¶ Welcome
And so when it comes to sexual polarity, I feel like that for me, the definition is very different and has nothing to do with the whole sexual feminine energy, masculine energy thing. And it's more about finding these opposites of intensity of experience to playing on the range. On the range. So exactly what like I said before, you want to be open to move between the full range, physically, emotionally, in your sexual experiences.
Hello friend, and welcome to the Sex Upgraded Podcast, a podcast for men all about sex where we'll combine real, authentic and down to earth conversations about sex life and relationships with some pretty wild personal stories and practical how to episodes as well with guest experts from around the world to help you have the most amazing sex life you can possibly have. My name is Taylor and I'll be your host on this journey and it's my goal with each episode to give you practical, actionable things you can start doing today to improve your sex life and your entire life, because a thriving sex life will help you thrive in all areas of your life. So let's begin today's episode by starting with a deep breath in through the nose, into the belly, together, exhaling with an audible sigh and let's get into today's episode. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Sex Upgraded podcast.
I am joined today by Yuval and Yuval is a really special guest and I am super interested and excited to get into this interview. It's a topic that many people have requested and a lot of people have been super curious about recently. So Yuval, thank you for being here and I wonder if you just take a moment to introduce yourself. What is it that you do? Would you say you are a sex coach or an educator? Are you a guide or are you more of just a personal explorer? How would you introduce yourself?
¶ Yuval Mann Introduced
The best way that I like to refer to what I do right now, it's an ever evolving, ever changing thing, as you probably know as well, is that I'm an artist. And my art, just like some people invest their entire life in painting or music or whatever, that does it to them. I invested my life in honing the art of eroticism, erotic intelligence, relational dynamics, and the content that I put online, what I write, what I produce is a byproduct of that exploration.
So it's safe to say you've explored a relatively I looked at your website and Instagram. I mean, you talk about things like BDSM and kink and sexual energy, different kinds of polarity power, dynamic play. You talk about Tantra, but you talk about tantra in a really interesting way, which is highlighting how most of original Tantra is different from what current Tantra is. But when I saw that, I thought, oh, this guy has explored a wide range of sexual experiences. And that's why I'm really excited to bring your experience in to the conversation around sexual polarity. And I read a blog post on your website that I thought was super interesting and I can link to that in the show notes for anybody. That's curious. But just a couple of the taglines from that is you say there is no such thing as feminine energy and there is no such thing as masculine energy, and boom, there are, I don't know, hundreds of people online.
Right now. Polarity coaches talking about this stuff and saying, if you're a man, you have to become a masculine man. Otherwise you're not going to be a good sex partner or you're going to be a failure. You're not going to be able to attract a mate. All this stuff. And there's a lot of guys who are trying to explore their sex life who hear stuff like that and they get concerned or possibly even fearful and I'd love to go into that with you. So when you say there is no such thing as feminine energy or masculine energy, what do you mean?
¶ Traditional Sexual Polarity Introduced
First of all, let me start with a disclaimer. I mean no disrespect to anybody's profession, anybody's school of thoughts, and anybody's personal direct experiences. And I think when I say there is no such thing, ultimately I want to draw some attention. Because when something exists in our language, when a myth exists, it exists in some way, right? So I'm not trying to discredit or kind of go against anybody's personal direct experiences. What I am trying to do is draw people's attention to the fact that human beings are far more multidimensional and complex than any binary system of definition can define. And I think especially when it comes to relational dynamics, which is my prerogatory, what I'm mostly interested in, I'm sure the same kind of philosophy can be applied to any other aspect of our lives. But specifically when it comes to relationships, relational dynamics.
I feel like speaking in those languages, especially talking not just in terms of binary definitions, but specifically talking about feminine and masculine. They are more instead of helping people expand to the full capacity of what they can be, they help people get even farther, more stuck in very narrow, very limited definitions of their potential. And the funny thing is that every single human being that talks about feminine, masculine energy, if you ask them what is it exactly for you? They will give you an entirely different answer than the next person. But there seemed to be some kind of repetitive patterns of groups of characteristics and human qualities that usually people associate with the word feminine or masculine that in this day and age is very highly dependent on social context. I'm sure 100 years ago you would say feminine and masculine people would think and feel something entirely different than what they feel right now.
And usually those qualities are something that is attached to that particular feminine or masculine thing based on the social context that you're in right now. And so when I'm talking with people, when I work with people, when I share content online, my goal is to help people be as authentic as they are meant to be. And so when someone comes to me and they ask me like, how should I be more in my masculine? How should I be more in my feminine? And instead of speaking in some amorphic, arbitrary, socially constructed way that may or may not resonate with them and who they are meant to be, I'm asking them more specifically. When you say I want to be more feminine or more masculine, what do you mean? What kind of qualities do you want to invite into your relational sexual experiences? And usually people would say people that want more to be more in their feminine wants to feel a sense of openness, softness, surrender, letting go of control, being led into beautiful experiences.
