Sexual Confidence Online Course:
Building Your Self-esteem in & Out of the Bedroom

So when we think of confidence, it's not so much like a state of mind, or a destination, it's this feeling of fullness. And so there are three big areas where folks tend to experience sexual unconfidence. And we're gonna go in depth into the areas, and also try and build some corrective practices so that we can heal those wounds from feeling unconfident, and unsexy, and feeling unattractive. So, one of the areas is bodies. And so, there's lots of stuff around bodies, and how we feel unworthy in the body that we're in. You may have a part of your body that you think is really awesome. You may have parts of your body that you think are really horrible. And what's interesting is that a lot of the time the parts that we feel ashamed of are the exact same parts as everybody else. So that's not a coincidence, right? We have an industry of beauty, of fashion, of diet culture, of fitness that really manufacturers for us what an acceptable or attractive body looks like. And 99% of us don't fit into that sliver, that narrow sliver of what sexy is supposed to look like. So where does that leave the rest of us? It really leaves us in a space of constantly feeling not enough. It leaves us in a space of feeling like we have to keep trying and trying and trying before we're really allowed to step into full pleasure. So what we'll talk about around bodies is how we can break up with body shame, but also how in our sexual moments, what actual practices can we use in order to come back to our bodies so that we don't get into the shame that exists in our heads. Another big one for people are desires. So, has anyone ever felt uncomfortable giving feedback to a partner? So maybe they were doing something that you didn't feel was actually that great, but you didn't wanna hurt their feelings, you didn't want them to feel rejected. You might've thought that it's gonna hurt their feelings. Okay, Kamal, yes, yes, okay, yep, absolutely. Amy, Karen, Sue, Vicky, yeah, okay. Emily, yes. Vicki, sometimes, yep. Danielle, totally. Okay, yeah. It's a really popular or common experience for people because we approach sex from a performance based kind of mentality versus a connection based, or a pleasure based reality. And so, we set orgasm as the only goal, right? Like that is how we have the sex. And that's really limiting because sex is so much more than orgasms. Orgasms are awesome, but sex is also pleasure. It's intimacy, connection, skin touch, it's playful. It's about having fun, having a good time. It can be about stress relief. It can be about building a bond with a partner. It can be trying something new. And so, all of those things don't have to end up in orgasm for it to be a good time. Kamal says, "Personally I love receiving feedback without ego, but when giving feedback I'm hesitant at the time of," oh, 100%. I love getting feedback, and I think lots of people like it if it doesn't sort of attack their ego, they feel very happy to receive like feedback on, "Oh, you like touch here and not here. Oh, you want it faster, not slower, okay, good" because it helps us be more responsive partners. And so, it's great. It can be challenging to give feedback in the moment. You can definitely make feedback sexy. And so, if your partner has their mouth on your body in a place that you really like, and they take it away too soon, you could say, "Oh babe, I miss your mouth already, can you bring it back over there?" And so, it doesn't have to be like, "Oh, excuse me, you have moved from the location that is best available for," so it doesn't have to feel prescriptive, it doesn't have to feel like a correction. It can totally be something that allows us to experience our humanity, and at the same time giving this feedback. Alrighty. So I'm glad that some of you, I'm not glad that you had that experience, but I'm not that you can relate to that because I think it's a big one. Most of us don't feel super comfortable giving that kind of feedback. Emma says, "I couldn't even acknowledge my desires existed, yep, "until I was in my 20s, so much learned shame." Oh my goodness, I know. I know there's so much that we're taught about sex, about pleasure, about how it's supposed to happen, who it's supposed to happen for, when sex ends, when sex doesn't. If you have sex with penises, you know that most of the time sex is considered over when the penis is over, and so, what bullshit nonsense is this, right? What if sex continued because it had nothing to do with the penis? What if it had to do with toys? What if it had to do with fingers? What if it had to do with mouths? What if it had to do with skin, with dirty talk, with fantasy sharing? So a lot of us have also been shamed through our partnerships. So, how many of you remember an experience with a partner where you didn't feel good enough, whether during sex or outside of sex? Where it kind of replays for you, right? Yeah, Karen. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Amy, Kamal, absolutely. Jen, yes. Emma, yep, yep, yep, yes. Sue, enthusiastic, oh yes. Vicky, yup. Yes, okay, so almost all of us, right? So that's also a powerful sort of magnet for more toxic thoughts because even if the person isn't there saying it anymore, we still have picked up and embodied that judgment, and so, we hold on to it, we've made space in our hearts for that and in our gut. And so, now it's very hard to get to our authentic voice, it's just we've got this noise in front of it. So what we have to do is sort of, we have to figure out what some of those narratives are, and we're gonna do a little bit of a an exercise, and that you can also continue to do, but helping find out what are those thoughts that are still there? And then we have to accept how they get in the way of our pleasure. And then we can move into action. So what are we gonna do to help rewrite or relearn a new way of connecting to our confidence? The last thing that people are really common, or commonly bonded by in sexual unconfidence is around performance. And so, how many of you have ever felt pressure to orgasm, or it might take you too long to orgasm, or you might not orgasm from the thing that the person is doing, and that kind of sends you into your head of anxiousness, right? Emily, of course, yes. Karen, yes. Vicky, oh yeah, yup. Janelle, very common, yes, yes. Marina, hell yeah. Sue, of course. Amy, yes. Danielle, a lot of the time. Yes, Jen, yep. Okay, yeah, me too, I also feel this, and this is also because we have a narrative around sex that says, if I make you orgasm, then I get some kind of, I don't sticker, or gold metal or something. And so it becomes a sign of my validation. And remember I started in the beginning where sexually confident people, they don't obsess over rejection or favor of their sexual giving of pleasure. They actually are just more concerned with, "Okay let's approach this path to your pleasure with curiosity. Let me learn what's gonna make you sink into a puddle. Let me learn what's gonna make your eyes roll back into your head, or your breathing change, or your body feel good." And so they're not worried about taking orgasm as a sign of like, "Yeah, I made you do that," well, you probably didn't, we did it together, right, so it's a co-creation. So, but for a lot of us, it throws us right into the anxious parts of our brain, and it makes us worry that they are going to think that they are not doing a good job, we don't wanna make them think that they are not good at the thing that they're doing for us. And so, so much noise in our head means that we can't focus even on orgasms. Who's gonna be able to cum from that? Nobody. I had a partner ones that would go down on me, and then would pop up and be like, "Huh, takes you kind of a long time to cum, huh?" And then we'd go back down and I was like, I'm like, "Don't even bother going back down because there's no way I'm gonna cum now knowing that you're thinking that," right? Yeah, exactly, Emily, I felt the same way, good God. And we also, if you've had partners that have complained that, oh, their neck hurts, or, if your neck hurts, get into a different position and keep doing what you're doing, right? So we're all struggling with lack of skill. We're all struggling with a lack of figuring out how to support each other, and it isn't intentional, it's just that we don't have spaces like we have tonight to be able to figure out how do we approach these things in a way that's empathetic, that's what we're looking for, right? We're looking for empathy. Alrighty. So, we're gonna go a bit deeper into those, but I would love to know if there's anything else that has taken away confidence from you 'cause I've got a big list here of things that are commonly stealing from people's confidence. So if there's something in particular that is stolen confidence for you and you'd like to share, feel free to do so. For some people it's past experiences. So we talked a little bit about that. It can also be past experiences with either sex lists, or desire list periods. And so, that might mean that you weren't dating for a while. It might mean, like me I was in a 10 year marriage, and we were pretty much like sexless from year six onwards with a sprinkling of sex, but then the last year completely no sex. And so, we just didn't have good communication, lots of love, but no communication. And it left me feeling incredibly unattractive, so unattractive, so desireless. And most of us have tied our attractiveness and our desire to being devoured by other people's desire. And so, when we feel someone wants us, or wants to have sex with us, then we feel kind of sexy. And it's okay to appreciate that someone wants to have sex with you, or desires you, or lusts for you, that can add to your sexual confidence, but it's very dangerous for it to become the sole place or the sole source that you plug into for your sexual confidence. What we're working on tonight is so that your cup, your sexy ass cup, is gonna be so full of your sexual confidence of feeling yourself that your overflow is what you will serve other people, that's spilling over is what you will gift other people. And so, that means if someone doesn't like you, or someone thinks that you are bossy in bed 'cause you said what you want, you'll be like, "Cool, okay, sorry," instead of feeling this level of devastation of having that desire withdrawn. So it gives you a little bit, it raises you, right? So it raises you up a little bit more. Also folks may have had desireless period. So you may have had someone wanting to have sex with you, but you didn't feel aroused, or sexual, or desirable, and so you weren't engaging in physical sexual activities. And this happens for a lot of us. It can happen medication, it can happen from mental health issues, it can happen from other physical health issues, it could happen just because we're not feeling happy with life, where our energies are focused sort of elsewhere. And so, that can also have an impact on how sexual and confident we feel. Katelyn says, "I advise them I don't come until page 297 in novel," that's beautiful, Katelyn. I love, give a direction, right? Just give a direction. Kamala says, "Thanks for naming this," yeah, absolutely. Emily says, "Then that's someone you don't wanna sleep with anyways," yeah, 100%, 100%. And what happens is sometimes even if we walk away kind of being like, "Hmm, yeah, okay, that person wasn't good enough for me" because we already have the narratives of our past kind of whatever we learned from our families about sexual shame, it could be from our communities of origin, it could be from our religious backgrounds, it could be just from society, we don't have a sex positive society, that moment actually starts to build on all of the crud that has left behind from all of this socialization of sexual shame. And so, sometimes the actual messages and the trauma gets stuck in our tissue. It gets stuck in our bodies, and even intellectually, I know that it makes no sense to feel bad in that situation, but emotionally, my body's like, "Oh, we were rejected. Oh, that person doesn't like us. Oh, they didn't wanna meet our needs." And so that's where a lot of us get stuck. It's like up here, we know, "Nope, we should be doing fine and feeling good, they're garbage," but society has told us so many other things. So we really got to work to shake that stuff out, we got to shake it loose and make space for something new. So thank you all for sharing about that. A couple of other things that take away from sexual confidence, these might relate to you as well, changes in your body, from birth, from surgery, from illness, from age, from ability, you might be on birth control. I was never on chemical birth control up until last year for two months before I had a surgery, and I was like, "Oh, whatever, how bad could it be?" I lost my sex drive immediately. I would have orgasms, but they weren't so great, and I dried up. And so, I really didn't have as much vaginal lubrication as I normally did. And so if you've been on chemical birth control for a longer period of time, you may also just not be as familiar with what your body might be like off of it. So that doesn't mean you have to go off of chemical birth control, it just means that you might be starting from a different level of desire if it's affecting your desire in any way. And so the strategies that are gonna work for everyone are gonna be a little bit different depending on what's in our way, and what challenges are in our way. Insult, trauma, criticisms, stereotypes, sexual stigma, all of these things can beat down our sexual confidence. Also, some of us find that if we're not moving our bodies, we find that we don't feel as good in them. We don't feel as strong, or as flexible, or as our blood circulation is going around, and this is not a call to the gym. Who cares if you go to the gym, you don't go to the gym, that's totally up to you, this is just about movement. And so, that might mean dancing around in your house like a stripper, I do this all the time, I specifically bought knee pads just to do this. So it's about really allowing your body to feel playful, to feel big, right? Think about any time during sex where you wanted to feel small because you didn't want your arm flapping around, or you didn't want your booty shaking, or you didn't want your tummy showing, or you have hair in places that you don't like having hair, right? So a lot of times we're trying to be sexy, but we're also trying to be taped and edited, and that's really contradictory. Emma says also just generally feeling inexperienced as a barrier to confidence. That's a great one, Emma. Yeah, for sure. I think society tells us that we have to fuck like porn stars, and that we need lots of partners, and that's not necessarily true. The most important sexual relationship you're gonna have is the one that you have with yourself. And so, even if you don't have a lot of experience or a lot of partners, someone who has a lot of experience in a lot of partners may not have a sense of what actually feels good for their body, they may have just had a lot of sex. So we all can benefit from building this relationship to our sexual selves. All right. So tell me now, now we've learned what takes away your confidence, tell me what gives you confidence? What would make you feel confident? It could be a compliment. It could be a particular color that you wear. It could be a vibe that you get. It could be a way someone looks at you, or talks to you. Amy says music. Oh yes. How many of you have a sexy playlist? I feel like we should make a group one after Karen says someone listening, 100% because you feel seen, right? You feel worthy of attention. Emily says banter. Yes, I love me some banter. Katelyn says lingerie, ooh, Caitlin, what kind of lingerie? Do you like Fishnet? Do you like Babydolls? Sue says, of course, yes. Jen says, feeling strong, absolutely. Jen is that physically strong, mentally strong, everything? Vicky says banter, lingerie, sexy talk, ooh, these are all great, these are great. Emma says smelling good. Yes, yes. Working out. Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness, these are all so hot. Danielle says knowing what I want sexually. Yes. Knowing is part of being able to communicate. And so, if you're like, "Yeah, I don't like what they're doing, but I'm not sure how to direct them differently." that can be really tough, so I'm gonna give you some tips for that as well. Okay, beautiful, these are awesome. How many of you, do you feel sexually confident if you get physical affection without it necessarily leading to sex? And so, if a partner wanting to kiss you, or adore you, or give you neck kisses and you know that it's not necessarily about getting to sex, yeah, okay cool, amazing. Vicky says flirtation, yes, yes. Love that, love it, yes for sure. Okay, so that's what we call lights on sex. And so lights on sex is about the appreciation for your partner sexiness, without it having to necessarily be like a breadcrumb to the thing that we're gonna do tonight, or later, or the thing that I wanna do right now. A lot of couples struggle because we only start to engage our partners sexiness when we're about to initiate sex. And so that kind of, it puts a lot of pressure on someone to receive that and give that. So we wanna make sure that in the same way that we're paying attention to our partner's dreams, desire, sadness, depression, all different types of things that they're experiencing, we also wanna pay attention to the way that they show up in their sexual selves. And so, that might mean we love the way their neck smells, or they're at the stove cooking and they look so sexy while they're cooking, and you're like, "Ooh, babe that looks yummy and so do you." And then you just walk away, right? You leave your little flirtation bomb and walk away. And so this helps them, helps our partners really trust in building a sexual relationship that isn't dependent on a sexual act, or being manipulated into a sexual act. So if you like these things, you can totally say to your partner, "Babe, I love it, I love, love, love it when you just drop a random compliment about me, and something specific. Like I loved when you complimented my eyeshadow the other day. I loved when I saw, I caught you like looking at my butt when I got up to get us water or something like that." So the more information that we can give our partners, the more that they can respond to our needs. Some folks feel that if we tell our partners that somehow if they do it, it makes it less sincere. That's not true, right? I mean, they're not mind readers, and we're all struggling with sexual connection and communication. So to be able to say, "I need this, I love when you do this," gives them the opportunity. It gives you an opportunity for connection, and you can also model by doing it to them and seeing how that feels. "Yes, I feel like I come with a lot of confidence and struggled with partner shame," ooh, yes, yes. It's hard to also feel confident when someone is struggling with their confidence because it leaves you feeling a little bit, like, "I don't know what's happening, I'm not sure how to read you, this is kind of," or they may be responding and insecure ways that actually feel really horrible for you. So that can really be tough for sure. All right, so how many of you have trouble receiving compliments? If I say, "Oh my gosh, Amy, I love that shirt." And Amy might say, "Oh, this, yeah, I've had it for five years, I got it, I don't know I found it on the road." And so, we... Yeah, yeah, it can feel awkward. Yeah, this whole thing, "Oh, it was, so I got it on sale," or what I do is I'm like, someone will say, I like my dress, and I'm like, "Look, it has pockets." And we wanna detract from this, right? We wanna detract from getting the attention from someone instead of just saying, "Oh, thank you. Yeah, this is my favorite dress too," right? Or, "yes, I love this color on me." Or we deflect, we go immediately to like, "Hmm, I like your earrings. Well, aren't those cute." So anytime we're trying to not be seen, someone has noticed us and we try to deflect that, that is a moment where, these are all these little moments where you actually notice that you're trying to feel smaller, that you're trying to disappear. And when we have this kind of running narrative, it's not like it just shuts off when we get into the bedroom, right? We take that with us into the bedroom. So accepting compliments, I'm glad Vicki you've been practicing this, that's awesome, and you've seen change, that's beautiful. So, some of us can also try this. We can try the next time someone gives you a compliment, or when you give someone a compliment, notice, notice if they try to deflect to you, if they are insecure about it, you don't have to call them out about it, but just watch their humanity try and struggle with this feeling of like, "Oh my God, someone noticed me. Someone is seeing me. What if they see all the ugly shit I think about myself too." And so it's coming from a place of desiring and wanting that acceptance. And so, it's not a bad thing in you, it's a part of you that's like, "Hey, we like to be noticed too." So it can really, really feel like it's a big barrier, but it's a small wind that has a bigger implication. Emily says, "I listened to Nicole Byer's podcasts, and she has goals for receiving compliments. She doesn't deflect, she just has a magnaminous thank you." Yeah, that's a great way to receive it, yes, yes. You can also practice by challenging that voice inside of yourself. And so, what I'd love you to do tonight, or when you have some time is write down five compliments that you've received from other people, right? So if someone's told you, you've got a cute butt, someone told you have nice eyes, someone told you to have a great personality, try and make it a mix of physical and nonphysical compliments that you've received, and see how you feel about those compliments. If you look at them, do they make you uncomfortable? If you say them out loud as an affirmation, do you believe them? So if you say, "Yes, I Luna have a nice ass." How do you feel about that? You might feel silly, you might feel awkward, that's okay. Silliness and awkwardness is actually, it's your little self trying to get vulnerable, right? So we step out of trying to be performed and very serious, and we move into a place where we can feel a little bit more vulnerable. So five compliments that other people have given you, then you're gonna write five compliments to yourself. And so, these are things about yourself that you admire, or that you think are great. And try to have at least one physical thing on there. But your physical self is actually the least interesting part about yourself, but what it ends up being the place where a lot of us hold a lot of our unconfidence. And so, really getting to a point of even acceptance of our physical selves is better than hanging all of our confident desires on being a physical self that is most acceptable to the rest of the world 'cause we really aren't gonna do that, right? I mean, I am the oldest, I am the heaviest, I am the most scarred that I've ever been just because age, right, we're all aging, we're all like moving towards some form of disability, but I am the most confident in this body. So it actually has nothing to do with my physical self. It really has to do with what my perception of my physical self is, and that perception is so distorted. All right, so that is something you can do. You can do your five compliments other people gave you, and five compliments that you're gonna do for yourself. I'm gonna be super proud of you. All right. So we're gonna touch back on, I've got a whole bunch of tools for you. I've got some good tools for you to use in the bedroom, outside of the bedroom, some more homework for you, but we're gonna go back to these most complex, or common things that people are unconfident about. Amy says definitely amazing. Karen says, yes, I will. Okay, good, good, I love these like affirmations, right? We got a little community here tonight that we can hold each other accountable to this. Feel free to share them with me if you would like. So we're gonna go back to our desires. And so, now that we know where some of our unconfidence might come from. So in those moments, Vicky, awesome, I'm glad you're on board for this, this is so great. We're gonna go back to those spaces where we feel that we might have fantasies, or that are not so, maybe someone's gonna think they're fucked up if we, or tell people that we want this thing, we might even just feel very embarrassed to take up space in pleasurable sex. So what that might look like is important. A lot of the noises are very high pitched, right, they're very high pitch. And in real life, our sex noises are kind of guttural, right? They're more like grunty, they're more like primal. And so you know that, excuse me, you know that there's a performance factor to noises, but noises are actually part of our expression. They're part of our sensory sensuality. And so they help us release, and move, and turn erotic energy. But think about your masturbation. So, we all started masturbating maybe at a point where we lived with other people, or our families, or roommates, and so, we were very quiet during sex, and so, we didn't really have that opportunity to be noisy. And so a lot of times our sexual expression during sex is also very, we're trying to make it proper. And that really takes out the desire of our erotic energy to actually be expansive. It wants to take up more space and we're just saying, "Nope, that's not appropriate, oh, that's gonna be weird, someone's gonna think you're messed up." So we can find challenges in also even owning the way that we show pleasure. So I am sweaty as fuck, just normally, and then during sex, I'm a hot mess. So, I get so, so sweaty, and I have been so ashamed of feeling sweaty forever until I had someone that was really appreciative, and thought that sweat was actually sexy, and made me feel so comfortable to just be where I'm at, to let my body do what it's doing. So if there's something about your sexual expression, maybe it's a noise you make, maybe you squirt and you feel embarrassed about squirting, maybe you take long to orgasm, or you come really quickly, or whatever it is, you can also tell your partner this, so that the burden isn't on you hiding this thing, or pretending like it's not gonna happen, or worrying about when it is gonna happen. But you could say to your partner, "Babe, I get really, really sweaty when I'm having a good time. And so yeah, I feel kind of shy about it, but it's how you're gonna know I'm having a really good time." And lots of partners that are compassionate and caring will be like, "Oh, don't worry about it," and they'll get really reassuring. Even if your partner is casual, or if you're with someone for 10 years, 10 minutes or 10 years, it doesn't matter because we still wanna feel comfortable independent of what's happening, and that's really hard, right? I've had partners that, after I got divorced, I went on like a year of fuckery that just never ended, and I was like, "Oh, I wanna everybody, I wanna do all the things," and my standards for having sex with people were quite low. I was like, "I just wanna have sex, I don't know, it'll be great, whatever." And when I look back, I feel like some of the bullshit that I put up with in order to have touch, or connection, or potentially orgasms was actually really detrimental to how I took up space in my desires. And so, if someone didn't go down on me, or they didn't wanna go down on me, I was like, "Okay, well that's their preference." But then I evolved, right, and I thought I deserve better, I deserve to get the kind of sex that I want because then why wouldn't I just do it myself and not have to have small talk or change my cheats, right? So, I started a list. And so, I'd encourage you to make a list of what you think would be a fun, a healthy, a meaningful, a delicious, a pleasurable, a worthy sexual experience for you. So what would that look like? Would your partner be really attentive? Would your partner be really confident? Would your partner be really communicative? Would they be really affectionate? So I made this list for myself. And so, what I ended up doing was using that list in my Tinder conversations. And so when the conversation would get sexual on a dating app, I would say, "Oh, okay, so what kinds of things are you into because sexual like-mindedness is really important for me?" And they'd say, "Oh, I don't know, I'm into sex." And that's like like a non-answer, right, it doesn't give you any information. So, yeah. Oh, Emily, good I'm glad you committed too, and Danielle, you're loving this real, that's good, I'm glad. And be really real with you all tonight, and you all are being really real with me and I really appreciate that. So having these conversations, I then move into a space where I would define what sexual connectedness or like-mindedness looked like for me. I would say "Okay, well, so I'm really affectionate, and I'm open-minded, and I really need a partner that's communicative, and eats pussy like a champ." Those are my four little pillars of having a good experience. And so, if they responded with, "Oh, I'm not really affectionate, I save that for a relationship, or I don't eat pussy because of whatever nonsense answer." Then for me, I was like, "Cool," and yeah, and like Katelyn says unmatched, right? Then so that for me was, I'm not gonna take the risk to try and negotiate what I need for my pleasure, right? So it's a little bit more challenging if you're already in a relationship and your needs are not being currently met. So the conversation there is actually more vulnerable because you have more to lose. And the reality is is that every time you say yes to somebody else, when you actually wanna say no, it's a betrayal to your desire to feel more sexually confident. So you showed up here tonight to feel more sexually confident, but when we go back into our spaces and we don't practice owning our desires, and at least giving them a voice, giving them a manifestation from up here or in here into our relationships and our partnerships, it can just feel like we keep saying no to ourselves. And so, bodies that say no to themselves, it's really hard to take up space in pleasure. It's hard to feel safe enough to do that. So when we go back to the original definition of sexual confidence that we need to feel secure, and if I'm not secure that you care about my pleasure as much as I do, it's hard, it's really hard. So please don't blame yourself because this is really a tough situation for a lot of people when we start to renegotiate, rename, and recreate an idea of pleasure that actually includes us, right? Sexually confident people wanna show up in the pleasure that they want to have. All right. Love this. Kamal, aw, thank you, Kamal. I'm so glad that you liked this honesty and vulnerability. I'm totally here for that. Amy says your favorite line, yes. Whatever nonsense answer, yeah, they'd be like, "Ooh, well, if she's clean, or" I was like, you know what, pussies are self cleaning, dicks are not. So, let's just go with some science here, right? Vicky says, you're a fuckery is the best line, yes. Katelyn says, yes, I've been doing that. Okay. Amazing, amazing. I'm so glad that we're all on the same page about that we want a different set of conditions for our pleasure. So, write that out, what would be your three things that you're looking for, right? So mine was that I'm affectionate, open-minded, and I need you to eat my pussy like a champ. And so I would say those are things I expect from someone. And then we can find connection in other ways, but those were my deal breakers. And it's really hard at first, and so if you don't get it right away, or you start to compromise on your conditions, it's okay, right? We're undoing decades of being told that our pleasure doesn't matter. So it's hard to confidently step into a way of being in that our pleasure actually does matter. Emily says, "The first time I slept with a woman, I wanted to tell every woman in the world to stop worrying about what their vulvas taste like," 100%, 100%. As soon as I started pleasuring vulvas, I was like, "What are people talking about? This is delicious, and it smells amazing," that muskiness that we've all been told is dirty, or that doesn't smell good. We're told you're supposed to smell like lavender's and roses if we have vulvas, and yet penises aren't expected, they don't have an entire industry built around them being scented like steak and cupcakes, right? So we have an additional pressure if you have a vulva to show up in a way that feels more sanitized, right? But a lot of that scent, and a lot of that connection from someone's pheromones, and from their skin, and from their sweat, those are all very animal like pieces that actually add to our arousal. So they cause physiological changes that increases blood flow to the rest of our body. So when I said sexually confident people are more satisfied, it's also because their arousal systems are more receptive to sensation, they're more receptive to sensuality, they're more receptive to pleasure because we actually have a combination of a state of being, but also a physiological set of responses that matches that mental connection, right? So our biggest sex organ is up here. We've got to use our erotic imagination to get into this space. All right. So what you're gonna do for your desires, has anyone ever had a fantasy that you were shy to tell a partner maybe you wanted to have a threesome, maybe you wanted them to dress up like a puppy, maybe you wanted to dress up as a fireman, I don't know. If you've ever had a fantasy and you thought, "Oh my God, that's a weird, they're gonna think I'm so weird." Sometimes I masturbate, and afterwards I have an orgasm and it's great, and then I'm like, "Oh my God, Luna, you're so fucked up." And so, we have shame around the things that turn us on, but the fact is, is that a lot of our desires, we don't necessarily know exactly where they come from. We don't all have a pathology of, "I smelled my mom's pantyhose when I was five, and now I have a pantyhose fetish." Some people do, but a lot of us don't, we just have these fantasies, these things just turn us on. And they don't have to say anything about who we are as people because in fantasy, we're creating these boundaries around the fantasy in order to have a safe space to explore them. And so, it can be, it's like, it's very vulnerable and it's intimidating to share with a partner that you would like to do something. And sometimes we feel, especially if we've been with a partner for a while, we might think that telling them we want to do something different is somehow telling them that what we're doing right now is not working. And that's also not true. So you could say to your partner, "Hey babe, like, is there anything that you've ever like fantasized about, or thought about? I would love to hear what goes on in that dirty little mind of yours. I would love to be naughty and talk with you about things that turn me on, I don't know if we have to do them, but we can just talk about them." And so you can make it a really cute point of connection. It can be a wonderful way to get into another space of connection and intimacy with a partner. And so, I'm gonna challenge you, I'll send you all what your homework is, but I'm gonna challenge you to come up with what I call a fuck-it list. So, a fuck-it list is like a bucket list, but it's all the things you wanna do that that have to do with your fantasies. And so, your fuck-it it list might include, it could be something simple like, maybe not simple for some of you so it might be, I want to sit on someone's face. It could be I wanna learn to be a femdom. It could be I wanna learn to be better at fingering. It could be I wanna learn how to, or I wanna dress up as something, or I wanna be, I wanna pretend to be an