Transcription

[00:00:02]

Hello. Hello, friends. Welcome. I am so glad that you are joining me here today as we continue talking about uncommon pleasures. And I have got a real treat for you, friends.

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It's only the one and only Lucy Rowett who's joining us here today. Day. Hi, Lucy. Oh, God, thank you so much for making me sound so important. Well, you haven't seen anything yet, folks.

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If you don't yet know who Lucy wrote is, let me tell you a little bit about her. Lucy is a certified sexologist and sex coach who is passionate about helping women and people with vulvas let go of sexual shame and hangups and embrace pleasure to create the passionate relationships they've always desired. She uses a combination of MINDBODY tools with evidencebased, sexuality education to create a fun and open space for women to explore their full erotic potential. Her specialty is working with women and people with vulvas who come from faith backgrounds who are struggling to let go of sexual shame and enjoy pleasurable and intimate relationships. Again, she is a resident on the UK contraception platform The Lowdown and she is regularly quoted in the media for her expertise in sexual health and wellness, pleasure and sexual shame, including Men's Health, GQ, Kingley, The Odiaries, the Sun Insider, and Glamor, among others.

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And on top of that, she is one of my closest and deaRowett friends. Hello, Lucy. Welcome. Hello, hello. So happy to be here.

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And today you're going to be talking to us about the uncommon pleasure of slowing down. What's that all about? It's funny because when you were approaching me about this in terms of what do I want to talk about? And it's like I can talk about so many things. And I know that in this episode we're going to riff.

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We're going to go off with multiple tangents in terms of talking about embodiment, talking about mindfulness, talking about the importance of ritual or somebody who has a type A brain and also riffing about tantra and sacred sexuality and all of the cultural shift that happens there and what to avoid. So this is just a heads up, but I think about for me, slowing down has been a big, massive part of my own healing process with sexuality, with health, with everything. And sometimes I feel like this kind of encompasses a lot of it, especially as the people that you work with Sarah and the people that I work with tend to be very stuck in their heads, very type A. Very driven and they often feel a little bit my umbilical cord is knocking against them as I just feel a little bit put off by a lot of stuff in spirituality. But they know that they need some of it.

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And so it's, how can we make and take all of that good stuff without any of the dogma and also make it anticapitalist? We're going to be bringing that in as well because I can't think of anybody who does not deal with stress in their lives. Whenever I speak to people, even people who are coaches and therapists who talk about self care, we are all dealing with such a low level or a high level of stress and we know that we need to be doing all of this stuff, but it's not quite going in. So I want to talk a bit about that. And we will inevitably end up going up on multiple tangents and it's also very poignant to me having ADHD, being neurodivergent, being highly sensitive, having health stuff.

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It's been my own medicine as well. So I hope this is helpful to people listening. Well, you make a really good point. Visa, visa stress. And I think it's something that everyone is generally aware that they have too much of, right?

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And you might even go to the doctor and your blood pressure is creeping up a little bit and they're like, you got to reduce your stress. But what the fuck does that actually mean? Like what actually is slowing down? And why does that have anything to do with pleasure? That's a really good question.

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And often the doctors who are prescribing it, they want to talk because they're also dealing with a huge amount of stress. This is no shade to doctors. They are under a huge amount of pressure at the moment, especially since the pandemic. And we are all guilty of giving the advice we need to take ourselves. But also I think about the concept of slowing down because we have a lot of things that we know we should be doing and there's that shouldn't we're?

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Making air quotes. Air quotes like oh, I should be doing more meditation, I should go to yoga class more, I should eat better. And often what that does is just add to the stress you're already feeling. And my idea or my idea. The idea of slowing down is that rather than trying to take on extra things in order to help your stress levels, which will probably end up adding to the stress levels because you're taking on somebody else's idea of what is going to reduce your stress as opposed to maybe what you actually need.

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It helps you to really tune into what your, you could say, your intuition, your own needs, your own wants and what is actually going on for you. And in regards to pleasure, it's very hard to feel anything. When you are in a low level or high level of chronic activation, it's hard to feel anything, which is why some people can feel that they need more and more intense experiences, why they need to either numb out or they need to do things just so they can feel something. I'm not against intensity, I'm not against numbing out. We can't be in this state all the time.

