being witnessed in transformation Yeah, it's unlike anything else. And then to have kind of the. Erotic energy to support and nourish that transformation. Wow. Yeah, we get, we experience the erotic in such boxes of, like like relationship boxes and privacy and scripts and everything and just, it's just like how do you create. An environment and like where you actually get to practice something really different and practice oh, like all of you is welcome and no choice is mandatory, or there's no script here. It's just really about feeling yourself and what you actually want and all your grief is welcome, all your.

Armor and your pain is, welcome your dysfunctions, our creative adaptations that we can respect and we can cherish. And to have that counter normative experience of the erotic Yeah. Outside the one-on-one box. I, which I love the one-on-one. Work, but yeah, I think it's like.

There's something very special here yeah, totally. As you were sharing that kain, it occurred to me that as a species, because we are a tribal species and a social species, for millennia, healing was done in community and in tribal kind of circles. And so there must be something deep within our psyche and our DNA that responds to that.

And the thing that really strikes me is. Especially in one-on-one sessions, and I think most practitioners can relate to this is so many clients think they're the only one that has certain fantasies. Yeah. Or certain hangups or certain whatever. But in a group, they recognize, oh my gosh, I'm not the only one.

Everybody has it. Yeah. Something I want to pick up on Kain is you mentioned in the group retreat, just the importance of voice and choice. For me, I, it was really like in my one-on-one sessions, recognizing how safe the body can feel once. It has, the evidence that its voice is gonna be honored and responded to was really very illuminating for me.

And I know in all of your work, in your books, like it's such a core theme. I think it's one of the three, three stool legs that you speak about is the voice and choice. And I just wanted to underscore that because I feel like in our society, the way we're. Often parented in families, like it's without a choice of what our body experiences and how revolutionary it can be in the reclamation of our erotic pleasure.

Yeah. Yeah, I think this is key, like how we, we use the word consent as oh, we need consent, but it's actually more than that. We have to go beyond consent because it's very common to consent. Unwanted touch or touch, like we consent to, I have a pelvic exam every year.

We consent to all kinds of touch exchanges. But we're getting practice every day in consenting to what we don't really want. Yeah. And if we are going to actually. Welcome each other's souls and cultivate this much more empowered and transformative relational and erotic experience. We have to go beyond consent and this like notion like to practice noticing what you want.

And then giving voice to it, and then having that expression welcomed by people who aren't going to hear your requests as a command. There's so much appeasing going on and threat management in the ordinary relational environment. That, somebody expresses something they want, either it's ignored or else.

And overridden, or else it's received as a command by someone who goes into appeasement and it's just oh, whatever you want, dear. And they're not in full heart with their gift of touch. I know you are. Empowered as I am by Betty Martin's work. And she's just done so much of helping us understand the subtleties of like where things go wrong and in in touch exchanges and practicing the three minute game that she developed and bringing those tools and understandings into our work has been so key for me.

Yeah. But I think, the appeasement or the fond response, I think it's not so well understood or acknowledged in our mainstream culture. Yeah. Certainly not within the field of sacred sexuality or sexuality and intimacy and yeah. I think. I was speaking to a psychotherapist who is African American, who's biracial, and those of us who were from marginalized cultures growing up especially are very good at the fond response just to, have a sense of belonging and not being ostracized.

And so it's really so important, I think, for. Us to recognize the fond response in ourselves because so much of consent could be a passive reflexive consent out of a fear of not belonging rather than a real authentic Yes. Yeah. And how key to bring these understandings of so much of how racism expressed is through non-consensual touch through sex, sexual violence, through sexualizing, sexual stereotypes and like these all come into play, when we come into.

Touch exchange yes, we need to name these dynamics and make them conscious and clear and like, how are we navigating this? And, unless we do that, like they're like, quick send, just pulling us down. Yes. And whether like in our own responses or how we're trained, to behave by the dominant culture.

Just like to navigate a social relational space where being racialized is endangering you and it's endangering you as a person with Asian ethnicity different from a black. Woman or a black man will be like, differently endangered. And there's all kinds of like really important stuff to unpack around what's going on in how the social space we're navigating and how we're trained. To show up in a, and we'll be blind to three quarters of what's going on. Yeah. That's why slowing it down and actually practicing and then getting even more curious and like having these day after day like experiences of actually having.

That welcome is so key. It is. It's so key and it helps. It just deepens our insights into our human species certainly expands our ability to connect, relate and into intimate with. The range of people we may want to, but also speaks to really being a holistic society, certainly as practitioners and as a field that invites all beings.