alien in bed, or whatever it is. So we wanna think about what are some of these things that we would be interested in doing? This is what keeps our desire and our erotic imagination stimulated, right? So it's like the exact same purpose as a bucket list it's things to look forward to, but it also sets this pathway of sexual creativity, of erotic creativity. And it helps us also feel that we have a sexual relationship to ourselves that is independent of other people's desires. And so, you might meet some of the things on your fuck-it list through your own self-pleasure. It might just be through masturbation. It might be through wearing an outfit. So when I was with my ex husband, and we weren't having sex, so I was masturbating a lot, and I had a lot of cyber sex, whether that was ethical or not. I definitely had a lot of fantasies. And so, what I ended up doing was I wanted to have sex in heels. I was like, "Oh, it'd be really hot to wear heels and have sex." So I would wear heels during masturbation. And so, I would step into that fantasy on my own, and enjoy the sexiness of the heels just for me, and get off wearing heels. So you don't necessarily need a partner to have a fuck-it list. You can make this fuck-it list for you. Katelyn says, "I feel like I end up with such boring vanilla partners that sharing fantasies can bring out their sex shame," yes, "need to keep being proud about it." This is where our empathy comes in, that's a great point, Katelyn. So it feels like a lot of times our empathy also comes in for other people to appreciate that we're all dealing with this type of sexual shame. And so, at first, if you start talking with a partner, they might shy away from it, right? It might not be about you, it's their own stuff. And so, it doesn't mean that we still can't take up space in our own erotic fantasies. And sometimes that inspires people to feel more confident and more vulnerable. And so you can give them a bit of time to come around to it. You can also suggest if they're like, "Hmm, I don't know," or, "I'm not sure," or, "No, I just liked the things we're doing." You can give them contrast. So give them things to choose between. So you could say, "Hey, so I've been thinking about spanking. What do you think about that?" And they might say, "oh, I don't know, that sounds okay." And you could say, "Okay, well, would you wanna be the one that's spanked, or would you wanna spank me? Would you like to," and if they say you, you might say, "Oh, okay, with a spoon or a paddle, or what are you thinking?" And so, you can start to suggest, and co-create, it shows an interest in teasing out their sexual ideas. And fantasies don't have to be extreme. Fantasies could be, I have this fantasy of wanting to kind of go back to when making out was hot, right, and just making out. And so, I wanna make out with someone and have their underwear still be on. And so we're just focused on like touching everywhere except our bare genitals. And I think the tease and the seduction in that would be amazing. And so that's pretty vanilla on the kind of fantasy scale of kinky things, but it's something that I think is so sexually charged. I think it would be a great way to approach each other's bodies. You could also do sexual fantasy sharing by going online to a sex shop, and picking something that you wanna use on them and maybe they want to use on you. And so, you're committing to kind of being curious about like, "Hey, if there's another way to be turned on, we would like to know," right? Okay. So you're gonna make a fuck-it list. Another list that you're gonna make around your desires, and this also applies when we'll get into the body parts is having a boundaries list. And so, a boundaries list is basically about what you're going to do to make sure to create the conditions where you have everything you need to feel safe and secure emotionally and physically. So, boundaries might be you need physical barriers like condoms, or gloves, or dental dams in order to feel safe in a situation. And so, this means your boundary is gonna be, if it's not safe to be able to negotiate that condition, then I'm not going to have sex with this person. I've definitely been in positions where I've been pressured, or guilted, or I just felt too uncomfortable with the conflict of someone resisting wearing a condom or a barrier, and I look back at my previous self and I just feel for her because there's so much shame to be submissive in sex when it comes to our boundaries, not submissive in a sexy way, but in a way that we surrender our pleasure non consensually to other people. So, everything from not speaking up about what we like, to not using the barriers that we're comfortable with, to not getting the kinds of sexual activities that we want. And so, on my boundaries list is if someone doesn't eat pussy, we're not compatible, doesn't matter, if Ryan Gosling doesn't eat pussy, we're not compatible. So, really think about what are you going to do? You're gonna make the list about the things that you need, and then make the list about what are you gonna do if those conditions don't exist? So actions could be you're gonna speak up about it, right? The action might be you're gonna have a conversation about it. The action might be you're gonna talk to a friend about how to approach this. Sometimes we need solidarity in this. We need validation from people who have a more objective perspective. It could just be you shut it down, right? If it's just a Tinder match, you might just unmatch them. If it's your partner, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult, you're gonna have to have a more intimate, vulnerable conversation with them. How does that sound? Can we do a boundaries list and a fuck-it list? We've got a fun list, and we got more of like a self-care kind of list. Katelyn says, "Ha ha, I made out with someone all night," Ooh, that's so sexy, Katelyn. "I felt like it was super hot and stayed within my boundaries," that's so beautiful. Karen says, "Yes, we can." Awesome. Vicky for sure. Okay, amazing, amazing. Unfortunately, there's not five things I can tell you to do to get sexually confident. It's a combination of all of these practices that are gonna help us erode all of the years of sexual shame that we have picked up. Right, so it's kind of like water on a rock. It's gonna take time, but it is making a difference because we start to pivot our value. We start to say, "Hmm, I am worth this, and this no longer serves me," right? Okay, so let's move into our bodies. So we wanna break up with body shame. Who wants to break up with body shame? I am so over body shame stealing all of my time and money. So, we need to end this relationship with body shame. But I'll tell you I've been in an active process of trying to break up with body shame, pretty much since I left my marriage which was six years ago. And I left my marriage and immediately was like, "I need to fall in love with myself. I need to get this kind of desire that I want from other people for myself." And that doesn't mean I also don't want it from other people, but I need to start with this relationship. So I took burlesque classes. And burlesque classes were, they were so fun, but I was such a hot mess, and I'm not coordinated or choreographed at all. And so, it was very challenging, but it was so it was so inspiring, it was so inspiring to think of the idea of decorating myself, to be able to take up space in a bawdy way, like B-A-W-D-Y in a really unapologetic way, you can't be a burlesque dancer and kind of be like, "Oh, hi, everyone, like me," you have to like be bold, and so, I wanted that boldness. So think about something that you might want to do. Because when we break up with body shame, we actually have to think about what does body shame hold you back from in your sexual desires? We're not gonna eliminate body shame. I still don't like certain angles of myself, I don't like this, but what we're building is a way to come back to ourselves. So every time body shame tries to drag us out of the bedroom, drag us out of these moments, we wanna create these anchors. And so one of the anchors, or one of the ways to get anchors is to get ugly honest. So it sounds counterintuitive, but ugly honest is about really thinking about all of the insidious and pervasive ways that you hide your body. So that might be from the clothing that you choose, the colors that you wear, what seat you choose on transit. If you ever eat, things that you eat and places that you go and... I met this woman in a class once, was it a boxing class, and she said to me, she was so young, and she said to me, "Oh, I think it's really inspiring that you have your arms out because I'm so shy about my arms." And she was fully wearing a cardigan in a boxing class. And I've been there, I've covered up to the point of discomfort and dehydration just to hide my hideous body from other people. Yeah, Emily you've been there, yes, yes, we've all been there. This is the ugly honest we need to get to. And she told me that she wanted to, I had just come back from New York and she was like, "Yeah, I really wanna go to New York, it's on my bucket list, I want to go to LA." And she was like, "But I have to lose 100 pounds." And I wanted to cry for this baby because we have all been there, we have all been there, where we are holding ourselves back from life because of a goal weight, or because of a desire for a flat stomach, or a less hairy back, or I've got stretch marks, I've got psoriasis, I've got all kinds of things that are not considered attractive. But we feel that, we've been told that we don't have the right to exist unless we are aesthetically pleasing, right? And so that's a hard truth because it really confronts us with all of the suffering that we have experienced under these pressures. Vicky says sounds familiar, yeah, absolutely. So I want you to get ugly honest. So I'll give you an example of my ugly honest. If I ever eat things like McDonald's, or take out, or something. If I'm carrying the bag from the place, I will not carry this bag in public. I will put it in my purse, I will shove the drink in my purse. So my pursed smell like fried food and spilled drink because God forbid someone look at that bag of McDonald's or whatever it is, and think that that's what I eat all the time, and so therefore, that's why my body is this size. That's my ugly honest. I think people are always looking at me and thinking that the first thing that comes to mind is that I am not fit, that I am fat, that I'm this and that. So, when we start to tease that out, right, I didn't use to be able to talk about that, I never told anybody that. I was too embarrassed that this is what I do to avoid getting confirmation from other people about what I think in my head. And maybe people are thinking that, and maybe they're not, but it doesn't even really matter what the truth is because the truth that we are choosing to stand behind is actually guiding how sexy we feel, how attractive we allow ourselves to feel, how we allow compliments to be received, how we allow sexual pleasure to be received. And so, if I'm thinking that, how could I possibly then get over the shame of if I think my genitals aren't tasty, and if someone's going down on me, is that what I'm worrying about the whole time that I'm star fishing? And I'm like thinking about, "Do they actually like this? And how could they possibly like my pussy, and how could they possibly wanna have sex with me because of my tummy, or because of this," and so, it can feel just like a tornado inside of you. So find those parts of you, find those parts of you that are telling you these really ugly things. And because we need to give attention to those parts of ourselves, right? We need a new narrative. We need to go in there and be like, "I'm so sorry that we believed that. But I know better now," right? I have to look, sometimes I get dressed, I put on this dress, this is my favorite dress. And I stood in front of the mirror, and the first thing I looked at was my belly. And then I looked back up and met my gaze, and I said, "Luna, I'm so sorry. I know people told us that this belly wasn't cute, and you could never be beautiful with it, but you know what, we know better now. And I'm sorry that you suffered through that, but we know better now." And so we really have to have these dialogues with ourselves. It feels weird, but I promise you, it is a practice that over time it helps build a new narrative, and the other voice feels less powerful. It starts to fade away as this voice gets louder. Katelyn says, "I just tell myself behind all that shame they think I'm a snack," often it's true. Yes, absolutely, we don't know what people are thinking. You can also notice the impact of this by trying an exercise. So the next time you go out, and you're passing, let's say five people, I want you to think that those first five people that you pass, they think you are the tastiest snack that they have ever seen, right? So just imagine that that's what they're thinking, and see what that does to your posture, see what that does to your mood, the spring in your step, right? And then the next five people I want you to think that they think that you are the most horrible looking person that they have ever seen, and see what that does to your mood, see what that does to the spring in your step. What does that do to your posture? What does that do to how secure you feel walking around? And this really gives us, it's an exercise in perception. It really is an exercise of how powerful our sense of perception is, and what we think is happening, how it can affect our mood. Because in the bedroom, we 100% need to leverage a mood. And I'm gonna get into feeling yourself in a minute. So, oh, I'm already at feeling yourself. So, with feeling yourself, this is how we enter our sexy spaces in a way that we are already like this full pot of honey, right? You're like this full, delicious pot of honey that is overflowing for other people. So I have a brand called Fuck Like a Goddess, and Fuck Like a Goddess is all about that, I am entering this space like a goddess, and I'm like, "Hmm, I'm just over here feeling myself, won't you join me," right? Not so much like, "Hmm. I wanna feel sexy, won't you make me feel sexy?" It's not about that, it's like, "I'm feeling myself, and I want you to meet me in this space where I'm feeling myself so you can feel yourself too." So the way to get there, there's a couple of, well, there's a bunch of stuff you can do to get there. So one of the things is mirror work. And so, mirror work is really powerful because mirror work confronts our own sense of our distorted gaze. And so, a lot of times we're looking at ourselves with the eyes of other people or systems. We're looking at ourselves through diet culture, through porn, through the fashion industry, through all these different types of things. So, mirror work, there's a couple of ways you can do it. So, if you go to the bathroom and you're washing your hands, look up in the mirror and just meet your gaze, and just give yourself a big smile. So smile at yourself in the mirror, you can even be like, "Hmm, you're looking a little cute today," and wink at yourself, flirt with yourself in the mirror. It feels amazing. It feels so silly, but after a while, you're like, "Why wasn't I doing this all the time?" And it's so simple. Every time you're washing your hands, you have an opportunity to challenge a narrative, away of feeling, a way of being. Another way to do mirror work is to dance in front of the mirror. And so, to put on whatever your anthem is for feeling sexy, what are some of our sexy anthems? What makes you feel like you are the tastiest thing alive? 'Cause I'm gonna use all your anthems and make a playlist for myself, but tell me what some of these sexy songs are. For me it's always "The weekend," I'm sorry, I know it's really basic, but it's always "The weekend." Jen says "Respect," yes, yes. Karen says, "Bitch Boss," amazing, amazing. So you're gonna do this dance in front of the mirror, and at first notice where your gaze goes because my gaze goes to the parts of the body that I don't like. And so, over time you will start to look at this person, this reflection in the mirror, as someone who's just having a really good time, or maybe they're having, they've got really good rhythm. Maybe they're just having a lot of fun. Maybe they just look great jiggling around and being playful. And you will stop focusing on, well, how society has taught us to see ourselves, which is like cuts of meat. So your arms are okay, but your belly is not okay. Your butt's okay, but your thighs are not okay. Your nose is okay, but your height isn't okay. We are not some of parts, right? We are entire experiences because you are gonna be the sex, right? You don't have to be sexy, you were gonna actually be sex. So mirror work is really fun. What I wanna challenge you to do with mirror work, if it's safe to do in your house, is to do part of the work looking at the mirror, and then keep the music going and turn around so you're not facing the mirror, and see if you even feel freer to dance around in your body. Remember, it's not about choreography, it's not about moves, it's about playing in your body. Oh my God, "Take It Off," I love that song, I love that song so much. Katelyn says, "When they won't listen to 'The weekend' during sex, even to humor me, I'm out." That's on your boundary list, Katelyn, I love that. "Soulmate" by Lizzo, oh my God, yes, yes, just put on the Lizzo album, you got your playlist right there. Ludacris, "What's Your Fantasy," Woo, Sue, that's a great one, thank you for dropping that. Okay, all right, so you already know some of your sexy anthems, this is amazing. So mirror work is something that you make time to do. And so, lots of folks are like, "I don't have time to do this," and I know you're busy people, and you've got lots of responsibility, and you're taking care of people and things and work. But the five minute gaze thing, like when you're brushing your teeth, you can also put on your sexy song. And if it's a two, three minute song, that's how long you're supposed to be brushing your teeth anyways. So you could be brushing and being like, "Yeah, this is what, look at me," what a great way to start and end your day, right, in taking up space in this sensual playfulness. If you're not able to, if your body doesn't feel good, or in a way to like stand up and dance, even putting on your sexy song in the morning when you wake up, and rolling around in your bed, just allowing that sensual juices to start flowing in a way that isn't necessarily sexual. You're just like, "I'm entering my day like a snack," right? And whether you have sex or not, it doesn't really matter, it's about kind of moving into that feeling of feeling good about yourself. Okay, you've got some sexy songs here, I love it. Another one is to notice if you can make small adjustments to your body when you're walking around. And so, we're not going a lot of places right now, right? But if you can make even if you're going to get groceries, and you notice that your posture is kind of down, I want you to just roll your shoulders back, what does that feel like? For me it feels very exposing because I'm pushing my chest out now, which is an area where I feel self-conscious about, or it makes me not able to suck in my stomach at the same time, right? So a lot of us subconsciously are holding tension in areas of our body that we end up disassociating from. We end up numbing that area because we never touch it, we never own it, we never stretch it out, we never make it big. And so, it's really hard to move into a sexy space in the bedroom if we are only part of our parts, right? We're just like kind of bringing in the parts that we sort of accept, but we don't hate. So if you're standing in line at the grocery store, notice how masculine people stand. Because masculine people tend to take up a bit more space. They stand with their feet farther apart. They're more centered in the way that they are standing. So, there's a little bit, they look more grounded, right? They look sort of like they're a little bit more solid in their space. Their shoulders might be a little bit more back. Their arms are kind of out. So if you've ever been on public transit, and a masculine person is like manspreading like, "What the fuck is this?" You're always like, "I got to cross my legs and damage my knees," but it's okay to man spread. So think about how you can take up a little bit more space, and remember confidence isn't arrogance. So taking up more space just means that you're gonna fill out a little bit, right? You're just gonna maybe stand with your feet a little bit wider apart. You're going to have your shoulders back so that you're taking up a bit more space even horizontally, right, you're stretching out a little bit. Another thing that you can do is use what I call they're sort of totemic items. And so, a totemic item is something that makes us feel sexy. So it could be underwear that you wear that nobody has to know about. I only buy bras in bright red or pink colors because who cares, right? Those colors make me feel cute, even if no one's going to see it. And so what happens is that we start to believe that decorating our nakedness is a sign of adoration for ourselves. And so that could be anything from, it doesn't have to be something feminine, it could absolutely be something that is, just something that makes you feel like you're kind of cute. So it could be the way that you do your hair. It could be, and it's hard because we've been in social isolation so we haven't had a reason to really groom ourselves to the way that maybe we were before. But it could even just be clothing that fits you really well. It could be a shirt that just pops your shoulders. It could be shoes that make you feel really dapper. It could be any range of things that allow us to feel cute on our own terms. So it's not about impressing someone, it's not about keeping up with fashion, even if that's your intention, that's totally cool. But it's not what we're serving, we're serving for ourselves. Katelyn says, "All the fucking space, yeah, always trying to take the middle arm rest." Ah, that's so true. Emma says, "Sometimes I practice just taking up space by man spreading on my Zoom calls." Oh my God, Emma, that's brilliant, that's a great way to do this, yes. 'Cause people can't see your legs, I could be manspreading right now, right? So, I love that. I really like that. Yeah, so any of these practices, it doesn't matter if anyone sees them are not, they're for you. They're actually retraining your sense of self, your perception of your space, and your sense of resilience and strength. So there's all these little micro moves that we're doing that are helping us go into that space. Another thing that you can do, so tell me what part of your body that you like the least, or you hold the most shame in. Is there a part of your body where you trap a lot of your shame? Okay, Michelle's got arms. Kamal says hips and curves. Vicky says belly. Breasts, thighs, stomach, yep. Arms. Yes. Chin hair. Same. Yep. These are big ones, right? So, particularly when we talk about having body dysphoria, and so we might not feel connected to how we express ourselves to internally, or through our gender, or our femininity, or masculinity, but we might have a disconnect with how that's presented to the world, right? So sometimes people would tell me that I look really confident and I was like, really because I walk around trying to disappear. And I had this big orange dress the other day, and I said to my friend, I'm like, "Oh, I feel kind of shy about wearing this because I'm gonna stand out." And he was like, "You kind of stand out anyways, so you might as well own it." And I was like, "Yeah, who am I kidding, I don't have a flat chest," it's like, my breasts are out there, so I might as well own this in a way that feels comfortable for me, not in a way that's sexualized for others. So all of you, these thighs, breasts, stomach, arms, chin hairs, hips, and curves, body hair, for sure, yes. All of these things are very powerful ways to center our body hatred, or our body unacceptance, or our body unconfidence in it. And especially during sex, we are the most naked, literally and figuratively. So when we're in these moments, it's really tough. Think about all the grooming that you might do before sex, right? How much money have I spent on ass waxes, and bikini waxes, and armpit waxes? And how much time have I plucked my chin hairs and my eyebrows? And there's nothing wrong with doing any of these things. If you want to do these things, that's totally okay. What the disservice to ourselves comes from is when we do these things with the intention of feeling like they are gonna earn us the reward of acceptance. And so if someone notices my hairy legs, ooh, they're gonna not accept me, they're not gonna think I'm attractive, and that means so much to me. And so we wanna let go of that intention. And so, if you wanna wear makeup, wear makeup, if you want to wear baggy clothes, wear baggy clothes, you wanna wear tight clothes, wear tight clothes. So, what you can do is try those areas where you're not so crazy about. It is try to create some tender compassion for them because likely they're not going anywhere, and likely next year or next month or 10 years from now, you're gonna have a new area of your body that's changing that you might not feel comfortable with. I am convinced that through social isolation because I haven't been wearing a bra, that my nipples have migrated. And I was like, "Oh my God, I can't find them, they're so far under." And I thought like, "Well, who am I kidding," right? I mean like, this is what our bodies do, they change, and they move into ways that are not like who we were when we were 21, and even at 21, I wasn't considered conventionally attractive. So, you might wanna send some compassion to these areas. And so with my tummy what I do at night, I have such disassociation from my tummy 'cause I spent so many years not liking it. So I've started to rub a body butter, specifically on my tummy, and I tell it I'm accepted, I'm safe, and I'm loved. And so, that belly part needs to really hear and I rub it, and so it really needs to hear that, you know what? I don't have to like the way that you look, but that this is a part of me, right, this is a part of me. Particularly if you've had any type of big change to your body, so maybe you've had surgery, maybe you've expressed your gender in a different way, maybe your hair is graying or something's happening. It can feel very jolting for your sense of self, and so, sometimes we wanna numb out those areas. So by practicing touch in those areas and affirmations to those areas, it can help us come back into connection with them in a more compassionate way, which also gives us more compassion for other people's bodies as well. All right, let's see. I just saw COVID bush. "I grew back my pubic hair during quarantine, and it's been super empowering." Oof, Emily and Katelyn, I love this because I was a Brazilian getter for many years, and I used to get the most terrible ingrown hairs, and then I decided I was like, I touch my pussy the most, so I like it when it's furry. So, I'm gonna keep it furry, right? And pubic hair is also something that we get shamed about in that folks think it's unhygienic, and, but hair is natural, we've just developed industries around hair. Imagine the first person that said, "Hey, do you think that we could get women to pay for ripping hair off of their genitals?" And at the time maybe someone was like, "Oh no, nobody's gonna do that." And now it's just become socially acceptable, right? And even folks who are not women also get the hair ripped out of their body as well. So, I'm really glad that we're all starting to challenge hair here. Me too not shaving has been so liberating. Jen's like, try breastfeeding, yeah, Jen, where are your nipples? Emily says, "Yes, I feel like one of your nipples is in Toronto, Jen. Did it make it down here?" Emily says, "Yes, I feel like I'm reconnecting with pubic hair after shaving for almost 20 years." Look at us, we have a hair club. Now, if you like hair removal, if you like having a smooth area, that's also okay too. I'll tell you, I only have hair removed from my butt crack and occasionally my armpits, but everywhere else, I pretty much just let it grow. And so now there's that connection to I could do it if I want, I could do it if I don't want, it doesn't feel like, "Oh my gosh, I have to get dressed and hair removed in order to be acceptable to the world." And so, that's how we start to take up space in our bodies during sex, is that we move into the space not thinking that there are these markers of acceptance for how we are going to please our partners, aesthetically, or even physically, and how much space that we deserve to take up with our pleasure. If my legs are hairy, do I not deserve to receive cuddliness? Do I not deserve to ask for what I want? Do I not deserve to say no to things that I don't want? Emily says or sorry, Jen says, "My nipples are the only ones travelling south." Yes, Jen, I know mine too, maybe they can share a lift on the way back. Okay, I love this. I love that you're all sharing about the ways that you're trying to reconnect with your body, that is a huge part of moving into sexual confidence. So I have a few more tips for you, I know we're right at 8:30, but I've got about 10 more minutes of stuff. Another way to, so moving on from bodies, we wanna think about our sexual performance. And so, one good way to stop focusing on orgasm focused sex is to set the scene for your sex. And so, that means you think about ambiance, you think about mood, you think about entering the sexual space by launching into it from your brain and landing in your body. So a lot of us struggle with initiating sex, or maybe our partners always initiate in the same way, and we don't really like it, or we're not in the mood when they do it. So there's two types of sexual sort of desires. So, one is responsive and one is spontaneous. And so, spontaneous sexual desire is, oh, we look at a photo of Salma Hayek, or somebody hot, and we're like, "Ooh, they're sexy," and then we feel aroused and we wanna have sex. And so we mostly see sexual, or spontaneous sexual desire from romantic comedies, right, where like all of a sudden they're in a fight, and then they start gazing at each other's eyes and then they start making out, and one of them has an orgasm. So it really is, it's not everyone's bag, it's not the way that everyone responds to sexual arousal. And so the other form is responsive, and so responsive sexual desire is more about getting ourselves into that head space, and entering it in a way that is seductive, right? So that seduction is about getting your mind in the mood. And so, if your partner says like, "Oh," you can kind of tell they're making their move for sex, right, they're doing the thing that they want, and you're not so in the mood you could say, "Hmm, babe, I would love to be in the mood, let's see if we can get my mind there, seduce my brain and let's get into the mood." So that might mean that you wanna cuddle for a bit, and share about your day. And so that closeness and that intimacy allows you to relax into a space of opening up and feeling sexual. So, setting the scene with candles, with your sex playlist, maybe you put out your lingerie, maybe you put out a sex toy, whatever is gonna make you feel sexy. And you can do this for your masturbation. You can do this for your solo pleasure. You can do this for having video sex with your partner. You can do this for having phone sex with your partner. It's like the way that you're gonna become sexual athletes. It's like the way that athletes kind of get ready for a game, right? There's a ritual. I don't know anything about sports, so I'm just assuming this is what they do. So, lets say that they get ready, and they're getting into the mood, they're getting into the headspace, and this is what we wanna do. We wanna allow ourselves to feel sexy. We want that sexiness from the outside to come into the sexiness that we have on the inside. So we've been talking about outer or inner work, and now we want this outer stuff, we wanna be ready to step into this moment. Another one is to get pleasure from giving. And so, getting pleasure from giving means that we're gonna tune into the signs of pleasure in our partners. And so, if you're going down on your partner, and their legs are spread and you're like, "Oh, you look so delicious, I can't wait to put my face between your legs." And then you start to see their breath change. You start to tune into their moans, maybe their words change, maybe they get giggly, maybe they get kind of sweaty. And so you can really surf those sensations of pleasure that are happening for your partner. So this means that you are going to feel good about the pleasure that you're giving. So you're creating this little erotic circuit where you're giving pleasure, but then you're getting pleasure from giving pleasure. And so if we tune in to giving, we stop trying to get sex from people, and we try to give sex to people. And we want partners who do that for us as well. Another one that I teach a whole class on is sensuality. And so, how do we get out of our heads and into our bodies. Sensuality is our pathway to getting back into our bodies. And so, when we think about what are the five senses? What information is available to us in those moments? If you start to, your partner's going down on you and it feels really good, but then you think, "Oh, do we do laundry? I don't know. Do I smell? Did I do everything for work that I was supposed to?" And so, you leave the sexual moment. A way to come back to the moment, I'm gonna give you three sensual tips to come back to the moment. So one way is to breathe, right? To tune back into your breath. And so, you might even have a word, an affirmation for yourself, like, "Okay, Luna, breathe, just breathe." And so, you wanna leave your head and you wanna come back into your lungs and your breath. And so you're just gonna take a deep breath in, and when you exhale, maybe you'll say something to your partner. So you're gonna be like, "Oh babe, you feel so good." And so, that way it doesn't really seem weird that you're starting to do breathing exercises in the middle of sex, right? You can also tell your partner, "Hey, sometimes I get kind of distracted during sex, would you mind reminding me to breathe." So your partner could say, "Oh baby, you gotta, I need you to breathe back to me. I can see you're getting distracted, breathe back to me." And so it can feel really sexy to have someone invite you back into the space. Another sensual thing that you can do is use your hands. And so, use your hands and either put them on yourself, and so if I'm lying on my back and someone's going down on me, I might just take my hands and drag them straight across my chest super slow. Basically, it just looks like you're touching yourself and feeling all sexy, but what it actually is doing is queuing for your brain that, "Oh yeah, shit there's a body here, there's a body here that I'm enjoying. There's a physical self here." We're allowing our hands to kind of come back into the moment. You might also use your hands to even grip the sheets, right? Hold onto the sheets, or the chair, or wherever you are just to give yourself a grounding. You could also grab onto your partner. And so, if they're okay with you touching their shoulders or their head during, if they're going down on you, touch them and just feel them, and feel how good they feel giving you pleasure. Another thing that you can do to come back into your body during sex is have an affirmation. And so I developed my affirmation as a way to just stop that noise that's in my head. Stop that chatter that you're not good enough, you're not hot enough, nobody likes you, no one's gonna love you. And so, my affirmation is I'm beautiful, I'm