The Sex Reimagined Podcast

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya Mazor 2.0: Gratitude in the Bedroom - The Surprising Link Between Positive Thinking & Amazing Sex | #106

• Leah Piper, Dr. Willow Brown, Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya • Season 2 • Episode 106

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Welcome love explorers! One of our fan-favorite sexperts, Emiliya Zhivotovskaya Mazor, returns with a treasure trove of positive psychology gems to supercharge your relationships. This episode is a rollercoaster ride through self-love, desire, and connection, packed with aha moments that'll make you rethink everything you thought you knew about intimacy. Whether you're flying solo or coupled up, Emiliya's insights will revolutionize your approach to love and life. Tune in now and get ready to fall head over heels... with yourself!

GET READY TO:

• Flip the script on your inner critic and become your own biggest cheerleader

• Discover how gratitude can be your secret weapon in the bedroom

• Learn to ride the waves of life's expansions and contractions like a pro

• Unlock the Tantric approach to harnessing desire for personal growth

• Master the art of heartfelt communication that'll make your partner swoon


EPISODE LINKS 

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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.

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.

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Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Emiliya is a leading voice in the world of positive psychology and the science. A flourishing. She's the CEO and founder of the Flourishing Center, which has trained thousands of practitioners all over the world since 2008. Emiliya holds a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, is currently pursuing a PhD in Mind Body Medicine from Saybrook University, and she holds over a dozen professional certifications. She's a master certified coach with the I C F and is a passionate edutainer and experience curator. Edutainer, very cute. Like edutainer, like entertainer, educator.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

And she does, she's a very entertaining educator. She used to throw One of her first jobs was being a DJ and doing all these parties for kids, so she knows how to do balloon shapes and get people on the dance floor. I mean, she's just like one of those great people that gets everyone involved and active.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

That's probably what's helped her success so much too, huh?

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Great stage presence. Yeah. So everybody, Oh yeah. Tune in, turn on, and fall in love with one of my favorite teachers,

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Emiliya.

Announcer:

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

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Hello, Emiliya, one of my favorite teachers. So glad to have you. Thank

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

you, Leah. So good to be back. Hello, Dr. Willow.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Hello, Emiliya. So wonderful to have you back and we're so excited to dive in with you today around your incredible expertise and all that you bring to the world in the way of positive psychology and how we can use that to transform some of these things in the world that keep us stuck and in pain, and playing small, and stuck in the shame cycle. So anyway, we're glad you're here. Love.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Thank you.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Why don't we start by diving in around, like maybe give us an overview of positive psychology, what it is, how you look at it, how you deliver it, how you bring it to the world.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, I would love to. So, positive psychology is specifically defined as the scientific study of optimal human functioning, where traditional psychology was an exploration of the mind and how people psyche works. It had focused largely on how do we fix and treat things like mental illness and diagnose and fix things that people would be struggling with. And in 1998, a new field of study was created as its own field. It was called positive psychology, with the intention of identifying how do we get people out of the negative, not just back to baseline, but to get them into the positive, into higher levels of wellbeing and flourishing and thriving. And so positive psychology is the scientific study of flourishing. And the way that I approach it is I run certification programs for practitioners, people that want to learn this in a deep way, that they can apply it to their career and into their work with others. And so we train coaches and speakers and trainers and consultants, and what the science of positive psychology. And Tantrika's and people from all walks of life that are curious about the science and how they can put it into practice. And one of the ways that I uniquely bring positive psychology into the world is also intersecting with my background in Mind, Body, Medicine. And Mind, Body, Medicine is the scientific study of integrative health and wellness and what would typically be considered complimentary alternative medicine. And for me that's the intersection of not just the mind and the psyche, but bringing in all of the body and the social quality of what goes into our flourishing. The spiritual quality of what goes into our flourishing and thriving. And so that's a little bit about me and what I do be in the world. I've been running The Flourishing Center for almost 16 years now, which is really exciting and yeah.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Congratulations. How old were you when you started the Flourishing Center?

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

I was, let's see, we started in 2008, so I was at my early twenties, like 22.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Amazing. Wow.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Yeah. I have to say that, I did Emiliya's, some of her certifications, especially in coaching, and I went into it going, yeah, I want to add another skill to my wheelhouse. And I was so surprised and so delighted and so shocked by how much I needed it. You know, like I had no idea the parallels it was going to bring into my life and how it was going to turn the key to things that really needed to be unlocked, what I was unconscious of. And it's been a really lovely journey and I thought it might be helpful for you to tell the audience the difference between therapeutic models, consulting models, and coaching models, because so many people call themselves a coach, not knowing that there's actually a definition that separates the role of a coach versus a therapist.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, absolutely. And I really want to commend you that you went into that practice having had been an expert in a field having been a professional coach and a sought out leader for so many years where you were doing sessions and you so demonstrated holding a growth mindset, especially even during the painful moments.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

