The Sex Reimagined Podcast

Ellen Heed: Castor Oil Magic - Can This Natural Remedy Transform Your Sex Life? | #97

• Leah Piper, Dr. Willow Brown, Ellen Heed • Season 2 • Episode 97

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Meet Ellen Heed, our scar tissue whisperer and sexual wellness guru. As a trailblazing holistic healer and sexologist specializing in scar tissue remediation, Ellen has transformed countless lives by alleviating pain and restoring sexual function. She's here to spill the tea on how those pesky scars might be cramping your style in the bedroom (and beyond). She reassures us that even though scar tissue can seriously mess with your sexual mojo that it's fixable. She covers everything from burn scars to tummy tuck scars to hysterectomies and that’s not all!

IN THIS EPISODE, ELLEN DISHES ON:

  • Her game-changing STREAM method for scar tissue remediation
  • Why your autonomic nervous system is the MVP of pleasure
  • The lowdown on castor oil packing (spoiler: it's a game-changer!)
  • How to turn back the clock on decades-old scars
  • Pelvic floor secrets for post-menopausal goddesses
  • Holistic healing tips for gender reassignment recovery
  • Your gut health and sexual function are BFFs
  • And how Relaxation is your secret weapon for healing and pleasure

EPISODE LINKS *some links below may also be affiliate links

THE VAGINAL ORGASM MASTERCLASS. Discover how to activate the female Gspot, clitoris, & cervical orgasms. Buy Now. Save 20% Coupon: PODCAST 20

LAST 10x LONGER. If you suffer from premature ejaculation, you are not alone, master 5 techniques to cure this stressful & embarrassing issue once and for all. Buy Now. Save 20% Coupon: PODCAST20.

THE MALE GSPOT & PROSTATE MASTERCLASS. This is for you if… You’ve heard of epic anal orgasms, & you wonder if it’s possible for you too. Buy Now. Save 20% Coupon PODCAST20.

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Leah:

This is Leah, your Tantra expert at Sex Reimagined.

Willow:

And Dr. Willow here, and we're so excited about today's guest because she is a wealth of information and so fascinating to talk to. Ellen Heed. She is a holistic healer and a sexologist specializing in alleviating pain as a result of scar tissue, her unique treatment method called STREAM, which stands for Scar Tissue Remediation and Education and Management. She teaches her STREAM practitioners how to cultivate extremely accurate perception using three modalities. Verbal, hands on and hands in, resulting in getting to the root of the nervous system so that pain can resolve, dissolve, resolve and dissolve, because both are important.

Leah:

Yes. You're going to be so impressed at just how easy, surprisingly easy one can heal from these issues. I mean, I was just taken back. So

Willow:

Great. Great episode. You're gonna love it.

Leah:

Tune in, turn on and fall in love with Ellen.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Sex Reimagined Podcast, where sex is shame free and pleasure forward. Let's get into the show.

Leah:

Ellen! Ellen, I got a question for you right off the start of this interview.

Ellen:

Okay,

Leah:

Are you still in Ashland?

Ellen:

I am still in Ashland.

Leah:

Oh, it's such a beloved town for me. I lived there for eight years a long.

Ellen:

Oh my gosh. Oh, did you love it so much?

Leah:

loved it so much. And you know what I miss? Morning glory.

Willow:

Is that a coffee shop or something?

Leah:

Oh, it's this breakfast restaurant that was to live for. They had the most epic pancakes. Hahaha.

Willow:

a couple times. It's a, it's a sweet place though. It's very kind of sister city to Santa Cruz.

Ellen:

Uh, yes, very much.

Willow:

Ellen, I first learned about you from a dear friend of mine who does, um, some out of emotional sexual healing work, uh, a male friend. And, uh, we were, we were actually doing a little trade and he was doing some work inside of my pelvic floor. And he was like, Oh, it seems like there might be a little bit of some scar tissue going on here. And, you know, I haven't had any, I haven't had deliveries and I haven't had any surgeries or anything like that, but I did have, um, some spots of high grade Dysplasia cervix. I actually ended up using herbs and suppositories to heal that, so it took me about a year. I didn't go with the Leap or the Creo or any of that. But um, yeah, who knows? Who knows where these, how tissues build up? I mean, I really think that there's also an emotional component, especially inside of the pelvic bowl.

Ellen:

Oh, absolutely. Yes.

Willow:

so, you know, this is kind of all your wheelhouse, so we're so excited just to get your expertise on all this.

Ellen:

Well, it's good to be here and good to be talking about this. I'm excited for the conversation.

Willow:

So what is your, um, how did you get into this work? Tell us your Genesis story.

Ellen:

Okay. My Genesis story is that I was in the garment business and, uh, kind of exhausted because the garment business is basically an exhausting profession. I was a designer and owner of a knitwear company and my back started to hurt when my friend said, Oh, you should go check out Anna Forrest who had a yoga studio in, um, in Santa Monica at that time. And I did. And, uh, she said, no, she's really intense. A lot of people find her too intense. I'm like, Oh, it sounds like my teacher.

Willow:

You'll love her, yeah.

Ellen:

So I went in and she did meet my level of intensity. I had a background in professional dance, so I have a lot of embodiment practices in my history. And I really enjoyed forest yoga. I asked for a private with her and she had me just walk around the room. She said, Oh, and I can tell by the way your sacrum moves, you're a sexual healer. I'm like, I'm going to go out

Leah:

That's a new one. Hahaha.

Willow:

I guess I'm out of the garment district.

Leah:

guess she's got some Jedi skills. I like it!.

Ellen:

I had the great fortune study with numerous teachers who had proprofound Jed skiills. Who could see beyond the scene, seeing beyond the visual into the somato emotional, the spiritual and the future. And each one of them said, each one of them gave me hints. So I went into, uh, body work. I learned to be a body worker and before I knew it, I was teaching anatomy. And then Anna took me on tour with her all over the world to teach anatomy to yoga teachers as her career started to explode. And I taught everywhere. I mean, the only place I haven't been is South America. Uh, to teach. I've taught everywhere else, just about. I mean, in Europe, in Asia, in

Leah:

How fun.