enough, and I have everything I need. And so, come up with something that helps you, just throw a wrench in that hamster wheel of negative thoughts and stuff, that nonsense that just doesn't serve us, and it actually just gets in our way. And so we don't have to go into a therapeutic debrief in the moment when it's happening, we just wanna take the power out of it, we wanna remove, we wanna unplug it. And so an affirmation can be a great way to come back to the moment. Sometimes I just say to myself, if I'm doing something and I start to lose confidence, I'll be like, "Oh yeah, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, I'm a goddess. I forgot, I forgot I'm a goddess," and come back to that, like, "Well, would a goddess think this? No, no she wouldn't. Would a queen think this? No. Would a superstar think this? No. Would a sexually confident person think this? No." And so we can create this alter ego based on parts of ourself that can actually give us a way to pivot into when we start to feel that the negative stories that are clouding our authentic self are getting in the way. And so, we start to take up space in this person. So, you do that through an affirmation, you can also do that through role play. And so if you've ever been curious about kink, or role-play, or anything where you get to take on the characteristics, or the archetypes of someone else, so an archetype could be like a daddy, or a mommy, or a queen, or a princess. Characteristics could be feline. They could be a playful, they could be dominant, they could be submissive. And so, if you start to want to explore your sexual confidence through this alter ego, eventually that alter ego is something that you will feel more comfortable taking up space in because that alter ego, it feels like it's not you, but it's made up of all the same parts of you, you put it together by scooping out parts of yourself and forming this dominant feline, or this submissive queen, or whatever you have created. So role play is a really good way to start to practice sexual confidence in a way that feels playful and imaginative. All right. How do we feel about that? How do we feel about some of these really fun, kind of more creative tools for our sex? Katelyn says, "Fist pump, partners before sex, like Usain Bolt," yeah I love that, love that. Amy, you like that? Awesome. Okay, great. Great, so I'm gonna leave you with a couple more tools, and then I'm gonna explain your homework to you. All right. So one tool that I suggest for self-pleasure is masturbation with edging. And so, edging means that you take yourself to the point of where you feel the biggest buildup of pleasure that might be orgasm, or it might just be like a certain kind of tense feeling, or the urge to pee. And you're gonna take yourself to that point, and then you're gonna back off a little bit. So you're not entirely removing the sensation, but you might slow it down, or if you're using a vibrator, you might move it to a different area of your body. And so, what edging does is allows you to expand the erotic moments that are happening for you. So we don't just kind of rush to like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum," and then cum and then you just kind of cascade down, right? So edging allows us to go up a little bit, and then before we peak, we kinda like level off, and then we go up a little bit more 'cause we've got a bigger buildup, and then we level off again, and you can go as much as you want. What edging does is it actually helps you get more in tuned with your own sexual responses, and explore more pleasure anatomy beyond your go-to spots. So, edging also involves, if you're masturbating, approach masturbation from touching other parts of your body first, and then making your way to your genitals. And because it allows you to kind of take the focus away from just generally focused sex. So your masturbation doesn't have to end up in orgasm, but we wanna play with expanding what these spots are that we can touch. Sex toys. If you need a sex toy, this is the time to go and get them because you're socially isolating, or you might already be with your partner, and maybe you're sick of looking at each other. And so, sex toys are a really fun way to bring new dynamism into your sexual energy. Partner masturbation. So you can do this over video, you could do it over the phone., if you're in person, you can do it sort of facing each other, and you can decide to touch each other and masturbate each other, or you can put on a little masturbation show for each other. And so, you could be like, "Babe, teach me how to touch you. I wanna see how you touch you when nobody else is looking." And that allows you to actually watch someone be really primal in their own pleasure, and for you as well, you get to put on a little bit of a show. If you feel uncomfortable being watched, but you like the idea of it, blindfold yourself. So you don't have to watch them watching you, right? And you still get to kind of put on a little bit of a show. Another one is to, how many of you like erotica? Do you like reading erotic stories, or listening to erotic audio? Erotica is a really good way to open up your erotic imagination. If you're like "Luna, I want to be more creative in sex, I feel that that would make me feel more confident," erotica is like, I don't know, I was gonna say something from the gym, and I don't know anything from the gym, I don't know. Okay, it's like a workout for your erotic imagination. I was gonna be circuit training, is that a thing? So, erotica is really great. I'm gonna put in the chat the site that I always recommend to people, literotica.com. I've been masturbating to it since 1995, and there's still tons of information, or tons of stories on there that are new. So, it's crowdsourced, so you keep getting new information, new stories. The categories there are great. And the wonderful thing about erotica is that sometimes you can engage in fantasies that might be dangerous or impossible in real life, so to depict with real people, but in erotica, you could have a threesome with a unicorn and an octopus, and it's possible, it's gonna happen, right? You could have a multiperson orgy, and not worry about sexually transmitted infections in erotica. So it allows you to delve into those parts of your brain that wanna be tickled with dirtiness and naughtiness, right? Emily cut your teeth on dirty fan fiction, oh, I love that. I love hentai, I love lots of different kinds of porn that doesn't necessarily depict actual humans, and so we get a chance to really delve into our imagination. And another one is to think about erogenous zones other than your genitals. So how many of you like your neck kissed? I feel like if you don't like your neck kissed you're dead on the inside. So if you like your neck kissed, Vicky does, Katelyn says yeah. Amy, yeah, you agree? Yeah, I'm like, I don't know it's so delicious, I love it. I could have neck kisses and kisses and that would be enough sex for me. I love kinky shit, but that would be, that's enough for me. Jen, you love that? Okay, amazing. What other erogenous zones do you have on your body? Which other ones are you thinking about? Anywhere on your body where you've got more blood flow to the top of the skin is gonna potentially be an erotic or an erogenous zone. So when we're done here, I mean, you can take some time, and even just stroke your wrist really slowly, just like pet your own wrist, and then close your eyes and see what that feels like. And then maybe use your nails a little bit, or maybe push in the other direction. And so, when you're feeling this arm, and let's do it for a minute, and when you're done notice if there's a difference between the hand that was doing and the hand that was receiving. This one's probably warmer. It's actually probably more sensitive to this touch. So the touch of the nails feels like way more pleasurable on the hand that we warmed up. So the concept of erogenous zones is that we're trying to cue those arousal, those physiological arousal changes that happen in our body by getting at multiple erogenous zones instead of just like, "Let's make out," and then let's go to the genitals. That's how you have fuller body orgasms. That's how you have deeper orgasms. That's how you have bigger orgasms. That's how you sink into pleasure, and you start to feel a little bit floaty, and you're not so worried about that noise. That noise sort of gets clouded the more that we get into that floaty headspace. So the noise and the shame starts to feel more muted. Okay, let's see what you perverts have for your erogenous zones. Back, Kamal, yes. Vicki back, oof, I feel like my back is like a second clit. I love my back played with. Sue, back of knees, good one Sue, I love that too, and that's just such an under-serviced erogenous zone. Your ears, your thighs, your back for sure, yes, back of knees, absolutely. The sides oof your body, so where your ribs are, that's a very sensitive spot as well. Some people like their inner thighs played with, that's a super sensitive spot. Lower back is another spot. Ears are another spot. Some people love like forehead, or face kisses. Your jaw line is another spot, right? This is super sensitive along here. Your feet they are another spot. So there's so many delicious spots. How about your scalp? Does anyone like scalp massages? You know those head-scratcher things, that is also a very erotic situation, yeah, yeah, all right. Back of knees. Back of legs. Yes, 100%, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, good. So we all know that there are more spots. So sexually confident people are gonna say, "Hey, you know what would make me so fuckin' hot? I love when my ears are sucked on. Oof, I can't wait to get your mouth on my neck. Oh, I would love to feel your hands just like touching my thighs." And so, when we start to do this to ourselves, right, when we start to, if you're moisturizing your skin, and you're massaging your hands, it feels so good in between your fingertips, massage your feet, rub your ear lobes, when you're shampooing your hair, give yourself some of this, right, and just move your fingertips through your scalp. It starts to be a little bit easier to identify those areas to help give people feedback. And so, you could say, you could start that conversation with someone by saying, "Hey, what other hotspots on your body are there? What do I need to know about? Where can I really make you melt? What buttons can I push on you?" And when they speak up, don't even wait for them to ask you. If they ask you, they don't ask you, be like, "Oh my God, I love hearing that. Here's where my spots are on my body. Yeah, here's where you could make me melt, here's where you push this, and I just like turned into a puddle." And so, the communication part is so critical, but the discovery part is also just as critical. We got to know where those spots are, and how to touch them, and what they feel like. And it might feel different when someone else touches them, but it's still just as powerful for ourselves. All right. Katelyn says, "I keep a cuticle oil at my desk," yes, and you massage everyone's during peak season, "should try it with my partners." A hand massage is so sexy. It's so sexy because it's so tender. And it also allows someone to, again, get out of their head and into their body. So, sometimes we start with massages on the shoulder, and then five seconds later, we end up on someone's chest, or we end up in their genitals. And so, we miss out on all of this stuff that's available that actually can be really, really sexy. Hand stuff can also be very platonic, right, like Katelyn's describing. So doing it in a way for yourself can also feel really great. All right, how are you feeling everyone? Do you feel like you have a couple of practices that you can try, and that you can move towards this feeling of being more unapologetic in your sexual space? And so, I've given you a bunch of different things that you can do for desires, for your body, for a performance, but they are practices. And so, if you try them and you're like, "Oh, Luna was wrong," maybe, I mean, maybe there's a practice out there for you that's better. But give yourself a chance, right? Give yourself a run at it, and maybe it doesn't quite land the first time, but give it another go. Because the more that you do it, the more that you drop off from that awkwardness, from that silliness, and you're like, "Damn, this is a whole new way of being." That's how I felt when I stepped into sexual confidence, I didn't get it at first, it didn't work for me. I was like, I'd lose it, find it on Saturday and lose it by Tuesday. And so it's really a process of also keeping into communication and commune with ourselves to be able to notice what triggers us back into that space. My PMS triggers me back into that space. A criticism about my body will trigger me into that space. If you told me I was stupid, I'd be like, "You're stupid," but if you told me I was fat, I'd totally be like, "Oh yeah, you notice." So like learning what our soft spots are, and where we want to direct that attention can also help you choose what strategy you would like to employ. All right. Amy says excited, amazing. Karen says definitely. Emily, "This was so wonderful, thank you so much, and thank you for the extra time." My pleasure, this is a big one, it's a big one. Definitely, it's been great, thank you, thank you, Vicky. Thank you so much for all of this, a wonderful Friday evening, this was wonderful, I loved this so much. Good, I'm so glad that you all feel so positive. If you're feeling still a bit intimidated, you're still welcome, Emma, you're welcome Marina, thank you for being here. If you feel intimidated at all, that's totally okay. Think about this, the whole world is telling us this, and we're sitting here being like, "But this doesn't work for us, this makes me feel really shitty." So we're going against the grain. You are gonna feel that internalization of resistance in yourself. And so that's all right. We will get this, and stay tuned because I have a pay what you can bedroom communication class coming up, so if you want more language for how to ask, come to that. But I'm also gonna be, I'm developing, so you will all be the first to know, I'm developing a community where we can do this together because it's wonderful for me to get you all inspired and pumped up now, but I'd love to be able to follow up with you, and so that we can share with each other what worked, what didn't work, here are some new practices, here are things that we can share, here's where I struggled, here's where I did this. So, you're not alone, I am totally here with you in solidarity of this. And I think it's completely possible to shed the shame and make more room for pleasure. So I 100% believe in you and believe in these practices. These are things, I haven't recommended anything to you that I haven't tried myself, and that I haven't found some sort of success with. All right. Katelyn, you're so welcome, Michelle, you're welcome, Jen, you're so welcome. And thank you, yeah thank you all. now we've learned what takes away your confidence, tell me what gives you confidence? What would make you feel confident? It could be a compliment. It could be a particular color that you wear. It could be a vibe that you get. It could be a way someone looks at you, or talks to you. Amy says music. Oh yes. How many of you have a sexy playlist? I feel like we should make a group one after Karen says someone listening, 100% because you feel seen, right? You feel worthy of attention. Emily says banter. Yes, I love me some banter. Katelyn says lingerie, ooh, Caitlin, what kind of lingerie? Do you like Fishnet? Do you like Babydolls? Sue says, of course, yes. Jen says, feeling strong, absolutely. Jen is that physically strong, mentally strong, everything? Vicky says banter, lingerie, sexy talk, ooh, these are all great, these are great. Emma says smelling good. Yes, yes. Working out. Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness, these are all so hot. Danielle says knowing what I want sexually. Yes. Knowing is part of being able to communicate. And so, if you're like, "Yeah, I don't like what they're doing, but I'm not sure how to direct them differently." that can be really tough, so I'm gonna give you some tips for that as well. Okay, beautiful, these are awesome. How many of you, do you feel sexually confident if you get physical affection without it necessarily leading to sex? And so, if a partner wanting to kiss you, or adore you, or give you neck kisses and you know that it's not necessarily about getting to sex, yeah, okay cool, amazing. Vicky says flirtation, yes, yes. Love that, love it, yes for sure. Okay, so that's what we call lights on sex. And so lights on sex is about the appreciation for your partner sexiness, without it having to necessarily be like a breadcrumb to the thing that we're gonna do tonight, or later, or the thing that I wanna do right now. A lot of couples struggle because we only start to engage our partners sexiness when we're about to initiate sex. And so that kind of, it puts a lot of pressure on someone to receive that and give that. So we wanna make sure that in the same way that we're paying attention to our partner's dreams, desire, sadness, depression, all different types of things that they're experiencing, we also wanna pay attention to the way that they show up in their sexual selves. And so, that might mean we love the way their neck smells, or they're at the stove cooking and they look so sexy while they're cooking, and you're like, "Ooh, babe that looks yummy and so do you." And then you just walk away, right? You leave your little flirtation bomb and walk away. And so this helps them, helps our partners really trust in building a sexual relationship that isn't dependent on a sexual act, or being manipulated into a sexual act. So if you like these things, you can totally say to your partner, "Babe, I love it, I love, love, love it when you just drop a random compliment about me, and something specific. Like I loved when you complimented my eyeshadow the other day. I loved when I saw, I caught you like looking at my butt when I got up to get us water or something like that." So the more information that we can give our partners, the more that they can respond to our needs. Some folks feel that if we tell our partners that somehow if they do it, it makes it less sincere. That's not true, right? I mean, they're not mind readers, and we're all struggling with sexual connection and communication. So to be able to say, "I need this, I love when you do this," gives them the opportunity. It gives you an opportunity for connection, and you can also model by doing it to them and seeing how that feels. "Yes, I feel like I come with a lot of confidence and struggled with partner shame," ooh, yes, yes. It's hard to also feel confident when someone is struggling with their confidence because it leaves you feeling a little bit, like, "I don't know what's happening, I'm not sure how to read you, this is kind of," or they may be responding and insecure ways that actually feel really horrible for you. So that can really be tough for sure. All right, so how many of you have trouble receiving compliments? If I say, "Oh my gosh, Amy, I love that shirt." And Amy might say, "Oh, this, yeah, I've had it for five years, I got it, I don't know I found it on the road." And so, we... Yeah, yeah, it can feel awkward. Yeah, this whole thing, "Oh, it was, so I got it on sale," or what I do is I'm like, someone will say, I like my dress, and I'm like, "Look, it has pockets." And we wanna detract from this, right? We wanna detract from getting the attention from someone instead of just saying, "Oh, thank you. Yeah, this is my favorite dress too," right? Or, "yes, I love this color on me." Or we deflect, we go immediately to like, "Hmm, I like your earrings. Well, aren't those cute." So anytime we're trying to not be seen, someone has noticed us and we try to deflect that, that is a moment where, these are all these little moments where you actually notice that you're trying to feel smaller, that you're trying to disappear. And when we have this kind of running narrative, it's not like it just shuts off when we get into the bedroom, right? We take that with us into the bedroom. So accepting compliments, I'm glad Vicki you've been practicing this, that's awesome, and you've seen change, that's beautiful. So, some of us can also try this. We can try the next time someone gives you a compliment, or when you give someone a compliment, notice, notice if they try to deflect to you, if they are insecure about it, you don't have to call them out about it, but just watch their humanity try and struggle with this feeling of like, "Oh my God, someone noticed me. Someone is seeing me. What if they see all the ugly shit I think about myself too." And so it's coming from a place of desiring and wanting that acceptance. And so, it's not a bad thing in you, it's a part of you that's like, "Hey, we like to be noticed too." So it can really, really feel like it's a big barrier, but it's a small wind that has a bigger implication. Emily says, "I listened to Nicole Byer's podcasts, and she has goals for receiving compliments. She doesn't deflect, she just has a magnaminous thank you." Yeah, that's a great way to receive it, yes, yes. You can also practice by challenging that voice inside of yourself. And so, what I'd love you to do tonight, or when you have some time is write down five compliments that you've received from other people, right? So if someone's told you, you've got a cute butt, someone told you have nice eyes, someone told you to have a great personality, try and make it a mix of physical and nonphysical compliments that you've received, and see how you feel about those compliments. If you look at them, do they make you uncomfortable? If you say them out loud as an affirmation, do you believe them? So if you say, "Yes, I Luna have a nice ass." How do you feel about that? You might feel silly, you might feel awkward, that's okay. Silliness and awkwardness is actually, it's your little self trying to get vulnerable, right? So we step out of trying to be performed and very serious, and we move into a place where we can feel a little bit more vulnerable. So five compliments that other people have given you, then you're gonna write five compliments to yourself. And so, these are things about yourself that you admire, or that you think are great. And try to have at least one physical thing on there. But your physical self is actually the least interesting part about yourself, but what it ends up being the place where a lot of us hold a lot of our unconfidence. And so, really getting to a point of even acceptance of our physical selves is better than hanging all of our confident desires on being a physical self that is most acceptable to the rest of the world 'cause we really aren't gonna do that, right? I mean, I am the oldest, I am the heaviest, I am the most scarred that I've ever been just because age, right, we're all aging, we're all like moving towards some form of disability, but I am the most confident in this body. So it actually has nothing to do with my physical self. It really has to do with what my perception of my physical self is, and that perception is so distorted. All right, so that is something you can do. You can do your five compliments other people gave you, and five compliments that you're gonna do for yourself. I'm gonna be super proud of you. All right. So we're gonna touch back on, I've got a whole bunch of tools for you. I've got some good tools for you to use in the bedroom, outside of the bedroom, some more homework for you, but we're gonna go back to these most complex, or common things that people are unconfident about. Amy says definitely amazing. Karen says, yes, I will. Okay, good, good, I love these like affirmations, right? We got a little community here tonight that we can hold each other accountable to this. Feel free to share them with me if you would like. So we're gonna go back to our desires. And so, now that we know where some of our unconfidence might come from. So in those moments, Vicky, awesome, I'm glad you're on board for this, this is so great. We're gonna go back to those spaces where we feel that we might have fantasies, or that are not so, maybe someone's gonna think they're fucked up if we, or tell people that we want this thing, we might even just feel very embarrassed to take up space in pleasurable sex. So what that might look like is important. A lot of the noises are very high pitched, right, they're very high pitch. And in real life, our sex noises are kind of guttural, right? They're more like grunty, they're more like primal. And so you know that, excuse me, you know that there's a performance factor to noises, but noises are actually part of our expression. They're part of our sensory sensuality. And so they help us release, and move, and turn erotic energy. But think about your masturbation. So, we all started masturbating maybe at a point where we lived with other people, or our families, or roommates, and so, we were very quiet during sex, and so, we didn't really have that opportunity to be noisy. And so a lot of times our sexual expression during sex is also very, we're trying to make it proper. And that really takes out the desire of our erotic energy to actually be expansive. It wants to take up more space and we're just saying, "Nope, that's not appropriate, oh, that's gonna be weird, someone's gonna think you're messed up." So we can find challenges in also even owning the way that we show pleasure. So I am sweaty as fuck, just normally, and then during sex, I'm a hot mess. So, I get so, so sweaty, and I have been so ashamed of feeling sweaty forever until I had someone that was really appreciative, and thought that sweat was actually sexy, and made me feel so comfortable to just be where I'm at, to let my body do what it's doing. So if there's something about your sexual expression, maybe it's a noise you make, maybe you squirt and you feel embarrassed about squirting, maybe you take long to orgasm, or you come really quickly, or whatever it is, you can also tell your partner this, so that the burden isn't on you hiding this thing, or pretending like it's not gonna happen, or worrying about when it is gonna happen. But you could say to your partner, "Babe, I get really, really sweaty when I'm having a good time. And so yeah, I feel kind of shy about it, but it's how you're gonna know I'm having a really good time." And lots of partners that are compassionate and caring will be like, "Oh, don't worry about it," and they'll get really reassuring. Even if your partner is casual, or if you're with someone for 10 years, 10 minutes or 10 years, it doesn't matter because we still wanna feel comfortable independent of what's happening, and that's really hard, right? I've had partners that, after I got divorced, I went on like a year of fuckery that just never ended, and I was like, "Oh, I wanna everybody, I wanna do all the things," and my standards for having sex with people were quite low. I was like, "I just wanna have sex, I don't know, it'll be great, whatever." And when I look back, I feel like some of the bullshit that I put up with in order to have touch, or connection, or potentially orgasms was actually really detrimental to how I took up space in my desires. And so, if someone didn't go down on me, or they didn't wanna go down on me, I was like, "Okay, well that's their preference." But then I evolved, right, and I thought I deserve better, I deserve to get the kind of sex that I want because then why wouldn't I just do it myself and not have to have small talk or change my cheats, right? So, I started a list. And so, I'd encourage you to make a list of what you think would be a fun, a healthy, a meaningful, a delicious, a pleasurable, a worthy sexual experience for you. So what would that look like? Would your partner be really attentive? Would your partner be really confident? Would your partner be really communicative? Would they be really affectionate? So I made this list for myself. And so, what I ended up doing was using that list in my Tinder conversations. And so when the conversation would get sexual on a dating app, I would say, "Oh, okay, so what kinds of things are you into because sexual like-mindedness is really important for me?" And they'd say, "Oh, I don't know, I'm into sex." And that's like like a non-answer, right, it doesn't give you any information. So, yeah. Oh, Emily, good I'm glad you committed too, and Danielle, you're loving this real, that's good, I'm glad. And be really real with you all tonight, and you all are being really real with me and I really appreciate that. So having these conversations, I then move into a space where I would define what sexual connectedness or like-mindedness looked like for me. I would say "Okay, well, so I'm really affectionate, and I'm open-minded, and I really need a partner that's communicative, and eats pussy like a champ." Those are my four little pillars of having a good experience. And so, if they responded with, "Oh, I'm not really affectionate, I save that for a relationship, or I don't eat pussy because of whatever nonsense answer." Then for me, I was like, "Cool," and yeah, and like Katelyn says unmatched, right? Then so that for me was, I'm not gonna take the risk to try and negotiate what I need for my pleasure, right? So it's a little bit more challenging if you're already in a relationship and your needs are not being currently met. So the conversation there is actually more vulnerable because you have more to lose. And the reality is is that every time you say yes to somebody else, when you actually wanna say no, it's a betrayal to your desire to feel more sexually confident. So you showed up here tonight to feel more sexually confident, but when we go back into our spaces and we don't practice owning our desires, and at least giving them a voice, giving them a manifestation from up here or in here into our relationships and our partnerships, it can just feel like we keep saying no to ourselves. And so, bodies that say no to themselves, it's really hard to take up space in pleasure. It's hard to feel safe enough to do that. So when we go back to the original definition of sexual confidence that we need to feel secure, and if I'm not secure that you care about my pleasure as much as I do, it's hard, it's really hard. So please don't blame yourself because this is really a tough situation for a lot of people when we start to renegotiate, rename, and recreate an idea of pleasure that actually includes us, right? Sexually confident people wanna show up in the pleasure that they want to have. All right. Love this. Kamal, aw, thank you, Kamal. I'm so glad that you liked this honesty and vulnerability. I'm totally here for that. Amy says your favorite line, yes. Whatever nonsense answer, yeah, they'd be like, "Ooh, well, if she's clean, or" I was like, you know what, pussies are self cleaning, dicks are not. So, let's just go with some science here, right? Vicky says, you're a fuckery is the best line, yes. Katelyn says, yes, I've been doing that. Okay. Amazing, amazing. I'm so glad that we're all on the same page about that we want a different set of conditions for our pleasure. So, write that out, what would be your three things that you're looking for, right? So mine was that I'm affectionate, open-minded, and I need you to eat my pussy like a champ. And so I would say those are things I expect from someone. And then we can find connection in other ways, but those were my deal breakers. And it's really hard at first, and so if you don't get it right away, or you start to compromise on your conditions, it's okay, right? We're undoing decades of being told that our pleasure doesn't matter. So it's hard to confidently step into a way of being in that our pleasure actually does matter. Emily says, "The first time I slept with a woman, I wanted to tell every woman in the world to stop worrying about what their vulvas taste like," 100%, 100%. As soon as I started pleasuring vulvas, I was like, "What are people talking about? This is delicious, and it smells amazing," that muskiness that we've all been told is dirty, or that doesn't smell good. We're told you're supposed to smell like lavender's and roses if we have vulvas, and yet penises aren't expected, they don't have an entire industry built around them being scented like steak and cupcakes, right? So we have an additional pressure if you have a vulva to show up in a way that feels more sanitized, right? But a lot of that scent, and a lot of that connection from someone's pheromones, and from their skin, and from their sweat, those are all very animal like pieces that actually add to our arousal. So they cause physiological changes that increases blood flow to the rest of our body. So when I said sexually confident people are more satisfied, it's also because their arousal systems are more receptive to sensation, they're more receptive to sensuality, they're more receptive to pleasure because we actually have a combination of a state of being, but also a physiological set of responses that matches that mental connection, right? So our biggest sex organ is up here. We've got to use our erotic imagination to get into this space. All right. So what you're gonna do for your desires, has anyone ever had a fantasy that you were shy to tell a partner maybe you wanted to have a threesome, maybe you wanted them to dress up like a puppy, maybe you wanted to dress up as a fireman, I don't know. If you've ever had a fantasy and you thought, "Oh my God, that's a weird, they're gonna think I'm so weird." Sometimes I masturbate, and afterwards I have an orgasm and it's great, and then I'm like, "Oh my God, Luna, you're so fucked up." And so, we have shame around the things that turn us on, but the fact is, is that a lot of our desires, we don't necessarily know exactly where they come from. We don't all have a pathology of, "I smelled my mom's pantyhose when I was five, and now I have a pantyhose fetish." Some people do, but a lot of us don't, we just have these fantasies, these things just turn us on. And they don't have to say anything about who we are as people because in fantasy, we're creating these boundaries around the fantasy in order to have a safe space to explore them. And so, it can be, it's like, it's very vulnerable and it's intimidating to share with a partner that you would like to do something. And sometimes we feel, especially if we've been with a partner for a while, we might think that telling them we want to do something different is somehow telling them that what we're doing right now is not working. And that's also not true. So you could say to your partner, "Hey babe, like, is there anything that you've ever like fantasized about, or thought about? I would love to hear what goes on in that dirty little mind of yours. I would love to be naughty and talk with you about things that turn me on, I don't know if we have to do them, but we can just talk about them." And so you can make it a really cute point of connection. It can be a wonderful way to get into another space of connection and intimacy with a partner. And so, I'm gonna challenge you, I'll send you all what your homework is, but I'm gonna challenge you to come up with what I call a fuck-it list. So, a fuck-it list is like a bucket list, but it's all the things you wanna do that that have to do with your fantasies. And so, your fuck-it it list might include, it could be something simple like, maybe not simple for some of you so it might be, I want to sit on someone's face. It could be I wanna learn to be a femdom. It could be I wanna learn to be better at fingering. It could be I wanna learn how to, or I wanna dress up as something, or I wanna be, I wanna pretend to be an alien in bed, or whatever it is. So we wanna think about what are some of these things that we would be interested in doing? This is what keeps our desire