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 I'm honored to share a conversation with someone whose work I've admired for years, Dr. Saida Desilets. Saida is a pioneering voice in sacred and embodied sexuality with a PhD and decades of real world teaching. But what moves me most about her work is how it emerged, not from theory. But from her own fierce commitment to choosing life and pleasure after being given a death sentence at the age of 20.

In this conversation, we explore the origins of sexual sovereignty, why arousal and pleasure deserve to be celebrated as markers of health and how rewilding in nature can teach us to become better lovers. ATU shares practices for reclaiming erotic innocence, navigating shame, and the beautiful art of leaning into difficulty during intimate moments rather than avoiding them.

Whether you have three hours for practice or three breaths, this conversation offers pathways back to your own aliveness. Let's dive in. Okay, so today I'm super honored to be speaking with Dr. Saida Desilets. I've known of Saia's work for so many years, so I'll just share her bio, which is really an injustice to her live organism of work that's already, that's always vibrating.

So Dr. Saida is a pioneering voice in the field of sacred and embodied sexuality. With a PhD in sexuality and many, many years of real world teaching around the world, Saida guides women and by extension couples to reclaim pleasure, sovereignty, and erotic wisdom as integral parts. Psychologically and spiritually fulfilling lives.

She's the author of the Pioneering book, the Emergence of the Sensual Woman, and also the author of Desire, the creator of many immersive programs and trainings and pleasure, embodiment, sexual polarity, and. How to live a, a generative erotic life. She's a recognized leader whose work has been featured in major voices of women's health.

Wherever you find her in online trainings, wilderness Rewilding retreats or her writing, she's committed to turning the cultural messaging of shame, disconnection, and the commodification of sexuality on its head, and inviting us into a radical reclaiming and rewilding of our bodies, our desires. Thank you so much for being here.

I'm excited to dive into this. I got excited to meet myself too. When you read that, that's always a, that's always a good thing. Yeah. Has been really. Fascinating to follow, for those of you who've known you since you know, emergence and even before that, and so I thought a great jumping off point would be inviting.

I would love to hear from you about the evolution of your sexual aliveness because it's taken. So many turns and so many kind of rebirthing and, you know, yes. Kind of deepening layers. And I, I'd also love to know like how your own path of reclaiming your sexuality and body informs the core frameworks you teach.

Which, you know, which, which is obvious. Perfect. But I'd love to hear it from you. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I wanna start at the very beginning, which is my parents. And they, they conceived me in a really special way. Snuck away to a wood cabin where they had to hike in for kilometers in the French Canadian snow in the middle of winter, and there were no furniture when they got there.

So they lit a big fire and then they laid down their fur coats in front of the fire, and that's where I came in. Oh, so I like my beginnings. Yes. Then very hot. I was born into. So my why this is important, it really frames everything, is my parents, they, they were raised in very religious settings and they chose together not to bring any of that information to their own children.

They wanted to see what would happen if we didn't impose any ideas or ideologies or. Have tos and just created a safe space. So my mom said I essentially was born and came out and was self pleasuring like from the first. Wow. She's like, what is my baby doing? And so she then her and my dad made the decision, protect, create healthy boundaries but don't inhibit.

So I had from. Birth a young age, a really strong, connected relationship with my body. It wasn't in my being something that was sexual because I didn't know that concept. It was just, I'm connected to me. This feels nice. Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. By the time I was five, I had discovered a very special spot.

And I thought all my friends should know about it. So my very first teaching class in a little circle of girls in a basement, we were all five years old. I decided to model oh, where the spot was and I got in so much trouble. Oh, wow. When I was thrown out of the house and basically ostracized from my friends and called the Devil Spun Uhhuh.

I remember thinking in my head. I don't think she knows where that spot is. 'cause if she did, she wouldn't be this angry uhhuh. Right, right. So this sets the frame of, you know, Saida's personality, where pleasure is something just inherent and natural that others should know about it. And that, oh wait, the whole, the, the other world that's out there has this weird anger, strange fear relationship around this stuff.

So that started very young, grew up. A, uh, pretty violent First Nations reservation in Canada, and a lot was going on there. So my house where I grew up was a shelter for abused women. So I saw a lot as a kid, um, and got to hear stories. So this was all kind of forming me in a really interesting way, like.

So why the, the birth of something called sexual sovereignty, which now everybody's using, but when I was started to use that term, nobody was using it a long, long time ago, almost 20 years ago. So I believe it started there because I remember advising women, looking at them with like boot marks in their back and going, this is not love.

I don't know what it is, but it's not love. And I was very young, but I knew that inherently when I was 20. Fast forward. So I didn't have any problems with my own body or any, I had some strange abuses that did happen on the the reservation, but nothing that. Somehow couldn't contextualize and manage, but when I was 20, I had to had a violent experience in the Caribbean that led to being told I had two weeks to live.