There's so many things I respect and really love about the institute that you've co-founded, the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education, because I feel like the training, I feel like what you've created and the structure and the pacing and interwoven the. Societal realities, like what you're speaking to, how race, how trauma of marginalized people affects, like our whole society.

It's interwoven through all of the curriculum really. I'm curious how 'cause you had mentioned moments ago that. After working with Joseph Kramer you, with his support, you started the first Canadian training program. I feel like there are things unique about the training at the institute.

I'm wondering what you feel like essential and where you see the field of somatic sex education moving into in the future. Because you've seen it sounds like the whole kind of evolution of it, in the last 20, 30 years. Yeah, I can only speak for the institute. We teach really differently in our training than somatic sex education is taught in other parts of the world.

And what we decided to do after, teaching in the old model for several years, I was just like, I can't teach this way anymore because it was very, like intense and like just threw everybody in a hopper for six months of super intense training. And then meanwhile, we're telling people and trying to teach them about the nervous system and how we need to slow down and we need to establish like a embodied sense of like safety, safe enough to be brave kind of feeling in the body.

And how that can only come like when we slow down and when we practice. And then we're just like going through this. Like so intense experience. So anyway i, we just decided that we had to design a different way. And so we designed a way where basically anyone can come in and take an online introductory program.

It's priced really accessibly, I think, and there's Bipoc scholarship fund as well. And then get. Introduce to the field gradually, figure out their relationship with it, do some of the practices, meet some of the different practitioners. Then we would have the intense like in-person experience but only for a week.

And then, people could self-pace themselves and then we would go into the. Old curriculum, which was more like the like high intensity do a whole bunch of body work practices. With guidance and curriculum evolved more by Joseph Kramer, which we've adjusted.

Partly, but for, that's our third course now. So like we're really trying to resource people with some slowing things down. And people can take the program over several years. That's some people are going, finish it in one year. But it's just in chunks where you can pace yourself.

Both, according to your nervous system, your, what works for your body and your learning to stay in your neural learning zone, but also your finances, yeah. I'm really proud of the curriculum that we've designed and the way that just feels like, oh, our students are just.

Magical beings that are finding us from all over the world. And I feel so excited by by what's what's evolving. There's the institute. Yeah. And yeah it's retiring next month, so I won't be teaching there anymore. But I feel like, oh it's really, good to go. And yeah the team that's there and the brilliant students and new leadership coming up, it's wow is right.

So next month is your retirement. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I need to ask you like, how are you feeling, Catherine, about retiring next month? Oh, I'm feeling all the things, a little bit scared, vulnerable, excited. I feel my, my spirit and my body is just demanding of me that I have more spaciousness and more peacefulness and just yeah, there, there's a definite.

I can't not do this. But it's also a little bit scary to, go from being busy and important to just being a has been so well being a an inspiring and inspiring pioneer and embodied vessel for. For life force to come through you in all of the infinite creative ways. She, I'm sure, can't wait to use you to paint her next painting.

I think it'll be really exciting. Kathryn, I've got projects and things that I'm doing and wanna do and yeah, so you might not have seen the end of me. That'd probably be another book or two, but but it'll be. Like related to this field and informed by it, but not. Not confined to it, ah, I see. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds very exciting. So not confined to it, but related to it so you can expand beyond what has been the field of focus. Yeah, it feels like there's other things calling me yeah. Oh, that's very exciting that freedom and sense of permission you're giving yourself sounds really exciting.

Yeah. And just, more time non-doing so. Yes. Absolutely. Kain, I really want to acknowledge the role that you've played in the field of somatic sex education. I think it's phenomenal just hearing your story. Thank goodness for all the challenges that you've experienced in your body and in the kind of social normative culture that has.

That has invited you to channel all of this incredible wisdom and discovery and create this structure for all of us to benefit from and to grow from and through as well. As I said, your books were really wonderful for me. As I was entering the field and there, there weren't, it's still a relatively new field, so your books were.

We're very instructive and very inspiring, and you're leaving behind this institute that is incredible. What you've done is you've created a, an institute with a curriculum and a pace that honors the where your students are at, which is what we do within sessions. So it's really a macrocosm of a microcosmic session and.

I'm excited to see what comes from you and through you next, but I'm so delighted to have you on the show at this juncture, to really acknowledge the incredible trail that you've blazed for all of us that are honoring the lineage that, that, that's been co-created for us. Rawhi I wanna thank you so much and just to say.