and our erotic imagination stimulated, right? So it's like the exact same purpose as a bucket list it's things to look forward to, but it also sets this pathway of sexual creativity, of erotic creativity. And it helps us also feel that we have a sexual relationship to ourselves that is independent of other people's desires. And so, you might meet some of the things on your fuck-it list through your own self-pleasure. It might just be through masturbation. It might be through wearing an outfit. So when I was with my ex husband, and we weren't having sex, so I was masturbating a lot, and I had a lot of cyber sex, whether that was ethical or not. I definitely had a lot of fantasies. And so, what I ended up doing was I wanted to have sex in heels. I was like, "Oh, it'd be really hot to wear heels and have sex." So I would wear heels during masturbation. And so, I would step into that fantasy on my own, and enjoy the sexiness of the heels just for me, and get off wearing heels. So you don't necessarily need a partner to have a fuck-it list. You can make this fuck-it list for you. Katelyn says, "I feel like I end up with such boring vanilla partners that sharing fantasies can bring out their sex shame," yes, "need to keep being proud about it." This is where our empathy comes in, that's a great point, Katelyn. So it feels like a lot of times our empathy also comes in for other people to appreciate that we're all dealing with this type of sexual shame. And so, at first, if you start talking with a partner, they might shy away from it, right? It might not be about you, it's their own stuff. And so, it doesn't mean that we still can't take up space in our own erotic fantasies. And sometimes that inspires people to feel more confident and more vulnerable. And so you can give them a bit of time to come around to it. You can also suggest if they're like, "Hmm, I don't know," or, "I'm not sure," or, "No, I just liked the things we're doing." You can give them contrast. So give them things to choose between. So you could say, "Hey, so I've been thinking about spanking. What do you think about that?" And they might say, "oh, I don't know, that sounds okay." And you could say, "Okay, well, would you wanna be the one that's spanked, or would you wanna spank me? Would you like to," and if they say you, you might say, "Oh, okay, with a spoon or a paddle, or what are you thinking?" And so, you can start to suggest, and co-create, it shows an interest in teasing out their sexual ideas. And fantasies don't have to be extreme. Fantasies could be, I have this fantasy of wanting to kind of go back to when making out was hot, right, and just making out. And so, I wanna make out with someone and have their underwear still be on. And so we're just focused on like touching everywhere except our bare genitals. And I think the tease and the seduction in that would be amazing. And so that's pretty vanilla on the kind of fantasy scale of kinky things, but it's something that I think is so sexually charged. I think it would be a great way to approach each other's bodies. You could also do sexual fantasy sharing by going online to a sex shop, and picking something that you wanna use on them and maybe they want to use on you. And so, you're committing to kind of being curious about like, "Hey, if there's another way to be turned on, we would like to know," right? Okay. So you're gonna make a fuck-it list. Another list that you're gonna make around your desires, and this also applies when we'll get into the body parts is having a boundaries list. And so, a boundaries list is basically about what you're going to do to make sure to create the conditions where you have everything you need to feel safe and secure emotionally and physically. So, boundaries might be you need physical barriers like condoms, or gloves, or dental dams in order to feel safe in a situation. And so, this means your boundary is gonna be, if it's not safe to be able to negotiate that condition, then I'm not going to have sex with this person. I've definitely been in positions where I've been pressured, or guilted, or I just felt too uncomfortable with the conflict of someone resisting wearing a condom or a barrier, and I look back at my previous self and I just feel for her because there's so much shame to be submissive in sex when it comes to our boundaries, not submissive in a sexy way, but in a way that we surrender our pleasure non consensually to other people. So, everything from not speaking up about what we like, to not using the barriers that we're comfortable with, to not getting the kinds of sexual activities that we want. And so, on my boundaries list is if someone doesn't eat pussy, we're not compatible, doesn't matter, if Ryan Gosling doesn't eat pussy, we're not compatible. So, really think about what are you going to do? You're gonna make the list about the things that you need, and then make the list about what are you gonna do if those conditions don't exist? So actions could be you're gonna speak up about it, right? The action might be you're gonna have a conversation about it. The action might be you're gonna talk to a friend about how to approach this. Sometimes we need solidarity in this. We need validation from people who have a more objective perspective. It could just be you shut it down, right? If it's just a Tinder match, you might just unmatch them. If it's your partner, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult, you're gonna have to have a more intimate, vulnerable conversation with them. How does that sound? Can we do a boundaries list and a fuck-it list? We've got a fun list, and we got more of like a self-care kind of list. Katelyn says, "Ha ha, I made out with someone all night," Ooh, that's so sexy, Katelyn. "I felt like it was super hot and stayed within my boundaries," that's so beautiful. Karen says, "Yes, we can." Awesome. Vicky for sure. Okay, amazing, amazing. Unfortunately, there's not five things I can tell you to do to get sexually confident. It's a combination of all of these practices that are gonna help us erode all of the years of sexual shame that we have picked up. Right, so it's kind of like water on a rock. It's gonna take time, but it is making a difference because we start to pivot our value. We start to say, "Hmm, I am worth this, and this no longer serves me," right? Okay, so let's move into our bodies. So we wanna break up with body shame. Who wants to break up with body shame? I am so over body shame stealing all of my time and money. So, we need to end this relationship with body shame. But I'll tell you I've been in an active process of trying to break up with body shame, pretty much since I left my marriage which was six years ago. And I left my marriage and immediately was like, "I need to fall in love with myself. I need to get this kind of desire that I want from other people for myself." And that doesn't mean I also don't want it from other people, but I need to start with this relationship. So I took burlesque classes. And burlesque classes were, they were so fun, but I was such a hot mess, and I'm not coordinated or choreographed at all. And so, it was very challenging, but it was so it was so inspiring, it was so inspiring to think of the idea of decorating myself, to be able to take up space in a bawdy way, like B-A-W-D-Y in a really unapologetic way, you can't be a burlesque dancer and kind of be like, "Oh, hi, everyone, like me," you have to like be bold, and so, I wanted that boldness. So think about something that you might want to do. Because when we break up with body shame, we actually have to think about what does body shame hold you back from in your sexual desires? We're not gonna eliminate body shame. I still don't like certain angles of myself, I don't like this, but what we're building is a way to come back to ourselves. So every time body shame tries to drag us out of the bedroom, drag us out of these moments, we wanna create these anchors. And so one of the anchors, or one of the ways to get anchors is to get ugly honest. So it sounds counterintuitive, but ugly honest is about really thinking about all of the insidious and pervasive ways that you hide your body. So that might be from the clothing that you choose, the colors that you wear, what seat you choose on transit. If you ever eat, things that you eat and places that you go and... I met this woman in a class once, was it a boxing class, and she said to me, she was so young, and she said to me, "Oh, I think it's really inspiring that you have your arms out because I'm so shy about my arms." And she was fully wearing a cardigan in a boxing class. And I've been there, I've covered up to the point of discomfort and dehydration just to hide my hideous body from other people. Yeah, Emily you've been there, yes, yes, we've all been there. This is the ugly honest we need to get to. And she told me that she wanted to, I had just come back from New York and she was like, "Yeah, I really wanna go to New York, it's on my bucket list, I want to go to LA." And she was like, "But I have to lose 100 pounds." And I wanted to cry for this baby because we have all been there, we have all been there, where we are holding ourselves back from life because of a goal weight, or because of a desire for a flat stomach, or a less hairy back, or I've got stretch marks, I've got psoriasis, I've got all kinds of things that are not considered attractive. But we feel that, we've been told that we don't have the right to exist unless we are aesthetically pleasing, right? And so that's a hard truth because it really confronts us with all of the suffering that we have experienced under these pressures. Vicky says sounds familiar, yeah, absolutely. So I want you to get ugly honest. So I'll give you an example of my ugly honest. If I ever eat things like McDonald's, or take out, or something. If I'm carrying the bag from the place, I will not carry this bag in public. I will put it in my purse, I will shove the drink in my purse. So my pursed smell like fried food and spilled drink because God forbid someone look at that bag of McDonald's or whatever it is, and think that that's what I eat all the time, and so therefore, that's why my body is this size. That's my ugly honest. I think people are always looking at me and thinking that the first thing that comes to mind is that I am not fit, that I am fat, that I'm this and that. So, when we start to tease that out, right, I didn't use to be able to talk about that, I never told anybody that. I was too embarrassed that this is what I do to avoid getting confirmation from other people about what I think in my head. And maybe people are thinking that, and maybe they're not, but it doesn't even really matter what the truth is because the truth that we are choosing to stand behind is actually guiding how sexy we feel, how attractive we allow ourselves to feel, how we allow compliments to be received, how we allow sexual pleasure to be received. And so, if I'm thinking that, how could I possibly then get over the shame of if I think my genitals aren't tasty, and if someone's going down on me, is that what I'm worrying about the whole time that I'm star fishing? And I'm like thinking about, "Do they actually like this? And how could they possibly like my pussy, and how could they possibly wanna have sex with me because of my tummy, or because of this," and so, it can feel just like a tornado inside of you. So find those parts of you, find those parts of you that are telling you these really ugly things. And because we need to give attention to those parts of ourselves, right? We need a new narrative. We need to go in there and be like, "I'm so sorry that we believed that. But I know better now," right? I have to look, sometimes I get dressed, I put on this dress, this is my favorite dress. And I stood in front of the mirror, and the first thing I looked at was my belly. And then I looked back up and met my gaze, and I said, "Luna, I'm so sorry. I know people told us that this belly wasn't cute, and you could never be beautiful with it, but you know what, we know better now. And I'm sorry that you suffered through that, but we know better now." And so we really have to have these dialogues with ourselves. It feels weird, but I promise you, it is a practice that over time it helps build a new narrative, and the other voice feels less powerful. It starts to fade away as this voice gets louder. Katelyn says, "I just tell myself behind all that shame they think I'm a snack," often it's true. Yes, absolutely, we don't know what people are thinking. You can also notice the impact of this by trying an exercise. So the next time you go out, and you're passing, let's say five people, I want you to think that those first five people that you pass, they think you are the tastiest snack that they have ever seen, right? So just imagine that that's what they're thinking, and see what that does to your posture, see what that does to your mood, the spring in your step, right? And then the next five people I want you to think that they think that you are the most horrible looking person that they have ever seen, and see what that does to your mood, see what that does to the spring in your step. What does that do to your posture? What does that do to how secure you feel walking around? And this really gives us, it's an exercise in perception. It really is an exercise of how powerful our sense of perception is, and what we think is happening, how it can affect our mood. Because in the bedroom, we 100% need to leverage a mood. And I'm gonna get into feeling yourself in a minute. So, oh, I'm already at feeling yourself. So, with feeling yourself, this is how we enter our sexy spaces in a way that we are already like this full pot of honey, right? You're like this full, delicious pot of honey that is overflowing for other people. So I have a brand called Fuck Like a Goddess, and Fuck Like a Goddess is all about that, I am entering this space like a goddess, and I'm like, "Hmm, I'm just over here feeling myself, won't you join me," right? Not so much like, "Hmm. I wanna feel sexy, won't you make me feel sexy?" It's not about that, it's like, "I'm feeling myself, and I want you to meet me in this space where I'm feeling myself so you can feel yourself too." So the way to get there, there's a couple of, well, there's a bunch of stuff you can do to get there. So one of the things is mirror work. And so, mirror work is really powerful because mirror work confronts our own sense of our distorted gaze. And so, a lot of times we're looking at ourselves with the eyes of other people or systems. We're looking at ourselves through diet culture, through porn, through the fashion industry, through all these different types of things. So, mirror work, there's a couple of ways you can do it. So, if you go to the bathroom and you're washing your hands, look up in the mirror and just meet your gaze, and just give yourself a big smile. So smile at yourself in the mirror, you can even be like, "Hmm, you're looking a little cute today," and wink at yourself, flirt with yourself in the mirror. It feels amazing. It feels so silly, but after a while, you're like, "Why wasn't I doing this all the time?" And it's so simple. Every time you're washing your hands, you have an opportunity to challenge a narrative, away of feeling, a way of being. Another way to do mirror work is to dance in front of the mirror. And so, to put on whatever your anthem is for feeling sexy, what are some of our sexy anthems? What makes you feel like you are the tastiest thing alive? 'Cause I'm gonna use all your anthems and make a playlist for myself, but tell me what some of these sexy songs are. For me it's always "The weekend," I'm sorry, I know it's really basic, but it's always "The weekend." Jen says "Respect," yes, yes. Karen says, "Bitch Boss," amazing, amazing. So you're gonna do this dance in front of the mirror, and at first notice where your gaze goes because my gaze goes to the parts of the body that I don't like. And so, over time you will start to look at this person, this reflection in the mirror, as someone who's just having a really good time, or maybe they're having, they've got really good rhythm. Maybe they're just having a lot of fun. Maybe they just look great jiggling around and being playful. And you will stop focusing on, well, how society has taught us to see ourselves, which is like cuts of meat. So your arms are okay, but your belly is not okay. Your butt's okay, but your thighs are not okay. Your nose is okay, but your height isn't okay. We are not some of parts, right? We are entire experiences because you are gonna be the sex, right? You don't have to be sexy, you were gonna actually be sex. So mirror work is really fun. What I wanna challenge you to do with mirror work, if it's safe to do in your house, is to do part of the work looking at the mirror, and then keep the music going and turn around so you're not facing the mirror, and see if you even feel freer to dance around in your body. Remember, it's not about choreography, it's not about moves, it's about playing in your body. Oh my God, "Take It Off," I love that song, I love that song so much. Katelyn says, "When they won't listen to 'The weekend' during sex, even to humor me, I'm out." That's on your boundary list, Katelyn, I love that. "Soulmate" by Lizzo, oh my God, yes, yes, just put on the Lizzo album, you got your playlist right there. Ludacris, "What's Your Fantasy," Woo, Sue, that's a great one, thank you for dropping that. Okay, all right, so you already know some of your sexy anthems, this is amazing. So mirror work is something that you make time to do. And so, lots of folks are like, "I don't have time to do this," and I know you're busy people, and you've got lots of responsibility, and you're taking care of people and things and work. But the five minute gaze thing, like when you're brushing your teeth, you can also put on your sexy song. And if it's a two, three minute song, that's how long you're supposed to be brushing your teeth anyways. So you could be brushing and being like, "Yeah, this is what, look at me," what a great way to start and end your day, right, in taking up space in this sensual playfulness. If you're not able to, if your body doesn't feel good, or in a way to like stand up and dance, even putting on your sexy song in the morning when you wake up, and rolling around in your bed, just allowing that sensual juices to start flowing in a way that isn't necessarily sexual. You're just like, "I'm entering my day like a snack," right? And whether you have sex or not, it doesn't really matter, it's about kind of moving into that feeling of feeling good about yourself. Okay, you've got some sexy songs here, I love it. Another one is to notice if you can make small adjustments to your body when you're walking around. And so, we're not going a lot of places right now, right? But if you can make even if you're going to get groceries, and you notice that your posture is kind of down, I want you to just roll your shoulders back, what does that feel like? For me it feels very exposing because I'm pushing my chest out now, which is an area where I feel self-conscious about, or it makes me not able to suck in my stomach at the same time, right? So a lot of us subconsciously are holding tension in areas of our body that we end up disassociating from. We end up numbing that area because we never touch it, we never own it, we never stretch it out, we never make it big. And so, it's really hard to move into a sexy space in the bedroom if we are only part of our parts, right? We're just like kind of bringing in the parts that we sort of accept, but we don't hate. So if you're standing in line at the grocery store, notice how masculine people stand. Because masculine people tend to take up a bit more space. They stand with their feet farther apart. They're more centered in the way that they are standing. So, there's a little bit, they look more grounded, right? They look sort of like they're a little bit more solid in their space. Their shoulders might be a little bit more back. Their arms are kind of out. So if you've ever been on public transit, and a masculine person is like manspreading like, "What the fuck is this?" You're always like, "I got to cross my legs and damage my knees," but it's okay to man spread. So think about how you can take up a little bit more space, and remember confidence isn't arrogance. So taking up more space just means that you're gonna fill out a little bit, right? You're just gonna maybe stand with your feet a little bit wider apart. You're going to have your shoulders back so that you're taking up a bit more space even horizontally, right, you're stretching out a little bit. Another thing that you can do is use what I call they're sort of totemic items. And so, a totemic item is something that makes us feel sexy. So it could be underwear that you wear that nobody has to know about. I only buy bras in bright red or pink colors because who cares, right? Those colors make me feel cute, even if no one's going to see it. And so what happens is that we start to believe that decorating our nakedness is a sign of adoration for ourselves. And so that could be anything from, it doesn't have to be something feminine, it could absolutely be something that is, just something that makes you feel like you're kind of cute. So it could be the way that you do your hair. It could be, and it's hard because we've been in social isolation so we haven't had a reason to really groom ourselves to the way that maybe we were before. But it could even just be clothing that fits you really well. It could be a shirt that just pops your shoulders. It could be shoes that make you feel really dapper. It could be any range of things that allow us to feel cute on our own terms. So it's not about impressing someone, it's not about keeping up with fashion, even if that's your intention, that's totally cool. But it's not what we're serving, we're serving for ourselves. Katelyn says, "All the fucking space, yeah, always trying to take the middle arm rest." Ah, that's so true. Emma says, "Sometimes I practice just taking up space by man spreading on my Zoom calls." Oh my God, Emma, that's brilliant, that's a great way to do this, yes. 'Cause people can't see your legs, I could be manspreading right now, right? So, I love that. I really like that. Yeah, so any of these practices, it doesn't matter if anyone sees them are not, they're for you. They're actually retraining your sense of self, your perception of your space, and your sense of resilience and strength. So there's all these little micro moves that we're doing that are helping us go into that space. Another thing that you can do, so tell me what part of your body that you like the least, or you hold the most shame in. Is there a part of your body where you trap a lot of your shame? Okay, Michelle's got arms. Kamal says hips and curves. Vicky says belly. Breasts, thighs, stomach, yep. Arms. Yes. Chin hair. Same. Yep. These are big ones, right? So, particularly when we talk about having body dysphoria, and so we might not feel connected to how we express ourselves to internally, or through our gender, or our femininity, or masculinity, but we might have a disconnect with how that's presented to the world, right? So sometimes people would tell me that I look really confident and I was like, really because I walk around trying to disappear. And I had this big orange dress the other day, and I said to my friend, I'm like, "Oh, I feel kind of shy about wearing this because I'm gonna stand out." And he was like, "You kind of stand out anyways, so you might as well own it." And I was like, "Yeah, who am I kidding, I don't have a flat chest," it's like, my breasts are out there, so I might as well own this in a way that feels comfortable for me, not in a way that's sexualized for others. So all of you, these thighs, breasts, stomach, arms, chin hairs, hips, and curves, body hair, for sure, yes. All of these things are very powerful ways to center our body hatred, or our body unacceptance, or our body unconfidence in it. And especially during sex, we are the most naked, literally and figuratively. So when we're in these moments, it's really tough. Think about all the grooming that you might do before sex, right? How much money have I spent on ass waxes, and bikini waxes, and armpit waxes? And how much time have I plucked my chin hairs and my eyebrows? And there's nothing wrong with doing any of these things. If you want to do these things, that's totally okay. What the disservice to ourselves comes from is when we do these things with the intention of feeling like they are gonna earn us the reward of acceptance. And so if someone notices my hairy legs, ooh, they're gonna not accept me, they're not gonna think I'm attractive, and that means so much to me. And so we wanna let go of that intention. And so, if you wanna wear makeup, wear makeup, if you want to wear baggy clothes, wear baggy clothes, you wanna wear tight clothes, wear tight clothes. So, what you can do is try those areas where you're not so crazy about. It is try to create some tender compassion for them because likely they're not going anywhere, and likely next year or next month or 10 years from now, you're gonna have a new area of your body that's changing that you might not feel comfortable with. I am convinced that through social isolation because I haven't been wearing a bra, that my nipples have migrated. And I was like, "Oh my God, I can't find them, they're so far under." And I thought like, "Well, who am I kidding," right? I mean like, this is what our bodies do, they change, and they move into ways that are not like who we were when we were 21, and even at 21, I wasn't considered conventionally attractive. So, you might wanna send some compassion to these areas. And so with my tummy what I do at night, I have such disassociation from my tummy 'cause I spent so many years not liking it. So I've started to rub a body butter, specifically on my tummy, and I tell it I'm accepted, I'm safe, and I'm loved. And so, that belly part needs to really hear and I rub it, and so it really needs to hear that, you know what? I don't have to like the way that you look, but that this is a part of me, right, this is a part of me. Particularly if you've had any type of big change to your body, so maybe you've had surgery, maybe you've expressed your gender in a different way, maybe your hair is graying or something's happening. It can feel very jolting for your sense of self, and so, sometimes we wanna numb out those areas. So by practicing touch in those areas and affirmations to those areas, it can help us come back into connection with them in a more compassionate way, which also gives us more compassion for other people's bodies as well. All right, let's see. I just saw COVID bush. "I grew back my pubic hair during quarantine, and it's been super empowering." Oof, Emily and Katelyn, I love this because I was a Brazilian getter for many years, and I used to get the most terrible ingrown hairs, and then I decided I was like, I touch my pussy the most, so I like it when it's furry. So, I'm gonna keep it furry, right? And pubic hair is also something that we get shamed about in that folks think it's unhygienic, and, but hair is natural, we've just developed industries around hair. Imagine the first person that said, "Hey, do you think that we could get women to pay for ripping hair off of their genitals?" And at the time maybe someone was like, "Oh no, nobody's gonna do that." And now it's just become socially acceptable, right? And even folks who are not women also get the hair ripped out of their body as well. So, I'm really glad that we're all starting to challenge hair here. Me too not shaving has been so liberating. Jen's like, try breastfeeding, yeah, Jen, where are your nipples? Emily says, "Yes, I feel like one of your nipples is in Toronto, Jen. Did it make it down here?" Emily says, "Yes, I feel like I'm reconnecting with pubic hair after shaving for almost 20 years." Look at us, we have a hair club. Now, if you like hair removal, if you like having a smooth area, that's also okay too. I'll tell you, I only have hair removed from my butt crack and occasionally my armpits, but everywhere else, I pretty much just let it grow. And so now there's that connection to I could do it if I want, I could do it if I don't want, it doesn't feel like, "Oh my gosh, I have to get dressed and hair removed in order to be acceptable to the world." And so, that's how we start to take up space in our bodies during sex, is that we move into the space not thinking that there are these markers of acceptance for how we are going to please our partners, aesthetically, or even physically, and how much space that we deserve to take up with our pleasure. If my legs are hairy, do I not deserve to receive cuddliness? Do I not deserve to ask for what I want? Do I not deserve to say no to things that I don't want? Emily says or sorry, Jen says, "My nipples are the only ones travelling south." Yes, Jen, I know mine too, maybe they can share a lift on the way back. Okay, I love this. I love that you're all sharing about the ways that you're trying to reconnect with your body, that is a huge part of moving into sexual confidence. So I have a few more tips for you, I know we're right at 8:30, but I've got about 10 more minutes of stuff. Another way to, so moving on from bodies, we wanna think about our sexual performance. And so, one good way to stop focusing on orgasm focused sex is to set the scene for your sex. And so, that means you think about ambiance, you think about mood, you think about entering the sexual space by launching into it from your brain and landing in your body. So a lot of us struggle with initiating sex, or maybe our partners always initiate in the same way, and we don't really like it, or we're not in the mood when they do it. So there's two types of sexual sort of desires. So, one is responsive and one is spontaneous. And so, spontaneous sexual desire is, oh, we look at a photo of Salma Hayek, or somebody hot, and we're like, "Ooh, they're sexy," and then we feel aroused and we wanna have sex. And so we mostly see sexual, or spontaneous sexual desire from romantic comedies, right, where like all of a sudden they're in a fight, and then they start gazing at each other's eyes and then they start making out, and one of them has an orgasm. So it really is, it's not everyone's bag, it's not the way that everyone responds to sexual arousal. And so the other form is responsive, and so responsive sexual desire is more about getting ourselves into that head space, and entering it in a way that is seductive, right? So that seduction is about getting your mind in the mood. And so, if your partner says like, "Oh," you can kind of tell they're making their move for sex, right, they're doing the thing that they want, and you're not so in the mood you could say, "Hmm, babe, I would love to be in the mood, let's see if we can get my mind there, seduce my brain and let's get into the mood." So that might mean that you wanna cuddle for a bit, and share about your day. And so that closeness and that intimacy allows you to relax into a space of opening up and feeling sexual. So, setting the scene with candles, with your sex playlist, maybe you put out your lingerie, maybe you put out a sex toy, whatever is gonna make you feel sexy. And you can do this for your masturbation. You can do this for your solo pleasure. You can do this for having video sex with your partner. You can do this for having phone sex with your partner. It's like the way that you're gonna become sexual athletes. It's like the way that athletes kind of get ready for a game, right? There's a ritual. I don't know anything about sports, so I'm just assuming this is what they do. So, lets say that they get ready, and they're getting into the mood, they're getting into the headspace, and this is what we wanna do. We wanna allow ourselves to feel sexy. We want that sexiness from the outside to come into the sexiness that we have on the inside. So we've been talking about outer or inner work, and now we want this outer stuff, we wanna be ready to step into this moment. Another one is to get pleasure from giving. And so, getting pleasure from giving means that we're gonna tune into the signs of pleasure in our partners. And so, if you're going down on your partner, and their legs are spread and you're like, "Oh, you look so delicious, I can't wait to put my face between your legs." And then you start to see their breath change. You start to tune into their moans, maybe their words change, maybe they get giggly, maybe they get kind of sweaty. And so you can really surf those sensations of pleasure that are happening for your partner. So this means that you are going to feel good about the pleasure that you're giving. So you're creating this little erotic circuit where you're giving pleasure, but then you're getting pleasure from giving pleasure. And so if we tune in to giving, we stop trying to get sex from people, and we try to give sex to people. And we want partners who do that for us as well. Another one that I teach a whole class on is sensuality. And so, how do we get out of our heads and into our bodies. Sensuality is our pathway to getting back into our bodies. And so, when we think about what are the five senses? What information is available to us in those moments? If you start to, your partner's going down on you and it feels really good, but then you think, "Oh, do we do laundry? I don't know. Do I smell? Did I do everything for work that I was supposed to?" And so, you leave the sexual moment. A way to come back to the moment, I'm gonna give you three sensual tips to come back to the moment. So one way is to breathe, right? To tune back into your breath. And so, you might even have a word, an affirmation for yourself, like, "Okay, Luna, breathe, just breathe." And so, you wanna leave your head and you wanna come back into your lungs and your breath. And so you're just gonna take a deep breath in, and when you exhale, maybe you'll say something to your partner. So you're gonna be like, "Oh babe, you feel so good." And so, that way it doesn't really seem weird that you're starting to do breathing exercises in the middle of sex, right? You can also tell your partner, "Hey, sometimes I get kind of distracted during sex, would you mind reminding me to breathe." So your partner could say, "Oh baby, you gotta, I need you to breathe back to me. I can see you're getting distracted, breathe back to me." And so it can feel really sexy to have someone invite you back into the space. Another sensual thing that you can do is use your hands. And so, use your hands and either put them on yourself, and so if I'm lying on my back and someone's going down on me, I might just take my hands and drag them straight across my chest super slow. Basically, it just looks like you're touching yourself and feeling all sexy, but what it actually is doing is queuing for your brain that, "Oh yeah, shit there's a body here, there's a body here that I'm enjoying. There's a physical self here." We're allowing our hands to kind of come back into the moment. You might also use your hands to even grip the sheets, right? Hold onto the sheets, or the chair, or wherever you are just to give yourself a grounding. You could also grab onto your partner. And so, if they're okay with you touching their shoulders or their head during, if they're going down on you, touch them and just feel them, and feel how good they feel giving you pleasure. Another thing that you can do to come back into your body during sex is have an affirmation. And so I developed my affirmation as a way to just stop that noise that's in my head. Stop that chatter that you're not good enough, you're not hot enough, nobody likes you, no one's gonna love you. And so, my affirmation is I'm beautiful, I'm enough, and I have everything I need. And so, come up with something that helps you, just throw a wrench in that hamster wheel of negative thoughts and