It was, um, because I'd had a P, it's pelvic inflammatory disease. I got that from a. Rape experience and when you're 20, you think you're immortal. So being told that you have two weeks to live was a massive shock. It, it, it woke something up in me. Yeah. And clearly I did not, uh, yes. Go with my surgeon's verdicts.

Yes. And I defied that and I chose a very organic path. I'm like, no, I'm choosing to live. And I was led step by step. To the journey that I went on to reconstruct my everything. Amazing. And that's where the method that I'm teaching and empower other professionals to teach and you know, the public is exposed to came.

The origins of that came from. Having to face my own death. Yes. And then the reclamation, like, I don't wanna be, I didn't even think of myself as a survivor of anything. I just knew I wanted to thrive. Right. It wasn't until many years later that someone said, do you realize that you are a survivor of rape?

I'm like, oh, I never identified with that. And I think maybe in part, that really helped me in my healing journey because I was just more, I wanna live, I wanna thrive, I wanna feel good. And so. At some point in that journey, when I was walking on the streets or in a cafe or wherever I went, women would come up to me and say, I dunno what you're doing, but I, I just wanna do what you're doing.

Are you teaching something? And so that's where it started in Vancouver, Canada. And I remember my very first circle there and, and minutes before going, what the heck am I gonna share with these people? And then all of a sudden when it started, the container opened. It was like a voice of maybe an elder aspect of myself or a wise aspect or something integrated, something not childish came through that was so attuned to the group that knew things, not because they were concepts, 'cause they, it was from the inside outs.

Mm-hmm. And so I started to just share that way. But what emerged in the groups, as you know, you do this work, you open a little bit of a door and so much can come. That I realized this is a really profound space. This is not a space to mess with. It's not a space to titillate, it's not a space to bring kind of grandiose ideas to, I need to be really firmly here and in deep, deep service.

So at some point I decided I need to get certified, I need to get educated, I need, and then eventually had the PhD and since then, mm-hmm. Did more research. So the path really did me, if that makes sense. And it was profoundly informed first by personal experience and then probably tens of thousands of women by now, like really working with them.

Their bodies, their, their direct feedback. Because when you share something and they're like, nah. That doesn't land, or I don't feel it, or I have no idea what you mean. You need to feel into what's going on. And so that's how the method was developed. And then one day I just kind of tried to go, okay, what am I doing exactly and could I share this with others so that they could replicate it?

So that's kind of where I ended up with the embodied psychosexual method. Wow. There's so many points there that really stand out for me. Yes. I mean, SIDA, the fact that your parents were part of. It sounds like this religion, but they really intentionally protected you, you know, and kind of held, held a space for your organic life force to emerge as it wanted to.

Yes. Is so significant. You know, because it feels to me like, I mean, the way you kind of, you know, taught all the five-year-old neighbors, like what, you know, what this joy and life force available to them in their bodies, you know, at that young of an age that's like, that's like. You destiny, like in this little girl.

But it also sounds like you know the, you know, the shock that 20 to be given two weeks to live and to realize what's really vital in life and how you're going to treat, I mean, I'm just imagining for a young 20-year-old how that shapes your destiny is. Profound. And it's so beautiful that you kept listening, you know, for how that life force wanted to guide you and inform you, you know, and you know, like, as you said, tens of thousands of clients and women's and, and, and followers, you know, get to benefit as a result.

Um, I wanted to ask you about this because I've also spent time, um, with Master Montauk Chia and in the emergence book. Was, was, can you speak about like your healing journey in your young life? Was that an instrumental piece? Was that kind of foundational in your understanding of how to cultivate your own life force?

Good question. So yeah, a few, there were like probably three substantial guides that came through at that point. One was the, uh, the book, the Healing love book from Manta Chia. Yes. Just like, wait, I can, what's ovarian kung fu? Like, I didn't know what it was, but I knew there were something there for me. And then there was a Stephen Chang's, uh, book as well.

And then there was the Metu Netter, which is an Egyptian book and, and practices. And if you read it, if you understand it, it's all the same practices as the Taos practice. It's just that it's written in a way that if you don't understand, you won't get the practice. But if you are initiated, you can. It's like it's all there.

So I had those, those, the Taos Chinese influence at that time. And then the, the Metro, which is more Egyptian, and then my own background with Native American, you know, just those traditions. Yes. Uh. Being kind of like introduced like earth medicine traditions. Those all were very instrumental. In the beginning, and definitely there's strong Taoist practice that influenced In the beginning I did a lot of Qigong.

In the beginning, I did like, I think I was training three hours a day every day and never missed a day for the first three years. And after that I went down to maybe hour and a half a day, like another decade. And then, so practice has been a big, a big part of my life and which is why I'm such an advocate.

Walk your talk like, don't talk to me unless you've done it. Yes. People who tell me they practice five minutes a day, I'm like, that's just an attunement practice of like hello to the body. But it's not, you're not yet in the landscape of that body, right. That takes actually investment of attention and time.