Ellen:

in all over the U. S., again and again and again, teaching anatomy. And at the same time, I enrolled as a, as a Shiatsu therapist in my local Shiatsu school. And I found another remarkable teacher who said, you know, there's this problem with scars in the pelvic floor and nobody's addressing it. And I'm like, Oh, here's a niche. You know, my marketing mind is like, Oh, this could be a niche. Oh, and there's problems here. And nobody's looking at the energetics of what happens when there's an episiotomy across the, uh, the, uh, perineum. And that is a problem. He said, I have patients with brain cancer, and I attribute their brain cancer to their episiotomy scar, because the, the vessel, the conception vessel and the governing vessel cannot meet. They have to have continuity between the crown and the root. And if the root is scarred, it breaks the continuity and that causes problems. And then he started referring people to me for pelvic floor work. And I'm like, I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, get my finger in the right orifice. And gosh, I hope I got it right.

Willow:

Should I use a glove? How do I do this? That's great that you just started with no training.

Ellen:

Yeah, I started with, well, I had training. I

Willow:

Yeah. Training but not

Ellen:

a lot of ideas and skills and a very subtle ability to feel deep into tissues because I just had to learn to see, they taught me to see without my eyes, using my fingers. And those fingers got extremely sensitive and um, I could pick up scar not only the scar on the surface but what it was attached to and how those attachments were changing uterine range of motion, fixating a cervix so it didn't move up and down within the back of the vaginal canal. I could feel if there were adhesions between the vagina and the rectum. I could feel if there were problems. You know, in people with penises, with prostates and so on. So I got this sensitivity and um, then I realized I needed to do something about scope of practice. So I became a sexological body worker, which is a recognized profession in the state of California. And that enabled me to do pelvic floor work, uh, freely in my practice. And people started referring and that was the, that's the story basically.

Leah:

Wow,

Ellen:

I, um, uh, Got good at it. And I got mad about it because I kept seeing people who were being not served, not well served by the medical profession and by even midwives. Midwives are, are enormously important and deeply helpful in a birth scenario and also not that cognizant of the effects of the stitching that they may do down the road. And so they don't really give a lot of information about self care, if there has been stitching to repair a tear in the perineum, for instance. Or if there has been a large tear, like a fourth degree tear, there's really very little information, or at that time, especially, there was a very little information. So people were coming to me with fecal incontinence and they had three year olds, you know.

Willow:

Mm-Hmm.

Ellen:

And that's a long time to suffer with that. And after one session, they didn't have it. Because if you know how to talk to the nervous system through the orifice, you can hook that neurology right back up again. So

Leah:

do you,

Willow:

it.

Leah:

can you explain how you do that?

Ellen:

yeah, it's very simple. I mean, I'm going to get very graphic here if you don't mind, because this is,

Willow:

do.

Leah:

sister.

Ellen:

what we're talking about. If somebody has fecal incontinence, it's because they've lost the, the, um, mental representation here in the area between the frontal lobe and the temporal lobe of the brain, that's where our body self image works. And when we have a scar, the lights go out in our mental representation of the place. When we lose the mental representation, we lose the ability to consciously turn on and off the musculature. And so we have control over our external anal sphincter, from just thinking about it, you know, if you're going to squeeze one out, you

Leah:

pucker up.

Ellen:

yeah, that's right, you hook it up. But the internal anal sphincter is not hooked up to our conscious awareness. It is an autonomic muscle, meaning it's governed by the autonomic nervous system. A scar also skews and transforms, not in a good way, the messaging from the autonomic nervous system, so getting contact with both the external and the internal anal sphincters with a finger in the anus and then pulling and saying, okay, okay, okay, I'm going to pull my finger out. You stop me. It's very simple. Stop me. Pucker up. And they're like, I can't feel. And I'm like, I'm going to pull my finger. I'm going to go in a little bit and out a little bit and in a little bit and out a little bit. Can you feel me going in? Yes. Can you stop me from coming out? Oh, oh my God. I forgot how to do that. Oh, but now I'm remembering is kind of what would happen with

Leah:

Wow. And it's, that's that simple. That is really, really awesome. You're just bringing their attention.

Ellen:

It's not only attention. They have to be relaxed. If they're worried about it, if they're concerned, Oh, maybe I should have done an enema before I came in. I didn't know I could do internal work. Ooh, you know, the turtle head. Uh, you

Willow:

do you have to go in anally every time you're working with an app episiotomy or a tear scar tissue, or

Ellen:

No, not every

Willow:

not

Ellen:

But I'm talking about a fourth degree tear that does affect the front wall, the anterior wall, the inner anal sphincter, because there will be a scar there and that scar can interrupt nerve information and it's easy to get numb, easy to lose conscious control over the external anal sphincter. And with castor oil, with massage, with adequate lymphatic drainage, that scar can start to change its form. And there's more. If the person is deeply relaxed, the emotion that they're carrying, that I think is the heart of every scar, will emerge, and when that happens, the miracles occur. The miracles are, oh my gosh, not only can I control my external anal sphincter, now I can control my internal anal sphincter at will. And when that happens, I mean, I've seen crazy things like people's diastasis re knit instantly, instantly to get on the backside of that linea alba up above the pubic bone, the linea alba is the midline connective tissue from which the rectus abdominis muscle detaches in diastasis, but it can all come back together when the body is relaxed and the story emerges around what happened that caused the body to dissociate.

Willow:

Can you tell our audience what diastasis or diastasis is?

Ellen:

diastasis is when the abdominal muscles separate from the midline, and it can be so bad that even intestines can kind of poke through, but in most people it manifests as, you know, if you're laying on the floor and you lift your head off the floor, you have to use your abdominal muscles to do that. And so to test for a diastasis, they'll put a finger at the midline, and sometimes there'll be a one finger gap. That's a healthy amount of space. Space

Leah:

Where's the midline? I'm

Ellen:

The midline runs from the crown down through the nose, the middle of the chin, between your collarbone, between your breasts, all the way down to the pubic bone in the front body and the back body. The midline iss represented by the spine

Leah:

Okay, great. Thank

Ellen:

and the butt cheeks. You know, the crack, the plumber's crack as part of the midline. The tailbone is part of the midline.

Leah:

so when you're, when you've done this with, with someone and you've helped them, um, start to feel control between their inner and outer sphincter muscles, do you have homework? Are there things that they need to do in order to keep that awareness?

Ellen:

Uh, no. They usually get it and then it's done. That's the thing about this work. If the emotion is able to emerge, the body heals spontaneously and the brain heals spontaneously. That's what I notice.

Willow:

I love that you're bringing that to light, Ellen, because, um, I've been doing pelvic floor with women for quite a long time now, and I always liken it to, like, working with infant tissue, because, because babies, like, they're, they're like, they'll, they're so easy to, to meld and mold and come back into balance, and then they're just there, they're just done, they stay, whereas working with, like, an adult body, um, Um, it's like, okay, you're going to have to come back a few times so we can really get this shoulder into alignment. But working inside of a vulva owner's pelvic floor, pelvic bowl, I notice it's the same as that infant tissue. Like it's just, as soon as you get it into place, it's like, it's good to go. It's done. Unless there's another incident or, you know, something happens and it goes into malalignment again.

