If you stroke my arm, like, I can feel that in my in a way that if you touch my right away, nothing's gonna happen. In fact, the opposite is gonna happen. We take a couple of deep breaths And release. And then we've switched our point of view from the outside to the inside. Beautiful. I'm Celeste. And I'm Danielle. And we're the founders of the Somatica Institute. And the creators of the Somatica Method of sex and relationship coaching.
We created the Somatica Method because we know that intimacy is at the heart of human longing and fulfillment. I see couples thinking, well, I have all these things to do. Sex is trivial, and it doesn't matter, and I'll just put it on the back burner, and I don't really need it anyway. And then you see them drift apart. I think many times, especially women, don't wanna have sex because and you call it vaginism.
So, like, you know, lack of interest, like, they don't feel that level of arousal, mostly because they're actually not getting, well, there are a few reasons. One is it reduces motivation for sex if you don't get what really turns you on. Where is kind of the beginning part of the roadmap of of really healing the, you know, from a, say, body image imbalance here? Takes practice the same way that we practiced unconsciously.
People often think of it as passive, and we really teach active receiving. Okay? Active receiving is where you you aren't just, like, laying there, like, hoping something will happen. I remember I was trying to help a woman orgasm for the first time, and I was just like I was like, okay. So how would you start? You know, she had her clothes on and everything, but she was just, like, touching her body. And she's just lying there, and she's like, yeah. I feel bored. And I'm like, yeah.
I would be bored too. Sometimes the only thing that makes me cum is, like, both the the because I'm making them and the in my that I make because I'm actively going towards them. I'm going towards them. So it's not gonna be like an overnight of unworking it, but I do think that the place to start Before we jump into today's episode, I wanna make sure that you know about my libido quiz at libidoquiz.com. This is a free quiz I developed to help you identify missing root causes of low libido.
When you take this quiz, you will be then given, you'll be sent information specific to your quiz answers, including the top tasks that may help diagnose and figure out why you have low libido that your doctor may not be ordering for you, as well as additional tips and tricks to support healthy libido, desire, intimacy, and so much more. So you can find that at libidoquiz.com. Hey, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of the Libido Lounge.
I'm your host, libido expert, doctor Diane, and we have a juicy episode here today for you. We're talking about body image, sensuality, how your body image can impact your sensuality, how sensuality can actually heal, help you heal from any body image imbalances or mental, you know, thoughts you have that are not serving you in this way. And to help us have this conversation, I'm very, very excited about our guests you just heard about the Celeste and doctor Danielle.
So as you just heard, they're the the cofounders of the Somatica Institute. And we're gonna get really juicy today and talk about these things that I think are so common. Right? So common, especially for women, but I think for men both. And and so let's just start ladies, if we can. Let's just start with why the heck are we in at this point? We're in 2025. Right?
We're at a point where this is not the first time that anybody has heard that, you know, we have to love our bodies and be kind to our bodies and all these things. Right? So why are we still in 2025 at a point where this is such a struggle for so many of us? Yeah. I feel like we still get so many messages out there.
Imagery, you know, messages saying, like, you have to look this way and you have to look young forever and you have to your body has to be a particular shape and size and weight for you deserve any sort of joy and pleasure. So we're bomb we're bombarded, which is why it still happens.
And we need to be able to create like an internal sense of self and pleasure, in order to like, you know, stave off all of those constant messages that we get and to actually just realize that we can claim our pleasure right now, and we don't have to be perfect or feel perfect in order to do that.
Now I know some of our listeners might be thinking like, okay, like, I hear that and I've worked on, you know, I've worked on my body image and I work on opening a magazine and, you know, not comparing myself to that woman in the magazine and all these different things.
What about though, do you guys feel that there's still a level for many of us that there's almost like this subconscious thing, where we we think we've done a level of work around like, okay, I'm not gonna identify with that girl in the photo who's been airbrushed and photoshopped and all the things. But you think that we can have then this almost, like, deeper level of, wow. Like, I didn't realize I had a body image issue until somebody put their hand on my thigh, and I cringed, you know.