¶ Embracing & Living a Life of Authenticity
For example, people who say I want to be more in my masculine talk about things like focus and leadership and taking responsibility and so on and so forth. And when you really break it down to the qualities, you realize that none of these things are neither masculine, feminine nor men. Woman has nothing to do with gender, sexual orientation or any of these things. They are just human qualities that we all want to embody in certain moments in our life. Aren't we all want to be sometimes the leader in some aspects of our life? Aren't we all want to sometimes let go of control and surrender and enjoy softness and openness? And so for me, it's not going against anybody. It's just a simple realization that those kind of languages, those kind of labels don't serve us anymore as individuals and as a collective.
Yeah, that's interesting. And as you were speaking, you said something to the effect of like, don't we all want to surrender and receive sometimes? Or something to that effect. And in my mind I thought, wow, a younger version of myself definitely would not because I would have it in my mind like, oh, that's not a masculine thing to do. That's not what a man should do. A man should not just lay there and he should be doing he should be creating the experience, leading the experience, guiding be in control. Always. Sounds like you've had a similar past.
Absolutely. I think that let's take it outside of the area of relational dynamics and sexuality and just talk about general approach to life. I think that for the majority of my life I bought into the idea, the collective archetype of the hustle. I recognized myself as a separated thing from life, not something that has emerged from life and therefore inherently is being always connected with life, being always taken care of. And instead I thought that my job is to constantly try to manipulate reality into my own likings to control my environment, to control my partners, to control my situation, to get it, to achieve it. And I think it got me to certain experiences. It's definitely a way to live life, but there was definitely something missing. I think there is definitely a place for going for it, for action, for moving forward. But what I realized later, based on my own direct experience, is that a whole other way of relating with life a whole other way of being in life and moving through life that I was completely missing out on.
Which is the way of letting go, letting things happen as they may let them unfold to stop trying to figure it out and let life figure me out. And by experimenting with that and living by that, not just in relationships and sexual dynamics, just in general. In my life, I have gained such a deep sense of inner peace and such a deeper connection to my own authentic expression of being of who I am in this world that I realized how much of my own perception of how I'm supposed to live my life was still intact to the societal conditioning of what I was told I was supposed to do. And so yes, I get it. Maybe someone young is listening to it and is still under the influence or the impression that his value is directly attached to his achievements and who he is in the world and how he presents himself and how he shows up.
And if that is the case and you're convinced that is you, well, good luck. I'm just here to share my own human experience and invite a different perspective.
¶ Societal Myths & Masculinity / Femininity
Yeah, I want to riff on that for a minute. I've definitely gone through a number of different phases in my life as well. And I remember there was a time when I decided, okay, you know what? I'm really going to go for it. I'm going to hit it hard. I'm going to produce, produce. I'm going to control everything, make sure I get the most optimal results. And that was a time when the term masculine energy meant a lot to me. In that moment, I still use it in certain contexts, but in that moment I was like, I'm going to be in my fucking masculine. I'm going to rock it out. I'm going to make money. I'm going to figure out how to do all this stuff. And I did. And at the same time, I lost some magic in the process. And I went through pretty intense periods of burnout and I lost that sort of the zest for life.
Like what started off as a zest for productivity turned into this sort of just running on empty kind of just produce, produce. Like, oh fuck, I got to do it again. And I eventually reached this point of realizing that there's got to be another way to do this. There's got to be something else out there. That's possible.
Yeah. Now try to translate this experience that you've had into relational dynamic and you'll see quite quickly and maybe you can know that from your own personal experience. Sure I can. This fixation on embodying a certain set of characteristics and sticking to them and getting fixated on them and being tense about any deviation from the sense of characteristics within a relational dynamic allows for very little maneuvering when it's needed. So let's say for example you think that you always need to take leadership that can easily become you becoming emotionally guarded, never letting your guard down, never being vulnerable with a woman, never fully sharing your human experience with this other person regardless of their gender, of their orientation which create a wall between you. Take it to another direction. Okay. Always your job is to lead the erotic situation in the bedroom. What about your partner taking a role of leadership and letting you totally rest and relax and surrender?