stuff, that nonsense that just doesn't serve us, and it actually just gets in our way. And so we don't have to go into a therapeutic debrief in the moment when it's happening, we just wanna take the power out of it, we wanna remove, we wanna unplug it. And so an affirmation can be a great way to come back to the moment. Sometimes I just say to myself, if I'm doing something and I start to lose confidence, I'll be like, "Oh yeah, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, I'm a goddess. I forgot, I forgot I'm a goddess," and come back to that, like, "Well, would a goddess think this? No, no she wouldn't. Would a queen think this? No. Would a superstar think this? No. Would a sexually confident person think this? No." And so we can create this alter ego based on parts of ourself that can actually give us a way to pivot into when we start to feel that the negative stories that are clouding our authentic self are getting in the way. And so, we start to take up space in this person. So, you do that through an affirmation, you can also do that through role play. And so if you've ever been curious about kink, or role-play, or anything where you get to take on the characteristics, or the archetypes of someone else, so an archetype could be like a daddy, or a mommy, or a queen, or a princess. Characteristics could be feline. They could be a playful, they could be dominant, they could be submissive. And so, if you start to want to explore your sexual confidence through this alter ego, eventually that alter ego is something that you will feel more comfortable taking up space in because that alter ego, it feels like it's not you, but it's made up of all the same parts of you, you put it together by scooping out parts of yourself and forming this dominant feline, or this submissive queen, or whatever you have created. So role play is a really good way to start to practice sexual confidence in a way that feels playful and imaginative. All right. How do we feel about that? How do we feel about some of these really fun, kind of more creative tools for our sex? Katelyn says, "Fist pump, partners before sex, like Usain Bolt," yeah I love that, love that. Amy, you like that? Awesome. Okay, great. Great, so I'm gonna leave you with a couple more tools, and then I'm gonna explain your homework to you. All right. So one tool that I suggest for self-pleasure is masturbation with edging. And so, edging means that you take yourself to the point of where you feel the biggest buildup of pleasure that might be orgasm, or it might just be like a certain kind of tense feeling, or the urge to pee. And you're gonna take yourself to that point, and then you're gonna back off a little bit. So you're not entirely removing the sensation, but you might slow it down, or if you're using a vibrator, you might move it to a different area of your body. And so, what edging does is allows you to expand the erotic moments that are happening for you. So we don't just kind of rush to like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum," and then cum and then you just kind of cascade down, right? So edging allows us to go up a little bit, and then before we peak, we kinda like level off, and then we go up a little bit more 'cause we've got a bigger buildup, and then we level off again, and you can go as much as you want. What edging does is it actually helps you get more in tuned with your own sexual responses, and explore more pleasure anatomy beyond your go-to spots. So, edging also involves, if you're masturbating, approach masturbation from touching other parts of your body first, and then making your way to your genitals. And because it allows you to kind of take the focus away from just generally focused sex. So your masturbation doesn't have to end up in orgasm, but we wanna play with expanding what these spots are that we can touch. Sex toys. If you need a sex toy, this is the time to go and get them because you're socially isolating, or you might already be with your partner, and maybe you're sick of looking at each other. And so, sex toys are a really fun way to bring new dynamism into your sexual energy. Partner masturbation. So you can do this over video, you could do it over the phone., if you're in person, you can do it sort of facing each other, and you can decide to touch each other and masturbate each other, or you can put on a little masturbation show for each other. And so, you could be like, "Babe, teach me how to touch you. I wanna see how you touch you when nobody else is looking." And that allows you to actually watch someone be really primal in their own pleasure, and for you as well, you get to put on a little bit of a show. If you feel uncomfortable being watched, but you like the idea of it, blindfold yourself. So you don't have to watch them watching you, right? And you still get to kind of put on a little bit of a show. Another one is to, how many of you like erotica? Do you like reading erotic stories, or listening to erotic audio? Erotica is a really good way to open up your erotic imagination. If you're like "Luna, I want to be more creative in sex, I feel that that would make me feel more confident," erotica is like, I don't know, I was gonna say something from the gym, and I don't know anything from the gym, I don't know. Okay, it's like a workout for your erotic imagination. I was gonna be circuit training, is that a thing? So, erotica is really great. I'm gonna put in the chat the site that I always recommend to people, literotica.com. I've been masturbating to it since 1995, and there's still tons of information, or tons of stories on there that are new. So, it's crowdsourced, so you keep getting new information, new stories. The categories there are great. And the wonderful thing about erotica is that sometimes you can engage in fantasies that might be dangerous or impossible in real life, so to depict with real people, but in erotica, you could have a threesome with a unicorn and an octopus, and it's possible, it's gonna happen, right? You could have a multiperson orgy, and not worry about sexually transmitted infections in erotica. So it allows you to delve into those parts of your brain that wanna be tickled with dirtiness and naughtiness, right? Emily cut your teeth on dirty fan fiction, oh, I love that. I love hentai, I love lots of different kinds of porn that doesn't necessarily depict actual humans, and so we get a chance to really delve into our imagination. And another one is to think about erogenous zones other than your genitals. So how many of you like your neck kissed? I feel like if you don't like your neck kissed you're dead on the inside. So if you like your neck kissed, Vicky does, Katelyn says yeah. Amy, yeah, you agree? Yeah, I'm like, I don't know it's so delicious, I love it. I could have neck kisses and kisses and that would be enough sex for me. I love kinky shit, but that would be, that's enough for me. Jen, you love that? Okay, amazing. What other erogenous zones do you have on your body? Which other ones are you thinking about? Anywhere on your body where you've got more blood flow to the top of the skin is gonna potentially be an erotic or an erogenous zone. So when we're done here, I mean, you can take some time, and even just stroke your wrist really slowly, just like pet your own wrist, and then close your eyes and see what that feels like. And then maybe use your nails a little bit, or maybe push in the other direction. And so, when you're feeling this arm, and let's do it for a minute, and when you're done notice if there's a difference between the hand that was doing and the hand that was receiving. This one's probably warmer. It's actually probably more sensitive to this touch. So the touch of the nails feels like way more pleasurable on the hand that we warmed up. So the concept of erogenous zones is that we're trying to cue those arousal, those physiological arousal changes that happen in our body by getting at multiple erogenous zones instead of just like, "Let's make out," and then let's go to the genitals. That's how you have fuller body orgasms. That's how you have deeper orgasms. That's how you have bigger orgasms. That's how you sink into pleasure, and you start to feel a little bit floaty, and you're not so worried about that noise. That noise sort of gets clouded the more that we get into that floaty headspace. So the noise and the shame starts to feel more muted. Okay, let's see what you perverts have for your erogenous zones. Back, Kamal, yes. Vicki back, oof, I feel like my back is like a second clit. I love my back played with. Sue, back of knees, good one Sue, I love that too, and that's just such an under-serviced erogenous zone. Your ears, your thighs, your back for sure, yes, back of knees, absolutely. The sides oof your body, so where your ribs are, that's a very sensitive spot as well. Some people like their inner thighs played with, that's a super sensitive spot. Lower back is another spot. Ears are another spot. Some people love like forehead, or face kisses. Your jaw line is another spot, right? This is super sensitive along here. Your feet they are another spot. So there's so many delicious spots. How about your scalp? Does anyone like scalp massages? You know those head-scratcher things, that is also a very erotic situation, yeah, yeah, all right. Back of knees. Back of legs. Yes, 100%, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, good. So we all know that there are more spots. So sexually confident people are gonna say, "Hey, you know what would make me so fuckin' hot? I love when my ears are sucked on. Oof, I can't wait to get your mouth on my neck. Oh, I would love to feel your hands just like touching my thighs." And so, when we start to do this to ourselves, right, when we start to, if you're moisturizing your skin, and you're massaging your hands, it feels so good in between your fingertips, massage your feet, rub your ear lobes, when you're shampooing your hair, give yourself some of this, right, and just move your fingertips through your scalp. It starts to be a little bit easier to identify those areas to help give people feedback. And so, you could say, you could start that conversation with someone by saying, "Hey, what other hotspots on your body are there? What do I need to know about? Where can I really make you melt? What buttons can I push on you?" And when they speak up, don't even wait for them to ask you. If they ask you, they don't ask you, be like, "Oh my God, I love hearing that. Here's where my spots are on my body. Yeah, here's where you could make me melt, here's where you push this, and I just like turned into a puddle." And so, the communication part is so critical, but the discovery part is also just as critical. We got to know where those spots are, and how to touch them, and what they feel like. And it might feel different when someone else touches them, but it's still just as powerful for ourselves. All right. Katelyn says, "I keep a cuticle oil at my desk," yes, and you massage everyone's during peak season, "should try it with my partners." A hand massage is so sexy. It's so sexy because it's so tender. And it also allows someone to, again, get out of their head and into their body. So, sometimes we start with massages on the shoulder, and then five seconds later, we end up on someone's chest, or we end up in their genitals. And so, we miss out on all of this stuff that's available that actually can be really, really sexy. Hand stuff can also be very platonic, right, like Katelyn's describing. So doing it in a way for yourself can also feel really great. All right, how are you feeling everyone? Do you feel like you have a couple of practices that you can try, and that you can move towards this feeling of being more unapologetic in your sexual space? And so, I've given you a bunch of different things that you can do for desires, for your body, for a performance, but they are practices. And so, if you try them and you're like, "Oh, Luna was wrong," maybe, I mean, maybe there's a practice out there for you that's better. But give yourself a chance, right? Give yourself a run at it, and maybe it doesn't quite land the first time, but give it another go. Because the more that you do it, the more that you drop off from that awkwardness, from that silliness, and you're like, "Damn, this is a whole new way of being." That's how I felt when I stepped into sexual confidence, I didn't get it at first, it didn't work for me. I was like, I'd lose it, find it on Saturday and lose it by Tuesday. And so it's really a process of also keeping into communication and commune with ourselves to be able to notice what triggers us back into that space. My PMS triggers me back into that space. A criticism about my body will trigger me into that space. If you told me I was stupid, I'd be like, "You're stupid," but if you told me I was fat, I'd totally be like, "Oh yeah, you notice." So like learning what our soft spots are, and where we want to direct that attention can also help you choose what strategy you would like to employ. All right. Amy says excited, amazing. Karen says definitely. Emily, "This was so wonderful, thank you so much, and thank you for the extra time." My pleasure, this is a big one, it's a big one. Definitely, it's been great, thank you, thank you, Vicky. Thank you so much for all of this, a wonderful Friday evening, this was wonderful, I loved this so much. Good, I'm so glad that you all feel so positive. If you're feeling still a bit intimidated, you're still welcome, Emma, you're welcome Marina, thank you for being here. If you feel intimidated at all, that's totally okay. Think about this, the whole world is telling us this, and we're sitting here being like, "But this doesn't work for us, this makes me feel really shitty." So we're going against the grain. You are gonna feel that internalization of resistance in yourself. And so that's all right. We will get this, and stay tuned because I have a pay what you can bedroom communication class coming up, so if you want more language for how to ask, come to that. But I'm also gonna be, I'm developing, so you will all be the first to know, I'm developing a community where we can do this together because it's wonderful for me to get you all inspired and pumped up now, but I'd love to be able to follow up with you, and so that we can share with each other what worked, what didn't work, here are some new practices, here are things that we can share, here's where I struggled, here's where I did this. So, you're not alone, I am totally here with you in solidarity of this. And I think it's completely possible to shed the shame and make more room for pleasure. So I 100% believe in you and believe in these practices. These are things, I haven't recommended anything to you that I haven't tried myself, and that I haven't found some sort of success with. All right. Katelyn, you're so welcome, Michelle, you're welcome, Jen, you're so welcome. And thank you, yeah thank you all. So we're gonna go back to our desires. And so, now that we know where some of our unconfidence might come from. So in those moments, Vicky, awesome, I'm glad you're on board for this, this is so great. We're gonna go back to those spaces where we feel that we might have fantasies, or that are not so, maybe someone's gonna think they're fucked up if we, or tell people that we want this thing, we might even just feel very embarrassed to take up space in pleasurable sex. So what that might look like is important. A lot of the noises are very high pitched, right, they're very high pitch. And in real life, our sex noises are kind of guttural, right? They're more like grunty, they're more like primal. And so you know that, excuse me, you know that there's a performance factor to noises, but noises are actually part of our expression. They're part of our sensory sensuality. And so they help us release, and move, and turn erotic energy. But think about your masturbation. So, we all started masturbating maybe at a point where we lived with other people, or our families, or roommates, and so, we were very quiet during sex, and so, we didn't really have that opportunity to be noisy. And so a lot of times our sexual expression during sex is also very, we're trying to make it proper. And that really takes out the desire of our erotic energy to actually be expansive. It wants to take up more space and we're just saying, "Nope, that's not appropriate, oh, that's gonna be weird, someone's gonna think you're messed up." So we can find challenges in also even owning the way that we show pleasure. So I am sweaty as fuck, just normally, and then during sex, I'm a hot mess. So, I get so, so sweaty, and I have been so ashamed of feeling sweaty forever until I had someone that was really appreciative, and thought that sweat was actually sexy, and made me feel so comfortable to just be where I'm at, to let my body do what it's doing. So if there's something about your sexual expression, maybe it's a noise you make, maybe you squirt and you feel embarrassed about squirting, maybe you take long to orgasm, or you come really quickly, or whatever it is, you can also tell your partner this, so that the burden isn't on you hiding this thing, or pretending like it's not gonna happen, or worrying about when it is gonna happen. But you could say to your partner, "Babe, I get really, really sweaty when I'm having a good time. And so yeah, I feel kind of shy about it, but it's how you're gonna know I'm having a really good time." And lots of partners that are compassionate and caring will be like, "Oh, don't worry about it," and they'll get really reassuring. Even if your partner is casual, or if you're with someone for 10 years, 10 minutes or 10 years, it doesn't matter because we still wanna feel comfortable independent of what's happening, and that's really hard, right? I've had partners that, after I got divorced, I went on like a year of fuckery that just never ended, and I was like, "Oh, I wanna everybody, I wanna do all the things," and my standards for having sex with people were quite low. I was like, "I just wanna have sex, I don't know, it'll be great, whatever." And when I look back, I feel like some of the bullshit that I put up with in order to have touch, or connection, or potentially orgasms was actually really detrimental to how I took up space in my desires. And so, if someone didn't go down on me, or they didn't wanna go down on me, I was like, "Okay, well that's their preference." But then I evolved, right, and I thought I deserve better, I deserve to get the kind of sex that I want because then why wouldn't I just do it myself and not have to have small talk or change my cheats, right? So, I started a list. And so, I'd encourage you to make a list of what you think would be a fun, a healthy, a meaningful, a delicious, a pleasurable, a worthy sexual experience for you. So what would that look like? Would your partner be really attentive? Would your partner be really confident? Would your partner be really communicative? Would they be really affectionate? So I made this list for myself. And so, what I ended up doing was using that list in my Tinder conversations. And so when the conversation would get sexual on a dating app, I would say, "Oh, okay, so what kinds of things are you into because sexual like-mindedness is really important for me?" And they'd say, "Oh, I don't know, I'm into sex." And that's like like a non-answer, right, it doesn't give you any information. So, yeah. Oh, Emily, good I'm glad you committed too, and Danielle, you're loving this real, that's good, I'm glad. And be really real with you all tonight, and you all are being really real with me and I really appreciate that. So having these conversations, I then move into a space where I would define what sexual connectedness or like-mindedness looked like for me. I would say "Okay, well, so I'm really affectionate, and I'm open-minded, and I really need a partner that's communicative, and eats pussy like a champ." Those are my four little pillars of having a good experience. And so, if they responded with, "Oh, I'm not really affectionate, I save that for a relationship, or I don't eat pussy because of whatever nonsense answer." Then for me, I was like, "Cool," and yeah, and like Katelyn says unmatched, right? Then so that for me was, I'm not gonna take the risk to try and negotiate what I need for my pleasure, right? So it's a little bit more challenging if you're already in a relationship and your needs are not being currently met. So the conversation there is actually more vulnerable because you have more to lose. And the reality is is that every time you say yes to somebody else, when you actually wanna say no, it's a betrayal to your desire to feel more sexually confident. So you showed up here tonight to feel more sexually confident, but when we go back into our spaces and we don't practice owning our desires, and at least giving them a voice, giving them a manifestation from up here or in here into our relationships and our partnerships, it can just feel like we keep saying no to ourselves. And so, bodies that say no to themselves, it's really hard to take up space in pleasure. It's hard to feel safe enough to do that. So when we go back to the original definition of sexual confidence that we need to feel secure, and if I'm not secure that you care about my pleasure as much as I do, it's hard, it's really hard. So please don't blame yourself because this is really a tough situation for a lot of people when we start to renegotiate, rename, and recreate an idea of pleasure that actually includes us, right? Sexually confident people wanna show up in the pleasure that they want to have. All right. Love this. Kamal, aw, thank you, Kamal. I'm so glad that you liked this honesty and vulnerability. I'm totally here for that. Amy says your favorite line, yes. Whatever nonsense answer, yeah, they'd be like, "Ooh, well, if she's clean, or" I was like, you know what, pussies are self cleaning, dicks are not. So, let's just go with some science here, right? Vicky says, you're a fuckery is the best line, yes. Katelyn says, yes, I've been doing that. Okay. Amazing, amazing. I'm so glad that we're all on the same page about that we want a different set of conditions for our pleasure. So, write that out, what would be your three things that you're looking for, right? So mine was that I'm affectionate, open-minded, and I need you to eat my pussy like a champ. And so I would say those are things I expect from someone. And then we can find connection in other ways, but those were my deal breakers. And it's really hard at first, and so if you don't get it right away, or you start to compromise on your conditions, it's okay, right? We're undoing decades of being told that our pleasure doesn't matter. So it's hard to confidently step into a way of being in that our pleasure actually does matter. Emily says, "The first time I slept with a woman, I wanted to tell every woman in the world to stop worrying about what their vulvas taste like," 100%, 100%. As soon as I started pleasuring vulvas, I was like, "What are people talking about? This is delicious, and it smells amazing," that muskiness that we've all been told is dirty, or that doesn't smell good. We're told you're supposed to smell like lavender's and roses if we have vulvas, and yet penises aren't expected, they don't have an entire industry built around them being scented like steak and cupcakes, right? So we have an additional pressure if you have a vulva to show up in a way that feels more sanitized, right? But a lot of that scent, and a lot of that connection from someone's pheromones, and from their skin, and from their sweat, those are all very animal like pieces that actually add to our arousal. So they cause physiological changes that increases blood flow to the rest of our body. So when I said sexually confident people are more satisfied, it's also because their arousal systems are more receptive to sensation, they're more receptive to sensuality, they're more receptive to pleasure because we actually have a combination of a state of being, but also a physiological set of responses that matches that mental connection, right? So our biggest sex organ is up here. We've got to use our erotic imagination to get into this space. All right. So what you're gonna do for your desires, has anyone ever had a fantasy that you were shy to tell a partner maybe you wanted to have a threesome, maybe you wanted them to dress up like a puppy, maybe you wanted to dress up as a fireman, I don't know. If you've ever had a fantasy and you thought, "Oh my God, that's a weird, they're gonna think I'm so weird." Sometimes I masturbate, and afterwards I have an orgasm and it's great, and then I'm like, "Oh my God, Luna, you're so fucked up." And so, we have shame around the things that turn us on, but the fact is, is that a lot of our desires, we don't necessarily know exactly where they come from. We don't all have a pathology of, "I smelled my mom's pantyhose when I was five, and now I have a pantyhose fetish." Some people do, but a lot of us don't, we just have these fantasies, these things just turn us on. And they don't have to say anything about who we are as people because in fantasy, we're creating these boundaries around the fantasy in order to have a safe space to explore them. And so, it can be, it's like, it's very vulnerable and it's intimidating to share with a partner that you would like to do something. And sometimes we feel, especially if we've been with a partner for a while, we might think that telling them we want to do something different is somehow telling them that what we're doing right now is not working. And that's also not true. So you could say to your partner, "Hey babe, like, is there anything that you've ever like fantasized about, or thought about? I would love to hear what goes on in that dirty little mind of yours. I would love to be naughty and talk with you about things that turn me on, I don't know if we have to do them, but we can just talk about them." And so you can make it a really cute point of connection. It can be a wonderful way to get into another space of connection and intimacy with a partner. And so, I'm gonna challenge you, I'll send you all what your homework is, but I'm gonna challenge you to come up with what I call a fuck-it list. So, a fuck-it list is like a bucket list, but it's all the things you wanna do that that have to do with your fantasies. And so, your fuck-it it list might include, it could be something simple like, maybe not simple for some of you so it might be, I want to sit on someone's face. It could be I wanna learn to be a femdom. It could be I wanna learn to be better at fingering. It could be I wanna learn how to, or I wanna dress up as something, or I wanna be, I wanna pretend to be an alien in bed, or whatever it is. So we wanna think about what are some of these things that we would be interested in doing? This is what keeps our desire and our erotic imagination stimulated, right? So it's like the exact same purpose as a bucket list it's things to look forward to, but it also sets this pathway of sexual creativity, of erotic creativity. And it helps us also feel that we have a sexual relationship to ourselves that is independent of other people's desires. And so, you might meet some of the things on your fuck-it list through your own self-pleasure. It might just be through masturbation. It might be through wearing an outfit. So when I was with my ex husband, and we weren't having sex, so I was masturbating a lot, and I had a lot of cyber sex, whether that was ethical or not. I definitely had a lot of fantasies. And so, what I ended up doing was I wanted to have sex in heels. I was like, "Oh, it'd be really hot to wear heels and have sex." So I would wear heels during masturbation. And so, I would step into that fantasy on my own, and enjoy the sexiness of the heels just for me, and get off wearing heels. So you don't necessarily need a partner to have a fuck-it list. You can make this fuck-it list for you. Katelyn says, "I feel like I end up with such boring vanilla partners that sharing fantasies can bring out their sex shame," yes, "need to keep being proud about it." This is where our empathy comes in, that's a great point, Katelyn. So it feels like a lot of times our empathy also comes in for other people to appreciate that we're all dealing with this type of sexual shame. And so, at first, if you start talking with a partner, they might shy away from it, right? It might not be about you, it's their own stuff. And so, it doesn't mean that we still can't take up space in our own erotic fantasies. And sometimes that inspires people to feel more confident and more vulnerable. And so you can give them a bit of time to come around to it. You can also suggest if they're like, "Hmm, I don't know," or, "I'm not sure," or, "No, I just liked the things we're doing." You can give them contrast. So give them things to choose between. So you could say, "Hey, so I've been thinking about spanking. What do you think about that?" And they might say, "oh, I don't know, that sounds okay." And you could say, "Okay, well, would you wanna be the one that's spanked, or would you wanna spank me? Would you like to," and if they say you, you might say, "Oh, okay, with a spoon or a paddle, or what are you thinking?" And so, you can start to suggest, and co-create, it shows an interest in teasing out their sexual ideas. And fantasies don't have to be extreme. Fantasies could be, I have this fantasy of wanting to kind of go back to when making out was hot, right, and just making out. And so, I wanna make out with someone and have their underwear still be on. And so we're just focused on like touching everywhere except our bare genitals. And I think the tease and the seduction in that would be amazing. And so that's pretty vanilla on the kind of fantasy scale of kinky things, but it's something that I think is so sexually charged. I think it would be a great way to approach each other's bodies. You could also do sexual fantasy sharing by going online to a sex shop, and picking something that you wanna use on them and maybe they want to use on you. And so, you're committing to kind of being curious about like, "Hey, if there's another way to be turned on, we would like to know," right? Okay. So you're gonna make a fuck-it list. Another list that you're gonna make around your desires, and this also applies when we'll get into the body parts is having a boundaries list. And so, a boundaries list is basically about what you're going to do to make sure to create the conditions where you have everything you need to feel safe and secure emotionally and physically. So, boundaries might be you need physical barriers like condoms, or gloves, or dental dams in order to feel safe in a situation. And so, this means your boundary is gonna be, if it's not safe to be able to negotiate that condition, then I'm not going to have sex with this person. I've definitely been in positions where I've been pressured, or guilted, or I just felt too uncomfortable with the conflict of someone resisting wearing a condom or a barrier, and I look back at my previous self and I just feel for her because there's so much shame to be submissive in sex when it comes to our boundaries, not submissive in a sexy way, but in a way that we surrender our pleasure non consensually to other people. So, everything from not speaking up about what we like, to not using the barriers that we're comfortable with, to not getting the kinds of sexual activities that we want. And so, on my boundaries list is if someone doesn't eat pussy, we're not compatible, doesn't matter, if Ryan Gosling doesn't eat pussy, we're not compatible. So, really think about what are you going to do? You're gonna make the list about the things that you need, and then make the list about what are you gonna do if those conditions don't exist? So actions could be you're gonna speak up about it, right? The action might be you're gonna have a conversation about it. The action might be you're gonna talk to a friend about how to approach this. Sometimes we need solidarity in this. We need validation from people who have a more objective perspective. It could just be you shut it down, right? If it's just a Tinder match, you might just unmatch them. If it's your partner, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult, you're gonna have to have a more intimate, vulnerable conversation with them. How does that sound? Can we do a boundaries list and a fuck-it list? We've got a fun list, and we got more of like a self-care kind of list. Katelyn says, "Ha ha, I made out with someone all night," Ooh, that's so sexy, Katelyn. "I felt like it was super hot and stayed within my boundaries," that's so beautiful. Karen says, "Yes, we can." Awesome. Vicky for sure. Okay, amazing, amazing. Unfortunately, there's not five things I can tell you to do to get sexually confident. It's a combination of all of these practices that are gonna help us erode all of the years of sexual shame that we have picked up. Right, so it's kind of like water on a rock. It's gonna take time, but it is making a difference because we start to pivot our value. We start to say, "Hmm, I am worth this, and this no longer serves me," right? Okay, so let's move into our bodies. So we wanna break up with body shame. Who wants to break up with body shame? I am so over body shame stealing all of my time and money. So, we need to end this relationship with body shame. But I'll tell you I've been in an active process of trying to break up with body shame, pretty much since I left my marriage which was six years ago. And I left my marriage and immediately was like, "I need to fall in love with myself. I need to get this kind of desire that I want from other people for myself." And that doesn't mean I also don't want it from other people, but I need to start with this relationship. So I took burlesque classes. And burlesque classes were, they were so fun, but I was such a hot mess, and I'm not coordinated or choreographed at all. And so, it was very challenging, but it was so it was so inspiring, it was so inspiring to think of the idea of decorating myself, to be able to take up space in a bawdy way, like B-A-W-D-Y in a really unapologetic way, you can't be a burlesque dancer and kind of be like, "Oh, hi, everyone, like me," you have to like be bold, and so, I wanted that boldness. So think about something that you might want to do. Because when we break up with body shame, we actually have to think about what does body shame hold you back from in your sexual desires? We're not gonna eliminate body shame. I still don't like certain angles of myself, I don't like this, but what we're building is a way to come back to ourselves. So every time body shame tries to drag us out of the bedroom, drag us out of these moments, we wanna create these anchors. And so one of the anchors, or one of the ways to get anchors is to get ugly honest. So it sounds counterintuitive, but ugly honest is about really thinking about all of the insidious and pervasive ways that you hide your body. So that might be from the clothing that you choose, the colors that you wear, what seat you choose on transit. If you ever eat, things that you eat and places that you go and... I met this woman in a class once, was it a boxing class, and she said to me, she was so young, and she said to me, "Oh, I think it's really inspiring that you have your arms out because I'm so shy about my arms." And she was fully wearing a cardigan in a boxing class. And I've been there, I've covered up to the point of discomfort and dehydration just to hide my hideous body from other people. Yeah, Emily you've been there, yes, yes, we've all been there. This is the ugly honest we need to get to. And she told me that she wanted to, I had just come back from New York and she was like, "Yeah, I really wanna go to New York, it's on my bucket list, I want to go to LA." And she was like, "But I have to lose 100 pounds." And I wanted to cry for this baby because we have all been there, we have