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I feel everything. But it's when it becomes a constant coping mechanism, I'm thinking especially around orgasms for example, you've probably talked about this before, my hair is in my face. We can't force an orgasm to happen and we know that. And if you're listening to this, you can probably resonate with you're trying really, really hard to have an orgasm. So what happens is you tense up your body and maybe you go harder and harder and harder and faster and maybe you can kind of squeeze one out but it kind of feels a bit like a sneeze and it feels like you have to try really hard to get there.

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And also if you are living in a life which we all are, where we are so overstimulated by so many things, it can feel a bit like your internal radio reception is completely muddied. So when we learn to slow down and will talk about kind of practicalities of that, it's easier to feel actually what you need to be feeling. It's easy to actually feel pleasure in your body. And when we think about stress and they often say that the antidote to stress isn't necessarily relaxation, although sometimes it can be. Pleasure can be a really wonderful antidote to stress.

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And whenever I've done talks about pleasure, there's always one or two people saying yes, but what about heaven ism, you know, going to excess? And I say, well, often pleasure is more about tuning in than numbing out. That you can have intensely pleasurable experiences by not doing very much on the outside. So that's where pleasure comes into slowing down. InteRowetting that folks link hedonism with excess as well, when really it's just the idea that part of what makes a meaningful life is the pursuit of pleasure.

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And I mean, over here, of course, we talk about dignified hedonism because the pursuit of pleasure without honoring the worthiness of everybody involved can get a bit mucky. But when you throw the dignity in, that tends to balance it out. But I wanted to call back to something you said earlier. You mentioned about being in a state of activation for our listeners who might not have heard that phrase before. What does that mean?

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I often slip in terminology from somatic work and nervous systems. I'm very much a nervous system geek at the moment. And activation is a state when you feel you could say hyper, you feel I'm trying to think of the term of it. Activation can be both positive and negative. So, for example, you're at a rock concert and the music and if you're in a rock concert it's very high energy.

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You could probably say activation is high energy but with high energy there are both positives and negatives to that. You can be in a high energy state and really enjoying yourself, but you know that you can't sustain that for long periods of time or you can be in high energy because you're really fucking stressed. And if you've ever said to yourself I can't relax, I don't know how to relax. My body won't relax. I don't know how to slow down.

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I can't stop. I can't stop. That's all symptoms or signs that you're in this state of chronic activation. And so it's learning different ways to start to bring that down a little bit. And we're also going to riff a bit on activation when we talk about cults and certain Pantric spaces or religious leaders who make their stick of working you up into a very highly activated state where you start to experience ecstasy, you start to experience bliss, you start to feel like you're hearing God, but that also makes you very vulnerable.

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Have I made that clearish? So it means, like, in that context, let me know if I got it wrong. But that's like sympathetic nervous system activation, which is also the thing that happens with fight, flight, freeze, fawn, all of those sort of unconscious physiological responses that happen in response to what? Perception of threat? Exactly.

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It's sympathetic nervous system. And another thing to think about is often we talk about the term being triggered. Being triggered as a state is a state of being activated. And sometimes what I do in my work is I often use the word trigger with point marks or being mindful of it because sometimes the word in itself can be triggering. But feeling activated by something where somebody says something or you see something and it makes you go.

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Like hole, clenches. That feeling or you suddenly see red or you suddenly you have to say something. Social media, for example, is a very activating place. It's designed to be that way. And I am not against social media at all.

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I believe it has both shadow and light. But social media is in general a very activating place. And something that one of my mentors, Tamu talks about is that something she realized was that she was using sympathetic nervous system or activation to try and constantly jerk herself out of feeling inertia to do things. But actually it wasn't supporting her, it was just creating circles of boom and bust. And this has absolutely been my own thing as well.

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We're trying to do things that jack me up to do things. And it's not that this isn't helpful sometimes, but when it becomes your default and when it becomes a way of not allowing yourself to feel things, it can end up leading to burnout and all sorts of things. I think what you're talking about is really important because a lot of people do this and don't realize that they're doing it. I didn't realize I was doing it right. And it makes me think in particular of some of the conversations I have with my clients bringing us back to the realm of sexuality and sexual expression and pleasure.