Ellen:

Yeah, I think there's something about mucosal membranes that are special with the innervation because there's so much that happens. All of the tissues are so multifunctional in the pelvic floor, in the vaginal lining, in the vulva lining. They have to do a lot of things. They have to engorge. They have to lubricate. They have to, I mean, they don't have to, often they don't. That's a problem when scar tissue is present. They're not doing those things because the scar is present. Blocking the movement of fluid and the movement, well, the movement of fluid, including blood to make engorgement possible. Engorgement has to precede lubrication because the engorgement actually pushes the, the thin little layer of, it's kind of like a, a mucin, a mucilaginous, uh, liquid that makes things slippery. But there's deeper levels of engorgement and there's deeper levels of lubrication that often people are not aware of. And I think a lot of the reason it's so interesting, Willow, that you call it, uh, like baby tissue. It is like baby tissue, but for more reasons than we might even imagine. Meaning that we're so naive to the purpose, the function, the sensitivity, and our connection to all of the tissue of our reproductive and genital pleasure tract. There's a lack of information and oftentimes what my teacher Joseph Kramer called a genital hole, meaning that space between the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe, and the body is blank. Because there was no information given about it. We know so much about penises and the way they work. We know so very little about vulvas and the way they work. Cause there is not the, um, there hasn't historically been a comfort level to study it, Kinsey.

Leah:

it had more to do with funding.

Ellen:

Well, that has to do with interest, doesn't it?

Leah:

Mm

Ellen:

It has to do with interest, it has to do with intention, and it has to do with the comfort level of the people who are asking the questions, which are researchers, which have largely been people with penises, historically. The Kinsey Institute did amazing work, but they ran up in, they ran into enormous funding and social barriers when it came to publishing reports. You know, the Kinsey report on male sexuality, um, No problem. The Kinsey report on female sexuality? Big problem. It caused an uproar socially because people didn't want to imagine their grandma getting aroused somehow.

Willow:

Interesting.

Leah:

I want to just highlight something because a couple points, one is if you've been having trouble with engorgement and lubrication, find out, get your history figured out regarding scars, and that could be something to address. Are you able to reverse that,

Ellen:

Oh, yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Leah:

There's hope out there, people!

Ellen:

A scar is not forever. That's what my whole, uh, focus is in the work. People think, oh, I've got a scar. I'm stuck with it. Because they see a cutaneous scar and it's there. You can even change a cutaneous scar. You can't disappear it, but you can certainly change its form. But we can change the form and function of the way a scar looks. proliferates through the connective tissue matrix to block sensation and normal functioning of tissue. And I use castor oil as my ally to help with that. Castor oil

Willow:

great. Castor oil softens and spreads and opens the tissue. When you say that, Ellen, that, um, you know, the, the, I, I, I see mycelium, you know, when you're, when you're describing it, I'm like, oh, these little tendrils that go of the scar tissue that can creep up, you know, up to the womb and up to these ligaments that move the, the cervix up and down. And, you know, and so. What you're talking about is like acts, finding and accessing, um, one point on that, like little tendril of, of scar tissue and, and, and opening it from that point all the way to the other point where it is, um, holding the body in a certain pattern.

Ellen:

That's right. That's right. And fascia communicates globally. There's something that happens in fascia that's faster than nerves. And when the fascia decides to make a change, all the fascia will respond. And so it's quite remarkable what's possible when you're talking to the fascia.

Willow:

So what are What are some of the results that people have after getting?

Leah:

I just ask one follow up question and then we'll tackle that one, Willow? Um, it's, um, what if the scar is old?

Ellen:

I've worked on people with scars that are 50 years old. They resolve.

Leah:

Yeah, but is it ideal, of course, to work with it

Ellen:

Well, let me put a caveat, not fresh. We need 12 weeks for tissue to adequately remodel before, uh, introducing castor oil because you don't want to interrupt castor oil as a massive anti inflammatory. We need the inflammatory process to complete, uh, enough of a wound healing stage. It, the problem is inflammation. Inflammation in the body creates problematic scar tissue. It creates the consistent overproliferation of scars. And so we have to look at inflammation. That's a lot of what the work I do with my clients is bringing their inflammatory titers down so the scar can resolve. Otherwise it may not. Yeah, inflammation will drive too much scar, which will create problems in the whole connective tissue matrix. It becomes a self propagating, continual growing of scar tissue, rather than a dissolution of scar. So, um, So, um, Provided there isn't too much inflammation and the emotion is released from the tissue and the person is relatively

Leah:

That happens to me all the time. Those balloons.

Ellen:

has to do with it, you know, when you do the peace symbol. Let's have some balloons.

Leah:

Yes. Blessings to everybody.

Ellen:

Uh, yes. Um, so, uh, Winding back through all the questions, fascia communicates with fascia faster than the nervous system. If the nervous system is relaxed, then the nervous system gets the memo. If the nervous system is not relaxed, the nervous system misses the memo of what happened in the fascia and the fascia reverts to its former habit. So the person has to be relaxed.

Willow:

yeah, I wanna unpack that a little bit. So, um, Yeah, I really,

Leah:

and I are both like,

Willow:

Because,

Leah:

knows so much. She knows so much. And I kind of get it.

Willow:

let's dissect a little bit. I just want our listeners to understand what you're saying because it's so rich and so deep. Um, when you say, so, so basically when they go into a state of rest and digest, their nervous system. That is when the scar tissue has the best opportunity to unwind and unravel. A lot of times emotions will release at this state as well, and, um, that's and from there, all kinds of life changes can, can

Ellen:

that's right.