all been there, where we are holding ourselves back from life because of a goal weight, or because of a desire for a flat stomach, or a less hairy back, or I've got stretch marks, I've got psoriasis, I've got all kinds of things that are not considered attractive. But we feel that, we've been told that we don't have the right to exist unless we are aesthetically pleasing, right? And so that's a hard truth because it really confronts us with all of the suffering that we have experienced under these pressures. Vicky says sounds familiar, yeah, absolutely. So I want you to get ugly honest. So I'll give you an example of my ugly honest. If I ever eat things like McDonald's, or take out, or something. If I'm carrying the bag from the place, I will not carry this bag in public. I will put it in my purse, I will shove the drink in my purse. So my pursed smell like fried food and spilled drink because God forbid someone look at that bag of McDonald's or whatever it is, and think that that's what I eat all the time, and so therefore, that's why my body is this size. That's my ugly honest. I think people are always looking at me and thinking that the first thing that comes to mind is that I am not fit, that I am fat, that I'm this and that. So, when we start to tease that out, right, I didn't use to be able to talk about that, I never told anybody that. I was too embarrassed that this is what I do to avoid getting confirmation from other people about what I think in my head. And maybe people are thinking that, and maybe they're not, but it doesn't even really matter what the truth is because the truth that we are choosing to stand behind is actually guiding how sexy we feel, how attractive we allow ourselves to feel, how we allow compliments to be received, how we allow sexual pleasure to be received. And so, if I'm thinking that, how could I possibly then get over the shame of if I think my genitals aren't tasty, and if someone's going down on me, is that what I'm worrying about the whole time that I'm star fishing? And I'm like thinking about, "Do they actually like this? And how could they possibly like my pussy, and how could they possibly wanna have sex with me because of my tummy, or because of this," and so, it can feel just like a tornado inside of you. So find those parts of you, find those parts of you that are telling you these really ugly things. And because we need to give attention to those parts of ourselves, right? We need a new narrative. We need to go in there and be like, "I'm so sorry that we believed that. But I know better now," right? I have to look, sometimes I get dressed, I put on this dress, this is my favorite dress. And I stood in front of the mirror, and the first thing I looked at was my belly. And then I looked back up and met my gaze, and I said, "Luna, I'm so sorry. I know people told us that this belly wasn't cute, and you could never be beautiful with it, but you know what, we know better now. And I'm sorry that you suffered through that, but we know better now." And so we really have to have these dialogues with ourselves. It feels weird, but I promise you, it is a practice that over time it helps build a new narrative, and the other voice feels less powerful. It starts to fade away as this voice gets louder. Katelyn says, "I just tell myself behind all that shame they think I'm a snack," often it's true. Yes, absolutely, we don't know what people are thinking. You can also notice the impact of this by trying an exercise. So the next time you go out, and you're passing, let's say five people, I want you to think that those first five people that you pass, they think you are the tastiest snack that they have ever seen, right? So just imagine that that's what they're thinking, and see what that does to your posture, see what that does to your mood, the spring in your step, right? And then the next five people I want you to think that they think that you are the most horrible looking person that they have ever seen, and see what that does to your mood, see what that does to the spring in your step. What does that do to your posture? What does that do to how secure you feel walking around? And this really gives us, it's an exercise in perception. It really is an exercise of how powerful our sense of perception is, and what we think is happening, how it can affect our mood. Because in the bedroom, we 100% need to leverage a mood. And I'm gonna get into feeling yourself in a minute. So, oh, I'm already at feeling yourself. So, with feeling yourself, this is how we enter our sexy spaces in a way that we are already like this full pot of honey, right? You're like this full, delicious pot of honey that is overflowing for other people. So I have a brand called Fuck Like a Goddess, and Fuck Like a Goddess is all about that, I am entering this space like a goddess, and I'm like, "Hmm, I'm just over here feeling myself, won't you join me," right? Not so much like, "Hmm. I wanna feel sexy, won't you make me feel sexy?" It's not about that, it's like, "I'm feeling myself, and I want you to meet me in this space where I'm feeling myself so you can feel yourself too." So the way to get there, there's a couple of, well, there's a bunch of stuff you can do to get there. So one of the things is mirror work. And so, mirror work is really powerful because mirror work confronts our own sense of our distorted gaze. And so, a lot of times we're looking at ourselves with the eyes of other people or systems. We're looking at ourselves through diet culture, through porn, through the fashion industry, through all these different types of things. So, mirror work, there's a couple of ways you can do it. So, if you go to the bathroom and you're washing your hands, look up in the mirror and just meet your gaze, and just give yourself a big smile. So smile at yourself in the mirror, you can even be like, "Hmm, you're looking a little cute today," and wink at yourself, flirt with yourself in the mirror. It feels amazing. It feels so silly, but after a while, you're like, "Why wasn't I doing this all the time?" And it's so simple. Every time you're washing your hands, you have an opportunity to challenge a narrative, away of feeling, a way of being. Another way to do mirror work is to dance in front of the mirror. And so, to put on whatever your anthem is for feeling sexy, what are some of our sexy anthems? What makes you feel like you are the tastiest thing alive? 'Cause I'm gonna use all your anthems and make a playlist for myself, but tell me what some of these sexy songs are. For me it's always "The weekend," I'm sorry, I know it's really basic, but it's always "The weekend." Jen says "Respect," yes, yes. Karen says, "Bitch Boss," amazing, amazing. So you're gonna do this dance in front of the mirror, and at first notice where your gaze goes because my gaze goes to the parts of the body that I don't like. And so, over time you will start to look at this person, this reflection in the mirror, as someone who's just having a really good time, or maybe they're having, they've got really good rhythm. Maybe they're just having a lot of fun. Maybe they just look great jiggling around and being playful. And you will stop focusing on, well, how society has taught us to see ourselves, which is like cuts of meat. So your arms are okay, but your belly is not okay. Your butt's okay, but your thighs are not okay. Your nose is okay, but your height isn't okay. We are not some of parts, right? We are entire experiences because you are gonna be the sex, right? You don't have to be sexy, you were gonna actually be sex. So mirror work is really fun. What I wanna challenge you to do with mirror work, if it's safe to do in your house, is to do part of the work looking at the mirror, and then keep the music going and turn around so you're not facing the mirror, and see if you even feel freer to dance around in your body. Remember, it's not about choreography, it's not about moves, it's about playing in your body. Oh my God, "Take It Off," I love that song, I love that song so much. Katelyn says, "When they won't listen to 'The weekend' during sex, even to humor me, I'm out." That's on your boundary list, Katelyn, I love that. "Soulmate" by Lizzo, oh my God, yes, yes, just put on the Lizzo album, you got your playlist right there. Ludacris, "What's Your Fantasy," Woo, Sue, that's a great one, thank you for dropping that. Okay, all right, so you already know some of your sexy anthems, this is amazing. So mirror work is something that you make time to do. And so, lots of folks are like, "I don't have time to do this," and I know you're busy people, and you've got lots of responsibility, and you're taking care of people and things and work. But the five minute gaze thing, like when you're brushing your teeth, you can also put on your sexy song. And if it's a two, three minute song, that's how long you're supposed to be brushing your teeth anyways. So you could be brushing and being like, "Yeah, this is what, look at me," what a great way to start and end your day, right, in taking up space in this sensual playfulness. If you're not able to, if your body doesn't feel good, or in a way to like stand up and dance, even putting on your sexy song in the morning when you wake up, and rolling around in your bed, just allowing that sensual juices to start flowing in a way that isn't necessarily sexual. You're just like, "I'm entering my day like a snack," right? And whether you have sex or not, it doesn't really matter, it's about kind of moving into that feeling of feeling good about yourself. Okay, you've got some sexy songs here, I love it. Another one is to notice if you can make small adjustments to your body when you're walking around. And so, we're not going a lot of places right now, right? But if you can make even if you're going to get groceries, and you notice that your posture is kind of down, I want you to just roll your shoulders back, what does that feel like? For me it feels very exposing because I'm pushing my chest out now, which is an area where I feel self-conscious about, or it makes me not able to suck in my stomach at the same time, right? So a lot of us subconsciously are holding tension in areas of our body that we end up disassociating from. We end up numbing that area because we never touch it, we never own it, we never stretch it out, we never make it big. And so, it's really hard to move into a sexy space in the bedroom if we are only part of our parts, right? We're just like kind of bringing in the parts that we sort of accept, but we don't hate. So if you're standing in line at the grocery store, notice how masculine people stand. Because masculine people tend to take up a bit more space. They stand with their feet farther apart. They're more centered in the way that they are standing. So, there's a little bit, they look more grounded, right? They look sort of like they're a little bit more solid in their space. Their shoulders might be a little bit more back. Their arms are kind of out. So if you've ever been on public transit, and a masculine person is like manspreading like, "What the fuck is this?" You're always like, "I got to cross my legs and damage my knees," but it's okay to man spread. So think about how you can take up a little bit more space, and remember confidence isn't arrogance. So taking up more space just means that you're gonna fill out a little bit, right? You're just gonna maybe stand with your feet a little bit wider apart. You're going to have your shoulders back so that you're taking up a bit more space even horizontally, right, you're stretching out a little bit. Another thing that you can do is use what I call they're sort of totemic items. And so, a totemic item is something that makes us feel sexy. So it could be underwear that you wear that nobody has to know about. I only buy bras in bright red or pink colors because who cares, right? Those colors make me feel cute, even if no one's going to see it. And so what happens is that we start to believe that decorating our nakedness is a sign of adoration for ourselves. And so that could be anything from, it doesn't have to be something feminine, it could absolutely be something that is, just something that makes you feel like you're kind of cute. So it could be the way that you do your hair. It could be, and it's hard because we've been in social isolation so we haven't had a reason to really groom ourselves to the way that maybe we were before. But it could even just be clothing that fits you really well. It could be a shirt that just pops your shoulders. It could be shoes that make you feel really dapper. It could be any range of things that allow us to feel cute on our own terms. So it's not about impressing someone, it's not about keeping up with fashion, even if that's your intention, that's totally cool. But it's not what we're serving, we're serving for ourselves. Katelyn says, "All the fucking space, yeah, always trying to take the middle arm rest." Ah, that's so true. Emma says, "Sometimes I practice just taking up space by man spreading on my Zoom calls." Oh my God, Emma, that's brilliant, that's a great way to do this, yes. 'Cause people can't see your legs, I could be manspreading right now, right? So, I love that. I really like that. Yeah, so any of these practices, it doesn't matter if anyone sees them are not, they're for you. They're actually retraining your sense of self, your perception of your space, and your sense of resilience and strength. So there's all these little micro moves that we're doing that are helping us go into that space. Another thing that you can do, so tell me what part of your body that you like the least, or you hold the most shame in. Is there a part of your body where you trap a lot of your shame? Okay, Michelle's got arms. Kamal says hips and curves. Vicky says belly. Breasts, thighs, stomach, yep. Arms. Yes. Chin hair. Same. Yep. These are big ones, right? So, particularly when we talk about having body dysphoria, and so we might not feel connected to how we express ourselves to internally, or through our gender, or our femininity, or masculinity, but we might have a disconnect with how that's presented to the world, right? So sometimes people would tell me that I look really confident and I was like, really because I walk around trying to disappear. And I had this big orange dress the other day, and I said to my friend, I'm like, "Oh, I feel kind of shy about wearing this because I'm gonna stand out." And he was like, "You kind of stand out anyways, so you might as well own it." And I was like, "Yeah, who am I kidding, I don't have a flat chest," it's like, my breasts are out there, so I might as well own this in a way that feels comfortable for me, not in a way that's sexualized for others. So all of you, these thighs, breasts, stomach, arms, chin hairs, hips, and curves, body hair, for sure, yes. All of these things are very powerful ways to center our body hatred, or our body unacceptance, or our body unconfidence in it. And especially during sex, we are the most naked, literally and figuratively. So when we're in these moments, it's really tough. Think about all the grooming that you might do before sex, right? How much money have I spent on ass waxes, and bikini waxes, and armpit waxes? And how much time have I plucked my chin hairs and my eyebrows? And there's nothing wrong with doing any of these things. If you want to do these things, that's totally okay. What the disservice to ourselves comes from is when we do these things with the intention of feeling like they are gonna earn us the reward of acceptance. And so if someone notices my hairy legs, ooh, they're gonna not accept me, they're not gonna think I'm attractive, and that means so much to me. And so we wanna let go of that intention. And so, if you wanna wear makeup, wear makeup, if you want to wear baggy clothes, wear baggy clothes, you wanna wear tight clothes, wear tight clothes. So, what you can do is try those areas where you're not so crazy about. It is try to create some tender compassion for them because likely they're not going anywhere, and likely next year or next month or 10 years from now, you're gonna have a new area of your body that's changing that you might not feel comfortable with. I am convinced that through social isolation because I haven't been wearing a bra, that my nipples have migrated. And I was like, "Oh my God, I can't find them, they're so far under." And I thought like, "Well, who am I kidding," right? I mean like, this is what our bodies do, they change, and they move into ways that are not like who we were when we were 21, and even at 21, I wasn't considered conventionally attractive. So, you might wanna send some compassion to these areas. And so with my tummy what I do at night, I have such disassociation from my tummy 'cause I spent so many years not liking it. So I've started to rub a body butter, specifically on my tummy, and I tell it I'm accepted, I'm safe, and I'm loved. And so, that belly part needs to really hear and I rub it, and so it really needs to hear that, you know what? I don't have to like the way that you look, but that this is a part of me, right, this is a part of me. Particularly if you've had any type of big change to your body, so maybe you've had surgery, maybe you've expressed your gender in a different way, maybe your hair is graying or something's happening. It can feel very jolting for your sense of self, and so, sometimes we wanna numb out those areas. So by practicing touch in those areas and affirmations to those areas, it can help us come back into connection with them in a more compassionate way, which also gives us more compassion for other people's bodies as well. All right, let's see. I just saw COVID bush. "I grew back my pubic hair during quarantine, and it's been super empowering." Oof, Emily and Katelyn, I love this because I was a Brazilian getter for many years, and I used to get the most terrible ingrown hairs, and then I decided I was like, I touch my pussy the most, so I like it when it's furry. So, I'm gonna keep it furry, right? And pubic hair is also something that we get shamed about in that folks think it's unhygienic, and, but hair is natural, we've just developed industries around hair. Imagine the first person that said, "Hey, do you think that we could get women to pay for ripping hair off of their genitals?" And at the time maybe someone was like, "Oh no, nobody's gonna do that." And now it's just become socially acceptable, right? And even folks who are not women also get the hair ripped out of their body as well. So, I'm really glad that we're all starting to challenge hair here. Me too not shaving has been so liberating. Jen's like, try breastfeeding, yeah, Jen, where are your nipples? Emily says, "Yes, I feel like one of your nipples is in Toronto, Jen. Did it make it down here?" Emily says, "Yes, I feel like I'm reconnecting with pubic hair after shaving for almost 20 years." Look at us, we have a hair club. Now, if you like hair removal, if you like having a smooth area, that's also okay too. I'll tell you, I only have hair removed from my butt crack and occasionally my armpits, but everywhere else, I pretty much just let it grow. And so now there's that connection to I could do it if I want, I could do it if I don't want, it doesn't feel like, "Oh my gosh, I have to get dressed and hair removed in order to be acceptable to the world." And so, that's how we start to take up space in our bodies during sex, is that we move into the space not thinking that there are these markers of acceptance for how we are going to please our partners, aesthetically, or even physically, and how much space that we deserve to take up with our pleasure. If my legs are hairy, do I not deserve to receive cuddliness? Do I not deserve to ask for what I want? Do I not deserve to say no to things that I don't want? Emily says or sorry, Jen says, "My nipples are the only ones travelling south." Yes, Jen, I know mine too, maybe they can share a lift on the way back. Okay, I love this. I love that you're all sharing about the ways that you're trying to reconnect with your body, that is a huge part of moving into sexual confidence. So I have a few more tips for you, I know we're right at 8:30, but I've got about 10 more minutes of stuff. Another way to, so moving on from bodies, we wanna think about our sexual performance. And so, one good way to stop focusing on orgasm focused sex is to set the scene for your sex. And so, that means you think about ambiance, you think about mood, you think about entering the sexual space by launching into it from your brain and landing in your body. So a lot of us struggle with initiating sex, or maybe our partners always initiate in the same way, and we don't really like it, or we're not in the mood when they do it. So there's two types of sexual sort of desires. So, one is responsive and one is spontaneous. And so, spontaneous sexual desire is, oh, we look at a photo of Salma Hayek, or somebody hot, and we're like, "Ooh, they're sexy," and then we feel aroused and we wanna have sex. And so we mostly see sexual, or spontaneous sexual desire from romantic comedies, right, where like all of a sudden they're in a fight, and then they start gazing at each other's eyes and then they start making out, and one of them has an orgasm. So it really is, it's not everyone's bag, it's not the way that everyone responds to sexual arousal. And so the other form is responsive, and so responsive sexual desire is more about getting ourselves into that head space, and entering it in a way that is seductive, right? So that seduction is about getting your mind in the mood. And so, if your partner says like, "Oh," you can kind of tell they're making their move for sex, right, they're doing the thing that they want, and you're not so in the mood you could say, "Hmm, babe, I would love to be in the mood, let's see if we can get my mind there, seduce my brain and let's get into the mood." So that might mean that you wanna cuddle for a bit, and share about your day. And so that closeness and that intimacy allows you to relax into a space of opening up and feeling sexual. So, setting the scene with candles, with your sex playlist, maybe you put out your lingerie, maybe you put out a sex toy, whatever is gonna make you feel sexy. And you can do this for your masturbation. You can do this for your solo pleasure. You can do this for having video sex with your partner. You can do this for having phone sex with your partner. It's like the way that you're gonna become sexual athletes. It's like the way that athletes kind of get ready for a game, right? There's a ritual. I don't know anything about sports, so I'm just assuming this is what they do. So, lets say that they get ready, and they're getting into the mood, they're getting into the headspace, and this is what we wanna do. We wanna allow ourselves to feel sexy. We want that sexiness from the outside to come into the sexiness that we have on the inside. So we've been talking about outer or inner work, and now we want this outer stuff, we wanna be ready to step into this moment. Another one is to get pleasure from giving. And so, getting pleasure from giving means that we're gonna tune into the signs of pleasure in our partners. And so, if you're going down on your partner, and their legs are spread and you're like, "Oh, you look so delicious, I can't wait to put my face between your legs." And then you start to see their breath change. You start to tune into their moans, maybe their words change, maybe they get giggly, maybe they get kind of sweaty. And so you can really surf those sensations of pleasure that are happening for your partner. So this means that you are going to feel good about the pleasure that you're giving. So you're creating this little erotic circuit where you're giving pleasure, but then you're getting pleasure from giving pleasure. And so if we tune in to giving, we stop trying to get sex from people, and we try to give sex to people. And we want partners who do that for us as well. Another one that I teach a whole class on is sensuality. And so, how do we get out of our heads and into our bodies. Sensuality is our pathway to getting back into our bodies. And so, when we think about what are the five senses? What information is available to us in those moments? If you start to, your partner's going down on you and it feels really good, but then you think, "Oh, do we do laundry? I don't know. Do I smell? Did I do everything for work that I was supposed to?" And so, you leave the sexual moment. A way to come back to the moment, I'm gonna give you three sensual tips to come back to the moment. So one way is to breathe, right? To tune back into your breath. And so, you might even have a word, an affirmation for yourself, like, "Okay, Luna, breathe, just breathe." And so, you wanna leave your head and you wanna come back into your lungs and your breath. And so you're just gonna take a deep breath in, and when you exhale, maybe you'll say something to your partner. So you're gonna be like, "Oh babe, you feel so good." And so, that way it doesn't really seem weird that you're starting to do breathing exercises in the middle of sex, right? You can also tell your partner, "Hey, sometimes I get kind of distracted during sex, would you mind reminding me to breathe." So your partner could say, "Oh baby, you gotta, I need you to breathe back to me. I can see you're getting distracted, breathe back to me." And so it can feel really sexy to have someone invite you back into the space. Another sensual thing that you can do is use your hands. And so, use your hands and either put them on yourself, and so if I'm lying on my back and someone's going down on me, I might just take my hands and drag them straight across my chest super slow. Basically, it just looks like you're touching yourself and feeling all sexy, but what it actually is doing is queuing for your brain that, "Oh yeah, shit there's a body here, there's a body here that I'm enjoying. There's a physical self here." We're allowing our hands to kind of come back into the moment. You might also use your hands to even grip the sheets, right? Hold onto the sheets, or the chair, or wherever you are just to give yourself a grounding. You could also grab onto your partner. And so, if they're okay with you touching their shoulders or their head during, if they're going down on you, touch them and just feel them, and feel how good they feel giving you pleasure. Another thing that you can do to come back into your body during sex is have an affirmation. And so I developed my affirmation as a way to just stop that noise that's in my head. Stop that chatter that you're not good enough, you're not hot enough, nobody likes you, no one's gonna love you. And so, my affirmation is I'm beautiful, I'm enough, and I have everything I need. And so, come up with something that helps you, just throw a wrench in that hamster wheel of negative thoughts and stuff, that nonsense that just doesn't serve us, and it actually just gets in our way. And so we don't have to go into a therapeutic debrief in the moment when it's happening, we just wanna take the power out of it, we wanna remove, we wanna unplug it. And so an affirmation can be a great way to come back to the moment. Sometimes I just say to myself, if I'm doing something and I start to lose confidence, I'll be like, "Oh yeah, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, I'm a goddess. I forgot, I forgot I'm a goddess," and come back to that, like, "Well, would a goddess think this? No, no she wouldn't. Would a queen think this? No. Would a superstar think this? No. Would a sexually confident person think this? No." And so we can create this alter ego based on parts of ourself that can actually give us a way to pivot into when we start to feel that the negative stories that are clouding our authentic self are getting in the way. And so, we start to take up space in this person. So, you do that through an affirmation, you can also do that through role play. And so if you've ever been curious about kink, or role-play, or anything where you get to take on the characteristics, or the archetypes of someone else, so an archetype could be like a daddy, or a mommy, or a queen, or a princess. Characteristics could be feline. They could be a playful, they could be dominant, they could be submissive. And so, if you start to want to explore your sexual confidence through this alter ego, eventually that alter ego is something that you will feel more comfortable taking up space in because that alter ego, it feels like it's not you, but it's made up of all the same parts of you, you put it together by scooping out parts of yourself and forming this dominant feline, or this submissive queen, or whatever you have created. So role play is a really good way to start to practice sexual confidence in a way that feels playful and imaginative. All right. How do we feel about that? How do we feel about some of these really fun, kind of more creative tools for our sex? Katelyn says, "Fist pump, partners before sex, like Usain Bolt," yeah I love that, love that. Amy, you like that? Awesome. Okay, great. Great, so I'm gonna leave you with a couple more tools, and then I'm gonna explain your homework to you. All right. So one tool that I suggest for self-pleasure is masturbation with edging. And so, edging means that you take yourself to the point of where you feel the biggest buildup of pleasure that might be orgasm, or it might just be like a certain kind of tense feeling, or the urge to pee. And you're gonna take yourself to that point, and then you're gonna back off a little bit. So you're not entirely removing the sensation, but you might slow it down, or if you're using a vibrator, you might move it to a different area of your body. And so, what edging does is allows you to expand the erotic moments that are happening for you. So we don't just kind of rush to like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum," and then cum and then you just kind of cascade down, right? So edging allows us to go up a little bit, and then before we peak, we kinda like level off, and then we go up a little bit more 'cause we've got a bigger buildup, and then we level off again, and you can go as much as you want. What edging does is it actually helps you get more in tuned with your own sexual responses, and explore more pleasure anatomy beyond your go-to spots. So, edging also involves, if you're masturbating, approach masturbation from touching other parts of your body first, and then making your way to your genitals. And because it allows you to kind of take the focus away from just generally focused sex. So your masturbation doesn't have to end up in orgasm, but we wanna play with expanding what these spots are that we can touch. Sex toys. If you need a sex toy, this is the time to go and get them because you're socially isolating, or you might already be with your partner, and maybe you're sick of looking at each other. And so, sex toys are a really fun way to bring new dynamism into your sexual energy. Partner masturbation. So you can do this over video, you could do it over the phone., if you're in person, you can do it sort of facing each other, and you can decide to touch each other and masturbate each other, or you can put on a little masturbation show for each other. And so, you could be like, "Babe, teach me how to touch you. I wanna see how you touch you when nobody else is looking." And that allows you to actually watch someone be really primal in their own pleasure, and for you as well, you get to put on a little bit of a show. If you feel uncomfortable being watched, but you like the idea of it, blindfold yourself. So you don't have to watch them watching you, right? And you still get to kind of put on a little bit of a show. Another one is to, how many of you like erotica? Do you like reading erotic stories, or listening to erotic audio? Erotica is a really good way to open up your erotic imagination. If you're like "Luna, I want to be more creative in sex, I feel that that would make me feel more confident," erotica is like, I don't know, I was gonna say something from the gym, and I don't know anything from the gym, I don't know. Okay, it's like a workout for your erotic imagination. I was gonna be circuit training, is that a thing? So, erotica is really great. I'm gonna put in the chat the site that I always recommend to people, literotica.com. I've been masturbating to it since 1995, and there's still tons of information, or tons of stories on there that are new. So, it's crowdsourced, so you keep getting new information, new stories. The categories there are great. And the wonderful thing about erotica is that sometimes you can engage in fantasies that might be dangerous or impossible in real life, so to depict with real people, but in erotica, you could have a threesome with a unicorn and an octopus, and it's possible, it's gonna happen, right? You could have a multiperson orgy, and not worry about sexually transmitted infections in erotica. So it allows you to delve into those parts of your brain that wanna be tickled with dirtiness and naughtiness, right? Emily cut your teeth on dirty fan fiction, oh, I love that. I love hentai, I love lots of different kinds of porn that doesn't necessarily depict actual humans, and so we get a chance to really delve into our imagination. And another one is to think about erogenous zones other than your genitals. So how many of you like your neck kissed? I feel like if you don't like your neck kissed you're dead on the inside. So if you like your neck kissed, Vicky does, Katelyn says yeah. Amy, yeah, you agree? Yeah, I'm like, I don't know it's so delicious, I love it. I could have neck kisses and kisses and that would be enough sex for me. I love kinky shit, but that would be, that's enough for me. Jen, you love that? Okay, amazing. What other erogenous zones do you have on your body? Which other ones are you thinking about? Anywhere on your body where you've got more blood flow to the top of the skin is gonna potentially be an erotic or an erogenous zone. So when we're done here, I mean, you can take some time, and even just stroke your wrist really slowly, just like pet your own wrist, and then close your eyes and see what that feels like. And then maybe use your nails a little bit, or maybe push in the other direction. And so, when you're feeling this arm, and let's do it for a minute, and when you're done notice if there's a difference between the hand that was doing and the hand that was receiving. This one's probably warmer. It's actually probably more sensitive to this touch. So the touch of the nails feels like way more pleasurable on the hand that we warmed up. So the concept of erogenous zones is that we're trying to cue those arousal, those physiological arousal changes that happen in our body by getting at multiple erogenous zones instead of just like, "Let's make out," and then let's go to the genitals. That's how you have fuller body orgasms. That's how you have deeper orgasms. That's how you have bigger orgasms. That's how you sink into pleasure, and you start to feel a little bit floaty, and you're not so worried about that noise. That noise sort of gets clouded the more that we get into that floaty headspace. So the noise and the shame starts to feel more muted. Okay, let's see what you perverts have for your erogenous zones. Back, Kamal, yes. Vicki back, oof, I feel like my back is like a second clit. I love my back played with. Sue, back of knees, good one Sue, I love that too, and that's just such an under-serviced erogenous zone. Your ears, your thighs, your back for sure, yes, back of knees, absolutely. The sides oof your body, so where your ribs are, that's a very sensitive spot as well. Some people like their inner thighs played with, that's a super sensitive spot. Lower back is another spot. Ears are another spot. Some people love like forehead, or face kisses. Your jaw line is another spot, right? This is super sensitive along here. Your feet they are another spot. So there's so many delicious