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This confusing of activation with like sexual desire so that people feeling that high sexual tension and anxiety and thinking that that's the thing you're supposed to feel when you're attracted to someone, or when you're horny and learning to separate that out. I hear this often from clients who are like, but won't that ruin the mood? If I talk about sex before sex, won't that ruin the mood? If I ask my partner what they want or what sort of sensations they want to experience today, won't that ruin the mood? And the mood that they're talking about is a state of very high activation, very high uncertainty, which can be thrilling, but it also comes with this edge.

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So when my clients talk about experiencing a lot of guilt or a lot of shame or a lot of fear around partnered sexual interactions, sometimes this very same mechanism is at work there and it shows up in self pleasuring as well, right. When there's the rush, rush, rush to not be caught, right. Some of that can lead to this very high pitched internal feeling. Right? Yeah.

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And it's also a lot of things that we get when we watch some porn. So free tube sites, and again, I am very pro porn in many ways, but we know from a lot of the free tube sites and the way that their algorithms work, they are deliberately designed to trigger that very intense feeling, that intense activation, that intense arousal. And what can happen with that intense arousal. And then you then combine that with I don't want anyone else to see what, you know, this illicit thrill, this feeling of I'm doing something really naughty. And then you try and come as quickly as possible.

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And then often what happens when you're in that state is you immediately feel really tired afterwards, or you'll notice that you are really into this video and then you come and then suddenly it's like, oh, that's disgusting, I'm not into that at all. Shut the laptop or add the tissues. And what I want to say is, that's not wrong. But when that becomes your default and you don't know any other way, sex and pleasure becomes very one dimensional. And when you add in the fact that it feels uncomfortable to talk about what you want, that then can go into very shadowy territory where consent isn't always explicitly expressed and things go unsaid and things go wrong.

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And then suddenly you end up transgressing someone's boundaries without realizing it. Yup, yup. So to that end, if someone's like, alright, I follow, but like, what is slowing down? How do I get started with this? So I'm aware that when I talk about slowing down, I will be using language from Somaticist.

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And I also want to caveat this, that for a lot of people, slowing down can feel very overwhelming and it can feel like too much or it can feel there's this misconception that by slowing down we have to be in this state of complete relaxation using very loud breathy exhales. The way I think about it is I like the concept of when you're driving a car. I can't actually drive. I've heard this metaphor. This is before we had automatic where you work with the accelerator in the brake.

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And it's the idea that rather than trying to make yourself completely relaxed right now, it's can I bring it down a notch? So a really simple thing is taking one breath, we could do it right now and it's the idea of small interruptions so that rather than trying to force yourself to do a half an hour meditation when that feels way too much, it's something that you can put into your day, especially when things are getting a lot. So if you're working really hard, rather than trying to make yourself take a half an hour meditation, just taking one breath, taking a look around the room you're in, maybe shifting your position, this is one small doable way of bringing in, slowing down. And that starts to change your state just a little bit. And maybe you'll notice when you do that.

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Actually, you know what, I really need to get up and have a walk. I need to get some sunlight actually. I'm feeling really hungry right now. I'm feeling really thirsty. So it's these small little ways of bringing in slowness that don't have to feel wanky and don't have to feel like your life is full of mindfulness.

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I'm a big fan of Mindfulness, by the way, but there's this misconception that mindfulness has to be sitting down and doing a meditation when for me, that's not always accessible. So for me it looks like regularly taking in my surroundings, regularly checking with my body and asking what it needs. Usually it needs a stretch and on a very practical level, it usually means putting a lot less into your calendar and into your day. And if you're hearing that and going, I can't do that, my life is too busy, I will challenge you on that because I would bet many things that I own. But a lot of what you think you need to be doing is actually unnecessary filler or things that could be outsourced to somebody else.

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I'm not saying that this is going to be perfect and that maybe you are under an incredible amount of strain right now. This is also systemic. This is the capitalistic society we live in. If you're a mum, if you don't have a lot of support, if your job is incredibly intense and stressful for low shitty pay this is a result of capitalism in the system that we live in. And yet there are always small things you can add in, even if they are really small, to add a bit more slowness and slowing down.

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Have I made that? I'm not sure. I feel like I've gone off on a tangent there. No, I mean, it's an expansive topic, isn't it? And it reminds me I just recently finished listening to the audio book of Rowett is Resistance.