When I was wrestling. Yeah, yeah.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Because you're like, Oh, you know, and it's really hard when you have so much mastery over, something. And then to take coaching as a skill set. It's a very unique skill of how to help people uncover their own solutions. And a lot of coaches will blend, and there's a lot of different ways that people go about coaching. But I really want to commend you because you really embody that growth mindset, that willingness to be a learner, that willingness to look at your own belief systems that would be getting in the way of something. And you really dove in and you're doing incredible coaching now and being able to seamlessly weave into when you're in teaching mode and expert mode and consultant mode and then coach mode on top of it.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Yeah, you really got to change your hat. And that was hard. I mean, 20 years of operating therapeutically in a specific way. And then to do something you didn't know how to do, you know, to like, wow. Just wait for it. And it's been, it's been precious.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Well, I think that's of the one of the amazing, powerful things that, you've been teaching people around sexuality for so long is things that they didn't know that they didn't know. And

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

True.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

it's like you do have that incredible capacity, Leah, to just to humble down and to just be like, okay, let me just learn. Like I want to really understand this and really learn this. And I've watched you go through this transformation with Emiliya as your guide learning this medicine really, and it's just been, it's really been a profound transformation to witness. so,

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

I'm happy to define the difference also, I realize I didn't answer your question because I jumped into my excitement around your personal practice. But so it just, for the audience that's listening, there's so many different ways that we can be of service to people as practitioners from and I like to think of it on a spectrum where there's like the full on surgeon, on one side of the spectrum, where you just lay there and you are as, literally as passive as you could be, and you're just the complete recipient of the healing work to something that is, let's say, a much more purest coaching approach. That would be almost like the Socratic method of the complete, the onus is on you and the teacher. The guide is just there asking very, very simple questions and you're completely doing all the work and everywhere in between. So we've got healers and we've got therapists and we've got consultants and teachers and mentors and guides and counselors, and so many different words that we can use to describe how we can help people. And they're all beautiful and they're all unique. And the International Coaching Federation, which is the school that my Flourishing Center follows. We are an accredited institution through the International Coaching Federation to train coaches and we help our coaches get credentialed through the ICF as well. It defines coaching as a partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that's meant to help them maximize their potential, both personally and professionally. And very simply put, it's about helping people bridge a gap between where they are and where they want to be. And there are many therapists that actually work in a very solution focused, almost coaching like way nowadays. We're really seeing a blend. But one of the big differences is that therapists are qualified to work clinically with people who are perhaps in the south of neutral. So they might be struggling with depression, they might be struggling with anxiety. They may have a diagnosed disease or disorder that is plaguing them. Whereas coaches are trained to help people who are pretty much kind of at neutral, maybe slightly below neutral, but they're really at neutral looking to maximize their life. And if and when things around the past do come up, there's ways in which coaches know how to work with. What are you needing now, based on what you've experienced? And so there is a lot of overlap because of the fact that usually they take the form of talking and asking questions and listening and reflecting back. But a coach brings a unique toolkit to the conversation where they're looking to help a person go through a journey, a discovery process, where many of the answers lie within them. And then when they are exhausted of their resourcefulness coaches can bring in their expertise as well, but it's this partnership around two equals, which is very different than a dynamic when you're coming in to see, let's say a doctor or a psychiatrist where something needs fixing and you are the positional power. So it is a unique skillset. I run the Flourishing Center Podcast where we have coaching session demos, so if anybody ever just wants to like, listen to coaching sessions. I'm so passionate about making coaching be available and when I started coaching, like I couldn't hear it. Like there was nowhere you could go where you could actually hear coaching

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

demos and yeah, watch and listen to the process.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah. Which as you know Leah, we do a lot of, as the way that you were taught, it's like you just have to hear it and do it, and hear it, and do it, and get feedback so that, so if anyone's interested in coaching, you can listen to full coaching sessions there.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

And what's the name of the podcast?

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

The Flourishing Center Podcast.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Cool.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Is there I'm imagining, but I don't know for sure that there's a somatic piece to this positive psychology coaching.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, I'm you know, there is in the way that I do it. There's really no one way to do it, but because of my background in my body medicine, bring a lot of somatic work into it, I also have additional training. So when I first even came to positive psychology. I was getting my yoga training at the, for my first of many, many yoga teacher trainings at the same time. And so I've always woven the two. And in the way that I train my positive psychology practitioners specifically integrates the vitality and the role of the body. And even things like sexuality and things that we're talking about here, all of that is woven into how I work with my clients and work with our students and things that we teach them, but it's not traditionally woven into positive psychology. I think more and more positive psychology practitioners are going in that direction because especially when we talk about what's new in the field of positive psychology, a lot of the new discoveries are linking it to biology. How is gratitude? Yep. How is. Yep. Yeah. Neuroscience brain, you know, how are we, how do we, even the things that induce positive emotions, how are they impacting our mind and how are they impacting us physically and looking at the intersection. So it is where the future of things are going. And I also do additional work, like I'm trained in a psychos sensory therapy that I work with a lot, which is havening, and it's the role of physical touch to create a sense of safe haven.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