spots. How about your scalp? Does anyone like scalp massages? You know those head-scratcher things, that is also a very erotic situation, yeah, yeah, all right. Back of knees. Back of legs. Yes, 100%, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, good. So we all know that there are more spots. So sexually confident people are gonna say, "Hey, you know what would make me so fuckin' hot? I love when my ears are sucked on. Oof, I can't wait to get your mouth on my neck. Oh, I would love to feel your hands just like touching my thighs." And so, when we start to do this to ourselves, right, when we start to, if you're moisturizing your skin, and you're massaging your hands, it feels so good in between your fingertips, massage your feet, rub your ear lobes, when you're shampooing your hair, give yourself some of this, right, and just move your fingertips through your scalp. It starts to be a little bit easier to identify those areas to help give people feedback. And so, you could say, you could start that conversation with someone by saying, "Hey, what other hotspots on your body are there? What do I need to know about? Where can I really make you melt? What buttons can I push on you?" And when they speak up, don't even wait for them to ask you. If they ask you, they don't ask you, be like, "Oh my God, I love hearing that. Here's where my spots are on my body. Yeah, here's where you could make me melt, here's where you push this, and I just like turned into a puddle." And so, the communication part is so critical, but the discovery part is also just as critical. We got to know where those spots are, and how to touch them, and what they feel like. And it might feel different when someone else touches them, but it's still just as powerful for ourselves. All right. Katelyn says, "I keep a cuticle oil at my desk," yes, and you massage everyone's during peak season, "should try it with my partners." A hand massage is so sexy. It's so sexy because it's so tender. And it also allows someone to, again, get out of their head and into their body. So, sometimes we start with massages on the shoulder, and then five seconds later, we end up on someone's chest, or we end up in their genitals. And so, we miss out on all of this stuff that's available that actually can be really, really sexy. Hand stuff can also be very platonic, right, like Katelyn's describing. So doing it in a way for yourself can also feel really great. All right, how are you feeling everyone? Do you feel like you have a couple of practices that you can try, and that you can move towards this feeling of being more unapologetic in your sexual space? And so, I've given you a bunch of different things that you can do for desires, for your body, for a performance, but they are practices. And so, if you try them and you're like, "Oh, Luna was wrong," maybe, I mean, maybe there's a practice out there for you that's better. But give yourself a chance, right? Give yourself a run at it, and maybe it doesn't quite land the first time, but give it another go. Because the more that you do it, the more that you drop off from that awkwardness, from that silliness, and you're like, "Damn, this is a whole new way of being." That's how I felt when I stepped into sexual confidence, I didn't get it at first, it didn't work for me. I was like, I'd lose it, find it on Saturday and lose it by Tuesday. And so it's really a process of also keeping into communication and commune with ourselves to be able to notice what triggers us back into that space. My PMS triggers me back into that space. A criticism about my body will trigger me into that space. If you told me I was stupid, I'd be like, "You're stupid," but if you told me I was fat, I'd totally be like, "Oh yeah, you notice." So like learning what our soft spots are, and where we want to direct that attention can also help you choose what strategy you would like to employ. All right. Amy says excited, amazing. Karen says definitely. Emily, "This was so wonderful, thank you so much, and thank you for the extra time." My pleasure, this is a big one, it's a big one. Definitely, it's been great, thank you, thank you, Vicky. Thank you so much for all of this, a wonderful Friday evening, this was wonderful, I loved this so much. Good, I'm so glad that you all feel so positive. If you're feeling still a bit intimidated, you're still welcome, Emma, you're welcome Marina, thank you for being here. If you feel intimidated at all, that's totally okay. Think about this, the whole world is telling us this, and we're sitting here being like, "But this doesn't work for us, this makes me feel really shitty." So we're going against the grain. You are gonna feel that internalization of resistance in yourself. And so that's all right. We will get this, and stay tuned because I have a pay what you can bedroom communication class coming up, so if you want more language for how to ask, come to that. But I'm also gonna be, I'm developing, so you will all be the first to know, I'm developing a community where we can do this together because it's wonderful for me to get you all inspired and pumped up now, but I'd love to be able to follow up with you, and so that we can share with each other what worked, what didn't work, here are some new practices, here are things that we can share, here's where I struggled, here's where I did this. So, you're not alone, I am totally here with you in solidarity of this. And I think it's completely possible to shed the shame and make more room for pleasure. So I 100% believe in you and believe in these practices. These are things, I haven't recommended anything to you that I haven't tried myself, and that I haven't found some sort of success with. All right. Katelyn, you're so welcome, Michelle, you're welcome, Jen, you're so welcome. And thank you, yeah thank you all. Okay, so let's move into our bodies. So we wanna break up with body shame. Who wants to break up with body shame? I am so over body shame stealing all of my time and money. So, we need to end this relationship with body shame. But I'll tell you I've been in an active process of trying to break up with body shame, pretty much since I left my marriage which was six years ago. And I left my marriage and immediately was like, "I need to fall in love with myself. I need to get this kind of desire that I want from other people for myself." And that doesn't mean I also don't want it from other people, but I need to start with this relationship. So I took burlesque classes. And burlesque classes were, they were so fun, but I was such a hot mess, and I'm not coordinated or choreographed at all. And so, it was very challenging, but it was so it was so inspiring, it was so inspiring to think of the idea of decorating myself, to be able to take up space in a bawdy way, like B-A-W-D-Y in a really unapologetic way, you can't be a burlesque dancer and kind of be like, "Oh, hi, everyone, like me," you have to like be bold, and so, I wanted that boldness. So think about something that you might want to do. Because when we break up with body shame, we actually have to think about what does body shame hold you back from in your sexual desires? We're not gonna eliminate body shame. I still don't like certain angles of myself, I don't like this, but what we're building is a way to come back to ourselves. So every time body shame tries to drag us out of the bedroom, drag us out of these moments, we wanna create these anchors. And so one of the anchors, or one of the ways to get anchors is to get ugly honest. So it sounds counterintuitive, but ugly honest is about really thinking about all of the insidious and pervasive ways that you hide your body. So that might be from the clothing that you choose, the colors that you wear, what seat you choose on transit. If you ever eat, things that you eat and places that you go and... I met this woman in a class once, was it a boxing class, and she said to me, she was so young, and she said to me, "Oh, I think it's really inspiring that you have your arms out because I'm so shy about my arms." And she was fully wearing a cardigan in a boxing class. And I've been there, I've covered up to the point of discomfort and dehydration just to hide my hideous body from other people. Yeah, Emily you've been there, yes, yes, we've all been there. This is the ugly honest we need to get to. And she told me that she wanted to, I had just come back from New York and she was like, "Yeah, I really wanna go to New York, it's on my bucket list, I want to go to LA." And she was like, "But I have to lose 100 pounds." And I wanted to cry for this baby because we have all been there, we have all been there, where we are holding ourselves back from life because of a goal weight, or because of a desire for a flat stomach, or a less hairy back, or I've got stretch marks, I've got psoriasis, I've got all kinds of things that are not considered attractive. But we feel that, we've been told that we don't have the right to exist unless we are aesthetically pleasing, right? And so that's a hard truth because it really confronts us with all of the suffering that we have experienced under these pressures. Vicky says sounds familiar, yeah, absolutely. So I want you to get ugly honest. So I'll give you an example of my ugly honest. If I ever eat things like McDonald's, or take out, or something. If I'm carrying the bag from the place, I will not carry this bag in public. I will put it in my purse, I will shove the drink in my purse. So my pursed smell like fried food and spilled drink because God forbid someone look at that bag of McDonald's or whatever it is, and think that that's what I eat all the time, and so therefore, that's why my body is this size. That's my ugly honest. I think people are always looking at me and thinking that the first thing that comes to mind is that I am not fit, that I am fat, that I'm this and that. So, when we start to tease that out, right, I didn't use to be able to talk about that, I never told anybody that. I was too embarrassed that this is what I do to avoid getting confirmation from other people about what I think in my head. And maybe people are thinking that, and maybe they're not, but it doesn't even really matter what the truth is because the truth that we are choosing to stand behind is actually guiding how sexy we feel, how attractive we allow ourselves to feel, how we allow compliments to be received, how we allow sexual pleasure to be received. And so, if I'm thinking that, how could I possibly then get over the shame of if I think my genitals aren't tasty, and if someone's going down on me, is that what I'm worrying about the whole time that I'm star fishing? And I'm like thinking about, "Do they actually like this? And how could they possibly like my pussy, and how could they possibly wanna have sex with me because of my tummy, or because of this," and so, it can feel just like a tornado inside of you. So find those parts of you, find those parts of you that are telling you these really ugly things. And because we need to give attention to those parts of ourselves, right? We need a new narrative. We need to go in there and be like, "I'm so sorry that we believed that. But I know better now," right? I have to look, sometimes I get dressed, I put on this dress, this is my favorite dress. And I stood in front of the mirror, and the first thing I looked at was my belly. And then I looked back up and met my gaze, and I said, "Luna, I'm so sorry. I know people told us that this belly wasn't cute, and you could never be beautiful with it, but you know what, we know better now. And I'm sorry that you suffered through that, but we know better now." And so we really have to have these dialogues with ourselves. It feels weird, but I promise you, it is a practice that over time it helps build a new narrative, and the other voice feels less powerful. It starts to fade away as this voice gets louder. Katelyn says, "I just tell myself behind all that shame they think I'm a snack," often it's true. Yes, absolutely, we don't know what people are thinking. You can also notice the impact of this by trying an exercise. So the next time you go out, and you're passing, let's say five people, I want you to think that those first five people that you pass, they think you are the tastiest snack that they have ever seen, right? So just imagine that that's what they're thinking, and see what that does to your posture, see what that does to your mood, the spring in your step, right? And then the next five people I want you to think that they think that you are the most horrible looking person that they have ever seen, and see what that does to your mood, see what that does to the spring in your step. What does that do to your posture? What does that do to how secure you feel walking around? And this really gives us, it's an exercise in perception. It really is an exercise of how powerful our sense of perception is, and what we think is happening, how it can affect our mood. Because in the bedroom, we 100% need to leverage a mood. And I'm gonna get into feeling yourself in a minute. So, oh, I'm already at feeling yourself. So, with feeling yourself, this is how we enter our sexy spaces in a way that we are already like this full pot of honey, right? You're like this full, delicious pot of honey that is overflowing for other people. So I have a brand called Fuck Like a Goddess, and Fuck Like a Goddess is all about that, I am entering this space like a goddess, and I'm like, "Hmm, I'm just over here feeling myself, won't you join me," right? Not so much like, "Hmm. I wanna feel sexy, won't you make me feel sexy?" It's not about that, it's like, "I'm feeling myself, and I want you to meet me in this space where I'm feeling myself so you can feel yourself too." So the way to get there, there's a couple of, well, there's a bunch of stuff you can do to get there. So one of the things is mirror work. And so, mirror work is really powerful because mirror work confronts our own sense of our distorted gaze. And so, a lot of times we're looking at ourselves with the eyes of other people or systems. We're looking at ourselves through diet culture, through porn, through the fashion industry, through all these different types of things. So, mirror work, there's a couple of ways you can do it. So, if you go to the bathroom and you're washing your hands, look up in the mirror and just meet your gaze, and just give yourself a big smile. So smile at yourself in the mirror, you can even be like, "Hmm, you're looking a little cute today," and wink at yourself, flirt with yourself in the mirror. It feels amazing. It feels so silly, but after a while, you're like, "Why wasn't I doing this all the time?" And it's so simple. Every time you're washing your hands, you have an opportunity to challenge a narrative, away of feeling, a way of being. Another way to do mirror work is to dance in front of the mirror. And so, to put on whatever your anthem is for feeling sexy, what are some of our sexy anthems? What makes you feel like you are the tastiest thing alive? 'Cause I'm gonna use all your anthems and make a playlist for myself, but tell me what some of these sexy songs are. For me it's always "The weekend," I'm sorry, I know it's really basic, but it's always "The weekend." Jen says "Respect," yes, yes. Karen says, "Bitch Boss," amazing, amazing. So you're gonna do this dance in front of the mirror, and at first notice where your gaze goes because my gaze goes to the parts of the body that I don't like. And so, over time you will start to look at this person, this reflection in the mirror, as someone who's just having a really good time, or maybe they're having, they've got really good rhythm. Maybe they're just having a lot of fun. Maybe they just look great jiggling around and being playful. And you will stop focusing on, well, how society has taught us to see ourselves, which is like cuts of meat. So your arms are okay, but your belly is not okay. Your butt's okay, but your thighs are not okay. Your nose is okay, but your height isn't okay. We are not some of parts, right? We are entire experiences because you are gonna be the sex, right? You don't have to be sexy, you were gonna actually be sex. So mirror work is really fun. What I wanna challenge you to do with mirror work, if it's safe to do in your house, is to do part of the work looking at the mirror, and then keep the music going and turn around so you're not facing the mirror, and see if you even feel freer to dance around in your body. Remember, it's not about choreography, it's not about moves, it's about playing in your body. Oh my God, "Take It Off," I love that song, I love that song so much. Katelyn says, "When they won't listen to 'The weekend' during sex, even to humor me, I'm out." That's on your boundary list, Katelyn, I love that. "Soulmate" by Lizzo, oh my God, yes, yes, just put on the Lizzo album, you got your playlist right there. Ludacris, "What's Your Fantasy," Woo, Sue, that's a great one, thank you for dropping that. Okay, all right, so you already know some of your sexy anthems, this is amazing. So mirror work is something that you make time to do. And so, lots of folks are like, "I don't have time to do this," and I know you're busy people, and you've got lots of responsibility, and you're taking care of people and things and work. But the five minute gaze thing, like when you're brushing your teeth, you can also put on your sexy song. And if it's a two, three minute song, that's how long you're supposed to be brushing your teeth anyways. So you could be brushing and being like, "Yeah, this is what, look at me," what a great way to start and end your day, right, in taking up space in this sensual playfulness. If you're not able to, if your body doesn't feel good, or in a way to like stand up and dance, even putting on your sexy song in the morning when you wake up, and rolling around in your bed, just allowing that sensual juices to start flowing in a way that isn't necessarily sexual. You're just like, "I'm entering my day like a snack," right? And whether you have sex or not, it doesn't really matter, it's about kind of moving into that feeling of feeling good about yourself. Okay, you've got some sexy songs here, I love it. Another one is to notice if you can make small adjustments to your body when you're walking around. And so, we're not going a lot of places right now, right? But if you can make even if you're going to get groceries, and you notice that your posture is kind of down, I want you to just roll your shoulders back, what does that feel like? For me it feels very exposing because I'm pushing my chest out now, which is an area where I feel self-conscious about, or it makes me not able to suck in my stomach at the same time, right? So a lot of us subconsciously are holding tension in areas of our body that we end up disassociating from. We end up numbing that area because we never touch it, we never own it, we never stretch it out, we never make it big. And so, it's really hard to move into a sexy space in the bedroom if we are only part of our parts, right? We're just like kind of bringing in the parts that we sort of accept, but we don't hate. So if you're standing in line at the grocery store, notice how masculine people stand. Because masculine people tend to take up a bit more space. They stand with their feet farther apart. They're more centered in the way that they are standing. So, there's a little bit, they look more grounded, right? They look sort of like they're a little bit more solid in their space. Their shoulders might be a little bit more back. Their arms are kind of out. So if you've ever been on public transit, and a masculine person is like manspreading like, "What the fuck is this?" You're always like, "I got to cross my legs and damage my knees," but it's okay to man spread. So think about how you can take up a little bit more space, and remember confidence isn't arrogance. So taking up more space just means that you're gonna fill out a little bit, right? You're just gonna maybe stand with your feet a little bit wider apart. You're going to have your shoulders back so that you're taking up a bit more space even horizontally, right, you're stretching out a little bit. Another thing that you can do is use what I call they're sort of totemic items. And so, a totemic item is something that makes us feel sexy. So it could be underwear that you wear that nobody has to know about. I only buy bras in bright red or pink colors because who cares, right? Those colors make me feel cute, even if no one's going to see it. And so what happens is that we start to believe that decorating our nakedness is a sign of adoration for ourselves. And so that could be anything from, it doesn't have to be something feminine, it could absolutely be something that is, just something that makes you feel like you're kind of cute. So it could be the way that you do your hair. It could be, and it's hard because we've been in social isolation so we haven't had a reason to really groom ourselves to the way that maybe we were before. But it could even just be clothing that fits you really well. It could be a shirt that just pops your shoulders. It could be shoes that make you feel really dapper. It could be any range of things that allow us to feel cute on our own terms. So it's not about impressing someone, it's not about keeping up with fashion, even if that's your intention, that's totally cool. But it's not what we're serving, we're serving for ourselves. Katelyn says, "All the fucking space, yeah, always trying to take the middle arm rest." Ah, that's so true. Emma says, "Sometimes I practice just taking up space by man spreading on my Zoom calls." Oh my God, Emma, that's brilliant, that's a great way to do this, yes. 'Cause people can't see your legs, I could be manspreading right now, right? So, I love that. I really like that. Yeah, so any of these practices, it doesn't matter if anyone sees them are not, they're for you. They're actually retraining your sense of self, your perception of your space, and your sense of resilience and strength. So there's all these little micro moves that we're doing that are helping us go into that space. Another thing that you can do, so tell me what part of your body that you like the least, or you hold the most shame in. Is there a part of your body where you trap a lot of your shame? Okay, Michelle's got arms. Kamal says hips and curves. Vicky says belly. Breasts, thighs, stomach, yep. Arms. Yes. Chin hair. Same. Yep. These are big ones, right? So, particularly when we talk about having body dysphoria, and so we might not feel connected to how we express ourselves to internally, or through our gender, or our femininity, or masculinity, but we might have a disconnect with how that's presented to the world, right? So sometimes people would tell me that I look really confident and I was like, really because I walk around trying to disappear. And I had this big orange dress the other day, and I said to my friend, I'm like, "Oh, I feel kind of shy about wearing this because I'm gonna stand out." And he was like, "You kind of stand out anyways, so you might as well own it." And I was like, "Yeah, who am I kidding, I don't have a flat chest," it's like, my breasts are out there, so I might as well own this in a way that feels comfortable for me, not in a way that's sexualized for others. So all of you, these thighs, breasts, stomach, arms, chin hairs, hips, and curves, body hair, for sure, yes. All of these things are very powerful ways to center our body hatred, or our body unacceptance, or our body unconfidence in it. And especially during sex, we are the most naked, literally and figuratively. So when we're in these moments, it's really tough. Think about all the grooming that you might do before sex, right? How much money have I spent on ass waxes, and bikini waxes, and armpit waxes? And how much time have I plucked my chin hairs and my eyebrows? And there's nothing wrong with doing any of these things. If you want to do these things, that's totally okay. What the disservice to ourselves comes from is when we do these things with the intention of feeling like they are gonna earn us the reward of acceptance. And so if someone notices my hairy legs, ooh, they're gonna not accept me, they're not gonna think I'm attractive, and that means so much to me. And so we wanna let go of that intention. And so, if you wanna wear makeup, wear makeup, if you want to wear baggy clothes, wear baggy clothes, you wanna wear tight clothes, wear tight clothes. So, what you can do is try those areas where you're not so crazy about. It is try to create some tender compassion for them because likely they're not going anywhere, and likely next year or next month or 10 years from now, you're gonna have a new area of your body that's changing that you might not feel comfortable with. I am convinced that through social isolation because I haven't been wearing a bra, that my nipples have migrated. And I was like, "Oh my God, I can't find them, they're so far under." And I thought like, "Well, who am I kidding," right? I mean like, this is what our bodies do, they change, and they move into ways that are not like who we were when we were 21, and even at 21, I wasn't considered conventionally attractive. So, you might wanna send some compassion to these areas. And so with my tummy what I do at night, I have such disassociation from my tummy 'cause I spent so many years not liking it. So I've started to rub a body butter, specifically on my tummy, and I tell it I'm accepted, I'm safe, and I'm loved. And so, that belly part needs to really hear and I rub it, and so it really needs to hear that, you know what? I don't have to like the way that you look, but that this is a part of me, right, this is a part of me. Particularly if you've had any type of big change to your body, so maybe you've had surgery, maybe you've expressed your gender in a different way, maybe your hair is graying or something's happening. It can feel very jolting for your sense of self, and so, sometimes we wanna numb out those areas. So by practicing touch in those areas and affirmations to those areas, it can help us come back into connection with them in a more compassionate way, which also gives us more compassion for other people's bodies as well. All right, let's see. I just saw COVID bush. "I grew back my pubic hair during quarantine, and it's been super empowering." Oof, Emily and Katelyn, I love this because I was a Brazilian getter for many years, and I used to get the most terrible ingrown hairs, and then I decided I was like, I touch my pussy the most, so I like it when it's furry. So, I'm gonna keep it furry, right? And pubic hair is also something that we get shamed about in that folks think it's unhygienic, and, but hair is natural, we've just developed industries around hair. Imagine the first person that said, "Hey, do you think that we could get women to pay for ripping hair off of their genitals?" And at the time maybe someone was like, "Oh no, nobody's gonna do that." And now it's just become socially acceptable, right? And even folks who are not women also get the hair ripped out of their body as well. So, I'm really glad that we're all starting to challenge hair here. Me too not shaving has been so liberating. Jen's like, try breastfeeding, yeah, Jen, where are your nipples? Emily says, "Yes, I feel like one of your nipples is in Toronto, Jen. Did it make it down here?" Emily says, "Yes, I feel like I'm reconnecting with pubic hair after shaving for almost 20 years." Look at us, we have a hair club. Now, if you like hair removal, if you like having a smooth area, that's also okay too. I'll tell you, I only have hair removed from my butt crack and occasionally my armpits, but everywhere else, I pretty much just let it grow. And so now there's that connection to I could do it if I want, I could do it if I don't want, it doesn't feel like, "Oh my gosh, I have to get dressed and hair removed in order to be acceptable to the world." And so, that's how we start to take up space in our bodies during sex, is that we move into the space not thinking that there are these markers of acceptance for how we are going to please our partners, aesthetically, or even physically, and how much space that we deserve to take up with our pleasure. If my legs are hairy, do I not deserve to receive cuddliness? Do I not deserve to ask for what I want? Do I not deserve to say no to things that I don't want? Emily says or sorry, Jen says, "My nipples are the only ones travelling south." Yes, Jen, I know mine too, maybe they can share a lift on the way back. Okay, I love this. I love that you're all sharing about the ways that you're trying to reconnect with your body, that is a huge part of moving into sexual confidence. So I have a few more tips for you, I know we're right at 8:30, but I've got about 10 more minutes of stuff. Another way to, so moving on from bodies, we wanna think about our sexual performance. And so, one good way to stop focusing on orgasm focused sex is to set the scene for your sex. And so, that means you think about ambiance, you think about mood, you think about entering the sexual space by launching into it from your brain and landing in your body. So a lot of us struggle with initiating sex, or maybe our partners always initiate in the same way, and we don't really like it, or we're not in the mood when they do it. So there's two types of sexual sort of desires. So, one is responsive and one is spontaneous. And so, spontaneous sexual desire is, oh, we look at a photo of Salma Hayek, or somebody hot, and we're like, "Ooh, they're sexy," and then we feel aroused and we wanna have sex. And so we mostly see sexual, or spontaneous sexual desire from romantic comedies, right, where like all of a sudden they're in a fight, and then they start gazing at each other's eyes and then they start making out, and one of them has an orgasm. So it really is, it's not everyone's bag, it's not the way that everyone responds to sexual arousal. And so the other form is responsive, and so responsive sexual desire is more about getting ourselves into that head space, and entering it in a way that is seductive, right? So that seduction is about getting your mind in the mood. And so, if your partner says like, "Oh," you can kind of tell they're making their move for sex, right, they're doing the thing that they want, and you're not so in the mood you could say, "Hmm, babe, I would love to be in the mood, let's see if we can get my mind there, seduce my brain and let's get into the mood." So that might mean that you wanna cuddle for a bit, and share about your day. And so that closeness and that intimacy allows you to relax into a space of opening up and feeling sexual. So, setting the scene with candles, with your sex playlist, maybe you put out your lingerie, maybe you put out a sex toy, whatever is gonna make you feel sexy. And you can do this for your masturbation. You can do this for your solo pleasure. You can do this for having video sex with your partner. You can do this for having phone sex with your partner. It's like the way that you're gonna become sexual athletes. It's like the way that athletes kind of get ready for a game, right? There's a ritual. I don't know anything about sports, so I'm just assuming this is what they do. So, lets say that they get ready, and they're getting into the mood, they're getting into the headspace, and this is what we wanna do. We wanna allow ourselves to feel sexy. We want that sexiness from the outside to come into the sexiness that we have on the inside. So we've been talking about outer or inner work, and now we want this outer stuff, we wanna be ready to step into this moment. Another one is to get pleasure from giving. And so, getting pleasure from giving means that we're gonna tune into the signs of pleasure in our partners. And so, if you're going down on your partner, and their legs are spread and you're like, "Oh, you look so delicious, I can't wait to put my face between your legs." And then you start to see their breath change. You start to tune into their moans, maybe their words change, maybe they get giggly, maybe they get kind of sweaty. And so you can really surf those sensations of pleasure that are happening for your partner. So this means that you are going to feel good about the pleasure that you're giving. So you're creating this little erotic circuit where you're giving pleasure, but then you're getting pleasure from giving pleasure. And so if we tune in to giving, we stop trying to get sex from people, and we try to give sex to people. And we want partners who do that for us as well. Another one that I teach a whole class on is sensuality. And so, how do we get out of our heads and into our bodies. Sensuality is our pathway to getting back into our bodies. And so, when we think about what are the five senses? What information is available to us in those moments? If you start to, your partner's going down on you and it feels really good, but then you think, "Oh, do we do laundry? I don't know. Do I smell? Did I do everything for work that I was supposed to?" And so, you leave the sexual moment. A way to come back to the moment, I'm gonna give you three sensual tips to come back to the moment. So one way is to breathe, right? To tune back into your breath. And so, you might even have a word, an affirmation for yourself, like, "Okay, Luna, breathe, just breathe." And so, you wanna leave your head and you wanna come back into your lungs and your breath. And so you're just gonna take a deep breath in, and when you exhale, maybe you'll say something to your partner. So you're gonna be like, "Oh babe, you feel so good." And so, that way it doesn't really seem weird that you're starting to do breathing exercises in the middle of sex, right? You can also tell your partner, "Hey, sometimes I get kind of distracted during sex, would you mind reminding me to breathe." So your partner could say, "Oh baby, you gotta, I need you to breathe back to me. I can see you're getting distracted, breathe back to me." And so it can feel really sexy to have someone invite you back into the space. Another sensual thing that you can do is use your hands. And so, use your hands and either put them on yourself, and so if I'm lying on my back and someone's going down on me, I might just take my hands and drag them straight across my chest super slow. Basically, it just looks like you're touching yourself and feeling all sexy, but what it actually is doing is queuing for your brain that, "Oh yeah, shit there's a body here, there's a body here that I'm enjoying. There's a physical self here." We're allowing our hands to kind of come back into the moment. You might also use your hands to even grip the sheets, right? Hold onto the sheets, or the chair, or wherever you are just to give yourself a grounding. You could also grab onto your partner. And so, if they're okay with you touching their shoulders or their head during, if they're going down on you, touch them and just feel them, and feel how good they feel giving you pleasure. Another thing that you can do to come back into your body during sex is have an affirmation. And so I developed my affirmation as a way to just stop that noise that's in my head. Stop that chatter that you're not good enough, you're not hot enough, nobody likes you, no one's gonna love you. And so, my affirmation is I'm beautiful, I'm enough, and I have everything I need. And so, come up with something that helps you, just throw a wrench in that hamster wheel of negative thoughts and stuff, that nonsense that just doesn't serve us, and it actually just gets in our way. And so we don't have to go into a therapeutic debrief in the moment when it's happening, we just wanna take the power out of it, we wanna remove, we wanna unplug it. And so an affirmation can be a great way to come back to the moment. Sometimes I just say to myself, if I'm doing something and I start to lose confidence, I'll be like, "Oh yeah, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, I'm a goddess. I forgot, I