How much of this is like happening consciously versus subconsciously, I guess is my question. Yeah. So I think it happens both ways. It happens consciously and subconsciously and there's a little bit of a way of like we are trying to work on that in a cognitive way. I think that's not helpful. It's not helpful enough. I think like it's one thing to start to compare yourself to magazines and get and see different imagery, which is super important.
It is very important to relate to different kinds of bodies because then you can find yourself in those bodies as opposed to just one kind of body. But the imagery is not getting much, much better. It's still kind of like the same with maybe here and there, there are fringe options. But I think the real thing that can help help helped me and can help other people is to start to develop like an inner experience of your body that's not just about the look.
We're not like clothes hangers that walking around is supposed to look in particular way, but it's more like wow like maybe I'm gonna look at my body as something that feels and experiences and have sensations and really enjoy things and not just like the way that I and then start to apply it to the look, like like kind of like developing a look from the inside from sensations as opposed to developing a look from the outside. So I wanna go into that a little more.
One of the things I said when we were, you know, just chatting for a few before we started recording here, is that this this concept that I see in my work of, wow, people try to be intimate, and we can't experience so many times orgasm or pleasure of any kind. If we're worried around like, well, how do I look in this position? Or is my belly hanging out here? Do my thighs look big?
And, you know, it's really, really difficult, if not actually completely impossible, to enjoy pleasure if we're worried about all this. And I hear in what you're saying some level of we need to get out of our just as, like, kind of trying to heal this just with, like, the mind and thinking, okay, well, I'm not gonna compare myself to the image. It sounds like the the process that is moving more into the body and the experience. So am I hearing you correctly?
And if so, can you explain that a little more? I wanna do one better than explain it. I want us all I want us all to try it right now. Oh, even better. That is better for sure. So so I feel like it's so easy to sort of feel ourselves. Like, we we're looking around all the time. We're in this external world, we're getting all of this input. And then we can also switch to our internal world, and we can actually do it pretty quickly and efficiently. So I want us to do it right now.
Here's how it goes. We take a couple of deep breaths. And we start to feel our pussy. Just notice your pussy is there, part of your body. I almost wanna feel it, like like, and relaxed and softened to the world first as we continue to breathe. And then on the next breath, we're gonna take a little hello squeeze. Squeeze the muscles as you breathe. And see if you can feel the pleasure of the sensation and then release. And another squeeze and focus on pleasure.
Imagine it flowing from there through your body. And release. And one more, just wake up. Hello. I feel myself on the inside. And release. And then we've switched our point of view from the outside to the inside. Beautiful. Beautiful. I, I love the activity so much. I feel compelled to bring up something that some of my listeners have heard me say before, which is when I when I snowboard, I sometimes do this activity with one of my girlfriends where we snowboard with our pussy leading.
So I'll be like, so that's kind it's kind of, like, exactly what you're talking about the exercise of saying, okay. Well, on this run, dropping first into feeling her. Right? And then imagining that the movement, that every turn, that the that connection is actually coming from that as kind of the focal point. So, this just brings me to my question, which is like, okay.
So taking what you did, do you teach and do you focus on ways where it's like, okay, outside of almost as meditative visual state, can we begin to have these experiences like that and bring it in more to, like, washing the dishes and showing up at work? And, you know, how does this work from, like, a day to day incorporating, leading from feeling my body type of way? Definitely.
And, you know, we call it decompartmentalization of sexuality because it is, you know, like we think that sex is just this thing we keep for the bedroom, but like, let her let's have like a pussy be our guide, our like, you know, like compass. You know, like she is leading me about like, oh, what do I feel wearing today? Or how do, you know, like, do I wanna move my body? Or what do I feel like eating?
Or how do I you know, like, she is like she's my you know, I move from my pussy the same way that you describe the snowboarding. Right? So I really think it's like the way we absorb our body image is just a habit. Know, we heard about it. We heard we drill, drill, drill. So we need to undrill it and start putting in some new practices that will allow us to connect with our body and with our experience of ourselves in a different way. I love it. I love it.