There is so much that you are missing there. I saw in one of your videos actually that you mentioned being penetrated which for a lot of men is a very scary thing specifically because bullshit like that because they have an idea that receiving pleasure, receiving support, receiving a love, receiving something in their butt is submissive and it's therefore feminine. And if that is what you think I don't know what to tell you because first of all it's pleasure that you cannot even fathom that you probably have never experienced in any other way but also just observe your own perception. Observe the story. Like why? Who said so? You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And so those are just a few ways. I think another way that it can be very unbeficial is if we go a little bit into kind of like more let's say there is even an abusive kind of dynamic and a dynamic in which one partner is emotionally manipulative or something like that. And something that I notice in a lot of polarity coaches polarity dynamic is this idea that the masculine job is to hold the feminine in all of her fluctuations and all of her emotional storms which in some moments, in some situations is a general good idea. In many other situations you can find yourself in a place in which your boundaries are being crossed and you are being hurt quite hardly and you're just going to stay there and not going to stand your ground because you're supposed to just be this rock who holds all of the things.
And I'm speaking from not my own personal experience but very close brothers and friends around me that have been in such situations and vice versa. I think that also a woman that gets stuck into this. I need to be in my soft, feminine and then when she notices her partner being out of integrity, but allows that to just go smoothly because she's supposed to surrender and follow his lead, rather than giving him directions and telling him, hey, that's not working for me. That doesn't feel good. So there is so many problematic, from problematic to just unbeneficial reasons to not use this whole feminine masculine thing and just open ourselves up to the full range of our human experience.
Yeah, I like that. So to clarify and for the sake of conversation, because I know some people who might be listening at this point might be thinking, oh, are you trying to erase men and erase women from the conversation? And it's not what I'm hearing you say, but I'd love to hear from your perspective in the roles of or the mythology of man and woman, do you find value in those terms? Or are you also saying, let's get rid of all of that?
I don't think that what I'm saying is neither or. I don't think that it's my job to try to create a collective change. It's not what I'm trying to do in my work. I'm merely sharing my own human experience, my own thoughts, my own philosophy. What I would say about this is that a very simple observation on human history, on anthropology, on science, biology, a real observation, not some bro science that you got from someone quoting it on some YouTube channel. Like, really go and do your research of how sex works, how chromosomes work, how gender works, and all of these things, as well as open your ears to listen to the human experience, to the full wide range of the human experience, to the multiplicity and complexity and multidimensionality of human expression. And you realize that really the borders between men, women, gender, expression, sexual orientation become very gray.
And it's not just my opinion. It's just if you are open to observation without fear, you're just looking around and you're like, okay, what is this human thing? And it's not just human. You also look at majority of animal species have a much broader range than the binary feminine, masculine, men, woman, female, male that we attached. So I'm not trying to erase anything, nor do I think I can. I think those are very powerful and strong myths. And I was actually reading about it today about the world myth that we think that myth is something that is untrue, like a lie that we buy into. But actually the source of the word myth is simply stories that creates certain meaning. So myth is basically the code that our human experience is using to create meaning out of the sensory experience that we receive from reality.
So we create stories, we create myths to help us make sense out of reality. And so in that sense, as long as there is such a thing a word, man, woman, and we use them in our society, there is a lot of value to it. And I'd be the last one to try to erase it. I love being a man, even though I know that definition is very societally dependent, is very fluid, it's very open to interpretation, it's very time and zeitgeist dependent. Nevertheless, I love being that. I love presenting in a way that people in their code of myth translate as this is a man. I love that. I love that experience, and I love being with people who are translated as women. There is no problem with that. It's just that we can better men and better women and better anything else when we are opening ourselves up to other possibilities of the human experience, to other existences that are not necessarily our own.
¶ The Human Experience is Complex
And that's, I think, the only thing that I'm really advocating for.
Got it?
Yeah.
Thanks for clarifying that. I love that. I love hearing you share all of that. And you said, I love being a man. I love at least presenting in this way that fits into the societal myth that is man. That feels good. And part of my thought around all of this is that right now, well, over the past bunch of years, there's been a lot of discussion in society around problems with men and all these things that men are doing that are bad and toxic masculinity, et cetera. There have not been as many conversations around. What are some healthy examples of what being a man could be like? What is a potential of a healthy male? And what does it even mean to have a man show up and say, oh, I love being a man? For a lot of people, that'll trigger a lot of anger or frustration.
But I also think it's really important to talk about because there are a lot of people out there who are men who feel like a man, who walk like a man, who their experience is being a man, and they're wondering where are the people talking about this in a positive way? And I'd love for you to share, if you're open to it, what are a couple of things you love about just being a man?