forgot I'm a goddess," and come back to that, like, "Well, would a goddess think this? No, no she wouldn't. Would a queen think this? No. Would a superstar think this? No. Would a sexually confident person think this? No." And so we can create this alter ego based on parts of ourself that can actually give us a way to pivot into when we start to feel that the negative stories that are clouding our authentic self are getting in the way. And so, we start to take up space in this person. So, you do that through an affirmation, you can also do that through role play. And so if you've ever been curious about kink, or role-play, or anything where you get to take on the characteristics, or the archetypes of someone else, so an archetype could be like a daddy, or a mommy, or a queen, or a princess. Characteristics could be feline. They could be a playful, they could be dominant, they could be submissive. And so, if you start to want to explore your sexual confidence through this alter ego, eventually that alter ego is something that you will feel more comfortable taking up space in because that alter ego, it feels like it's not you, but it's made up of all the same parts of you, you put it together by scooping out parts of yourself and forming this dominant feline, or this submissive queen, or whatever you have created. So role play is a really good way to start to practice sexual confidence in a way that feels playful and imaginative. All right. How do we feel about that? How do we feel about some of these really fun, kind of more creative tools for our sex? Katelyn says, "Fist pump, partners before sex, like Usain Bolt," yeah I love that, love that. Amy, you like that? Awesome. Okay, great. Great, so I'm gonna leave you with a couple more tools, and then I'm gonna explain your homework to you. All right. So one tool that I suggest for self-pleasure is masturbation with edging. And so, edging means that you take yourself to the point of where you feel the biggest buildup of pleasure that might be orgasm, or it might just be like a certain kind of tense feeling, or the urge to pee. And you're gonna take yourself to that point, and then you're gonna back off a little bit. So you're not entirely removing the sensation, but you might slow it down, or if you're using a vibrator, you might move it to a different area of your body. And so, what edging does is allows you to expand the erotic moments that are happening for you. So we don't just kind of rush to like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum," and then cum and then you just kind of cascade down, right? So edging allows us to go up a little bit, and then before we peak, we kinda like level off, and then we go up a little bit more 'cause we've got a bigger buildup, and then we level off again, and you can go as much as you want. What edging does is it actually helps you get more in tuned with your own sexual responses, and explore more pleasure anatomy beyond your go-to spots. So, edging also involves, if you're masturbating, approach masturbation from touching other parts of your body first, and then making your way to your genitals. And because it allows you to kind of take the focus away from just generally focused sex. So your masturbation doesn't have to end up in orgasm, but we wanna play with expanding what these spots are that we can touch. Sex toys. If you need a sex toy, this is the time to go and get them because you're socially isolating, or you might already be with your partner, and maybe you're sick of looking at each other. And so, sex toys are a really fun way to bring new dynamism into your sexual energy. Partner masturbation. So you can do this over video, you could do it over the phone., if you're in person, you can do it sort of facing each other, and you can decide to touch each other and masturbate each other, or you can put on a little masturbation show for each other. And so, you could be like, "Babe, teach me how to touch you. I wanna see how you touch you when nobody else is looking." And that allows you to actually watch someone be really primal in their own pleasure, and for you as well, you get to put on a little bit of a show. If you feel uncomfortable being watched, but you like the idea of it, blindfold yourself. So you don't have to watch them watching you, right? And you still get to kind of put on a little bit of a show. Another one is to, how many of you like erotica? Do you like reading erotic stories, or listening to erotic audio? Erotica is a really good way to open up your erotic imagination. If you're like "Luna, I want to be more creative in sex, I feel that that would make me feel more confident," erotica is like, I don't know, I was gonna say something from the gym, and I don't know anything from the gym, I don't know. Okay, it's like a workout for your erotic imagination. I was gonna be circuit training, is that a thing? So, erotica is really great. I'm gonna put in the chat the site that I always recommend to people, literotica.com. I've been masturbating to it since 1995, and there's still tons of information, or tons of stories on there that are new. So, it's crowdsourced, so you keep getting new information, new stories. The categories there are great. And the wonderful thing about erotica is that sometimes you can engage in fantasies that might be dangerous or impossible in real life, so to depict with real people, but in erotica, you could have a threesome with a unicorn and an octopus, and it's possible, it's gonna happen, right? You could have a multiperson orgy, and not worry about sexually transmitted infections in erotica. So it allows you to delve into those parts of your brain that wanna be tickled with dirtiness and naughtiness, right? Emily cut your teeth on dirty fan fiction, oh, I love that. I love hentai, I love lots of different kinds of porn that doesn't necessarily depict actual humans, and so we get a chance to really delve into our imagination. And another one is to think about erogenous zones other than your genitals. So how many of you like your neck kissed? I feel like if you don't like your neck kissed you're dead on the inside. So if you like your neck kissed, Vicky does, Katelyn says yeah. Amy, yeah, you agree? Yeah, I'm like, I don't know it's so delicious, I love it. I could have neck kisses and kisses and that would be enough sex for me. I love kinky shit, but that would be, that's enough for me. Jen, you love that? Okay, amazing. What other erogenous zones do you have on your body? Which other ones are you thinking about? Anywhere on your body where you've got more blood flow to the top of the skin is gonna potentially be an erotic or an erogenous zone. So when we're done here, I mean, you can take some time, and even just stroke your wrist really slowly, just like pet your own wrist, and then close your eyes and see what that feels like. And then maybe use your nails a little bit, or maybe push in the other direction. And so, when you're feeling this arm, and let's do it for a minute, and when you're done notice if there's a difference between the hand that was doing and the hand that was receiving. This one's probably warmer. It's actually probably more sensitive to this touch. So the touch of the nails feels like way more pleasurable on the hand that we warmed up. So the concept of erogenous zones is that we're trying to cue those arousal, those physiological arousal changes that happen in our body by getting at multiple erogenous zones instead of just like, "Let's make out," and then let's go to the genitals. That's how you have fuller body orgasms. That's how you have deeper orgasms. That's how you have bigger orgasms. That's how you sink into pleasure, and you start to feel a little bit floaty, and you're not so worried about that noise. That noise sort of gets clouded the more that we get into that floaty headspace. So the noise and the shame starts to feel more muted. Okay, let's see what you perverts have for your erogenous zones. Back, Kamal, yes. Vicki back, oof, I feel like my back is like a second clit. I love my back played with. Sue, back of knees, good one Sue, I love that too, and that's just such an under-serviced erogenous zone. Your ears, your thighs, your back for sure, yes, back of knees, absolutely. The sides oof your body, so where your ribs are, that's a very sensitive spot as well. Some people like their inner thighs played with, that's a super sensitive spot. Lower back is another spot. Ears are another spot. Some people love like forehead, or face kisses. Your jaw line is another spot, right? This is super sensitive along here. Your feet they are another spot. So there's so many delicious spots. How about your scalp? Does anyone like scalp massages? You know those head-scratcher things, that is also a very erotic situation, yeah, yeah, all right. Back of knees. Back of legs. Yes, 100%, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, good. So we all know that there are more spots. So sexually confident people are gonna say, "Hey, you know what would make me so fuckin' hot? I love when my ears are sucked on. Oof, I can't wait to get your mouth on my neck. Oh, I would love to feel your hands just like touching my thighs." And so, when we start to do this to ourselves, right, when we start to, if you're moisturizing your skin, and you're massaging your hands, it feels so good in between your fingertips, massage your feet, rub your ear lobes, when you're shampooing your hair, give yourself some of this, right, and just move your fingertips through your scalp. It starts to be a little bit easier to identify those areas to help give people feedback. And so, you could say, you could start that conversation with someone by saying, "Hey, what other hotspots on your body are there? What do I need to know about? Where can I really make you melt? What buttons can I push on you?" And when they speak up, don't even wait for them to ask you. If they ask you, they don't ask you, be like, "Oh my God, I love hearing that. Here's where my spots are on my body. Yeah, here's where you could make me melt, here's where you push this, and I just like turned into a puddle." And so, the communication part is so critical, but the discovery part is also just as critical. We got to know where those spots are, and how to touch them, and what they feel like. And it might feel different when someone else touches them, but it's still just as powerful for ourselves. All right. Katelyn says, "I keep a cuticle oil at my desk," yes, and you massage everyone's during peak season, "should try it with my partners." A hand massage is so sexy. It's so sexy because it's so tender. And it also allows someone to, again, get out of their head and into their body. So, sometimes we start with massages on the shoulder, and then five seconds later, we end up on someone's chest, or we end up in their genitals. And so, we miss out on all of this stuff that's available that actually can be really, really sexy. Hand stuff can also be very platonic, right, like Katelyn's describing. So doing it in a way for yourself can also feel really great. All right, how are you feeling everyone? Do you feel like you have a couple of practices that you can try, and that you can move towards this feeling of being more unapologetic in your sexual space? And so, I've given you a bunch of different things that you can do for desires, for your body, for a performance, but they are practices. And so, if you try them and you're like, "Oh, Luna was wrong," maybe, I mean, maybe there's a practice out there for you that's better. But give yourself a chance, right? Give yourself a run at it, and maybe it doesn't quite land the first time, but give it another go. Because the more that you do it, the more that you drop off from that awkwardness, from that silliness, and you're like, "Damn, this is a whole new way of being." That's how I felt when I stepped into sexual confidence, I didn't get it at first, it didn't work for me. I was like, I'd lose it, find it on Saturday and lose it by Tuesday. And so it's really a process of also keeping into communication and commune with ourselves to be able to notice what triggers us back into that space. My PMS triggers me back into that space. A criticism about my body will trigger me into that space. If you told me I was stupid, I'd be like, "You're stupid," but if you told me I was fat, I'd totally be like, "Oh yeah, you notice." So like learning what our soft spots are, and where we want to direct that attention can also help you choose what strategy you would like to employ. All right. Amy says excited, amazing. Karen says definitely. Emily, "This was so wonderful, thank you so much, and thank you for the extra time." My pleasure, this is a big one, it's a big one. Definitely, it's been great, thank you, thank you, Vicky. Thank you so much for all of this, a wonderful Friday evening, this was wonderful, I loved this so much. Good, I'm so glad that you all feel so positive. If you're feeling still a bit intimidated, you're still welcome, Emma, you're welcome Marina, thank you for being here. If you feel intimidated at all, that's totally okay. Think about this, the whole world is telling us this, and we're sitting here being like, "But this doesn't work for us, this makes me feel really shitty." So we're going against the grain. You are gonna feel that internalization of resistance in yourself. And so that's all right. We will get this, and stay tuned because I have a pay what you can bedroom communication class coming up, so if you want more language for how to ask, come to that. But I'm also gonna be, I'm developing, so you will all be the first to know, I'm developing a community where we can do this together because it's wonderful for me to get you all inspired and pumped up now, but I'd love to be able to follow up with you, and so that we can share with each other what worked, what didn't work, here are some new practices, here are things that we can share, here's where I struggled, here's where I did this. So, you're not alone, I am totally here with you in solidarity of this. And I think it's completely possible to shed the shame and make more room for pleasure. So I 100% believe in you and believe in these practices. These are things, I haven't recommended anything to you that I haven't tried myself, and that I haven't found some sort of success with. All right. Katelyn, you're so welcome, Michelle, you're welcome, Jen, you're so welcome. And thank you, yeah thank you all. Another way to, so moving on from bodies, we wanna think about our sexual performance. And so, one good way to stop focusing on orgasm focused sex is to set the scene for your sex. And so, that means you think about ambiance, you think about mood, you think about entering the sexual space by launching into it from your brain and landing in your body. So a lot of us struggle with initiating sex, or maybe our partners always initiate in the same way, and we don't really like it, or we're not in the mood when they do it. So there's two types of sexual sort of desires. So, one is responsive and one is spontaneous. And so, spontaneous sexual desire is, oh, we look at a photo of Salma Hayek, or somebody hot, and we're like, "Ooh, they're sexy," and then we feel aroused and we wanna have sex. And so we mostly see sexual, or spontaneous sexual desire from romantic comedies, right, where like all of a sudden they're in a fight, and then they start gazing at each other's eyes and then they start making out, and one of them has an orgasm. So it really is, it's not everyone's bag, it's not the way that everyone responds to sexual arousal. And so the other form is responsive, and so responsive sexual desire is more about getting ourselves into that head space, and entering it in a way that is seductive, right? So that seduction is about getting your mind in the mood. And so, if your partner says like, "Oh," you can kind of tell they're making their move for sex, right, they're doing the thing that they want, and you're not so in the mood you could say, "Hmm, babe, I would love to be in the mood, let's see if we can get my mind there, seduce my brain and let's get into the mood." So that might mean that you wanna cuddle for a bit, and share about your day. And so that closeness and that intimacy allows you to relax into a space of opening up and feeling sexual. So, setting the scene with candles, with your sex playlist, maybe you put out your lingerie, maybe you put out a sex toy, whatever is gonna make you feel sexy. And you can do this for your masturbation. You can do this for your solo pleasure. You can do this for having video sex with your partner. You can do this for having phone sex with your partner. It's like the way that you're gonna become sexual athletes. It's like the way that athletes kind of get ready for a game, right? There's a ritual. I don't know anything about sports, so I'm just assuming this is what they do. So, lets say that they get ready, and they're getting into the mood, they're getting into the headspace, and this is what we wanna do. We wanna allow ourselves to feel sexy. We want that sexiness from the outside to come into the sexiness that we have on the inside. So we've been talking about outer or inner work, and now we want this outer stuff, we wanna be ready to step into this moment. Another one is to get pleasure from giving. And so, getting pleasure from giving means that we're gonna tune into the signs of pleasure in our partners. And so, if you're going down on your partner, and their legs are spread and you're like, "Oh, you look so delicious, I can't wait to put my face between your legs." And then you start to see their breath change. You start to tune into their moans, maybe their words change, maybe they get giggly, maybe they get kind of sweaty. And so you can really surf those sensations of pleasure that are happening for your partner. So this means that you are going to feel good about the pleasure that you're giving. So you're creating this little erotic circuit where you're giving pleasure, but then you're getting pleasure from giving pleasure. And so if we tune in to giving, we stop trying to get sex from people, and we try to give sex to people. And we want partners who do that for us as well. Another one that I teach a whole class on is sensuality. And so, how do we get out of our heads and into our bodies. Sensuality is our pathway to getting back into our bodies. And so, when we think about what are the five senses? What information is available to us in those moments? If you start to, your partner's going down on you and it feels really good, but then you think, "Oh, do we do laundry? I don't know. Do I smell? Did I do everything for work that I was supposed to?" And so, you leave the sexual moment. A way to come back to the moment, I'm gonna give you three sensual tips to come back to the moment. So one way is to breathe, right? To tune back into your breath. And so, you might even have a word, an affirmation for yourself, like, "Okay, Luna, breathe, just breathe." And so, you wanna leave your head and you wanna come back into your lungs and your breath. And so you're just gonna take a deep breath in, and when you exhale, maybe you'll say something to your partner. So you're gonna be like, "Oh babe, you feel so good." And so, that way it doesn't really seem weird that you're starting to do breathing exercises in the middle of sex, right? You can also tell your partner, "Hey, sometimes I get kind of distracted during sex, would you mind reminding me to breathe." So your partner could say, "Oh baby, you gotta, I need you to breathe back to me. I can see you're getting distracted, breathe back to me." And so it can feel really sexy to have someone invite you back into the space. Another sensual thing that you can do is use your hands. And so, use your hands and either put them on yourself, and so if I'm lying on my back and someone's going down on me, I might just take my hands and drag them straight across my chest super slow. Basically, it just looks like you're touching yourself and feeling all sexy, but what it actually is doing is queuing for your brain that, "Oh yeah, shit there's a body here, there's a body here that I'm enjoying. There's a physical self here." We're allowing our hands to kind of come back into the moment. You might also use your hands to even grip the sheets, right? Hold onto the sheets, or the chair, or wherever you are just to give yourself a grounding. You could also grab onto your partner. And so, if they're okay with you touching their shoulders or their head during, if they're going down on you, touch them and just feel them, and feel how good they feel giving you pleasure. Another thing that you can do to come back into your body during sex is have an affirmation. And so I developed my affirmation as a way to just stop that noise that's in my head. Stop that chatter that you're not good enough, you're not hot enough, nobody likes you, no one's gonna love you. And so, my affirmation is I'm beautiful, I'm enough, and I have everything I need. And so, come up with something that helps you, just throw a wrench in that hamster wheel of negative thoughts and stuff, that nonsense that just doesn't serve us, and it actually just gets in our way. And so we don't have to go into a therapeutic debrief in the moment when it's happening, we just wanna take the power out of it, we wanna remove, we wanna unplug it. And so an affirmation can be a great way to come back to the moment. Sometimes I just say to myself, if I'm doing something and I start to lose confidence, I'll be like, "Oh yeah, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, I'm a goddess. I forgot, I forgot I'm a goddess," and come back to that, like, "Well, would a goddess think this? No, no she wouldn't. Would a queen think this? No. Would a superstar think this? No. Would a sexually confident person think this? No." And so we can create this alter ego based on parts of ourself that can actually give us a way to pivot into when we start to feel that the negative stories that are clouding our authentic self are getting in the way. And so, we start to take up space in this person. So, you do that through an affirmation, you can also do that through role play. And so if you've ever been curious about kink, or role-play, or anything where you get to take on the characteristics, or the archetypes of someone else, so an archetype could be like a daddy, or a mommy, or a queen, or a princess. Characteristics could be feline. They could be a playful, they could be dominant, they could be submissive. And so, if you start to want to explore your sexual confidence through this alter ego, eventually that alter ego is something that you will feel more comfortable taking up space in because that alter ego, it feels like it's not you, but it's made up of all the same parts of you, you put it together by scooping out parts of yourself and forming this dominant feline, or this submissive queen, or whatever you have created. So role play is a really good way to start to practice sexual confidence in a way that feels playful and imaginative. All right. How do we feel about that? How do we feel about some of these really fun, kind of more creative tools for our sex? Katelyn says, "Fist pump, partners before sex, like Usain Bolt," yeah I love that, love that. Amy, you like that? Awesome. Okay, great. Great, so I'm gonna leave you with a couple more tools, and then I'm gonna explain your homework to you. All right. So one tool that I suggest for self-pleasure is masturbation with edging. And so, edging means that you take yourself to the point of where you feel the biggest buildup of pleasure that might be orgasm, or it might just be like a certain kind of tense feeling, or the urge to pee. And you're gonna take yourself to that point, and then you're gonna back off a little bit. So you're not entirely removing the sensation, but you might slow it down, or if you're using a vibrator, you might move it to a different area of your body. And so, what edging does is allows you to expand the erotic moments that are happening for you. So we don't just kind of rush to like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum," and then cum and then you just kind of cascade down, right? So edging allows us to go up a little bit, and then before we peak, we kinda like level off, and then we go up a little bit more 'cause we've got a bigger buildup, and then we level off again, and you can go as much as you want. What edging does is it actually helps you get more in tuned with your own sexual responses, and explore more pleasure anatomy beyond your go-to spots. So, edging also involves, if you're masturbating, approach masturbation from touching other parts of your body first, and then making your way to your genitals. And because it allows you to kind of take the focus away from just generally focused sex. So your masturbation doesn't have to end up in orgasm, but we wanna play with expanding what these spots are that we can touch. Sex toys. If you need a sex toy, this is the time to go and get them because you're socially isolating, or you might already be with your partner, and maybe you're sick of looking at each other. And so, sex toys are a really fun way to bring new dynamism into your sexual energy. Partner masturbation. So you can do this over video, you could do it over the phone., if you're in person, you can do it sort of facing each other, and you can decide to touch each other and masturbate each other, or you can put on a little masturbation show for each other. And so, you could be like, "Babe, teach me how to touch you. I wanna see how you touch you when nobody else is looking." And that allows you to actually watch someone be really primal in their own pleasure, and for you as well, you get to put on a little bit of a show. If you feel uncomfortable being watched, but you like the idea of it, blindfold yourself. So you don't have to watch them watching you, right? And you still get to kind of put on a little bit of a show. Another one is to, how many of you like erotica? Do you like reading erotic stories, or listening to erotic audio? Erotica is a really good way to open up your erotic imagination. If you're like "Luna, I want to be more creative in sex, I feel that that would make me feel more confident," erotica is like, I don't know, I was gonna say something from the gym, and I don't know anything from the gym, I don't know. Okay, it's like a workout for your erotic imagination. I was gonna be circuit training, is that a thing? So, erotica is really great. I'm gonna put in the chat the site that I always recommend to people, literotica.com. I've been masturbating to it since 1995, and there's still tons of information, or tons of stories on there that are new. So, it's crowdsourced, so you keep getting new information, new stories. The categories there are great. And the wonderful thing about erotica is that sometimes you can engage in fantasies that might be dangerous or impossible in real life, so to depict with real people, but in erotica, you could have a threesome with a unicorn and an octopus, and it's possible, it's gonna happen, right? You could have a multiperson orgy, and not worry about sexually transmitted infections in erotica. So it allows you to delve into those parts of your brain that wanna be tickled with dirtiness and naughtiness, right? Emily cut your teeth on dirty fan fiction, oh, I love that. I love hentai, I love lots of different kinds of porn that doesn't necessarily depict actual humans, and so we get a chance to really delve into our imagination. And another one is to think about erogenous zones other than your genitals. So how many of you like your neck kissed? I feel like if you don't like your neck kissed you're dead on the inside. So if you like your neck kissed, Vicky does, Katelyn says yeah. Amy, yeah, you agree? Yeah, I'm like, I don't know it's so delicious, I love it. I could have neck kisses and kisses and that would be enough sex for me. I love kinky shit, but that would be, that's enough for me. Jen, you love that? Okay, amazing. What other erogenous zones do you have on your body? Which other ones are you thinking about? Anywhere on your body where you've got more blood flow to the top of the skin is gonna potentially be an erotic or an erogenous zone. So when we're done here, I mean, you can take some time, and even just stroke your wrist really slowly, just like pet your own wrist, and then close your eyes and see what that feels like. And then maybe use your nails a little bit, or maybe push in the other direction. And so, when you're feeling this arm, and let's do it for a minute, and when you're done notice if there's a difference between the hand that was doing and the hand that was receiving. This one's probably warmer. It's actually probably more sensitive to this touch. So the touch of the nails feels like way more pleasurable on the hand that we warmed up. So the concept of erogenous zones is that we're trying to cue those arousal, those physiological arousal changes that happen in our body by getting at multiple erogenous zones instead of just like, "Let's make out," and then let's go to the genitals. That's how you have fuller body orgasms. That's how you have deeper orgasms. That's how you have bigger orgasms. That's how you sink into pleasure, and you start to feel a little bit floaty, and you're not so worried about that noise. That noise sort of gets clouded the more that we get into that floaty headspace. So the noise and the shame starts to feel more muted. Okay, let's see what you perverts have for your erogenous zones. Back, Kamal, yes. Vicki back, oof, I feel like my back is like a second clit. I love my back played with. Sue, back of knees, good one Sue, I love that too, and that's just such an under-serviced erogenous zone. Your ears, your thighs, your back for sure, yes, back of knees, absolutely. The sides oof your body, so where your ribs are, that's a very sensitive spot as well. Some people like their inner thighs played with, that's a super sensitive spot. Lower back is another spot. Ears are another spot. Some people love like forehead, or face kisses. Your jaw line is another spot, right? This is super sensitive along here. Your feet they are another spot. So there's so many delicious spots. How about your scalp? Does anyone like scalp massages? You know those head-scratcher things, that is also a very erotic situation, yeah, yeah, all right. Back of knees. Back of legs. Yes, 100%, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, good. So we all know that there are more spots. So sexually confident people are gonna say, "Hey, you know what would make me so fuckin' hot? I love when my ears are sucked on. Oof, I can't wait to get your mouth on my neck. Oh, I would love to feel your hands just like touching my thighs." And so, when we start to do this to ourselves, right, when we start to, if you're moisturizing your skin, and you're massaging your hands, it feels so good in between your fingertips, massage your feet, rub your ear lobes, when you're shampooing your hair, give yourself some of this, right, and just move your fingertips through your scalp. It starts to be a little bit easier to identify those areas to help give people feedback. And so, you could say, you could start that conversation with someone by saying, "Hey, what other hotspots on your body are there? What do I need to know about? Where can I really make you melt? What buttons can I push on you?" And when they speak up, don't even wait for them to ask you. If they ask you, they don't ask you, be like, "Oh my God, I love hearing that. Here's where my spots are on my body. Yeah, here's where you could make me melt, here's where you push this, and I just like turned into a puddle." And so, the communication part is so critical, but the discovery part is also just as critical. We got to know where those spots are, and how to touch them, and what they feel like. And it might feel different when someone else touches them, but it's still just as powerful for ourselves. All right. Katelyn says, "I keep a cuticle oil at my desk," yes, and you massage everyone's during peak season, "should try it with my partners." A hand massage is so sexy. It's so sexy because it's so tender. And it also allows someone to, again, get out of their head and into their body. So, sometimes we start with massages on the shoulder, and then five seconds later, we end up on someone's chest, or we end up in their genitals. And so, we miss out on all of this stuff that's available that actually can be really, really sexy. Hand stuff can also be very platonic, right, like Katelyn's describing. So doing it in a way for yourself can also feel really great. All right, how are you feeling everyone? Do you feel like you have a couple of practices that you can try, and that you can move towards this feeling of being more unapologetic in your sexual space? And so, I've given you a bunch of different things that you can do for desires, for your body, for a performance, but they are practices. And so, if you try them and you're like, "Oh, Luna was wrong," maybe, I mean, maybe there's a practice out there for you that's better. But give yourself a chance, right? Give yourself a run at it, and maybe it doesn't quite land the first time, but give it another go. Because the more that you do it, the more that you drop off from that awkwardness, from that silliness, and you're like, "Damn, this is a whole new way of being." That's how I felt when I stepped into sexual confidence, I didn't get it at first, it didn't work for me. I was like, I'd lose it, find it on Saturday and lose it by Tuesday. And so it's really a process of also keeping into communication and commune with ourselves to be able to notice what triggers us back into that space. My PMS triggers me back into that space. A criticism about my body will trigger me into that space. If you told me I was stupid, I'd be like, "You're stupid," but if you told me I was fat, I'd totally be like, "Oh yeah, you notice." So like learning what our soft spots are, and where we want to direct that attention can also help you choose what strategy you would like to employ. All right. Amy says excited, amazing. Karen says definitely. Emily, "This was so wonderful, thank you so much, and thank you for the extra time." My pleasure, this is a big one, it's a big one. Definitely, it's been great, thank you, thank you, Vicky. Thank you so much for all of this, a wonderful Friday evening, this was wonderful, I loved this so much. Good, I'm so glad that you all feel so positive. If you're feeling still a bit intimidated, you're still welcome, Emma, you're welcome Marina, thank you for being here. If you feel intimidated at all, that's totally okay. Think about this, the whole world is telling us this, and we're sitting here being like, "But this doesn't work for us, this makes me feel really shitty." So we're going against the grain. You are gonna feel that internalization of resistance in yourself. And so that's all right. We will get this, and stay tuned because I have a pay what you can bedroom communication class coming up, so if you want more language for how to ask, come to that. But I'm also gonna be, I'm developing, so you will all be the first to know, I'm developing a community where we can do this together because it's wonderful for me to get you all inspired and pumped up now, but I'd love to be able to follow up with you, and so that we can share with each other what worked, what didn't work, here are some new practices, here are things that we can share, here's where I struggled, here's where I did this. So, you're not alone, I am totally here with you in solidarity of this. And I think it's completely possible to shed the shame and make more room for pleasure. So I 100% believe in you and believe in these practices. These are things, I haven't recommended anything to you that I haven't tried myself, and that I haven't found some sort of success with. All right. Katelyn, you're so welcome, Michelle, you're welcome, Jen, you're so welcome. And thank you, yeah thank you all.