And then so my other question is in thinking about the, you know, kind of the science behind this. I'm a I'm a scientist at heart, really, because I really find that when people understand some of, like, why this is happening, sometimes if there's, like, a little resistance to, like, okay, this is interesting. Leave with my pussy. Drop into my pussy. Feel my pussy. Like, all those, sometimes they can be like, what is this gonna do? Right?
So can you explain, like, kind of, like, almost from the the mechanism perspective, like, how dropping and feeling into our bodies, into our anatomy, into our, you know, our pleasure centers, how that is then connected to repairing, you know, the body image. I do feel like so much of it is about our hormones, like the hormones that get released when we're in high states of pleasure, when we're having orgasm, when we're squeezing those muscles and feeling the sensations move through our body.
We're like releasing endorphins and oxytocin. We're doing it with ourselves, and we're loving ourselves more when we come from that inside place and that embodied sensation based place. And we're doing it with our partners when we create this loop of pleasure between us. Right? Then we're having all of the sensation and pleasure that we can share and the feedback.
And I think one of the things that I really want to say, you know, is a lot of times we feel like we have to do these things all by ourselves.
But I think it's great to like really get the feedback of other people, like helping us raise those hormonal levels and giving us pleasure and taking in how much they desire us instead of like oh is do I look good do I look good it's just like wait I see desire coming at me from all over the place I must look amazing And all and that loop actually releases those hormones as well. So that combination just for me it just is what it's what balances my brain.
It's what makes me you know live to fight another day. It's really It's really those that hormonal level keeping that high by being connected to our bodies. And just again to keep reinforcing what Silas said like in letting like allowing and like keep reinforcing this lending strip in our body that says, like, yes. That feels good. Yes. I can take it in. Because what do we see? What do we tell? Like, let's think about, like, the average person.
Like, you know, like, when we are hearing a compliment, we're just like, oh, no. They didn't really hear it. Oh, thank you. But not really letting it in. And I was like, I wanna I'm like, yeah. I wanna get it in. I wanna take it in. I'm building my lending strip to be luscious and open and available and say it's almost like we learned we're not supposed to take it in and we're supposed to be miserable in some way. And I was like, let's be greedy. Let's take it in.
Let's show ourselves as this good compliments and positive sensation because who said we have to like buy into the other story? Yeah. Yeah, it's the the art of receptivity is like, it's so crazy to me sometimes how hard it is to literally just be okay with just being in the receiving. You know, it's it's so easy to receive a compliment superficially, like you're saying, and then just, like, instantly be like, oh, and then, like, give a compliment back. And that's, you know, it's great.
It's great to be, you know, reciprocal that way. But I think so often, we're, like, we're just so quick to kinda get out of that state of rest receptivity versus, like, taking that moment to be like, wow. Yeah. That feels really, really good and actually completely allow that energy in before we move into whatever, you know, whatever else we're moving into. I know one of the things that that you ladies talk about is this concept of pleasure being a birthright.
And I know in talking to people, like, sometimes it's so easy for people to just be like, well, I'm not that interested in sex. That's just not what my partner and I do. It was great in the beginning. It went away. We're fine now. And, you know, what do you have to say to that in in response to also this this idea around, this is a birthright. This is healing. This is everything that you've said. So so why is pleasure a birthright, and why do you think we, like, deny it so often?
In our culture, what we really have is a work ethic. We think the only thing that makes us valuable is these sort of, like, particular external achievements. And, you know, I believe in a pleasure ethic, and it's really, I think, what makes life more joyful and interesting and exciting and fun. I think we'll still get plenty of work done, especially if we're having much more fun doing it.
So, you know, to really go into that birthright means to let go of some of this idea that the only thing that gives us value is sort of, like, this kind of productivity. I think a lot of times I see couples thinking, well, I have all these things to do. Sex is trivial, and it doesn't matter, and I'll just put it on the back burner, and I don't really need it anyway. And then you see them drift apart. Hey, everybody. Quick break out our episode to talk to you about our sponsor, My Libido Doc.
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Because there's none of this exchange of, you know, connection and intimacy and hormonal balance and and all of those nice sticky, hormones and connections that we that we really need to keep that. But the work ethic gets in the way of this birthright and this pleasure ethic. And, and I think we would get so much more done if we really focused on how enjoyable the the moments of sensation and and playfulness and fun are. I agree. I agree.