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If you haven't checked it out yet. Go get a copy. It's amazing because it's exactly about this reclaiming moment of the day to Rowett. And that Rowetting doesn't just look like taking a nap. It can take lots of different forms, like taking a walk.

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And, you know, if I kind of put myself in my mind years ago before I started doing any of this work and listening to you, and I kind of go, wait, because you talked about getting a snack or taking a nap or going for a walk or these things that your body wants. And it's like but you just act on those impulses. What if I'm busy? What if I'm in the middle of something that is tricky? Because I'd always challenge that with what are you there?

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But are you that busy? And I'm not saying you aren't or you are, but I would challenge that. Are you really that busy that you can't take 5 minutes to go and get something to eat or get a glass of water or just to stand up and have a little stretch 5 minutes if you're in the middle of a work meeting? It could be, for example, yeah, I'm definitely hungry right now. I'm going to put a mental bookmark that when the meeting finishes, instead of doing more emails or going on social media, I'm going to put my computer down, I'm going to get up, I'm going to go and get a snack.

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So it's not always possible to meet that need in the moment, but you can make that mental note. And I also want to caveat this with this is fucking hard. It may sound easy. It's not. It's really hard.

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And I want to kind of forewarn you on that so that you're not adding that extra beating yourself up, going, why aren't I taking care of myself? You're having to go against a lot of conditioning. And also probably the people that you're with in the workplace or friends and colleagues, they're also in exactly or a very similar boat. And it's probably baked into the culture of your workplace. It's baked into the culture of everywhere, this idea of constantly pushing and pushing ourselves and going over our internal boundaries for success to hit those goals.

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And this is why I can't remember who came up with this. Maybe Adrian Marie Brown. I can't remember. Called internalized capitalism where we are constantly over exploiting our own internal resources.

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Internal exploitation. I've got so many thoughts pinging around in response to all of this that yeah, there's this collective brainwashing, isn't there? And it makes me think about a period of time in my private practice where I noticed that people started to respond to marketing. If I started talking about how much more productive taking care of your sexual self can make you be, or how I've had clients report things like, oh, when I started doing this, my manager was like, I've never seen you so confident before. And like well, on the one hand it was like, wow, okay, I'm finding some kind of language that's resonating.

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People are signing up for things in response to this. It never really sat well with me because I don't think the reason to do any of this is to make you a better cog in the system, right? That kind of goes against the underlying ethos. So I think that's part of what caused me to take a step back a little while ago and reassess why things weren't feeling lined up. And I can see the parallel between do you listen to your body when you need a snack or you need a drink and do you listen to your body when you want to be touched in a certain way, or when you want to move in a certain way, or when you'd like to share some kind of sensory experience with a partner.

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And I mean, it's kind of logical, isn't it? Right? Like if that little voice is trying to speak up and you always ignore it, then why would it start to talk to you in the bedroom when you don't listen to it in any other way? So there's clearly a connection between getting into the habit of paying attention to bodily desires in life in general so that you can also get that information when it comes to sex and pleasure. Right?

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You've kind of hit the nail on my head, especially with the clients the women vulgar have us that come to me and it's usually this I don't know how fast for what I want because I don't even know what I want in the first place. I need help tapping into my sexual desires. They go into freeze when when somebody they can't ask them what they want and also they can't let go during effects or they're telling themselves they can't let go, they can't have orgasms. And in a lot of our work, it's very difficult to tap into your desires to be able to let go, to be able to have all of this sex you want if in the Rowett of your life you're overriding your body's needs. If you don't have you have a weird relationship with pleasure, where the idea of pleasure just feels a bit strange and alien to you, and yet when you go to bed, you're suddenly expected to flip the switch.

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And actually, it doesn't really work like that. And it's very hard to have a big orgasm, for example, or have your partner touch your neck and you need to go if in the Rowett of your life you don't feel much in your body in general. So I hope that resonates with people, especially when the clients that I work with are female or assigned female at birth. And we have that added extra thing of diet culture of constantly trying to change our bodies, of never feeling that our bodies are skinny enough or curvy enough or toned enough and constantly Rowettricting what we eat or doing the native fad eating plan. It's all systemic.