So it's, it's a different language and I think that's what's given me the gift to feel into people's bodies very, very deeply. Where especially if there's been a lot of trauma. My work somehow existed before the words trauma informed came along. Yes. And so when trauma therapists have come into my work, they're like, wow, this is way beyond trauma informed.

If anything, it's like trauma transcended because it's, it acknowledges the journey we need to take to, to get to a place where we stabilize post-trauma, but it never takes people into possibility. And that's where my work goes. It kind of opens that door into possibility. And I think that's a really crucial missing piece.

Yes. Of the journey for, for a lot of us. Yes. Yeah, it is. It's very interesting because I wanna talk about, I mean, what you've witnessed as far as pleasure and erotic energy. I mean, you know, we use these semantic words to describe just different emanations of life force. Yes, it's all life force and aliveness.

And, but I feel like what's, what's very missing in trauma healing is the understanding of how pleasure brings aliveness to the body. Just as you're saying, beyond restoring and repairing trauma, but into like a whole other realm of consciousness. Absolutely. And, um, I haven't written this yet, but I'm, I'm in a deep contemplation around this for a while, and, uh, as you know, there, I have published some papers.

Like I, I like research. I'm a bit of a geek that way, but I'm also very much like an organic wild girl. So there's these, I hold, uh. Uh, the clinical application of arousal and pleasure, a paper on that because we avoid, I, I don't know why clinically we avoid, we don't discuss these things, but arousal is a sign that something like, say if the tissue gets engorged.

That's healthy. Why are we afraid of that? Why do do we make it wrong? Right? I've had pelvic exams and just the way in which, because my body's responsive, which is healthy. Yes, it gets touched in the pelvic exam and there's arousal. I don't wanna have sex with the person. Of course, they don't wanna have sex with me, but there's just this natural arousal.

I'm comfortable with it because I don't feel like every month. Moment of arousal means it's a sexual moment. Mm-hmm. Because I've learned that my body engorges and my body doesn't, and then it does. And then it doesn't. Yeah. So I wanna make a case for if arousal arises within these contexts, it needs to be normalized and celebrated.

Like, wow. Yes, it's your body, it's healthy. The tissue's engorging, everything's functioning really beautifully. Fantastic. Just some good feedback so that the person's not just lying there in a pelvic exam going, is everything okay? They're not saying anything. You know what's going on, right? And then the next level of that is pleasure and I know it's pleasure is a sign that the mechanism is in a good place.

'cause when you are in distress, you, you don't have pleasure. So something to pleasure. We're not meant to only have pain everywhere. That's just not the how we're designed. The nervous system is designed to also feel and enjoy and experience and expand upon pleasurable, easeful, delightful sensation. Yes.

And that is healthy information for all of you know, the immune system works better, digestive system works better, everything works better. When you have that ease and that delight and that goodness, yes, or what I like to call the yum part of life. Yeah. Yeah. And so I wanna make a case for that so that we can start not being afraid.

Because honestly, where people get hung up is not in the fact that it exists. It's the meaning that we put on it. Exactly. So if pleasure arises in a pelvic exam. It's the meaning we put on it that creates the shame or the weirdness or the badness. Or the inappropriateness, absolutely. But if we could contextualize it and as a celebration, look, you're functional.

This is amazing. Like it's actually, especially for women who've been through things or are a menopausal or something weird is going on with the body where they don't fully understand, but they can get that reflection. Look, you're still very juicy. Things are still responding be, these are sessions that I've done with a gynecologist with clients where you give, uh.

It's like there's a bit of cognitive dissonance between someone going through menopause and what's actually happening in their pelvis. So when they get the visual and then they're told like, look, this is engorging, this is healthy, this is moist, this is, you have pleasurable sensation. This is all fantastic.

All of a sudden they have to accept. Oh, maybe I'm not like old and shriveled and useless and you know. Right. All that stuff. Yeah. So I wanna make a case for arousal and pleasure and normalize these as very, very, this is the, the human being in its optimized expression. Yeah. I love what you're saying because what I'm hearing is that why can't arousal and pleasure the other markers and indicators reflecting good health.

You know, blood flow, tissue, engorgement, you know, sensitivity, all of those things, oxygenation of the tissue. You don't have pleasurable sensation without there being nitric oxide in, in oxygenation of the tissue. So all of these are good health, healthy markers. Totally, totally. And it's never, you know, I mean, sexual arousal and engorgement, it's never what, I mean, it's like what you do with what happens as well as, as you pointed out, the meaning that people place to it.

Yes. You know, like here in Los Angeles, we have a month, a bimonthly potluck, you know, at at our place for sexuality professionals, and someone was saying that in pt, in pelvic therapy. Mm-hmm. What they're taught is when a male client has an erection during a PT exam, they're required to leave the room and just the message that that sends.