I, I do a lot from a work perspective with setting goals and that sort of thing, but within the context of, like, anytime I set work goals, I also set pleasure goals. And my friends know this enough that they'll check-in and be like, how are your pleasure goals being? How are they going? Right? Because I find the same thing. It's like when we can get into that space and we can create from that space, I'm getting work done. It's like, we all get work done. That's just that's who most of us are.
It's like gonna be part of our lives. Right? But to have pleasure as a huge component of it, I think is a, you know, it's a really important, piece of this. So what about things like numbness? Like, you know, because I do see that that vaginal numbness is a very fairly common thing, sometimes from trauma, sometimes from hormones, sometimes just with aging, sometimes from lack of interest. There's so many different reasons for this.
So where does your work come in with helping people heal from any sort of vaginal numbness? Yeah. And I think I think many times, especially women don't want to have sex because and you call it vaginal numbness. So like, you know, lack of interest, like they don't feel that level of arousal mostly because they're actually not getting well, there are a few reasons. One is that they're not getting the sex that they want.
They're getting like some sex that doesn't mean that that's what turns them on. And they're not like because we're trained that sex is not for us in, you know, in societally. So we don't go on an exploration of pleasure for ourselves. We do it to satisfy our partners. So that creates like, you know, a lack of libido is just around the corner. I'm not talking about hormones. Hormones have their own issue that I think deserves some, you know, special mention.
But definitely people are not even like, you know, like we're eating from a kidney meal. We're not eating for the full potential gourmet French meal that we can get. So it reduces motivation for sex if you don't get what really turns you on. So then, okay. So another question that I have for you ladies is, so we're doing an exercise like this somatic exercise we just did. Right? And that was around our pussy. But in waking up the whole body, right?
Because I think so many times too, one of the problems we get into with intimacy and sex is we are just thinking penetration. And when I ask people, when I have, like, teach live classes and I ask people, like, when I say sex, what's the first thing that comes to mind? It's always intercourse, penetration, and intercourse, penetration. Right? That's what everybody thinks of. And, you know, sex for a lot of us is, like, so much more than just this this penetrative type of act.
It's a pleasure filled event of so many different of waking up ourselves in so many different ways. So what's, like, the process you guys take people through around, like, oh, wow. Maybe we're gonna get out of just thinking about sex from a standpoint of penetrative only and and really begin to experience pleasure from, like, a multifactorial, you know, multicellular type of way.
I do feel like we don't, we don't teach people about women's bodies and the ways that our bodies need a lot of all over body touch and warm up. I know when I'm with a new partner so quickly, I feel them trying to go to my genitals and touch them right away. And when they do that, I'm just like, there's nothing happen. If we wanna talk about numbness, like, she's not awake. I'm like, you kiss my ear if you stroke my arm.
Like, I can feel that in my clitoris in a way that if you touch my clitoris right away, nothing's gonna happen. In fact, the opposite is gonna happen. And so it is really, about educating our partners. And also, I think as women, what we don't realize is that our arousal curve does take longer. We we need more warm up time.
I think everybody does well with more warm up time, but we really need it in order to get to the heights of our pleasure, whether we're having intercourse or oral sex or none of the above, manual, playing with our vibrators. But to take the time to really feel and touch and smell and, like, all over body touch and kissing. And and and also, I think a lot of times women feel like, I'm supposed to be giving back right away.
I really teach my female clients to focus on their sensation first, get connected to their pussy, touch their own body while their partner is touching their body. It's like, let's team effort this. You know? Because because I know that my partners want to get me to my highest level of arousal. And if I'm worried about them right away, that's not gonna happen.
And so there is this focusing, this self focus that needs to happen that I think a lot of us feel guilty or bad or, like, we're supposed to get turned on faster than we are. And there's a lot of pressure around that. So slowing down and focusing on self is so important. Yeah. I mean, I think that to me just goes back to the concept of rest you know, receiving that we were talking about around.