I think there are many. The first thing that really kind of and again, when I'm saying being a man, I'm talking about this rather narrow societal, like whatever that means, being a man. Totally. I love having a cock. I think that's a wonderful experience. Like, when I'm thinking about it in the context of the evolutionary unfolding, the magnificent complexity that had to unfold, and for this experience to have, for me to be able to hold my cock and experience pleasure and give pleasure with it, that's a fantastic thing. I'm just like being blown away by having this thing dangled between my legs and being a source of so much orgasmic aliveness for me and for others. And I love that there are obviously a set of privileges that come with being a man that I feel like I am much more able to enjoy now in a way that is healthy now that I'm aware of.
And so I like the fact that there is a certain way that people approach me. There is a certain openness that people have, there is a certain authority that my voice creates just because it's how it is in our culture. I don't like that. It's not like that for a lot of women. But I do enjoy these experiences. I feel like we can enjoy our privilege while being aware that it is indeed a privilege.
Yeah.
I love discovering. If anything, I love the curious, playful discovery of really what it is being a man as we speak. Rather breaking free from the societal dogmatic narratives of who am I or who am I not? As a male presenting body and discovering what it is for me, what it can be, what I am capable of as a man in this culture and how I can better in being a man in this culture. And I think that journey itself is what for me, it's all about rather than trying to define what it is, just enjoying the process of discovering it.
¶ Sexual Polarity, Fluidity and Tension in Sexual Dynamics
Yeah, I love the process of discovering it too. And I would say I do get some kick out of breaking the norms a little bit. It's enjoyable to me and that's also, I think, beneficial for people. And I want to give one example from a survey that I did but just to set the context, a lot of people like we talked about earlier, will say, oh yeah, if you're a man, you penetrate, you fuck, you control, you have this sort of outward going energy. You definitely don't get penetrated otherwise you're feminine or you're weak or you're beta or something like that, right? And so last year I surveyed hundreds of people, hundreds of men, hundreds of women and I asked them this whole list of questions and then I could sort the different answers in this program that I'm using by sexual orientation, by amount of money they make, by different sexual habits, different sexual preferences, all this kind of stuff.
And one of the characteristics that a lot of people will associate as being in the masculine right now is making a lot of money, right? Like if you're a man, you need to provide. You need to make money and provide for people. Well, there was this very interesting anomaly. I spent hours doing this, like cross referencing all there were like 60 questions and what I found was very interesting. Heterosexual men who have been pegged by a female partner. So being pegged, if you're not familiar with this term, it means like you're getting fucked with a strap on, a woman wearing a strap on and she's penetrating you. Heterosexual men who have been pegged by their female partners made significantly more money than heterosexual men who did not. And this is like hundreds of responses and this is just like the legit statistical analysis of that and it just blew my mind.
Like holy shit. And at the same time, it kind of makes sense in some ways. And before I give any theory on that, I just want to hear, do you have a reaction to that? Does that make sense? Like, you laughed.
I laughed because it's hilarious. I think that most people who really are, I'd say affluent or financially successful, at least that I met, or the role models that I see around usually tend to be less concerned with all of this. I need to do it because, like, look around on the role models that a lot of young people have these days on what it means to be financially successful. Look at people who came to prominence recently, like people like Andrew Tate and people of that sort that flaunt around their wealth online and talk about their wealth and how wealthy they are. Exorbitantly way more than it actually. Is in practice, which is something that came out during the trial, that he was actually way poorer than he was making himself to be. Definitely not even close to being a billionaire. And then you hear them talk about their sexual experiences, and you hear people like Andrew Tate say, like, oh, sex is boring.
It's like sex for them is not something that you do for pleasure, because pleasure is gay. Pleasure is feminine. So you have sex as yet another way to conquer or to mark your territory, rather than something that is a playful exploration of self discovery and you make two and two together. It makes total sense. These people are bad at sex. They are bad at relationships. They are bad attracting female partners and also don't make as much money as they say they make and are not as successful as they are. And even if they are, look at how they make their money. A lot of these role models, so called role models, make their money scamming other people, doing things in very unethical ways. So when you're mentioning that to me, it makes a lot of sense because the archetype that I'm imagining is a mature, emotionally intelligent, well integrated man who cares more about giving and receiving pleasure and being curious about sexual explorations with a partner.
Part of it is being pegged because, well, it's available and it's pleasurable. Why don't we try it? Those people strike me more as people who are likely to be financially successful because they play with life, they are able to move forward, but also let go and listen to others and create strong teams around them and create systems that support them. Those people are striking me as more likely to be affluent and financially successful than the other group. It's just all kind of like social media illusion rather than something that is based in reality.