You know, around shame around, you know, what it means around who's at fault. It's just, it's, it's, it's shocking. I remember being, I had many different jobs, uh, you know, in my life and one of them I wanted to do, I learned a style of massage. It was kind of a. Swedish style mixed with aromatherapy, with energetics.

It was just interesting witchy lady in Vancouver who was certifying people through this particular modality, and I really loved it 'cause it was the whole body, but not the genitals. They weren't like touched, but. They were included in the sense that it's part of the body. I'm gonna move something over, but I'm not gonna get upset about it.

But it was not a genital session. Mm-hmm. But it was very sensual. And what I wanted to give adults is it is possible to receive loving touch from a person without having to give anything back and without having it be the a sexual act. Because I feel like in adulthood, the only time we really get touched is if we actually have sex.

Yeah, the rest of the time we're kind of ignored. What I noticed though, is both men and women would get intensely aroused at times in those sessions. 'cause they were being touched with a lot of presence and connection and then we were breathing and so, and then my own natural sensuality like and relaxation around these things.

And then the aromatherapy, like all of that blended. Oh. And I remember telling the client, look, this might be, this may happen. Your body and it's welcome here, Uhhuh. Nothings going to come of it. I'm not going to engage with it. Mm-hmm. But also just breathe into it. Enjoy it. It's your body, it's, it's your body relaxing.

It's your own, you know, system being Yes. Saying, hey, hello, you're just. I, yeah. Yeah. It's a healthy response. It's a healthy response. And so if we can contextualize things properly and actually strip things, like if we have our own triggers, then we need to do the work, obviously. Yes. Like if we've been abused or, or the lines have been crossed and we need to uncross those lines.

Of course. Like we need to do that work. So we get very clear. But I have found. In desire, the book desire. I talk a lot about many phases of the erotic evolution, the first being erotic innocence, and I really feel as adults there needs to be a return to that erotic innocence where it's not always about like pornographic acts of sexuality.

Sometimes there's just. There's just turn on moving through the system and how lovely is that? And I get to breathe into that and take authority and ownership of that and make wise choices with do I express this now or not? And if I choose not to express it, 'cause it's not appropriate, I can still let it th through my system and enliven me.

I don't need to shut it down. So this is a big edge for a lot of my students. Is learning that categorically there is a gray zone between being completely switched off and completely switched on. There's a lot happening in between and it's in that in between that I think a lot of the aliveness cultivation needs to happen.

Yes, that's so well said that that. Yes. I mean, you know, as you're describing the style of massage, you were, you were facilitating, it made me, I'm sure a lot of those bodies for the very first time got to experience a very down-regulated nervous system and really healthy arousal. Yes. And I think that can, that's such a game changer for lovers.

You know, because our nervous for a lot of, for a lot of people, the nervous system is, is wired with upregulation and higher arousal states. Yes. And just separating that alone is, is is such a empowering freedom for a lot of bodies. Yeah. This is what I often refer to as a state of relaxed arousal. Yes. And relaxed arousal is, is crucial.

A lot of people don't understand it. They think we, we need to be like sympathetically aroused or we need to be. Mm-hmm. Relax, right? But it's like, no, there's is this, the dynamism between all of this information is what creates this beautiful aliveness. So yes, be alive, be aroused, be awake, be engaged, but be at ease with it.

Be in the state where the front body can soften and, and be spacious. Yes. With that experience. So, and then in states of relaxed arousal, so many. Other say, aspects of living and being become open and available to us that are not available if we're hyper-vigilant or kind of in that shutdown space.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Just so within a trains in the in between. Yeah. And it's just, it's almost like kind of a, a portal to a new realm of embodiment and connection and consciousness. I could geek out with you forever, but I do wanna ask you some pointed questions for our listeners. Right. I'd love to know Sida.

So in the Rewilding process, you know, many folks grow up, you know, as you mentioned, your, your parents, you know, with, with, um, religious influences or cultural influences where sex is wired or associated with shame or disconnection. I'd love to, for our audiences to get a sense of the work that you do and facilitate.

What are some. For, you know, initial internal or embodied shifts that you invite people into when they start reclaiming their erotic sovereignty and specifically around resolving the shame that they grew up with, because that's such a yes, you know, epidemic in our culture. It is. There's a course I did once called Shameless Surrender, and I, I unpack, I'm like, well, there's actually the purpose of shame.

Originally is really just, there's a sweetness to it in the sense of I wanna protect this person from, from bad things. So then if I shame them, then they're morally going to behave better and pay attention to things. So shame is used as a way to kind of keep people more conscious about their choices, but it doesn't work that way.

Mm-hmm. It's just, if you could see kind of the benevolent aspect of why maybe people project and put shame onto each other, so there's shamelessness or. Erotic innocence, the capacity to just be present with what is without right, wrong, good, bad, and then check in with the body. And is this a, is this a yes?

Is it a no? Is it, I'm not sure yet. And be able to just be at home with that process of how am I orienting myself that proprioceptive. In space, where am I in relation to life itself and the things around me? And then as I'm taking in information through my sensuality, which is how we all make sense of reality, right?