Okay. Even when we are being touched sensually, it's like really allowing to feel that before we quickly move into, okay, now I gotta give you pleasure too. And and you're right. I think we do so easily just jump so fast and and ignore that. So so where do people start? Right?
If I if the the, say, block is around something like body image, and if people are experiencing that they go into a sensual experience and they're either in their head around, like, being touched or how they look or they're like their, you know, hand touches an area of their body, they feel trepidation around, and they feel themselves, like, pull back and almost, like, have this inability to receive. Do they go straight to an exercise like you taught us?
Like, where is kind of the the beginning part of the road map of of really healing the you know, from a, say, a body image imbalance here. Yes. I wanna say that it definitely, you know, like it's been years of us, like, working with that, you know. I mean, like, it's like we get those messages really early on. So it's not gonna be like an overnight of unworking it. But I do think that the place to start is really we created two special classes.
I just wanna say, you know, like, one is really about erotic embodiment and the other one is about body image. And I think this combination of those classes where you kind of go and practice. It takes practice the same way that we practiced unconsciously taking the negative messages. We want to practice consciously creating a positive loop in our nervous system. That's kinda it's also like that's the way it works on the nervous system level. Right?
We are retraining a body to enjoy pleasure in every level in the embodiment class. Have like so many ways to take in pleasure and to bring it all the way down to your pelvic floor and how to like keep building and reinforcing those circuits in the body.
And then like in the body image class, we talk a lot about like how to, you know, like re create a lending strip, how to put boundaries when people tell you stuff that you don't wanna hear and like really like how to start enjoying yourself, how to face the mirror and love what you are seeing there because it's coming from this place of like my my body's superpower, and not just like, I'm just like this this thing that like I'm not matching exactly what the
journals or the, you know, tells me I'm supposed to look like. Can I add something also? Which is this idea of receiving. I think people often think of it as passive, and we really teach active receiving. Okay? Active receiving is where you aren't just like laying there, like, hoping something will happen. I remember I was trying to help a woman orgasm for the first time, and I was just like I was like, okay. So how would you start?
You know, she had her clothes on and everything, but she was just, like, touching her body, and she's just lying there. And she's like, yeah. I feel bored. And I'm like, yeah. I would be bored too. You know? Like, nothing's happening. And so I was like, here's what it looks like when I masturbate. And I start, like, squeezing my muscles and moving my legs and breathing and, like, touching my body and making sound. And, like, this is not a passive process.
This is like we've gotta go towards the pleasure. We've gotta make sound. Like, sometimes the only thing that makes me come is, like, both the noise, the the experience of making a noise, and hearing my noises that I'm making because I'm actively going towards pleasure sounds. I'm going towards pleasure movements. So I really want people to start to think about, like, receiving as an active process. Even when I touch people, I'm touching for my pleasure.
Like, I'm feeling the flesh to turn me on. You know? So that's something that I like to teach, women to do. Yeah. And then it's also like sorry. I'm labeling, like, off, like, hitting off each other here. And then also it creates a much more motivation for a partner to keep giving us because then it creates this, like, flow of erotic energy between us. So, like, we are responding to their touch. So they are more motivated to give us more touch.
So it's kind of like self reinforcing and mutually reinforcing. Well, you guys are really setting me up for the next question that I wanted to ask you anyway. So this is a perfect lead in. So thank you. And I and I agree. It's like when we're talking about like that active pleasure or active receiving versus passive receiving. It's not like we're laying there like a, you know, like in corpse pose or, you know, Shavasana just kind of like spacing out. Right?
There's so much more happening to that. My question here is this is, and I'll give you a little backstory around I was healing from a relationship many years ago when I went to a therapist. I had said something to this therapist around. Was like, well, you know, I want to make sure that I am, like, totally healed from this relationship before I start dating again. And the therapist had told me something that nobody ever told me before that, but I thought was profound.
And and she's like, in order to heal from a relational thing, you do that in relationship. And so and it was very interesting to, like, take that into my next partner and to just really be like, oh, yeah. If I get triggered in this partnership based upon my past, like, now it's bringing up this moment for me to actually heal that I couldn't have healed because I wasn't having those triggers come up that I didn't recognize. Right?