Willow:

better continence, better sex, better, all kinds of more pleasure and sensation, um, better gait, you know, everything. So, uh, I just, yeah, if there's anything more you want to add to that, I just wanted to kind of break it down

Ellen:

Well, I think that I normally, I rarely need to see someone more than three times. Often it's done in a single session, but three times, it's like, we need to get to know each other. I need to map the body. I need to find out if somebody is holding a lot of emotional tension, where that emotional tension is located. And then how do we go underneath the emotional tension? workaround? So we're not, um, we're not blocked by the emotional tension in the work. So I assess the whole body. I have, I know, you know, like there's 12 hidden trap doors to where emotional tension is typically hiding out. I assess those places and I work with cranial techniques to relax the body deeply. And not until I feel the person, until I actually see evidence of deep down regulation, like the breathing starts to become abdominal, eyes closed, eyeballs are sort of rolling back and forth behind closed lids when somebody goes into a slightly hypnagogic state. If they can't get to that level, then I know it's going to take more than three sessions. We have to train their nervous system because I respect the primacy of the autonomic nervous system, the vegetative nervous system, which can get skewed toward. Um, the opposite of rest and digest. It can get skewed toward what we call sympathetic dominance, which means somebody is in a stress state and they're so married to their stress state, they forgot how to relax. Yeah.

Willow:

a friend actually that I was working on doing cranial sacral, and I gave her this real deep session. She just went way out, right? And then she gets up, she texts me later that day. She's like, I feel so weird. Like this feels weird. I'm like, yeah, because you live in, you know, you live in that parasympathetic or that sympathetic state. And so, um, Um, for, for those who are always just on that fight or flight nervous system radar, um, dropping into this rest and digest parasympathetic state can feel strange and, um, uncomfortable, like,

Ellen:

Well, it's so unfamiliar, right?

Willow:

unfamiliarity to it. Yeah.

Leah:

Now you were talking about inflammation earlier. And so I was, I'm just wondering if people who have, um, autoimmune issues and scars, how do you manage that situation? Does the inflammation caused by the autoimmune issue affect your treatment for them.

Ellen:

I go underneath the autoimmunity by looking at gut health. I mean, I, I, I am a deep practitioner. I work with people at the level of diet, at the level of emotions, at the level of what's going on in their autonomics, at the level of structure. I can assess in many domains, and if somebody has chronic autoimmunity, the scar can get to a certain point, but then it will come back until they clean up their gut. Cleaning up their gut means that they can digest what they're eating without it provoking an inflammatory response. And I work a lot with the GAPS diet as a, my, uh, gut cleanup of choice. And if somebody can't bring themselves to do GAPS, let's say they're vegan and they're not ever going to do bone, bone broth, then we look at other inflammatory provocation and experiment with withdrawing that from the diet.

Leah:

Can you explain what the gap diet is?

Ellen:

The GAPS diet is a system. It's a, uh, You could call it, well, it's a selective carbohydrate diet where you take many, many carbohydrates that are known to provoke inflammation out and, uh, calm the system with a lot of fat and a lot of protein and teach the body to not react. Ultimately, it's an adaptive therapy, where you can teach your body, if let's say you couldn't tolerate dairy or you can't tolerate wheat, you can't tolerate corn, you can titrate tiny amounts of wheat or corn or carbohydrate or dairy back in, you know, like people don't get this about gaps and they fail all the time because they think titration means, oh yeah, I'm going to try a quarter cup of milk. No, you need to try a quarter teaspoon of milk. And if you can tolerate that, then let's try another quarter teaspoon, see if you still tolerate it. If you can tolerate it three times, can we move it up to a half? That level of titration. People don't have the patience for that in our, you know, kind of immediate gratification culture, but teaching the body to be patient and teaching oneself to be patient is part of a reparenting process of the gut. And a lot of times it's in infancy that the gut started to get screwed up anyway. Okay. So, you know, this idea of infant tissue is so fascinating. I'm really, you caught my attention deeply with that one because a lot of times we need to take things back to infancy in terms of how do we reintroduce foods as if the body were naive

Leah:

Hmm.

Ellen:

and

Willow:

good point. I

Ellen:

believe that the body can go back to a naive state and learn to perceive things without reacting negatively like an inflammatory response.

Willow:

Hmm. It's like the curious mind.

Leah:

Yeah, it's it's like you're going underneath You're not putting band aids anywhere. It is a deep, deep dive, I love it! it

Willow:

Yeah,

Ellen:

it's got to be, you got to go to first causes and to really heal. You have to get to first causes, but there's a lot of effective workarounds along the way to show somebody what's possible. When they understand what's possible, then it's more likely, you're more likely to get some buy in for things that are more difficult, like changing food habits, which are deeply lifestyle, uh, aligned.

Leah:

Mm

Willow:

You know, coming back to the, the scar tissue, um, in the pelvic floor, there doesn't have to be some kind of trauma. There doesn't have to be an episiotomy. There doesn't have to be,

Ellen:

Oh, I could tell you crazy stories about this. One of my students found that people having problems with failure to progress with labor had scar tissue in their cervix from taking, guess what, the morning after pill.

Willow:

Interesting. An oral pill. Yeah.

Ellen:

and a vaginal pill.

Willow:

Okay. A

Ellen:

The vaginal pill affected the, the, uh, the, the cervix by fixating it and making it unable to receive a lot of hormonal cues that are part of the labor process.

Willow:

So

Ellen:

so she would work manually with the cervix and kind of get it, you know, kind of waked up and moving during a labor process. She's midwife. And, um, it's only because she asked the right question. You know, she kept finding again and again, this will failure to progress. And she just said, Hey, if you take the morning after pill, the answer was yes. So many times she's like, Oh, there's a correlation here.

Willow:

Interesting. Yeah, I love that. I love that kind of like research just on the ground level. Just asking your patients over and over again. Like, oh, and then you start to see these patterns that make so much sense.

Ellen:

yeah.

Leah:

I'm really curious about gender reassignment surgeries and how that affects sexual performance

Ellen:

Oh boy,

Leah:

pleasure and all of that

Ellen:

okay, well, in people with neovulvas, there's still a certain amount of erectile tissue remaining in some cases inside of that neovagina. I've had the great pleasure of being the first fingers in multiple times of neo vaginas and introducing castor oil, introducing something that's not hard plastic dilator, but actually living flesh that can give them feedback about what they're feeling because they're maybe afraid to put their own fingers in because it's painful or they're too traumatized by all the changes they've gone through, or Maybe they, it hurts. So first pain free penetration is possible. Let's start with that. Castor oil has a slightly analgesic property and that helps with the pain, but it also helps with the lubrication. It also helps relax the musculature. And then if you can get to a place where you can feel a little bit of residual erectile tissue as something that seems to be swelling in a spot, Seeing if the person can still connect to the pleasure centers in their brain with the sensation of working with this erectile tissue, uh, let's call it an island of erectile tissue, uh, they can remember sexual pleasure or what it felt like from before their gender reassignment surgery. They can start to make the connection and see that it's possible to use this tissue that's been deeply reorganized to get back to sensations that are familiar and pleasurable.