I do. I teach people havening. I only know one thing. Well,

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

That's all.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Okay, three.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah. Well there's only three moves. There's only three moves. That's all you need.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

them all. Leah, good

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

You do know

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Really works. It's self soothing.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

It's amazing. To create a safe haven in our body. And I think when we're talking about sexual work, sexual trauma, we're talking about getting to explore the boundaries of what our body is capable of. You can't do that without a first, a sense of safety and a sense of haven. And so I work with Havening with my clients. I work with tapping with my clients. And we give some very basics, basic exposure to our practitioners for this because many people haven't heard of these tools and they're so simple. And they're so empowering because they essentially teach you how to regulate your own nervous system and help you learn to regulate the nervous systems of those around you. People are doing this with their children. They do it with their partners. And so it's definitely an important part of how I work with people.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

In the vitality module we, I think we had a whole class on fascia and, you know, what fascia is and what it looks like and how to explore it. And it, you can get rid of cellulite if you just work your fascia. And it was such a fun class, you know, and to know when you go that deep into loving your skin and your tissue, the sensations that arise and I can testify that I've often felt really tender in my tissue. Like it took me a long time to enjoy massage. And now I can get deep massage. But when I first started, I did not want deep massage at all. It was like if you pressed too hard, everything felt like a bruise underneath. And I think that there was a real connection to something kind of emotionally and how I stored or did not metabolize feeling hurt. So I think it, it goes into the skin and into the body. And so being able to be proactive with helping your body improve. And so, you know, you have things that really contribute to wellness, like sleep, like nutrition, like exercise. I mean, it was. I am not an exercise person. I am not a jock. I'm not athletic, and I am scared of hurting myself. Like I have this little corner in my brain that really struggles with those things my whole life. And you know, when you are driven to go work out because you want to be thin, that was never successful for me. But learning about what exercise does to the brain was the hook that got me in there. And now I realize, oh well I love what it's doing to my body, but I love even more how I feel mentally. Like that feeling of ease to have a more happy life, to feel good in your skin. And I felt like you really brought that home so many times in various modules in the CAPP program.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Well, it's so funny because I was about to challenge you just now when you're like, I don't like to move. I'm like, girl, what are you talking about? You're doing it all the time. I see pictures of you flexing with this big smile on your face. So I was going to challenge you on it, but then I realized where you're going with it because, and it is interesting because we change, right? We can change over time. And I was in the same boat for, I was someone who at the age of 14 started with an eating disorder. After my brother passed away, my parents got sick and looking back on it, it was, and 14 was this pivotal age where all these changes were happening. Not just hormonally but loss of my brother. I started working, I started my first career that lasted for 12 years, so suddenly I was making money which gave me this independence. Even though I was like, I'm still only a child. And it was going all over, traveling all over. I lost my virginity at the age of 14 to my boyfriend who was, you know, four years older than me. And it was just like the thing I thought I was supposed to do and all of this stuff around that age, and exercise was very much, you know, just this trying attempt to change my body. And part of my journey and the journey I'm really passionate about helping people come back to is to come back to this love for one's body. Because as a bulimic, I didn't want to be in my body because I was in conflict with it and I was in conflict with food, I was in conflict with the way that I looked or in conflict with control and things I could control and things I couldn't control. And I think that what you just spoke to Leah, and one of the things that I think positive psychology offers us as to how to heal the body is actually to learn to be in awe of it. Because when you're in awe of something and you are appreciative of something and you love something, you want to take care of it. We take care of that, which we love. And so for me, I like to say gratitude was the best diet I ever put myself on because once I started to express gratitude for my body or gratitude for my food, it was like you couldn't take it for granted anymore. You couldn't abuse it. I couldn't abuse it in the same way. I couldn't do the things that I had just meant disconnected from and did and likewise with exercise, too much exercise, not enough exercise. I needed to wear an aura ring, you know, and a whoop on my wrist for many years to finally give myself the permission to be like, Ugh, I don't feel like exercising. And then I would open up my phone and it would tell me, yeah, you're in the red sister. You're like, you're not recovered yet. No. No wonder you don't want to exercise. So don't exercise. You're not recovered. Wait till you're recovered and then go back and doing these things. And it's just so, it's kind of like I laugh at it now that I needed these different hacks to just come back to something as simple as just listening to my body and. Doing right by it because it's doing right by me and exercising from a place of joy, from a loving to move, from things that feel good. Even when I exercise, I used to try to force myself to do these like strong workouts first thing in the morning, because that's what skinny people did. They woke up and they ran first thing in the morning and I was like in order to be a skinny person, I need to wake up in the morning.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

I need to suffer.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

I need to suffer

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Well, I love how you're showing how positive psychology really works. Like, let me do this because it's going to make me feel good in this way, not because I just want to be a skinny person. You know, it's like finding

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

a should

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

that's really going to drive things forward. So I'm curious what you would say or how you would support some of our listeners who are overcoming body shame because that's actually something we haven't touched on yet and it's such a big piece of inhibition around sexual freedom, sexual exploration, sexual expansion.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

sexual?