It's like without the senses, there's no. So turning up sensuality not down, especially women are, are taught that if we, we need to turn it down in order to be safe, that is a complete bs. That's part of the rewilding process. When you're in the wilderness, you have to have your sensuality on full blast.

You need all the information from all your senses coming in Unimpeded. 'cause that is what orients you to being in harmony with all the other beings that exist in that wilderness setting. Mm-hmm. Without that, you kind of clump around noisily and with ignorance and can cause a lot of chaos and even danger because you're, you're unaware and you're unreceptive.

So it's actually very key. For people to bring sensuality back online. Uhhuh. Wow. You know, I was gonna ask you about the Rewilding process, and you described it so well of being in the wild, in the elements of nature and really attuning. So you're working synergistically, you know, as an expression of that life force, you know, as opposed to being separate from or working.

Uh. You know, in conflict with it. Yeah. So the, the rewilding, a lot of it happens without words. So when I bring people into the wilderness, there's many days of silence. Very little instruction. I might give you one sentence, you know, a question to contemplate or something, but there is a, a little bit of animal communication training prior and, and other attunement processes prior.

But the most important is just to be there and really be there. No distractions. You don't have your phone, you don't have anyone else around you. There's new and foreign sounds because if you've never heard a. A wild lion roaring or a hyena or a leopard or an elephant, like they're all very like, wow, what are these sounds are very wild and intense, and finding your place in that and starting to recognize, and this is what I love about the wilderness.

You don't actually have an inner space. All those wild beings can read everything, all whatever you're hiding and holding onto. If it's anger, if it's fear. It's like emanating very loudly into the space and it gets immediately reflected back to you. So part of the Rewilding process is to realize, wait, I belong to life and if I belong to life, I am.

Okay. Just as I am right here, as I am and in that I'm part of this whole experience and I have impact, and therefore I actually deeply matter because every choice I make has a ripple effect and the choices that the other beings make. In and around me also have that ripple effect. And when you start to be attuned in that way, there's a synergy that happens and it's so gorgeous.

So I believe what happens when we're out there, which is super interesting, is the Prelingual self comes back online. And that's a really important part of the human being that needs to come back. 'cause that part has so much intelligence. It's so much intelligence. Mm-hmm. And attunement that's hard to explain.

Sure. Like a, a quick story. After I came back from the wilderness, this time I'm indoors in the house. I'm working on the computer to not wild things whatsoever. I suddenly. For no reason that I can think of at the time. Put my computer down, go immediately outside, walk to this weird part of the property that I've never been to before, find a turtle, trail in the dirt, follow the turtle trail, and then I look up just on time to see a really bad fire explode and no one had noticed it yet.

So I raised the alarm and like. We were lucky that we, you know, it got handled, but how did I know? And it's that level when you, when you reclaim your belonging to life, there's an attunement that happens that you can notice in animals. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They'll like seem to get weird around, you know, before tsunami or before storm.

And everyone's like, it's fine. What's wrong with my animal? Right. When you start to be attuned, then you also are like, you know what? I think I need to move or I need to go elsewhere or do something else. And, and then. Yes. Later. Find out why. Yes, yes. I mean, what I'm hearing from you Sida is, I mean, what you're describing is so profound and you know, is a reflection of how disconnected we are to the life force of the earth, the planet, the elements.

But what you're speaking to is an invitation for lovers to cultivate that attunement, to synergy and to another alive force. And so it's almost like the most incredible training to be a wonderful lover is being in nature in. And being inviting this synergistic attunement as one organism and to attune to the shifts and the changes and the desires of your, your environment.

It's interesting that you said that, 'cause I, I know you practiced Qigong or you did, or you are interested in that. And many, many years ago, I, I did a lot of different types of chi, but I remember a learning one that was. Kind of a difficult one, not a popular one, difficult, strange. And you had to do a lot of standing practice for a really long time.

And there was this moment where I started to understand, ah, the human being is the meeting point of heaven and earth. It's how the cosmos is actually making love over and over again is through us, through all the elemental aspects of who we are. And then I would start to have these ecstatic, cosmic kind of bliss orgasmic states.

Purely just standing there breathing as I was attuning to this kind of elemental experience that was happening. And I mean, you could ask my current partner, but every time I do, whether we're both together or I go on my own and come back, have time in nature. There's an element of the love making that's even more ecstatic and more present and more full of life, let's say.

Full of sparkle. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I can. I can totally see that. I wanted to ask you. In regards to that, since we're on this topic about sexual polarity. You know, in the, in the chara world, there's a lot of emphasis on cultivating your, your core polarity so that when you come together, those polarities really have a dance.

In your work, in your teachings, how, how is polarity introduced and like facilitated so people get in touch with their core, you know, core energy essences? It's an interesting question. 'cause on one level I'm not a big. Person for the superficial polarity information. 'cause I feel it makes people behave in really weird ways.