Leah:

Mm hmm.

Ellen:

I have not worked with people with neo penises so much thus far, but I've worked with Will

Leah:

someone call Ellen? Please, let her work with your neo penis!

Willow:

and we'll have her back

Leah:

Yes! Do it for science! We must know how we can serve!

Willow:

I'm curious, Ellen, if, if at some point with your, with your work, with, um, Neo vulvas and vaginas. If, if at some point you recommend um, certain vibrators or certain sex toys so that

Ellen:

I recommend sensitivity and using actual living fingers that can give feedback, until there is a firm pathway established between pleasure and our mental representation, mental representation of pleasure here.

Willow:

Mm,

Ellen:

In the head. Once that is a, uh, a functional pathway, then you can use whatever you want, but it has to be titrated. And sex toys, you know, there's always caveats and complications. Like if you have. Uh, sex toys don't do so well with castor oil if they're made of silicone. And then if you put a, uh, a condom on your sex toy to make it, it's the condom nitrile and therefore impervious to castor oil. But if it's a vinyl or if it's latex, is castor oil going to, uh, destroy the, the condom, you know? So it's complicated.

Willow:

it can get, get a little complicated.

Ellen:

their

Leah:

know, I have encountered, I know Willow certainly has, um, a lot of women who have such, just so much pain with sex. It just, they can, to the point where they can't really be penetrated anymore. And, um, and they come from all different, you know, They come from all different ages and they've tried physical therapy, they've done pelvic floor work, they've played with lots of different wands and yoni eggs and all the things.

Willow:

this,

Leah:

What's A and

Ellen:

Autonomic

Willow:

nervous

Ellen:

system, the primacy of the ANS. If you can't relax, you can't lubricate, you can be 90 and lubricate. You can. You have to be engorged, but in order to be engorged, you have to be relaxed. So people use the anticipation of pain, which becomes then the predominant set, I know this is going to hurt. Now they're in sympathetic dominance and they can't relax and trust that it's possible to get underneath it to an area of relaxation that will allow lubrication and allow engorgement to happen.

Willow:

That's such a key piece.

Ellen:

That's right. It's When

Leah:

been so strongly conditioned, how do you help them to relax? What's been successful?

Ellen:

Work with them very deliberately neurologically. I coach with them and I also do a lot of hands on work, uh, if possible. I can teach somebody to down regulate without touching them, but it's easier if I can touch them because then I can use my fingers to touch certain places in their occiput or their sacrum or, you know, cranial sacral work is deeply effective as a down regulatory tool. Um, but people can learn to downregulate themselves, but they have to want to, and they have to understand, and they have to really investigate secondary gain in not getting penetrated, because there may be lots of reasons why it doesn't feel safe. And a lot of times, old trauma comes up and it gets attached to, Oh, I'm postmenopausal. It's my vulva that doesn't work. No, it's the trauma that's up to be reassigned or re recapitulated and released. It's homework that needed to be done that didn't get done. And when that homework can get done and the emotion can move out of the tissue, then the tissue can start to behave more normally. And I'm not saying this is the only reason, but there's other health issues. Menopause, menopausal tissues. Everything's hung on menopause is the problem. Menopause is the result of a lot of unfortunate decisions. Those unfortunate decisions need to be identified and reversed to get back to health.

Leah:

What these decisions, Ellen? What Are these decisions that are a

Ellen:

I'm talking about diet. I'm talking about autonomic habits. I'm talking about lack of sex education. I'm talking about not taking enough time. I'm talking about, uh, partners that are expecting things to go as they used to and not have to make adjustments to take the time it requires for full arousal and engorgement to happen, which is an absolute necessity post menopausally. So let's talk about 45 minutes of foreplay. Can we please.

Willow:

45 minutes at minimum. And I'm not even fully menopausal yet.

Ellen:

Right, but how many people actually have an honest discussion about that with their partners who are fully used to five minutes of foreplay and it's, we're done in

Willow:

fifteen. In, Out, and On to the next. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that is a huge conversation that, that we could have a whole other podcast episode on, you know, around, um, talking to your, I think, I think there's a lot of shame for

Ellen:

Oh

Willow:

vulva owners.

Ellen:

agreed.

Willow:

around needing that extra time and, you know, and that they, and then there's the self worth of like, do I even deserve to have that.

Ellen:

All of that. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Willow, because this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say the primacy of the ANS. I mean our conditioning and our beliefs that drive our autonomics to turn off and turn off and turn off the things that they are so elegantly designed to deliver because of scarcity of time, scarcity of self worth, scarcity of confidence and a living in a culture that is still deeply puritanical around conversing about sex. Like if it doesn't happen automatically, there's something wrong

Leah:

Yeah. I think a lot of people feel like I don't know what I want. I don't even know what to tell my partner to do that's going to get me

Ellen:

because they don't have any education about what's possible.

Willow:

So, so let's educate them. What can we tell them? Like, what can we tell women who are listening, who are like, okay, yeah, I do, I know I need more time. I don't know what I need exactly, but

Ellen:

right? Well, self exploration is deeply helpful. It's a selfless self exercise. You can't deal with a partner, there's too much at stake. Because if the partner fails, or you fail, then it just reinforces bad ideas and habits, and our self Our self image, our self definition. So being willing to do a lot of selfless self work, sit down with some books I love, even though I feel the language is a little dated. I still think Sheri Winston's Women's Anatomy of Arousal is a wonderful book. I still think that I still love, uh, A New View of a Woman's Body. I think that's one of the most radical, still remains one of the most radical books around women's sexuality out there. And my favorite G Spot book is, um, Female Ejaculation and the G Spot by Deborah Sundahl, who was a profound researcher and actually took the time to interview the man who got, The female prostate recognized as an actual legit, um, anatomical entity by discovering, Oh yeah, the G spot or ejaculate contains prostate specific antigen. For instance, that we're so much more complex. We're so much deeper. We have so much ability to under the it's. It's complex, and because our vulvas are complex, they require education and attention together. So you can have the education, but if you don't bring the time and attention to explore yourself, thoroughly, with confidence and patience, and seek expert advice. There are sexological body workers who are expert. There are people who offer erotic retreats for women and so forth that are expert. You have to know who you're going to, you have to do your due diligence, your homework, make sure they're not. It's really for you and not for them and really understand that it is for you because you can tell by the way they're talking to you about your experience that it's yours. Somehow not theirs. These are ways that people can avail themselves of education and experience to learn what's possible. We've been, um, robbed of our sexual potential by a culture that doesn't take the time and have the courage to admit what it is.