So my question for you kinda comes from that and thinking about this from, like, a, you know, healing body image and learning how to be receptive and all of this. Like, how much of this work do you think then from a, you know, somatic experiences work that we can do alone versus, like, hey, we really need to have this partner here to help us, you know, heal? Yeah. Yeah. I think Our whole method is basically based on that belief system. Like, we we work with our clients and we train our coaches.
We teach them how to be relational And, you know, and we do go into erotic and emotional intimacy with our clients within the boundaries of the method. And we do that as a way to actually, like, maybe touch on some of those triggers and they become activated in the relationship. And then we can work on them in a very safe container where the focus is the work because sometimes you're not totally ready to bring it to a partner.
You're too scared or you're too wounded, but you do need a place where you can practice inauthentic intimacy to create that safe, we call it the relationship lab. And nothing is perfectly safe, right? But it's like safe, a safer space where some of those feelings can come up and you can process them with somebody who's really present and connected with you.
Yeah, and just to add to that, like you can't, you can't heal body image just with your own, you know, because then you go out, you need to create some sort of like immunity. You need to create experiences that you're going out because you can tell yourself so many things that which is amazing. You keep do telling yourself all the good things in front of mirror. That's fantastic.
But then, like, it's also like go out there and then first learn to listen to the good stuff that people tell you and take it in. And then, like, keep asking people to tell you good stuff. Like why just ask people for criticisms? Yeah, yeah, tell me more. What do you like about me? Yeah, yeah, I wanna hear more. You don't really take it in, you know. It's okay to tell people if you have something bad to say, don't tell me. I just want to hear the good stuff that you have to tell me. So yeah.
Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think it's really beautiful because I think so many times we're in this world of trying to heal ourselves and it's so isolating and alone. And a lot of the times, it doesn't work to do it that way anyways. So we don't have to be alone in this. Yeah. Remember the first time a partner ever said, I love your thighs. And I have to tell you, like, I grew up in a time when thighs, you weren't supposed to have them at all.
They weren't even supposed to touch each other. And I have these very round, luscious thighs. And he said, I love your legs so much. And I was like, what? You love my legs? And it was really healing, that moment for me. And I was like, oh, I started to fall in love with them too. And so it's like sometimes we can do it in ourselves and sometimes we really need that positive reinforcement to remind us, you know, how gorgeous and sexy we are.
And so often with our lovers, they're not like picking those little things apart. They're just like, you're hot. I want you. You know? I was like, yes. Yes. More. More. More. Totally right. Totally right. Well, I can't believe we're already at the top of our time. This went so fast, ladies.
I know we're gonna put in the show notes how to work with you guys, how to get involved if you are if people are interested in learning your methodology as healers, as people that would actually like to bring this work to others, as well as if they are interested in working with you guys more on just people that want to learn your methodology right in their own lives.
But tell us a little bit, like, just kinda what you package that up nicely for us around, like, how people work with you and and of course we'll put everything in the show notes for for everybody. Wonderful. So we have our platform learn.somatica.com. This is where you can get classes and really kind of practice with yourself. We have an app for that and you can really kinda learn and everything is experiential. So while it is like a self learning process, you definitely have practices.
This is a little bit like Celeste demonstrated earlier and way in more and more and more opportunities for you to practice tools to start to love your body and engage in your sexuality and feeling very driven around that. And we have the somaticainstitute.com. This is where you can explore about the potentially being a coach and support others on this journey as well. Amazing. And thank you so much for being here. Everybody remember that I will be doing part two in our libido club.
So please do come over and check that out. How you join us in the show notes below. Then ask a lot more juicy questions such as what are the steps that we need to do to really be transformed here? How do we really begin to learn our pleasure body? Where do we start? So much more. Alright, everybody. That's it for today. Thank you again for joining me on the lounge, and we'll see you again real soon. Ciao for now. Thank you so much. Thank you, Diane. You for listening to the Libido Lounge.
Please don't keep me a secret. Please share this with your friends. You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, as well as how to work with me at mylibidodoc.com.