Yeah, I would agree with that. And say that people who are open to that experience heterosexual men, for example, they're willing to and able to break down whatever societal programs have been put on them for the sake of pleasure, for the sake of play, for the sake of joy. And I think that does translate to the business realm or the money realm, like being able to break down whatever barriers might be holding them back as well. And it just kind of makes sense. And if you look at a couple of different esoteric traditions to the root, the ass, or even just from the Western medical perspective, people hold a lot in their anal region, like tight ass. The word tight ass is widespread today. People are tight asses everywhere. And it refers to this sort of like kind of agitable, very reactive type person versus what would it be like to actually feel open there, and not just open, but powerful and like, oh, you're experiencing pleasure in the root of your being, like the core of your being.
What else could that open up? How do you show up in the business meeting when you feel fully fucked and orgasmic in your whole life? How is that different when you show up to try to change the world in any sort of positive way or make money? It's very interesting to me.
Absolutely. I 100% agree. I feel like it's easy for people, especially young and impressionable people, to kind of overlook a person's posture, a person's attitude, a person's energy by just seeing the perceived image, the perceived masks that they want you to see. Because it's easy to kind of fake on social media, to flaunt expensive cars and to talk a big game on all of your imaginary sexual conquests. And in reality, you can take one look at a person and feel something. You can look at their posture, you can look how tense or relaxed and open they are. And it can tell you a lot about their attitude towards life and it can tell you even more than that about are they really someone that I want to see as a role model? Is it something that I really, truly want to follow? And I love that we use anal penetration as analogy because it really is a powerful one, the openness to receive.
For me, it's all analogies, it's all the way that we for me, sexuality and what I talk about, sex in general is not just about the sexual stuff, but what does it mean about your very relationship with life? What are your chosen myths or programmed myths about your sexuality and pleasure? Can tell you about the way that you approach life as a whole. Your connection with your body, your connection with your soul, if you even think you have one. Your connection with others, your connection with nature. And I think when we talk about things like anal penetration, I think your attitude towards this, if you are honest enough to observe it, can tell you a lot about your relationship. With life? Are you tight? Are you open? Are you willing to sit quietly with your woman and receive her unique wisdom? Right? Are you open for feedback?
I would go as far as to say that someone who is, and I'm saying it with absolute zero judgment, everybody are exactly where they need to be in their journey. But I would go as far as to say that someone who is tightly afraid of being penetrated, analy, or at least be open to the idea or think that it's a positive thing to explore, are very likely to also be to hold back and be tight about a lot of things, sexually speaking. So, for example, if their partner, for a lot of men, their sense of self worth, their sense of worth as a whole is directly and intimately attached to their perceived performance in the bedroom. So what happens when your partner gives you something, right? Like, it can be anal penetration, but it can also be a feedback. She gives you a piece of wisdom, she gives you a gift.
Like, here it is. I'm presenting something to you that is an invitation for growth. How will you receive that? Will you receive her feedback as you are receiving a potential being penetrated analy? Or you're receiving it with total openness, with embrace, feeling the discomfort that it creates in your body. That's completely natural. You're feeling, oh, what's wrong with me? What does it say about me? Am I good lover? Am I a bad lover? And all of these things, that's fine, but you're receiving it nevertheless. You're open to it. You're like, I'm here to explore together. I'm here to discover who I am, not to impose who I think you should be. And I love this analogy.
Yeah. And within that, you're also not saying just for clarification that you can't also be in the more penetrating, dominant position when you choose to be right or when it works out for your lovers or for the love making scenario, right? You're talking about being able to do the whole range, basically. I know we've talked a lot about in this episode so far, like being open to and receiving, but also looking at your material on the Internet and knowing myself. We're both also very into the holding somebody down and exerting power over in a consensual way and that sort of thing too. I just want to add that to the conversation, to say that's very much here as well, even though we're talking a little bit more about this other piece for the full picture.
Absolutely. And I would say that for me, the compass is what is this moment asking for? I notice a pattern that is really exciting in my connections with people, intimately sexual connections, which is I notice that my mood very often matches their mood. Meaning when I am present and aware enough to listen to the moment, listen to the sensations that I feel in my body. Listen to my subtleties of mood. I'm listening to my partner's mood as well and where these two moods meet in the middle. And I'm asking myself if this mood was a type of sex, what kind of sex was it? Would it be like a rough throw me against the wall kind of ravishment, fuck me, open to God? Would it be dirty talk, kinky, power, dynamic, all kinds of role plays? Would it be something soft and tender? And I noticed that when I'm listening to this deep primordial intuition that is always alive in my body, I'm always spot on.
And of course I'm open for feedback. Maybe I'll start something and then my partner will signal not today, maybe let's do something else. And that's completely fine. But I noticed that when I'm listening to this intuition which again requires receptivity, requires openness, requires a sense of flow and things that usually are assigned to feminine qualities, I'm spot on. It's usually being received like how did you know this is exactly what I wanted to experience? And sometimes it will be a combination of these ranges of experiences in one setting. So you can take your partner all the way from super tender to rough ravishment and all the way back to loving tenderness. And that range creates such epic erotic aliveness that is just the juice that unforgettable sexual experiences are made of.