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Anything sexual and so I'm curious like how could somebody maybe change their perspective, start to see their body in a different way? If they've been stuck in, you know, I have cellulite, or I have a belly, or my breasts, or whatever kind of shame that they have around their body.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, the word shame within itself, it's like when we feel ashamed or when we hold a sense of shame, it's a painful feeling. And it's a feeling that has to do with believing that somehow we are flawed. And with that flaw, and therefore, right, that I'm therefore unlovable or I don't belong. Firstly, all of it is subjective. So what does it mean to be flawed? And so if we, first thing we have to deal with is to recognize that there is no such thing as perfect. And so we can't force a person to get rid of their shame, but what we can do is we can just take a really good look at it and figure out, well, what are the stories that I'm telling myself around this? And what is the story costing me? Because for me, I used to, I look at how our thoughts impact our beliefs and our beliefs impact our mindset. And our mindset creates the mental schema or the lens through which we see the world. And so this frequent story around, I'm so blank, or I'm not blank enough, all of those frequent thoughts begin to create this story or this belief system that is the shame. This is the story that you tell yourself and it's like, well, why do I even have this chatter? And so for mine was always, I'm so fat. I'm so fat, I'm so fat, I'm so fat, I'm so fat, I'm so fat. And I would do this weird thing where I would like squeeze at the roll in my belly. And I would just used to like, imagine, I just wish I could just cut it off.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Oh, me too.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

yeah, just like where's, like, where are the scissors? Yeah, like I, and so I would just like squeeze around myself, right? And I'm like, here I am I'm like a teenager, right? And I'm just like squeezing these things because it's not flat and it's not perfect. And one of the ways that I healed from that was learning some very basic cognitive behavioral therapy around even talking back to what is the story of so fat? And I literally had to say, that's not true because the definition of being fat is, you know, having a BMI that's higher than this, and even still, let's say my BMI was higher than that, like it's all about the story that we're aligning with ourselves that because I don't fit X mold somehow I'm not worthy of love or somehow there's something wrong with me and what's that costing me? And I realize that I used to have all of this chatter. judgment chatter starts with, I'm so... I'm a... He's a... She thinks... They think... and all of this judgment that I used to have of myself, I realized it's because I was judging other people. And so if I was judging other people, I just assumed they were judging me. They must be judging me, right? So it's like I'd be walking down the street and just like evaluating everybody in their outfits and who's cute and who's not cute, and who shouldn and shouldn't be wearing that. And so once I started to actually just like stop and just love them and just like beam love at them. Suddenly I wasn't so insecure about what I was looking like or what I like, it was just magic. Like that one disappeared. And then the other one

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

That's a good hack.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah. And then the other one.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Those thoughts.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Totally. And just send them love. Send them love.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

God bless. Like if I was on the beach the other day and I was like, yes, where that G-string bikini woman, like love it a who rock it.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Especially for the divine feminine, right? For us to actually love and celebrate the beauty that we can get, from other women, from rejoicing in their beauty rather than feeling in competition with their beauty. I'm not in competition. It's just beautiful and rejoice. The second type of chatter I refer to as motivation chatter, and so motivation chatter is what I call the words that start with You should.... You have to... You need... and it's like, well, why is my brain saying that? It's saying that because it thinks it's somehow going to get me and motivated to do something. So every time you should go to the gym, you should exercise more, you should eat better, you should do these things. And I remember when I would catch myself, especially as I was like weaning off of the eating disorder, probably like a decade into it, I would have these moments where I would laugh at myself because I was like really shoulding on myself that like, I need to order the salad and I need to have a healthy dinner. Then I was like, I actually really like eating healthy. Like I, actually want a really nice, rich, full salad with all the different colors in it right now. I was like, why am I like militantly reminding myself, choose the salad. I was like, I don't need it for motivation. I don't need to crack the whip in order to get myself to do this. And so part of this whole, it's not just one thing that gets us away from the body shame. It's like, Why am I telling myself these things? Because somehow I'm either trying to protect myself that if I say things to myself that are cruel, that if someone else says them to me, if somebody else calls me a name or says something somehow, it's not going to hurt as bad because I've already, I've heard it all before. Right. You can't hurt me.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

You can't tell me anything new.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, I can't tell them anything anything new. I say these things to myself and it's like, okay, well, who's actually who's getting hurt here? Like, you know, who's winning? This isn't, this is a zero sum game, right? Like, nobody's winning here. And I don't need these things to motivate me. I don't need these things to drive me because in fact, they don't. All of that makes me want to not eat healthy. It makes me act out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's like rebel. Oh yeah. I need to do this voice.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Fuck you voice, I'm going to whatever I want. You're not boss of me.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