Willow:

Hmm.

Ellen:

Women's sexual potential is terrifying to a lot of people.

Willow:

Yeah, because it's pretty vast and it's pretty untapped. I feel like right now, I mean, we had the big movement in the 60s. That was like the first wave, you know, I feel like we're having another big wave and at this point in time, there's a lot more people doing sexual coaching work and sexological body work, and there's a lot more training out there. So many more books. There's so much more information and content, so there's really, I feel like there's no excuse at this point. There's so much free information, you know, but then to take your journey further and invest in an erotic retreat or, you know, or working with someone one on one on Facebook. Figuring out where your arousal lives in your body and what you can actually do with arousal. I was actually working with a new client last night and he had, you know, never moved arousal through his body before. It was like, like most people, always in the genitals, you know? And so what happens when we start to breathe and move it through our bodies and hit the Very big experience, very big tetany experience of like buzzing and tingling all over the whole body. And that experience when the first time you have it can feel again like, you know, wow, I don't know what this is. I don't know what to do with it. So, um, But I think that that's the beginning of something really beautiful and really big that, that you get to, our bodies are these, um, uh, conduits, you know, they're these vessels for so much energy to move through and sexual energy is some of the most potent high frequency energy that we can play with.

Ellen:

I would say it's the gateway to neuroplasticity.

Willow:

love that. Sexual energy is the gateway to neuroplasticity. That's going on our Instagram. That's a quote by Ellen Heed.

Ellen:

I love that so much because the autonomics, I always heart back to the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system dictates how much extra we have for sexuality. Until we get right with our autonomics, our up regulation, our down regulation, and being in charge of those states, we need to be in a variety of states and not stuck in one position, not stuck in sympathetic dominance, because it's very difficult. Sex is extra from the perspective of survival. It, you know, we think it's necessary, but actually the survival of the individual has to happen first before they're available to procreate from the perspective of Mother Nature. So if we actually Pay attention to the primacy of the autonomic nervous system and understand what state we're living in and where our allegiance lies. That's the homework that has to underlie the sexual. People jump into sexuality without examining that and they wonder why they can't get into arousal because arousal requires flexibility of state. You have to be able to get from Upregulation to downregulation. Orgasm happens right at the crux between a upregulated, upregulatory and downregulatory wave. We have to be there in the middle to have an orgasm and have to be even deeper down at that level where they cross again to ejaculate, for instance, as people with vulvas. And that's a deep, process for a lot of people, because a lot of people are stuck here, you know, north of the Cartesian divide. They're stuck in their heads and they don't have this notion that body states matter. Yoga did a lot to change our awareness of that, but then yoga sort of went away in, uh, the pandemic. And now people are just reawakening to the fact that they have bodies again a bit. I think, you know, it's a, it's a, uh, A new wave of learning curve that has to be reestablished because we all kind of climbed up into our heads as a safer place when we were faced with the, the complications and the dismay of living at home, you know, being locked in a house for a couple of years or however, we navigated the pandemic

Leah:

You know, I

Ellen:

very deeply stressful time.

Leah:

was very stressful. Um, I want to segue to vanity when we take a look at scars as a result of plastic surgery. I've had a couple surgeries and they've been botched. And so my scars are, um, unfortunate. I would call them unfortunate. Uh, and

Willow:

though they're better now.

Leah:

Um, and Willow's been helping me. She does acupuncture. She's needling the, the, um, the biggest scars. Uh, my tummy tuck scar is older than the, um, my breast scars. And so sometimes I think, oh, there's no hope for that one, but I'm really encouraged to hear that just cause it's old doesn't mean it's hopeless.

Ellen:

No, tummy tucks, they're the gnarliest scar in my experience. They are the gnarliest scar because so many layers of tissue are involved. However, you can make enormous difference with manual manipulation, use of castor oil, regular castor oil packing and clay, clay packing to start to pull out any of the Bentonite clay, Montmorillonite clay, my favorite clay comes from a place called Vitality Herbs and Clays up here in Ashland. They take clay from around Crater Lake and, um, uh, you can bathe in it and it's awesome. The, uh, the, the quality of it is amazing. It's so relaxing. But it also pulls out, uh, A lot of toxic chemistry that promotes an inflammatory overprocreation of scar tissue. I know that's a mouthful, but a scar by definition is an infection that's been encapsulated. And so we need to pull out those infective agents to stop the inflammation. So the scar is just a program that's been stuck on on. We need to turn the program off, which means we need to change the chemistry of the scar. We can use clay and we can use castor oil to do those two things.

Leah:

So let me slow you down

Willow:

and

Leah:

protocol. Let's get a protocol in place. So what's

Ellen:

So,

Leah:

So I've got a

Ellen:

so castor oil packing is using, uh, flannel with castor oil on it. There is a company called Queen of the Thrones that makes strap on castor oil packs that are incredibly convenient and easy to use. I am the queen of castor oil who would not castor oil pack because it was a pain in the butt. And, uh, you know, I found these strap on packs and I never looked back. They made enormous difference. I had a hysterectomy. I was dealing with scar tissue, uh, from the ports. The hysterectomy didn't require an incision, but there were still four holes for drainage for laparoscopic surgery and to, you know, inflate the abdomen to get in and do the thing. Um, those were bothering me a lot. They were affecting, and I had a hernia, hernia repair at the same time. It happened underneath my skin, you couldn't see it, but the, um, restriction in my ability to control, connect to, and contract my upper abdominal muscles was intense. So I started castor oil packing and I got not only what was missing, but a much deeper connection to my upper abdominal muscles, even post surgically. So you sleep with these things on, you put them on at night. You put, you know, a couple tablespoons of castor oil on the flannel, put it over your scar. They make different sizes for different places in the body, sleep with it on, and it's absorbed by the morning, doesn't really get on your sheets, although I recommend sleeping with an old t shirt over in case. So that's castor oil packing. Topical application of castor oil is just rubbing it into the scar. I, uh, I often use fascia blasters, not the way they're sold online, but very gently to tease up a pink glow in the skin on the scar. And I've seen clients who had gnarly, big, black, raised keloid scars go to flat and pink. The scar can radically change its morphology when you use castor oil and a fascia blaster to help the skin open up, the fascia open up, and the castor oil can sink in more deeply. It's all about penetration when it comes to castor oil. You want it to get to the deep below. A scar, you have to think of it, you know, if you look, think about an appendectomy scar or a scar for breast surgery. It's not just the incision you see on your skin. Think about a grapefruit size of tissue that's affected by that. On the backside of the scar, the inside of the scar.