Yes, absolutely. So I'd love to come back to the sexual polarity piece because in your article you also talked about how you do find sexual polarity to be a really valuable concept in certain ways and I'd love to hear you talk about that. What is sexual polarity if it's not masculine and feminine? What's actually happening there?
¶ Sexual Polarity IS Valuable
Yeah, again, as I mentioned in the beginning of The Call, I'm a work in progress and these things are constantly changing. It's another disclaimer that I think is important. I think if I go back to some of my own material in the past, if I go back to my current courses, there is some mentions of feminine, masculine polarity and this kind of stuff. I am saying that like most polarity teachers out there they will say yes, we all have all within us and DA DA. Nevertheless, we are still very much we just can't divorce successfully masculine from men and feminine from women just because the societal conditioning that we are in.
Right.
But I'll say that I am also a work in progress. I'm constantly evolving and changing and learning. And for me what's really interesting here is not to try to change the current language in a completely and entirely new language as much as the playful journey of discovering new and fresh ways to relate to our human experience in a way that can bring some value to people. And so when it comes to sexual polarity, I feel like that for me the definition is very different and has nothing to do with the whole sexual feminine energy, masculine energy thing. And it's more about finding these opposites of intensity of experience to playing on the range. On the range. So exactly like I said before you want to be open to move between the full range physically, emotionally, in your sexual experiences. So be able to experience, penetrate and be penetrated.
Go from tenderness to harshness, from submission to dominance in all of its varieties and all of its forms and all of its ways and play on this music of tension and release that is being created in that play. So tension and release in a sense that both in the micro but also in the macro. So in the macro it can be going either in one session or generally in your relationship from super tender to super intense or from being penetrated to penetrating. But it can also be in very micro levels. So the way you kiss for example you can kiss and go all the way in and like full tongue and never stop. But you can also stop, take a moment, hover over your partner's lips, create tension. You feel the erotic tension building up the polarity from the minus and plus building up and then you are releasing that tension in this erotic and you are like going and giving that tension just like the build up to an orgasmic climax.
You start building up tension by slowly, energetically getting into the room even before that, building anticipation leading to the interaction. And then you start touching each other, and then you more and more you take each other's clothes off. It start getting more and more intense. And eventually it gets to some kind of climactic conclusion, which is the release. So there is always tension and release. So for me that is what polarity is playing between the polar opposites. Another way that we can think about it is in a fetishy, kinky way, which is a whole other topic that I love talking about, which is you think about a lot of the things that we find erotic and of course, if we are honest and go to the full capacity of the fucked up strangeness of our own sexuality, which is not something that everybody are always ready to do, but if you really go into human sexuality, you see, there is a lot of weirdness.
A lot of strangeness. And it's interesting to me because a lot of times the things that we hold most forbidden, most taboo, are the ones that in some strange way, turn us on the most as well. There is a reason why the most taboo things like incest or all kinds of forbidden power dynamics in normal life that are like a boss and an employee or doctor and a patient are so incredibly erotic. There is a reason for that and something interesting that I feel it teaches us. And there is a wonderful book called Existential Kink that is expanding on that in a lot of depth, which is perhaps there is a way to relate to most of our uncomfortable thought patterns or emotional experiences in a way that is kinky or pleasurable. So you think about it in a sense that if I keep experiencing this emotional experience, let's say I have some problems around my relationship with money and finances, let's say I have some recurring patterns or relationships that keep coming up and creating uncomfortable experiences.
Maybe if I keep experiencing that, at least on some level, conscious or unconscious, it turns me on. Like I drive some sort of pleasure from it. And when I think about it in these ways, like collecting everything that I said together, like this way of relating with our own sexuality as a way to better understand our human experience, what can be created in any given sexual dynamic with whatever emotional experiences are coming up. So for example, let's say there is a fight or a conflict, there is tension in the air. Maybe there is rage or anger or something that wants to be expressed. There is an artful way to take that experience and masterfully turn it into erotic aliveness and turn it into pleasure. And of course it requires all of the people involved to consciously be into it. You can't just bypass something intense or challenging that is coming up that requires a conversation to be had and just try to take it to the bedroom.
That's not what I mean here.
Right.