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It's all part of the same ecosystem. Well, and it's inteRowetting listening to you, because I work with people from a variety of gender identities. Historically, I've worked with people who identify as men as sort of like 75%, 85% of the people in my practice. And it never ceases to amaze me how actually the underlying thing is the same. And there's just gender seasoning on top of it because talking about that disembodiment or that highly valorizing of the mind and every other element of life and then coming into pleasure and just in this case, having the expectation that you're going to take all the initiative, that you're going to drive the experience that you have to perform in a certain way, and that the whole thing should make you feel, like, manly because you're punching your man card when you fuck someone.

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Yeah, exactly. Rock hard. And also, you should be enjoying this kind of sex. And if you're not, then you're obviously not mad or you're not mad. Same shit, just like a different rapper on top of it.

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And I think it's important to call that out because the more we can see how we're all collectively being fucked and not in a good way, essentially by the systemic factors at play which is part of why the slutty activism podcast exists in the first place, the more I think we can collectively say no to that bullshit and say yes to changing the world, our own and the wider world through pleasure. So when we'd been talking before, I just want to check in. You'd mentioned that maybe we could even do a little exercise here together today for people to have an example of what this could look like. Is that something you'd be up for sharing with my listeners? So I'm guessing let me just adjust my seat here.

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I'm guessing this will take between five to 10 minutes. I will try not to go over. So you could say this is a mindfulness embodiment and pleasure practice. And the great thing about this is you can do this literally anywhere because it's fully clothed and there's not really much body movement involved. And you could even try this in the middle of a work meeting and see how that feels.

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That titillation. So are you ready? Sarah I'm ready. Do me. Do me at a distance.

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Lucy Rowett so what I invite you to do, if you are watching or listening, is to obviously keep listening to my very sexy voice. And I'd like you to take your eyes away from the device or the screen that you're watching or just take your eyes away from anything and take a slow look around the room that you're in. And you may be very good too. You may be very familiar with this already. And as you're doing this, also open up your field of vision because especially if you've been on your laptop and you're punching forwards and squinting your eyes forwards to really look around almost services for the first time.

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This is known as orienting, to have a little check in with your body. So you can either return back to the screen or put your eyes wherever and think of it like you're taking an internal screenshot of your body. And as you're doing this, you may notice that something feels like it needs moving. Or maybe you realize my neck suddenly feels really stiff. And so maybe in a micro way, maybe notice if anything needs adjusting.

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Like as I'm doing this, I always tend to rom my shoulders back. Maybe you want to wiggle your feet. Just notice if there's something in your body that wants a little bit of adjustment, if it's feeling a bit tense or it maybe you suddenly realize, you know what? I need a big ass stretch because it's been a long day. You can make this as micro or macro as you want to.

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That's the beauty of it. And then if it feels good, you can either close your eyes or just bring your focus inwards. The great thing about this is that you always get to be in choice. You can open your eyes whenever you want to and you can close them when you want to. And I want you to bring your awareness down to where your bum or your butt is making contact with whatever you're sitting on.

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Maybe you want to give your bum a little wiggle like, yep, definitely feel my butt on this chair, or whatever.

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And also what your back is making contact with. And if possible, can you let yourself be supported just a little bit more? This isn't about completely relaxing, just can I let myself be supported 1% more? Just 1% and then I invite you too. This is a fun thing, and if you find it pleasurable, you can smile because we get to have fun and play with this rather than take it very seriously.

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Imagine that there is if you have a uterus an evolver, imagine there is a string coming out of your wound space or area and it's going down through your vagina and it's going down, down to the center of the Earth. Imagine you're really letting that string pull and push down. And if you have a penis, you could imagine that it's coming out, it's maybe starting just around your bladder area and it's going down to your perineum. It's going down, down, down. So whatever set of genitals you have, it's going down through the center of the Earth.

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And if you want, you can imagine slightly pulling on the string so maybe doing a little kegel, a little squeeze like you're slightly pulling on the string.

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And then imagine that all of this wonderful Earth energy, whatever resonates with you, is coming up through this string. You could. Think of it as grounding. You could think of it as coming from the center of the earth and it's coming up through this string, it's entering your gentle and it gets to feel good.

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And you can imagine it filling up your whole pelvic bowl, this yummy energy that also gets to feel really pleasurable.

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Let it be there, feeling yourself really rooted, really supported and rooted and supported in your situation. It gets to be here just like everything else in your experience.