I'm like, just be, just do you? Right. 'cause when I hear someone saying, yeah, I need to be more feminine, it's like telling a lioness be more of a lioness. Like she's gonna look at you like you're, what is wrong with you? Yeah. Like. Yeah, I am a lions. I can't be more or less like I'm feminine. I can't be more or less feminine.

Uhhuh. My masculine energy can't be more or less, it's what it is. Uhhuh, do I access it? So when there's this element of people saying, oh, I don't have enough this. I'm like, no, you have it. You're just not aligned with your own version of it, and you're trying to be feminine, like, I don't know, this flowy white light goddess over here, and then there's this dark goddess over here and you're trying to like polarize yourself and like maybe you're ne neither of those, or maybe you're all of it like.

I don't know. So in some ways I stay away from feminine masculine words and I prefer, uh, receptive, active. I think that's a little bit more easy to understand in the energetics. Yes. And then say with my ladies, I will teach an advanced practice called the inner marriage, and that involves. Different channels of the body and kind of creating that inner marriage of blending different aspects of your own nature.

Mm-hmm. And through shamanic astrology, I explored a little bit the work of Daniel Gia, Mario. He says there's what, 144 different versions of the masculine and the feminine. There's a lot of aspects. So what I love about that though, what it says is. I cannot tell you, like, be like this, right? And, and then you're gonna be perfect.

Rather, I'd like to invite you into notice where in your being you are more receptive and have you practiced just allowing that part to be the dominant aspect of you in this moment. Can you really let yourself receive? And what does receiving actually look like? And maybe your, your experience of masculine is a receptive vessel, not a mm-hmm.

I play a lot with trying to dismantle like assumptions because everyone then tries to squish this wild being into this little cookie cutter. I'm like, now you're behaving very strange. And I always say like, data bots, like they stare at you because they're masculine and they want, right, right. And I'm like, whoa, dude.

Like, and I want flash on my titties or something just to kind of like, like how present are you gonna be now? Yeah, so, so there's this naughtiness that can come of me at times in these, in these spaces. But think about the way I prefer to play with it is can we self generate inside a, a space where, say the heart genital practice, where there's this beautiful energetic of the heart that's beautiful, energetic of the genitals, and you have the union of that or the.

You know, the psyche and the aero come together. You have the union of that. What, what is birth of that? It's a form of magnetism. To me that's far more exciting than polarity because now I'm like, I'm, I'm either drawing in as a magnet. There's this. Attractive cept quality to the magnet. But there's also a, a, a quality of pushing away and out and feeling into space.

Yes. Which is the active and sensorial aspect. Uhhuh. So that's a little bit how I play with that. So maybe I'm a bit not answering your question the way you wanted to. No, you are, you're, and you're answering it spot on. And I think it makes so much more sense. And I love, it's so refreshing to hear a, you know, um.

Someone in the se sacred sexuality field to speak about polarity in that way. Because, you know, to your point, the, the, the, the spectrum of masculine is so wide and feminine, 44 ways. I love that. And, you know, it, it is our, our invitation in this lifetime is to really align to what is true within our life force and how that shows up, you know, within these.

Yes. Yeah. I love it. I love it. And what's, what's interesting too, when you start to study different lineages is they sometimes flip flop the meanings of things. Yeah. So when you see the flip floppiness, then you're like, okay, well then what's true for me? Mm-hmm. At the end of the day. Mm-hmm. Because for some of us, the feminine aspect is actually more of a warrior lioness type, and our masculine aspect is more the nurturing father.

Energy. Yeah. So who knows? You know? Right. What is what and how is how. So the more important thing though is what is me and what does, what feels true to me? And where is it that I, I have pushback. Where is it that I'm like, that I feel seen, that feels real, that feels true. And you cannot know that if you don't marinate in your own essence.

If you don't really sit with that and then you start to track, that's attractive. That's not attractive. Well, what are you learning about yourself when you're seeing and feeling those things? Yes. Marinating in your own essence. Yes. So I love that. Um. I wanted to ask you Sida, you know, like a lot of listeners have, you know, you know, they're, they're, they're balancing work and raising kids and, and, and so forth and so on, and, and they're like, oh, I wish I could have three hours to have a Qigong practice, but you know, I've gotta find time where I can For folks like that, like you talked about the heart genital axis and this wonderful like, you know, discovery that happens when these two forces come together.

Are there some kind of Yes. Simple practices that you encourage people who feel like they don't have time because the consistency of practice is so vital with anything. Yes, yes. But particularly when it comes to energy cultivation. Well, there's, there's two answers to this. Okay. There's the how deep do you want to go?

Like how meaningful is this for you? How important is it? Because if you're going to learn, say how to play an instrument, the degree to which you devote. Time to learning that instrument and just having fun with it and discovering and expanding is going to kind of tell you, are you just a very basic guitar player that knows three chords, or are you the next Jimmy Hendrix?