Watching you and learning from you in your webinars recently, the careful presence, the knowledge, knowledgeable touch, the really going at the pace of trust and like the embodied wisdom guiding you in how you show up with people and how like you offer. Work and then how you also teach, like you bring that as a teacher.

And like in our conversation here, it's really evident that yeah, it's like you're living the dream of being in a grounded nervous system and, being able to show up for others, like with this focused, loving presence like and to offer that through your knowledgeable hands. Yeah, I wanna thank you for being you and for Yeah.

Having this wonderful conversation and really to honor what you manifest and embody and how inviting that is for me, just as a human, but also as a teacher. And I understand that, and I love thinking of you as like a. A little boy receiving that kind of touch from your mother and the holding environment that you were able to receive and now can pass on to others that it's so profound.

And I think like when we integrate the erotic with that holding environment, it's oh, all of you becomes. Safe enough to be brave and to heal and to unfold like this. Not only our child self, that shows up always as we work with clients or as we show up in relationship, but then also our adult self our full erotic self.

And yeah. So I just wanna honor that and reflect that to you, like what you. You come in with and embody. So thank you so much. Thanks Catherine. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. To close out the podcast I'd like to see if there is a somatic exploration that may want to be led for our listeners.

Let's just tune in and see if there's something that wants to come forward. We spoke of welcoming the erotic as sacred life force energy, so I could just guide a little bit of a visualization to invite folks to do that if that feels like. Something they'd like to explore for a few minutes with us.

So yeah, I like to always begin by just feeling my feet on the floor and just noticing, maybe wiggling my toes and rocking back and forth a bit on my feet and just feeling like roots are going down from the soles of my feet down. Into the floor and into the crawl space and into the earth below, through the rocks and through the crystal layer and just feeling, seeking the heat and seeking the warmth at the core of the earth, and then bringing that up.

And you can use your breath or your imagination, or a combination of both. Bring some warmth up from the roots and missles of your feet and bring it up into your legs and bring it up to the top of your legs, into your pelvis,

and just feeling that warmth. Fill your pelvic bowl,

that bowl there as you breathe in.

And just noticing with your breath that there's a little expansion of that bowl.

Our pelvis is actually made to expand with every breath that we take in, and then contract a little bit with every breath that we take out. We can't always feel that, but we can always imagine that we feel that just breathing in and feeling the expansion and breathing out, and feeling the contraction and feeling the swirl of warmth from the core of the earth

swirling in the pelvis.

And then now if it feels right, and just bringing your thought, your awareness up into your hands, and reaching up into the sky

and wiggle your fingers, reaching up into the air, into the light.

And see if it feels right to breathe in through your fingers, some energy, and breathe it in down your arms, into your shoulders. Breathe it down into your chest. And a little bit lower into your belly and all the way down into your pelvis.

And again, just feeling the pulse of your pelvis as you breathe in and your pelvis opens, and as you breathe out and your pelvis. Contracts and comes together

opening with the in breath and contracting with out breath,

and letting the energy of the sky and the energy of the soil meet and swirl around there in that beautiful bowl of your pelvis. If it feels nice, you can use your hands to touch the outside of the bowl and use your awareness and your breath to massage the inside of the bowl and just noticing any sensation and welcoming it.

Welcoming at home.

And when you feel done, just coming back into connection with each other, me and Rahi, me, and Rahi and all of you, and just feeling the connection and feeling the swirl of energy in our pelvis.

Just rocking

and coming back into being ready and a little bit warmed up for whatever comes next for you. That's beautiful. Thanks so much, Catherine. That was really lovely.

Notice how you're feeling in your body right now.

What sensations are present in your pelvis and in your heart space?

Notice how blessed we are to have been graced by lighthouses such as kain and her creative and gracious life force.

I would love for us to consider sending Kain a blessing, a prayer, some good juju, a smile for her path as her journey continues to unfold. And if you happen to visit her wonderful site that honestly has so many amazing free resources, consider dropping her a note or perhaps an email about how her works may have affected you.

And maybe there are other angels that have supported your erotic embodiment as your sexual journey has unfolded. A teacher, a counselor, a best friend, a lover, or someone who inspired you with their example of healthy erotic embodiment, who encouraged you to explore your sexual nature without shame, who reflected back to you, your perfection exactly as you are.

How about we take a moment this week to express our gratitude to them as well?

 Thank you for listening to Your Body. Remembers Pleasure If this conversation supported you, the simple way to help this work reach more people is to leave a five star rating or a brief review. You'll also find more resources and teachings@rahichun.com. Until next time, take good care.