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And if you notice that it starts to feel tingly or pleasurable, allow yourself just a favorite. You don't have to go anywhere with it, you don't have to do anything with it. You just get to enjoy it for what it is.

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Favoring this feeling of feeling really deeply supported or even just 1% more supported and your sexuality being connected to the earth and you just get to enjoy it with no goal.

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And then you can either keep the structure or maybe you want to imagine pulling it up again so much like you're putting it back into your body. You've plugged yourself in, you're charged up now you're withdrawing that charger. So you're pulling that string back up and it sits back in your pelvic bowl again, you're feeling your bum and your back supported.

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Start to slowly open your eyes and as you start to be aware of the room that you're in, also see if you can keep a little bit of your attention still on the inside where that sexual energy was. So you get to realize and know that you're still in the same place. You get to feel some of that yummy energy, you get to have both. You get to carry it with you for the Rowett of your day.

[00:36:01]

Thank you for that, Lucy. And doing this exercise. It reminds me of one other thing. That if you follow along because you can replay this for yourself as many times as you'd like, if you then open your eyes and suddenly you feel a little bit slow and a little bit for me, I always feel like it's taken me a minute to catch up. That's normal and it's not something to be immediately remedied by slamming yourself with caffeine or back into work.

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Like this is a living example of the thing that we were talking about. It's really important that you take this integration time, even if it's 5 minutes, and give yourself a bit of lead time, whether it's winding down and that is just as important whatever you've experienced, because then you get to integrate it. And if you try and rush yourself out of it or have an espresso, you could actually make yourself quite jangled and a little bit discombobulated. So take the lead time or the waking up time, almost like the idea of when you're winding down for bed. You don't try and get in straight away.

[00:37:18]

Give yourself a bit of time and if you feel that you can't give yourself a bit of time that is something to reflect on. Indeed it is. And I'm curious here because I think this is such a great example of where people can get started and we're coming towards the end of our time together today. I wanted to just touch briefly on this concept of the kind of thing that we just did also being kind of like a ritual. Even if you might hear the word ritual and immediately go or that sounds a bit woo or it might fill your head with really breathy people at a tantra gathering.

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And I think there's something really poignant to the fact that ritual is something that you can create for you. It can be slow, it can be private, it can be just that sort of thing we did now. It can be pleasurable and very embodied and body focused that it doesn't that actually in fact, part of the point is not to go into that state of activation, right? To not go into that state of really high arousal which is often created at places like pantry gatherings or I know you work with people from faith backgrounds, right? Like they manufacture this sensation in evangelical churches all the time using music or other it's a big worship in a.

[00:38:52]

Worship session like that. And in terms of ritual, one of the two things I want to speak into, the first thing that really helps can help you reframe ritual is that ritual is just a way of communicating with your unconscious mind and it can literally look like anything as long as it means something to you. But a ritual is also a way of communicating something with you that can help you complete something or to start something. Knowing that when you're intentionally working with ritual you're communicating with another part of you that's not your conscious mind. To finish something, to create something, to mark a transition.

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And that when you do that, it's another you could say it's a smarter way of working with yourself. It's a way of working with parts of you that you don't usually get contact with.

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And also in terms of when we talked about being in spirituality or religious settings where you're probably familiar with this, where they work you up into really hyper state. So I used to be an evangelical Christian. And you'd be in these worship sessions where you'd start with a very inspiring talk by the pastor or preacher and you'd feel very emotional. And then you'd be doing these worship songs that would build up in crescendo, but they'd start very small and then they build up to really loud and energetic. And that would be when people would start falling down and speaking in tongues and hearing God.

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And this also exists in tantrum spaces in New Age and spirituality spaces. Something to be aware of is I want to have faith that some of the people doing it. I'm not doing it with the intention of trying to manipulate you. But there are certain stages and they are leading you through certain brain stages. And when you understand that, you can know that if you're in a very highly activated state, like in a worship session, in a tantra workshop, in a spirituality place, where you suddenly feel blasted wide open and you feel ecstatic.

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And you feel this? Oh, my God. I feel God. Or I'm experiencing sexual energy. Please have some awareness that this is a brain state and it can be absolutely healing and beneficial and wonderful.