Exactly, exactly. So it depends like. To what extent is this calling you? However, all of us are inherent practitioners, and the reason I wanna say that is we're all sensual. If we weren't, we wouldn't be able to make sense of all of this, and we all breathe. And so for me, the breath is one of the most, the greatest teachers.

It's the wisest teacher. It's telling you how to receive the world with the in breath. Mm-hmm. It's telling you every moment how to release. Let it go. It's done. It's complete. Yes. And so every moment is as if you want, is a practice literally in life. And so if you're really, really busy, just keep in mind, receive a breath, release a breath, that's it.

And you do that all day long. You will have done a lot more practice. Probably mm-hmm. Than if you had concentrated in five minutes to try and like squish something in. Yeah. Oh, I love that. It's so true. And I think the first point is really like, I wanna underscore that because I mean, obviously we all have choices to make in regards to how much time to devote to anything.

Yes. And how much to prioritize. I mean, it's really a conscious choice. So just for listeners to recognize like what, what you know are your choices reflecting your priorities? And how can you shift priorities to really make it a regular meditation for yourself? You know, because our life force is really the most important thing.

Yes. You know, like in our existence. Well, one way I like to play with it, again, I said the word yum earlier, but there's also the word yuck. Mm-hmm. And so. One of the things that I noticed with some of my clients, there's an obsession with yuck. There's so much energy spent focused on the yuck. Mm-hmm. And so I'm like you, I'm not gonna prescribe watching more news and.

Reading more research and mm-hmm. You know, all this kind of stuff. I'm gonna prescribe reading the Radiant Sutras. Mm-hmm. Listening to beautiful music being in the forest, because I want you to start training, flexing your capacity to notice the yum. Yes. And to take it in. And that is the practice. Because I think the greatest training right now that we humans can do is where we.

Paying attention. Yes. We're literally paying with our life force. Yes. So where wherever we invest. So is it overly focused on the yuck or can you move some of that attention intentionally to noticing the yum. And I know sometimes it's hard. There's a lot of stuff going on, but Yum is always available.

It's just a matter of where the attention can be. And sometimes yum might be you're in a traffic jam, your car's not moving, but there's some nice sunlight coming through and it's warming your skin and you open the window and maybe you're, you know, on that Pacific Highway, wherever in LA Yes. Yeah. PC and there's a, there's the sea breeze smell.

And so suddenly, yes, you're stuck in traffic. There's a nice smell. There's warm sunshine. You are taking some deep breaths. Yeah. And maybe you turn off the news and you put on your favorite book, or your favorite poetry, or your favorite songs or music. Yeah. And you start cultivating some yum in the midst of a stressful experience because you're in that traffic and you gotta get somewhere.

Now what you're doing is you're practicing taking ownership authority. Autonomy, sovereignty of your own moments of life, because otherwise you're just a victim to everything that's happening around you. And I really believe we're a choice with that. Mm-hmm. That's something that we're a choice with is the noticing and the propensity to focus on you.

Not enough on yum. Focusing more on that. And then for a lot of people, especially I find for ladies. They're very resistant to name what they would love. They're very good at saying what they don't want, but they're not willing to vocalize what they would really love. And sometimes I, I'm even. And can be one of those people.

Yeah. Yeah. Because there's such a vulnerability. Because if I were to say it rocky out loud, there's a chance I don't get it right. And that is like devastating to me. Mm-hmm. But if I'm unwilling to turn my attention to the yum. And all I'm left with is paying attention to the things I really don't like and I don't want.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which I get more of every day. So this is the practice that I think is very practical. You can apply it anywhere, in any situation. Receive a breath. Release a breath. Mm-hmm. Oh, I'm noticing a lot of yuck. What is the yum available in this moment? Okay, here it is. Tuning into that and allowing myself to take.

One, two breaths. Just thank you. Okay. Now I'm gonna focus back at this difficult experience that I'm having right now, but now I'm more me, I'm more centered. I, I'm more attuned. I can face it differently. Yes. Sida, what you just described, I think is like a life lesson. You know, it, I mean, I'm sure you know the Buddha or someone, I mean, it's like, it's one of these things that, that we all need to remind ourself of.

We are at choice in any moment, and I to bring it to, you know, sexual intimacy, I, I, people really focus on what's not working, you know, as opposed to what is working and even within a lovemaking experience. You know, it could be, you know, wonderful love making, but then something happens and then suddenly like the whole world's crashing, when in fact, leading up to it, it was amazing, you know?

Yes. Yeah. And so, you know, like with like with with clients who experience something like that, I always encourage them, you know, if something doesn't go well, you know, return to what feels good, you know, in the moment so that, you know, otherwise there's this kind of anxiety that starts building up. You know, that's something that, what went wrong, whatever that is for.

Mm-hmm. You know, the, the meaning making brain, you know, gets to become this mountain. But I love that. I love that. It is, it is like a core life lesson. I would love to share something personal for a moment. Oh yes, please. Around, around love making and around difficult moments. One thing I love, you know, my partner.