But nevertheless, when you become more erotically intelligent, when you become more aware of your own sensory experience, of your own subtleties of emotions and moods, you can do the same about your partners. And that gives you a lot of material for erotic art to play with. You can take anger and turn it into ravishment. You can take sadness and turn it into a kinky play of I don't know, a kinky play of I blacked out on the word degradation of some. Like you can find ways to play on whatever is being presented to you in each given moment. And I feel like to me this is sexual polarity. It's like playing on these polar opposites of pleasure and pain, comfort and discomfort in a way that just kind of start blurring the line between them.
Yeah. Working with the charge or working exactly where there is no charge. Working to create charge. Working to create charge. There's one thing you said earlier you talked about you used the word incest and how there are certain things that turn people on and I know for a number of people listening, they might be thinking oh, is he encouraging incest, et cetera. And I would just want to highlight one of the most popular fantasies or kinks or pieces of dirty talk that people do is the whole daddy daughter thing. Right?
¶ How to Create Sexual Polarity
Yeah.
The word incest is charged and we don't like to keep it. People don't like to use that. But when you look at the daddy daughter thing, it's playing off of some form of that and there are plenty of healthy examples of people playing with that in their relationship. And so I just wanted to add that one piece.
Absolutely.
And then pivot into if we're talking about sexual polarity or the art of working with sexual polarity, is the art of working with charge or the art of creating charge if there is none, what if somebody's experiencing a lack of charge in their relationship or a lack of polarity? What would you say about that?
I love this question and I think that I first would like or invite someone that is experiencing something like that. And let's expand a little bit the definition of what we are talking about so it will be clear. So either you are in a relationship and there is a lack of sexual intensity between you, like the passion kind of deemed a little bit whether you are a long time together or was it like that from the beginning, whatever that is, or you're feeling in your own self. Maybe you're not even in a relationship, but you're feeling a little bit lacking lust for life. You're not feeling turned on. You lost your mojo, as they say. I would invite someone that is experiencing something like that, whether they are in a relationship or not, to first look at it in their own inner experience before they talk about it within a relational dynamic with their own inner experience.
Am I excited about my life? Am I turned on for life? Because at least I found that there is a direct correlation between how much lust we have towards being alive in general and how much lust we can experience in the bedroom. I feel like our sexual experiences is just a microcosm of our overall relationship with life. Maybe the place in which our overall attitude, relationship and experience with life is showing up in the most potent way. And if you recognize that there is something that is lacking that you want more of, that you are not feeling turned on for life, then the next question is what does turn me on? And I would invite someone to do that before they talk about it in sexual terms. What turns me on sexually? What turns me on in general? It's a moment to moment practice of what does my body is calling for right now?
What is this moment calling for right now? Do I feel like it's in the way that I wake up in the morning and take the first few steps? It's in the way that I dress and how the fabrics feel on my body. It's in the way that I breathe and how intentionally I do that. It's in the way that I eat my food. Do I chug it all in unconsciously or do I savor every moment and really feel the full range of the taste that it creates and the sensation in my body. How do I relate to my work? Am I just clucking a ticket? Or if I'm my own boss, then I'm just doing the things that I think needs to be done just because? Or do I have this sense that, wow, fuck yes, I get to do this. I get to engage with life.
I get to be in service in some way, whatever that way might be. And I think that is where I would start is find the charge with life, the turn on life. And I feel like our sex is a byproduct of that. It's an outflow of that when it comes to a relational dynamic. In a very similar way, I would start with where are we at relationally. So one question that I encourage everybody to continuously ask in the relationship, each other and themselves is why are we here? You can feel it in your body right now, whoever is listening, when you ask yourself, why am I in this relationship? That question has a lot of charge. Talking about charge, right?
Yeah.
When you're retouching that place of like, why are we together? Right. What turns me on about you not just sexually, also sexually, but not just sexually, that creates charge. It invites the mystery, the discovery back. And from there, just like we mentioned before, you can start taking whatever experiences you're having together, whatever conflicts you may have, whatever emotional experiences you have individually and together and start using those occasional moments of tension and slowly transmute them into erotic aliveness.
When you say transmute, can you just clarify what do you mean by that?
I'm simply referring to what were talking about before on how every emotional intensity can be turned into erotic aliveness. That's awesome. Yeah. Just another way to say that the.
Changing of one form of energy to another useful form. Yeah. So I read on your website too, that you say I'm just going to quote you for a moment. You said, you may have noticed that sometimes in long term relationships, if we don't intentionally and consciously work on it, we can get very close in love and enmeshed with each other's life and each other's nervous systems. And something I'm paraphrasing now something in the erotic aliveness dies, something in the charge dies, something in the polarity dies. And so what would you suggest in that case? Are you suggesting, like, people go out and find new partners in polyamory or threesomes are the answer to all your problems or is there some way to create healthy differentiation?