[00:41:14]

I'm not against this, but you need to or the people that you're with, they need to be leading you down and out of that as well. One of the most valuable pieces of advice I received from another form of mentor, katherine Hale. And I wish somebody had bloody said this to me years ago, that if you're at a workshop or a retreat or a training where you are very highly activated, or even when you're having deep emotional shifts, don't make any big decisions for a week afterwards. That especially means like relationship or marriage, money, kids. Don't make any big decisions for at least a week because you will not be making it from a very clear brain space.

[00:41:58]

You'll be making it from a space that's almost like on drugs, because you are you're in a different brain state. Well, I talk about this, too, when people are experiencing NRE new relationship energy, sometimes called limerants, you are also in basically a drugged brain state at that time. And I think this is one area where you can really judge the practitioners that you're around. So if you're listening to this, it's not to hate. On Tantra, I have a lot of personal misgivings and I recommend a lot of caution and discernment when you explore that space.

[00:42:39]

Because when you go to these brain states, you are a bit vulnerable, right? And there are people there who are looking to prey on others. And I think we can say this is the same of evangelical Christianity, too. And spaces as well, and business spaces. Absolutely pickup spaces anywhere you've got gatherings of human beings.

[00:43:00]

Because I think, on the one hand, like, a lot of us yearn for having these collective experiences of ecstasy, right? There's something inside of us and it is very bonding and very powerful and at the same time attaching meaning to it, right? Attaching narrative to these states is where we get in trouble. So you want to look for people who help to contextualize these things before they lead you through this experience and letting you know, like, you're not actually hearing the voice of God, right? Or you're not actually experiencing when we layer those stories on top, when we have these profound and moving embodied experiences.

[00:43:45]

I think that's part of where too, ideas and beliefs can get really entrenched because, like, what are you going to tell me, Lucy, that that thing I felt wasn't real? That I wasn't actually hearing the voice of God or I wasn't actually blending into the collective consciousness or I wasn't actually insert X-Y-Z? And my sense is that like a responsible organizer or guide or shaman, even if we want to use that kind of language, is going to prepare you that these things are going to happen and to let you know that it's not something from out here, right? It's something from in here. And also if you're doing psychedelics or plant medicine, for example, if you want to go on a retreat or whatever.

[00:44:32]

And I do want to say that these ecstatic experiences are absolutely necessary. They are completely valid and part of human experience. But the point is you should not be staying there. And also you need to understand that this is not an everyday experience because this happens within Christianity. It also happens within Tantra and New Age spirituality spaces where you're constantly trying to recreate this high because it's amazing.

[00:45:01]

You know it's intoxicating. Especially when we don't tend to come to this stuff from having had a wonderful life. We come to this stuff from our own stories of personal pain and this feeling of ecstasy and exhilaration and that everything is possible and it's wonderful. And this is absolutely not sustainable for everyday life and you need to see it for what it is. And I say this from an experience as well.

[00:45:30]

I've seen and I was one of those people myself constantly trying to recreate this high thinking, being told by certain teachers this is the state we need to be in and this is where I get stuff done and this is where I'm inspired. But this is not sustainable and you will have a crash trying to constantly recreate that. And so whoever if you're in that kind of workshop or retreat or setting a responsible leader will then bring you down will then help you to down regulate and not just a simple thing of okay, now take it slowly will actually lead you through an experience to help wind you down and then when it finishes give you practical information. For example, don't make any big decisions for at least a week. You need to Rowett, you need to drink lots of water, you need to sleep, you need to eat nutritious food to give you practical things to do.

[00:46:31]

Or if they don't give you that, do it yourself. Because understand that this highly ecstatic emotional space, it is not sustainable and you cannot act on any of that until you have brought yourself down to a baseline and please don't try because you will burn out. You will crash. And I've seen this and I've lived this myself. It's the workshop junkies who are always chasing that dragon.

[00:46:58]

And I think it's one of the reasons why at least for me, thinking about my personal experience that arriving at happiness doesn't actually feel like a high. It feels like this calm low. And that was so unfamiliar, right? And I think that's because so very many of us are used to shooting up to high highs or being dragged to low lows and being in a place of just contentment and a level place feels so foreign and so unusual. Right?