I can't have that. Oh, let me show you. I can have that.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Cycle of never actually moving forward, just feeling like it's just one stuck action and moment and thought at a time. And yeah. That's a hard loop. Those are good suggestions. Yeah.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

And then to fall in love with your body. I mean, this is the only suit you have. You have the suit for the rest of this beautiful journey and anytime I, you know, this is still my edge. I'm still very much working on this. I've got amazing teachers of the sacred sensuality, sexuality, Tantra work. Leah, you've been such an incredible teacher and inspiration for me, and I've studied with John Wineland and David Dieda and Om Rupani and all these other teachers and one of John Weinland's teachings is that whenever my brain wants to go to the thing I want from someone else, you know, I want my boyfriend to give me more attention. I want him to give me more love or more ravenous energy, or whatever it may be. It's like, how am I not meeting my own needs. You know, how am I not loving my body if I want him to worship this body? You know, if I want him to worship this body, how much am I worshiping this. Right? To be that John, John calls it, she who must be claimed, you know, and it's like, so in order for me to shift in those places, it's like, I want to start with that myself. And so it's like we can try to not be ashamed, but that's I think just the neutral position. That's just trying to get ourselves out of the negative back to baseline. Stop being ashamed of your body. Well, fuck that. Don't just stop at neutral. Don't pass go. Don't collect a hundred dollars. Proceed directly to try to amplify the positive, and sometimes the others just disappear that as you go instead to. You know, finding something that you love, finding something that you love, the sensation of your hair on your cheek, and just finding some pleasure there. Right. Finding the joy, finding the sense of pleasure. Like curves are really nice to run your fingers around, you know, and it's like all this time that I wanted to just have everything be flat, flatten, square. It's like, no, like it's so much more pleasurable.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Scars and stretch marks. If you were just to feel them with your finger, they feel great.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

They feel cool. Yeah.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Like somehow our visual mars the actual felt feeling the sensation on your fingers when you're massaging your own body and feeling your body and it's nuances, like you said, the curves.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Yeah, it's really a great practice in coming home to your inner beloved, I think. You know, it's like any time I've been in relationship where I'm like, oh, I don't know. I'm not really getting what I want here. I'm not having the satisfaction that I need, I'll just go have a little inner beloved session with my own damn self, and all of a sudden I feel so much better. And the thing that was kind of niggling and bugging and like what it just disappears. It's not a thing anymore. Until it maybe comes around again. Right. And if it's one of those things it just keeps coming around in relationship again and again, then maybe you take a closer look at that relationship. But if you can nourish yourself and feed yourself in that deeper way and find that level of self love that is so magnetic, it changes the outer enviroment.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

And so attractive. It does, yeah. Relationships to people change, and I found through, I mean, I wrestled with such self-loathing. It got to the point where I couldn't shut the critical voice off. And it was so cruel and so mean, and I thought if I don't do something about this, something bad's going to really happen to me. So how do I wrestle with that and then conquer it and win? And a lot of things you just said really highlighted part of my journey of overcoming and learning how to love myself. And that love also turned in to how to trust myself. Because I think one of the things that really happens in this separation of I'm, from worthless to worthy, is this feeling that we have to, we need proof from the outside that we're okay in order to somehow be cured of shame. And this idea of like, you do the work first, you want them to do it. You do it. You wish the knight in shining armor would show up. Boy did I have longing. I just want the one. I just want the one. And then realizing I'm the one I've been waiting.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

That's right.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

And I've got to start behaving and treating myself the way I just wish someone would come and do it all. You know, tell me it enough times and I'll believe you. And so I had to tell myself enough times until I believed me. And that really helped shift the sound of the voice that is kind of a meanie. And when you stop judging the voice, you can see it's just a fearful part that really is just afraid of death. It kind of comes down to that, like it just doesn't want to die. So it's rough on us to preserve whatever it is staying small and safe, you know, somehow is a part of the ego's agenda, when really that just stops us from living.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, well, and I think what you just highlighted there is a really important part of how to work with that voice. In positive psychology we sometimes refer to it as the rider and the elephant. It's lots of different metaphors that we use. It's really Ganesh, you know, it's the more emotional, unconscious part of ourselves and the more rational reasoning thinking part of ourselves sometimes at odds with ourselves. In treating the ego not as something that you like, you're going to destroy. because the more you try to destroy it, the more it fights to stay alive. The more it like digs its heels, the more it's like, no, you need me to tell you how really awful you are because you will never amount to anything and you're not going to, for whatever it might be. And it's really just there to protect you. So it's like we are going to live with this part of ourselves as we just little by little begin to shed it and shed the ego. And a lot of people are turning to plant medicine now as ways of getting those, those glimpses into how to shed the ego. Little by little by little, and then over the process of over time, it's like we start to have more, more of that space, but to be kind to it, to literally just be so kind to it, to say the way that you would to a toddler having a temper tantrum, it's like, thank you so much. You're trying to get my attention. Thank you so much. You're trying to keep me safe, you know? Thank you so much. You're just, you're a familiar voice that is afraid to be disappointed or afraid to be, have other people let you down so you're going to armor up and all these other things and so just. Thanking it, blessing it, sending it on its way as a important and beautiful approach to how to work with this part of ourselves.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