¶ Embrace Newness and Mystery
I'm happy that you asked that in that way because it helped me bring some of what I said before and could be a little bit amorphic to some and maybe more too poetic or artistic to something more concrete. So something fundamental that is important to understand about eroticism and erotic aliveness and sexual charge is that those things breathe on, breed on mystery, newness vanity. What tends to happen which is in complete opposite to the kind of Disney fairy tale of oh find the perfect prince or princess on a white horse and it's just perfectly happily ever after. And because we are so in love with each other of course we're going to be always attracted to each other sexually. That's a myth that is unlike other myths that can serve us. This is a myth that doesn't serve us very well because what tends to happen is we get into a relational dynamic and the love builds and we keep choosing love which is what it is.
Love is a choice and you choose it every day. And you become more enmeshed with each other and you become more connected with each other and you start feeling as if you already know everything there is to know about your partner which is the complete opposite of the mystery that is necessary to feel erotically alive, to feel erotically attracted. The thing is that it is what it is. It's a myth you will never fully discover. Not your own sex and not your partner's sex. You will never finish discovering a human being because a human being is not a stagnant thing. It's something that is constantly ever changing and so are you and so is your partner and so is the third entity that you create in the relationship between you. All of these things are always in flux, always changing. And so what I always suggest people that come to me and have these experiences which are way more common than we think.
It's just that we don't talk a lot about it. Because sex is still a taboo for some reason is to start consciously creating mystery. Inviting newness and newness can be polyamory and new sexual experiences together and apart. But it doesn't have to be at all. There is always a place for newness it's new things to discover in the bedroom, new ways to relate with each other, new ways to experience pleasure physically, emotionally, energetically. You can introduce all kinds of varieties of new things to do in the bedroom new kinds of power dynamics, new kinds of toys, new kinds of fantasies to fulfill with each other. There is an endless variety of things and it will always keep changing because again you are changing all the time. There is also an aspect of mystery that is connected to distance. A lot of times people who live together, sleep together in the same bedroom live their entire life together.
There is a certain comfort and camaraderie that is being built but they are a complete anthesis to erotic charge and aliveness which comes from the excitement of missing each other and having some distance. And so you can consciously create distance. Maybe you sleep in separate bedrooms. Maybe you go apart for a few days traveling separately things of that nature. There are all kinds of things you can always do to reintroduce newness mystery and recreate aliveness. Yeah.
And be an artful lover in the process. Yeah, that's beautiful.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I love that answer. And wow, you've all thank you so much for this conversation. This has been really rich and interesting and we've gone down a lot of just fascinating rabbit holes that I think are really useful and inspiring for folks. And is there any last piece that you'd like to add before we wrap things up here?
There is something that is alive in me recently, which is that play is the love language of the universe. And this is directly touching all of the topics that we touched here and kind of like bringing them all together. Try to see through the dogma, through the narrative, through the programming, through your own myths and thought patterns and stories about reality. And embrace a sense of playful curiosity towards your life, towards your sexual experiences, towards your partner. Because play is what the evolutionary process is. In order for you to exist, you are basically a direct result of a direct line of very successful relationships, an infinite amount of successful relationships. You don't see all the even more unsuccessful relationships that needed to exist in order for you to be here. The evolutionary unfolding is play in action. That is what, to me, life is. And if we enact playfulness in our own life, we become one with the unfolding of the evolutionary process.
We become more connected with life as well. It's the childlike innocent way to love the world, is to play with it. See what is possible for you. Don't say no to anything just because, but be open. And I think that serves us well in all aspects of our life, especially our sexuality and relationships, because there is no one way to do any of it. There is no one binary definition of how you should be as a man, as a woman, or anything in between. There is no one way in which your sex should and meant to look like or sound like and there is no way in which you should construct and live your life. It is entirely up to you to design, to play with, and to find out. And I think that's what I would like to leave behind on this call.
Beautiful. Well, thank you so much. And if you're listening, if you have any questions or thoughts to share, go to the YouTube version of this and leave a comment there. I will definitely get back to you and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. And Yuval, if people are inspired by what you've shared and they want to work with you, do you have any programs coming up and how can people best get in touch with you?
At the moment, I'm mostly working one one with people and couples. I occasionally also launch a program based on the heat of inspiration. And I also have video courses that people can find. Generally, I'm just yuval, man. In all of the social media platforms. So pretty easy to find. Great.
And we'll put links to all that in the show notes. Thank you again so much for being here. I love this conversation. Thank you for listening. The listener and yeah, man, there's a lot of other topics we could have gone into. Maybe we'll have to do an interview round two around Kink and BDSM and all that stuff and the sacred and the spiritual and tantra. But for now, we'll close it here and say thank you so much and I hope you all have a beautiful rest of your day.