[00:47:32]

I completely agree. And often, for me, contentment has often I think I invite you to anyone listening to start to get familiar with how these different experiences feel like being in a high, high exhilarated space versus a state of just contentment. It's a feeling that feels like a and it feels life doesn't feel like it's on multiple life doesn't feel on steroids. You're not seeing the full kaleidoscope things just feel and this is not a bad state. And also, maybe if you've had these massive high highs, if you've had these high highs, be it through any experience, I guarantee you've also experienced a crash, basically sub drop that feeling after an amazing event or an experience was suddenly and this is not because you're weak or because life is shit.

[00:48:37]

This is inevitable because this is what your brain has done. So you need to know this in advance. If you're having this massive high and everything feels wonderful, you need to learn how to bring yourself slowly down. One of my therapists, she said this right at the beginning of the pandemic. She said we need to flatten the curve.

[00:49:00]

Wow. It's so true, though. It's like, okay, I've just come from this amazing experience and that we've left the experience and the leaders left us in this space of feeling ecstatic. Okay, I know what happens now because this has happened before. I now need to take it slower.

[00:49:20]

I now need to clear my schedule for as much as I can for the next few days. And I need to deliberately do things that are comforting, binge on Netflix, eat food that's not comforting. And nourishing, because there will be a drop there. And I have been in spaces where the leaders were not responsible, where they left us completely blown and wide open with generic words about landing softly and Rowetting but no actual practical advice and where we were encouraged to make very big decisions financially relationshipwise from this space of and I saw people trying to recreate this and getting very badly hurt. And I mean in terms of mental health, in terms of physical health.

[00:50:13]

So that's the danger there when leaders are not doing that well and then. Pulling it back around just as we come to the close here. You can easily see the parallels between that in that wider context and how we often are in our interpersonal relationships with our partner or partners. I'm thinking now about the kind of clients that are always jumping from relationship to relationship very rapidly because as soon as that new relationship energy wears off. There's a sense of something's wrong.

[00:50:47]

I'm not getting that high feeling anymore. We must not be in an air quotes in love anymore. We're obviously not compatible with air quotes anymore. And that can create over time, a profound sense of loneliness. And if you believe that what you need in order to be happy is that are the highest highs and you never find this place of sustainable, delicious delight that you can enjoy every single day, it feeds into that always wanting, that always sense of lack, which is something that capitalism wants us to have perpetually.

[00:51:28]

Right? Yeah, exactly. I completely agree. And I've seen this, I've had friends and who repeat this pattern over and over again until they become aware of it. That they have basically become NRE junkies or dopamine junkies until they realize, oh, it wasn't actually the relationship, it was me.

[00:51:50]

That I reach this point of boredom. And again, the same therapist or someone was talking about that. If you are somebody where you've lived your life like this, from intensity to intensity, part of healing is learning how to be okay with feeling bored and learning how to be okay with contentment. And also knowing that no one partner is this magical solution to what you need on the inside. Beautiful.

[00:52:24]

I think that's a wonderful place to wrap for today. Lucy, how can the people get in touch with you? Is there anything you want to tell the people about that they should definitely check out? So check out loads of things. I'm on Instagram at Lucy Rowett do check out my website, Lucyroet.com.

[00:52:40]

At the moment I have two free offers, although I don't know how long I'll keep them there. I have a free course, an audio course on mastering sexual communication and a video training on authentic sexual confidence. So if you really enjoyed what I said, if that really resonates with you, I have spaces for one to one clients for the Rowett of this year and next year. So if you are a woman or vulva, have her and you want to do some really deep work around sexuality and sexual healing and do get in touch, I would love to connect with you. And this is airing late 2022.

[00:53:13]

In 2023, I'll be opening up the next cohort of my group program called The Shameless Woman Immersion. So if any of these call you, get in touch, email DM's website and we can have a free chat to discuss which one is right for you. Beautiful Lucy, thank you so much for your generosity, for spending your time with us here. I've taken away a lot and I hope our listeners have too about the uncommon pleasure that can come when you slow the fuck down. And to all of you watching the video or listening to the audio here, thank you so much for spending some of your time with us here and for investing this time in learning how to expand your own pleasure potential.

[00:53:54]

Because, like, no bullshit, that is what's actually going to change the world for us. All right, Lucy, thank you so much. And thank you. Everybody listening. We'll catch you later.

[00:54:05]

Yeah.