I have another question for you. And this was about meaning and purpose and how can we understand meaning and purpose in our desire to want to feel more connected? I mean, what I see is people feel lonely. They're not sure that they belong and they feel separate. And I think that can lead to a lot of shame. Thoughts. I'm not good enough. I'm not cool enough. I'm not a part of that club. They're so exclusive, you know? Can you say a little bit about the correlation between, you know, feeling a sense of meaning? That might lead you out of feeling sorry for yourself or feeling stuck or our inability to really take risks because we're afraid to fail.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah. Well, there's so many interesting words that you use there, and they're concepts that I think are worth picking apart so that we can understand them individually and then put them together into a bigger picture. So we have the question of what is meaning. What is purpose? What is belonging? What is mattering? And what is loneliness? And what is isolation? Right? So about six different concepts. I'm just going to pick them apart. So isolation is just this feeling that we get when we feel alone, when we feel that we are we don't have the connection necessarily that we crave, but you can be isolated and not feel lonely. So loneliness is a gap between the amount of connection you want and the amount of connection you have. So you can not be isolated. You could be surrounded by other people and you could still feel lonely. And when we feel lonely we experience a type of social pain. And research shows that social pain, such as being being shunned, social pain, like being rejected, for example. All of that social pain, lights up very similar areas of the brain as physical pain. And in fact, in some ways it's actually worse in those saying goes, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. It's actually not accurate because when you physically break a bone, yes, it hurts in the moment, but usually you forget the pain. And when you recall the pain, you can remember that it sucked, but you can't really remember the physical pain. Like it, you can't call upon the pain.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Like the sensation again. Yeah, it's foggy.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Whereas if you think back to a person who betrayed you, right, you could like it, like washes over you.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

You can feel it, you can bring that emotion and that sensation back around again.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

How it gets coded in the brain is actually similar, yet in some ways stronger because your brain basically says, don't forget that person was not safe. That person can come back and hurt you again. And so our brain literally codes it as don't forget. And the way that it codes that is it gives you this sensation. And so when we are, yeah, when we are lonely, we are in pain. I

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

It hurts so bad. That makes sense now.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, exactly. So when we're lonely, we're in pain. When we're isolated, we're in pain. We hurt. And when we are in pain, that sense of inflammation that we can get, that sensitivity makes us sub. It's a subjective experience and it makes us view things through a very different lens. And so people with a depressed mood. Or people who are feeling lonely may, may be surrounded by loved ones and not able to take in the goodness. And so we do need an antidote to loneliness. And the antidote is things like belonging and things like mattering. And it even just, so I think the New York Times came up with an, came out with an article just today where they were recognizing that their efforts for de and I are insufficient. So now you have places talking about D E E E I N B. It's hard to say the two double E's and the ands together. Because they're saying that it's not enough just to value diversity just because you're diverse, you're valuing diversity, you're trying to build equity and including people. That doesn't mean that people are going to feel like they belong. So now there's this even larger emphasis on belonging, where I also feel that people need to not just feel like they belong. The other one is that we need another, of course, we need another initial. We need the M for mattering because mattering and belonging are different. They're very connected and they do tie to meaning and purpose. But belonging is when you feel accepted. You feel accepted with a group of people, you feel like you can be yourself. You do not need to pretend you do not need to morph yourself. You You can literally come as you are and you belong. You can be you, and these are, and so therefore you can be like, these are my people. This is where I belong. This is where my nervous system can rest. I don't have to be on guard. I don't have to be looking over my shoulder. I don't have to worry. How am I being perceived? I'm with my people and belonging is beautiful, but it's a tricky one because. You can't make someone feel that they belong. You can do your best, you can do your best to create the conditions of we and not just me. You can use we language. You can remind people like, you know, around the creating as best as you can. That safe haven. We can't just make a person feel like you, they belong. We have more entry points in under mattering. So mattering is similar to belonging, but it's different. They're connected. People feel that they matter when two conditions are met. One is they feel like they make an impact. They feel like they add value and they are recognized for that value. So, you know, hopefully how much the Sex Reimagined Podcast matters to people, because as you are creating it, you know that you're creating something valuable. But it wouldn't be enough. It's also people coming back and telling you, this was so helpful. This changed my life. Hearing that made all the difference. Thank you so much. And that makes it, you know, that this thing matters. It matters to you, it matters to others. And so the reason I say we have entry points into mattering even more than belonging is because we can tell people, we can say, Leah, I really value your teachings and I value your heart and dr. Willow, I value your earnestness and your love and your ability to see to the core of what a person's experiencing. Like I can tell you that I value you. I can tell you that you impact me, and what you choose to do that with, to do with that is up to you. I still can't, impact whether or not you believe it, whether you take it in, whether you believe you add value, but you have more of a way in than just belonging. And then all of this ties into meaning because we relationships are often where we drive our sense of meaning and purpose from and in our lives. And so my life is meaningful when it has a sense of mattering. When it says, when it has a sense of belonging. But meaning is also meaning is about comprehension. It's about my life makes sense in the way that I want it to. Purpose is about what do I want to do with that? So purpose is the unique way that each of us impacts the world. It's like, what is my purpose? What is my why? What's my purpose? What's my why behind what I do? And so of course, if we can tie our sense of purpose to something like being of impact, being of value, feeling connected, all of these things will absolutely impact our wellbeing and can sometimes help us get over that hump of the vulnerability that it might feel to get yourself out of isolation, to reach out to a new group, to make a new friend, to take a new class. You know, we have to make our why bigger than our, yeah but. Yeah, but I don't know anybody. Yeah, but I'm going to be the oldest one in the room. Yeah, but you know, whatever it might be. Yeah, but I'm going to have to put myself in an uncomfortable situation. I don't know how I'm going to be perceived. Well if your why for doing it is stronger, then your fears, you're going to be more likely to act. So I know that was like a whole thing to, for all these.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Yeah. I think of this level of receptivity that is rooted in self-worth. So with this, you know, you matter and you belong. It's like that's really cool to hear that there's more access points to the, you matter. It makes a lot of sense. Right? Because you can be like, here you belong. Yeah, come on in. It's all good. You're part of