Yes. And how he is and how he moves has really given me a opportunity to be even a more expressed human in this realm. I was already expressed, but the way that he's, these gifts that he's brought in. Yes. And one of the gifts he's brought in is, please, SIDA, you need to tell me if something isn't feeling nice.

Uh, or if you have even just a moment of discomfort like you need to tell me instead of like breathing through it or gritting your teeth, or whatever it is. So that was a new experience for me. Not in the telling, because I would often express like OW or something like that. Yeah. But in the now, he's noticed that I'm even guiding him to stay present with.

So when we feel something slightly off, we don't avoid it. We lean in, we vocalize like, oh, something's. Feeling a little funny here, or my heart or whatever. And then we lean in, we breathe, we pause, we feel into it. And as we breathe and feel into it, the thing that was momentarily ago, a problem becomes actually blissful.

Wow. And we've done this so many times that we've training ourselves. That challenge or an interruption or a difficulty is an invitation. Yeah. Into more beauty, into more connection, into more pleasure. If we're willing. Together to not avoid it, not poo poo it, not make it bad, wrong, all these things, but just like be with that.

And I just find that rather extraordinary. It is extraordinary. What you're describing is, is there's so many things that that describes, but one of the things is the genital disarming process. You know, it's like if there is some sort of armor, it's almost the cellular tissue. Kind of having a marker for the body owner to say, Hey, let's look at this.

There's something to look at here. And the way that, that you and your beloved can see it as an invitation and be with it. And it, it allows it to have the attention that it's wanted, you know? Yeah. And then metabolize as a result. And then there's so much more pleasure and. Spaciousness on the other side, and it creates more trust so that if something arises the next time around, you're both a tiny bit more confident.

Like, we can go here now. Yes. And so then maybe it's not a physical thing that's going on, maybe it's an emotional thing that's going on, but now you've, because you've done it in, in the embodiment process, then through the body you can also sit with the emotional maybe little. Niggle that's happening over here and just be with it and breathe into it and allow it.

And so we've both been really learning like, okay, here's how in that space we can attend to this piece instead of avoiding it or making it wrong or pointing the finger or any of those things. So that creates even more trust and and connection. So I really love to that I'm still to this day, learning and growing.

As you reflected back to.

The beauty of the simplicity of that. Like, Hey, you know, did you know that you could just lean in towards the thing that feels like an owie and that that point of that greatest pain or that moment in your life that was really hard can become a point of power for you? And that's been a huge part of my transformational work with people.

I feel like that brought us full circle. You know, like I was like really curious to hear about the evolution of your, um. You know, body of work and your own personal sexual aliveness. And I feel like that's really what you've been doing is, you know, you've been leaning in to examine, be with, make love with, you know, like embrace all of the areas that are full of lessons and it's just continue to, you know, support your evolution.

You know, not only in your own aliveness, but in your partnership and in your work. I, I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, it's beautiful. How can people find out about you and connect with you? Sure, so there's the university that Aaron and I created called Embodied Love University.

Basically the front facing is free for everyone. You just need an email address and what's available at that level. We we're like, what are the five foundational things that could help raise humanity's bedroom iq? So we make available those five foundations, and then there's. The free part of the podcast and then the whole bunch of free little mini trainings people can really learn and grow, and we've gamified that.

Of course there's some paid membership levels. If you also just wanna find me directly, then my name, kind of anywhere, Dr. Saida Desilets on Instagram or LinkedIn or Yes, wherever. Um, and then Dare Your Desire Do com is like my older website. That's just kind of me, but the Embodied Love universities. Then you one.

Embodied Love University. That's terrific. So we're gonna have all the, um, links in the show notes. Saida, it's been such a pleasure to connect with you. Thank you so much for being who you are, for really attuning to how the life force wants to move through you and, you know, like helping. All your audiences, your students, everyone else, your readership, now students at the university cultivate that sense of attunement and interconnection and aliveness as well.

It's really been fun to watch your evolution and thank you. Um, give my best to Aaron, please. Absolutely. And also to your partner for me and from Aaron. Yes.

How is this episode landing for you and your body right now? Are there ways you can explore being a choice in where you place your attention risk, naming what you truly want and normalizing your arousal and pleasure as healthy expressions of being alive? Are there ways you might lean into moments that feel challenging, whether in your love making, your partnership or in your daily life?

Trusting that what feels like an owie can evolve into a point of extraordinary power and delicious pleasure. Ling's to ADA's work at Embodied Love University, dare Your desire and to her book's desire and the emergence of the sensual woman can be found in the show notes. If this conversation supported you in any way.

A simple way to help this work reach more people is to leave a five star rating or a brief review. You'll also find resources and teachings@rahichun.com. Until next time, may you find your own practices for returning to aliveness, whether that's three hours or three breaths, take good care.