Willow:

you know, my first introduction to castor oil packs was when I was cramping when I had really severe menstrual cramps and I never had endometriosis, which is a big form of scar tissue. Um, but I have forever, since this was early, early on in my life, forever been, you know, Oh, gotta do a castor oil pack and, um, and sleep with it on. And I would always put a heating element over it as well. Um, but I'm just curious so that, so that it actually would penetrate through the outer skin of the womb to the inner to help move that stagnant tissue, which for me again, wasn't scar tissue per se, but it was stagnant blood, which what you're talking about is very, very similar, right? It's carrying all these toxins and stuff. And so I'm just curious, like for people with severe menstrual cramps and, or endometriosis, what about putting the cashroll up inside along with

Ellen:

Absolutely. You can. You can do so. You can soak a tampon in castor oil and insert it. You can squirt castor oil internally with a syringe like an ear bulb. You know, when you

Willow:

Yeah. Baby bowl. Yeah.

Ellen:

Baby bulb or an anal syringe any of those things work, but you would put a chucks on the bed You know one of those like adult diaper things you put it on the bed to protect your mattress So you don't get castor oil leakage in during the night put on your granny

Willow:

Or you could wear a pad. Yeah. Or your Think's

Ellen:

you can wear a pad all the things

Leah:

What's the frequency recommended?

Ellen:

Here's the thing, for internal castor oil, you don't do it every day. The mucosal membranes can sensitize to the castor oil the way you would know is a slight itching or burning, so I recommend one out of three days. One day on, two days off for internal castor oil. I can castor oil on my skin and I don't know anyone who cannot so far, and I know thousands of people now, castor oil on the skin daily for a period of three weeks on and one week off. Yeah, the castor oil, it's a really big deal. I'm not a fan of using heating pads if they're electric because the EMF, again, I don't, I'm not comfortable with the EMF on my, uh, over an area I'm trying to heal overnight. So I, a hot water bottle is great. Hot water bottles last a good long time. Uh, you know, at least two hours if you do it right. You gotta heat the hot water bottle itself, the rubber hot water bottle. You have to put it in hot water and then fill it with boiling water, then pour out half the boiling water, and then put in room temperature water, and it will be warm. That's right, but it will make that hot water bottle hot for hours. Yeah. Yeah.

Leah:

effective if you don't use a heating element?

Ellen:

Yes, that your body heat if you've got a strap on castor oil pack The reason you leave it on all night long is body heat. It's neoprene on the outside. So it's an insulator your body heat It'd be enough to pull the castor oil and because it's hours of exposure it goes deep I mean I could feel the difference. Wow the difference in my range of motion of my ribs and thoracic spine was ginormous after I started castor oil packing. Oh, and the liver, we have to talk about castor oil packing the liver. Speaking of endometriosis, what is blood stagnation, but liver stasis. And so if you're castor oil packing the liver, the blood will change its viscosity over time. If you're taking good care of your liver, otherwise that's a whole different discussion, but that's part of it. You know, it really is a sexuality is whole body health. You know, that's another one Instagram post.

Willow:

There you go. Yeah. it. Another quote

Ellen:

Well, people like to think that it's separate. It's not, it's, Sexuality is reflection of the overall health of our entire body. And so we have to look deeper when sexuality, it's the tip of the iceberg. We have to go deeper underwater to find out what else is contributing to the problem.

Leah:

I, I have just one last question, and I probably already know your answer, but what's your opinion on silicone scar tape and, um, the ointments that they use for scar treatments that's not castor oil?

Ellen:

Um, there's all kinds of people, all kinds of things that people use for scars. And, uh, any topical is worth exploring. I'm not prejudiced against them. I just don't have any experience with them. My experience is essential oils and, uh, and castor oil. And using the really, really old school from the 70s kind of healing methodologies that I learned from my teachers.

Willow:

from

Ellen:

And I'm not fond of things that don't have a natural origin, but I would say whatever works.

Leah:

Okay, I know I said that was my last question, but I just had a, another thought bubble in, and that is burn scars. Have you treated many burn scars? Mm

Ellen:

treated a few. It's complex. It's very complex. What I hear and what my clients tell me is that Manuka honey from New Zealand on the burn scar can work miracles.

Willow:

New Zealand specifically.

Ellen:

New Zealand. Yes, it has to be active. It has to be potent. And you know, that's where the good Manuka honey comes from, but there's all kinds of information on the internet about using honey on burn scars. And it's effective if you get it soon enough. I had a client who was A steamer emptied hot water over her arm and she had a horrible burn and she started treating it with honey and within like 10 days it was healed. Uh, I knew a man who turned his truck on its side and his arm was out the window and he got this horrible asphalt burn that took off his forearm. He wrapped it in honey and then he put a stake On top of the honey and wrapped that up and the enzymes from the meat and the enzymes from the honey got together and his arm was good as new in two weeks. I mean, it

Willow:

is amazing. Now there is an old school 70s home

Ellen:

super old school, super duper old

Willow:

Get it on.

Ellen:

honey and meat.

Willow:

Try it out. It's worth trying. It's cheaper than a lot of the other things you'll find out there, right?

Ellen:

That's true.

Leah:

Well, that was a, that's an unusual and wonderful thing to end the interview with. Ellen, you're fascinating. What a, uh, How wonderful it is to sit with someone who has so much embodied knowledge. I could just listen to you all day long. We have to have you back on the show. I'd love to have you in a couple of workshops that we're connected to because you're just filled

Willow:

A wealth, a wealth of info. Yes.

Ellen:

I'm, uh, now that

Willow:

in it too.

Ellen:

It took a bit to get settled in Ashland, but now that I'm settled, I'm ready to start, um, teaching, uh, beyond my school. I just want to mention that I have a school and I teach scar tissue remediation to, uh,

Leah:

that. You have a certification process, right, to help train people to do your work.

Ellen:

Yes, I train people to do my work in a combination of a two year online learning program. Because when we're working with reprogramming the autonomics and we're working with the nervous system and we're working with craniosacral techniques and we're working with body work techniques as well as internal techniques, you have to learn it all correctly and how to sequence it, which is why it's a two year program. And then, uh, there are four, uh, live in person workshops as a result of that. or as part of the program. And so they're four, four day immersions in how to listen, how to assess, how to treat the body and how to treat the internal, uh, the internal orifices.

Willow:

hmm. God, what a body of

Leah:

find us in your class

Willow:

put together. Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's fantastic.