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

your member card.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Yeah, but if the level of worthiness is blocking your ability to actually receive that welcoming, then that's where the, you matter can get into that piece of like, I'm not really worthy, but it's like, no, you are worthy. Look at what you added to the situation. Look at what you brought that no one else could have brought. Like you are worthy of belonging in this.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

And it's also, and it's also the difference between, like, sometimes you know, we want to make people feel good from an authentic place, but we sometimes think we have to do it through compliments. And compliments are beautiful as Leah's former co-teacher would always say compliments are free. Yeah, well, the thing about them is whether they're positive or like, there's still a judgment. So, a compliment is an assessment. It's my judgment or evaluation of the situation when I compliment Leah, your flowers are so beautiful and Willow, your flowers are so beautiful. It's still me judging and assessing the situation. But when we go to the level of, I'd really appreciate. You know, I appreciate being, I appreciate the colors that you guys are bringing to our conversation. And then I can see these like beautiful tulips are about to pop right behind Leah. It's like you can't argue about someone's emotional experience. Whereas if I say, oh, that's really cute, or that's really sexy, or that looks great on you, there's a little bit of wiggle room where I can get caught up on. Is that accurate or is that not? But if it's something I value, which is something that's important to me, or you are important to me, Or I appreciate that you bring this to our marriage, to our friendship, to my company, to wherever it might be. There isn't that place to like, let the ego argue. Oh, they're just saying that, or that's not true. Right. You compliment someone in the way that they look. There's room for them to sort of be like,

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

To disagree.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

To disagree. Yeah.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Oh, it's not that cute. It's not that pretty. I don't look that good in it. But yeah, if you're like, the watching you move in that way or seeing you in that color makes me feel happy, excited.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Brings out inside of me. Yeah.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

I mean, when I think of like, the women who feel like there's not as much connection with their partner because of the empty compliments that they can't really take in, or they're not believing how that could be transformed, if their partner could describe what it feels to them, what it means to them, you know, and it's sometimes those feeling words and descriptions are hard for people. There's

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Well, and I think that's there's an opportunity too for whomever is receiving the compliment to be like, well, tell me more. You know, I want to know why. Why do you think this looks good on me? Or why do you appreciate that about me? Like I want to know what it is, what it does for you. So we have to kind of pull it out of each other because we're not trained to do this.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Well, and then that points to again, this piece around receiving and there's not a lot of attention put on our ability to receive love well. A lot of attention is put on are we giving our love well? and in my work we spend a lot of time separating the roles of giver and receiver so that people can start to accurately measure where they want to expand into so they can have, you know, a better experience, especially in the love, in their love life with partners. And so this thing about receiving is a rewiring process.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

So much. And then we wonder why we're so malnourished for love and why we're so thirsty and we're so hungry for this insatiable. It's this insatiability and it

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Why we reject it too.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

yeah, but it. Yeah, But it would be the same thing of there are times where I was working with a functional nutritionist where I was eating this, like what seemingly immaculate organic, grass-fed, free range diet, and wild everything, and my gut was inflamed and I wasn't absorbing my nutrients. So I was literally pooping out all the good stuff. I did a poop test and she's like, all the fat that you should have been absorbing, that should be going to your brain. Nope. It's coming out on your poop. Yeah, it's coming on your poop. Right? So that's why in even in CAPP in the positive psychology training, the way we talk about new nutrition is actually through the role of absorption. It's not what you eat, it's how much it's what you absorb, right? So it's not

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

How do you correct your absorption?