Leah:

Thank you so much for being here today.

Ellen:

Oh, what a pleasure. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your, your time and your attention and your wonderful questions. It was a lot of fun.

Leah:

All right, that's a wrap. Stay tuned for The Dish.

Announcer:

Now, our favorite part, the dish.

Leah:

Oh my gosh, I know like, I'm thinking of like five or six people right now who are going to geek out on her. I cannot wait to share this episode with them.

Willow:

Yeah, so that was great. Really good episode. I, it's fun for me who, who has, who's kind of like in the same, similar wheelhouse and have been doing a lot of this work for a long time, but, but the, the methodology, I mean, I, and I have my own methodology that I've, you know, and I know how much work it takes to like put a methodology into a school, into a system where you can actually teach it to others. So for anyone, I, I did a pelvic floor training. Mine was in, um, was with Tammy Lynn Kent, who is a really good author, um, she wrote The Wild Feminine, um, but teacher wise, I'm a teacher connoisseur, and so I only really like the best of the best teachers, and I just didn't get that much out of the training itself. If I had known about Ellen way back when I did my pelvic floor training, I definitely would have gone to her. Um, there is one other. uh, style of pelvic floor, or I'm sure there's more than one, but one that I am really familiar with, which is Karsai Netsong, and so that is, that's the um, you know, the Taoist approach, and so that was another training that I picked up along the way, and um, I could just, I could just see though, if somebody

Leah:

tell everyone what that is? What Karsai is?

Willow:

Yeah, so, so there's a couple, um, Taoist massage techniques. One is called Chi Ne Tsang, it's C H I N E I T S A N G, and that is for the visceral organs, where you go and you do belly massage, basically, to massage the liver, to massage the colon, the small intestine, all of the, um, organs in your abdominal cavity. And then there's Kar Sai Ne Tsang. Cang, which is K A R S A I N E T S A N G. And um, and so that's where you go into the pelvic floor cavity and you can work the ovaries, the fallopian tubes, And yes, for, for, uh, penis owners, you can do that and you can work the cervix, you can work the womb and, and all of the ligaments in there. So it's really, really profound. I remember getting it for the first time in Thailand at, at, um, the Tao Gardens at Mantak Chia's Place. And, um. I just, I remember just feeling so much more open. Like, wow, I'm walking different. And like, when I went to urinate, it felt different, you know, and it was just like, everything was really shifted. And I think that, that was so long ago and so early in my whole career of this Taoist journey. And, um, I just, I fell in love with it. I was like, wow, this is miraculous, miraculous healing. So got into it myself.

Leah:

Yeah. I think it's interesting. Um, my experience of Karsai when I was also in Thailand. Um, is like the clearing of the sediment that happens in some of these veins and like, and to be able to that subtle movement of moving the stuck, congested, um, sediment, really. And then what people were telling me, this didn't happen to me, but a couple of the friends I was traveling with, um, they reported it was like when they had that first pee afterward, they felt kind of sandy and weird. Um, and the demo of it at the retreat. Oh man, the guy looked like he was in a shit ton of pain.

Willow:

Yeah, it can, it can feel really uncomfortable when you're getting it.

Leah:

Yeah. I thought it felt fine.

Willow:

Yeah. It just depends. It depends on how much scar tissue is built up inside of you. You know, like at this point when I'm working with women and their pelvic floors, I'm doing a lot of just a somato emotional release, like cranial sacral work. It's like doing cranial sacral in the vagina. Yeah. I'm glad she was talking about that a lot. Yeah.

Leah:

I loved that she was making that correlation. So, I thought cranial sacral was just with the head.

Willow:

No, you can do cranial sacral anywhere in the body. Like right now I have some wrist pain and I really wish I could cranial sacral my own wrist because I could clear it in about 20 minutes if I could. Yeah, it's about,

Leah:

What set's it apart from other modalities?

Willow:

it's, it's cranial sacral is where you're using the rhythm of the cerebral spinal fluid which runs really, really slowly up and down your whole spinal column to realign the skeletal structure and reset. The nervous system. That's the explanation in a

Leah:

cranium being the head, sacrum being the

Willow:

Yeah, so a lot of times, you know, people will, are familiar with the cranial sacral hold, where one hand is under the occiput and one hand is under the sacrum, but you can also do it on the rib cage, you can do it on the shoulders, you can do it on a little joint in your body, and it is, you can realign the, the bones and the ligaments through that. Very, very deep internal rhythm. I like to think of it as like bone marrow level rhythm. Like we have a rhythm in our heart rate, a rhythm in our breath rate. And then we have this cerebral spinal fluid rhythm, which is a very deep and ancient bone marrow level. Yeah,

Leah:

is so cool. I've, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry I didn't ask that question sooner. Now I'm ready to go sign up for a bunch of cranial sacral work. Uh, that's really neat. I love how these, all these things start to weave together. You know, she kind of reminded me of, um, Lynda. She's got a similar energy Lynda Cesera, who's, who's another Jedi on the scene.

Willow:

Yeah, I thought that

Leah:

So fun. Well, anything else you need to dish about?

Willow:

Uh, no, I think that was fantastic. And I really, I think one of the highlights that she, um, you know, brought to the table is like, when we drop into a rest and digest state, a parasympathetic nervous system state, that's when the magic happens. That's when the holdings of our scar tissue and our bodies and our joints and the pain and the suffering and the emotion that just keeps us blocked from living our highest and best selves, it all just unwinds and unravels miraculously. There's not a lot of doing when you stop being in that, um, fight or flight, parasympathetic, dominant nervous system state.

Leah:

Yeah. from this interview feeling a lot of hope for a lot of things that, that people struggle with when it comes to pain. And lack of pleasure in their life as a result. And just seeing all these correlations, seeing that, you know, things build on top of each other and how interweaved it all is, having someone explain that and unravel that was really refreshing. And I know brought a lot of hope to my work. And, um, and I just want people to know out there that she, you heard that she trains practitioners. You can also find a practitioner on her website. We'll have that in the show notes and she's got a book. So go check out her book too.

Willow:

Much love.

Leah:

Much love.

Announcer:

Thanks for tuning in. This episode was hosted by Tantric Sex Master Coach and Positive Psychology Facilitator, Leah Piper, as well as by Chinese and Functional Medicine Doctor and Taoist Sexology Teacher, Dr. Willow Brown. Don't forget, your comments, likes, subscribes, and suggestions matter. Let's realize this new world together.

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Dr. Willow Brown

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Leah Piper

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Ellen Heed

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