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Well, first thing.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

receiving, but from a tissue standpoint.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Let's start with the tissue because there's so many powerful metaphors. An inflamed gut cannot absorb nutrients in the same way. You have a leaky gut, it leaks through. So what happens when the tissues in inside of our digestive tract are porous? Their little villi inside of our digestive track. It's basically tissue going all the way through. You're just one, one big giant tube with appendages from mouth to anus. One long, long, long, long, long tube. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Yeah.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

And when you think about it that way.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

One hell of a tube

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

One hell of a tube with appendages, you know, and we could talk all about how the tissue on the inside of the mouth is very similar to the tissue of the anus, but

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

You're well, there

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

and the vagina, right? That's a whole other story.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

are important things.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, But when it becomes inflamed, it literally, it becomes swollen and so you literally get leaks in the gut where food escapes and then food passes through and it's escaping out of the digestive system and it's getting, it could get into the bloodstream, it gets into other organs. The body recognizes that as stress. It goes warning, clean up on aisle four. We've got stuff that's leaking out of the gut, and so then it sends little cytokines and stress responses over into the area of the body, basically creating inflammation. So we get inflamed, the tissue gets even more swollen because now it has an, it has leaky gut, it has things that are slipping through. So first thing you have to do is, get rid of the inflammation. Get rid of the stress, because in that inflamed state, you can't take anything in. You pay somebody a compliment when they're all wired and they're like twitching from stress and you're like, you're doing a good job at work, and you're like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm doing a terrible job. You know, it's like we need to relax. We need to relax. In order to receive, we need to empty the cup. We have to empty the vessel. The same way that a sponge, right, like a sponge, can't absorb anything until you squeeze it all out. That's why I was celebrating you Leah when you came to this program and you said, I want to study positive psychology. And then you said, I want to study at a level deeper. I want to study coaching. You had to empty your cup because you're like, nothing new is coming in right now. Because I have so much story around how this should be or who I, how I work. Right. So it's like we need to first be able to soothe our nervous system. We have to know that it's safe. We have to get rid of the inflammation. We have to, even if it's temporarily, like for a container of, for five minutes, I'm going to just receive, I'm going to receive touch. I'm going to receive the gifts of nature as a blessing to me to see something beautiful or feel the sun on my face.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

And really experience it, not just let it pass you by.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Even if it's just in little moments, can I absorb just this one little bit and start absorbing it more and more? But we have to be able to release first and to empty in order to then absorb. In order to receive. And you know, I play with this all the time. For me it's a constant practice. The being, not the doing. And the doing is the masculine energy of efforting, of willing, of structure, of order, and then,

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

And also time to prove, it's if I do all of this, I'll finally be okay.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Be okay. Yep. And it's purpose, right? It's like I have a lot of purpose and I have a lot of drive and a lot of beautiful masculine energy in me. And in order to settle into that feminine energy, I need to move slow. I need to move slow. In order to feel I need to move, I need to literally I need to just sit there and wait. You know? It's like the sperm swims to the egg. The egg, she just floats down in her glory, letting things be magnetically drawn to her, which is like, that is not my MO right? Immigrant kid, lost her whole family by the time she was 35. Fending for myself in many ways, just needing to make it. That's not how I operate. And I have and yet I want to feel. I want to, I want to receive, not just because I'm a woman, but because from a Tantric perspective, the divine masculine is the universe, that universal consciousness of God or Shiva or whatever perspective we, want to take on that higher power. And then everything that is made manifest, man, woman, animal, tree, plant is the feminine, is the receiver of that energy. So it's like, I want to be in my feminine, not just because as a woman, but because I am a human being and I want to exalt that, that energy. And so it's like slowing down. Breathing, moving slow, creating the space and in order to create space, you literally have to clean it up, right?

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Right. And there's something about being able to feel pleasure. You have to choose to go, oh, this feels good. Oh, the sun feels good. Oh, the smell of this flower smells so good. I want to smell it three more times. And I think that's like this. You have to want it. I loved what you said about your desire has to be bigger than your but. You know, you have to want it more than your but, that needs to be on a bumper sticker or on a magnet on every refrigerator, certainly mine. Because that was a really good reminder and you have to sometimes dig in deep and pull that up so that you can live it more fully or, you know, have some kind of strategy to walk your way. Into that desire. And so what do you have to say about desire?

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Oh goodness. What do I have to say about desire? Well, for many, many, many years I gravitated to Buddhism as a spiritual philosophy, as a spiritual practice and thought it had so much wisdom in terms of teachings on how to live and how to be in the world. And and then the one place I always had a tricky time was around their perspective on desire. Because it was just like, I was like, oh, whatever you're not going to love everything. Right? So it was like I'll take the parts that I love, I'll let go of the parts that I don't until I found Tantra. And Tantric Vedic philosophy that predates some of the different Buddhist perspectives I was studying and there was a very different perspective on desire. That desire is fuel, desire within itself is just pure potential energy. And so from my perspective, the issue with desire is not the actual feeling of desire, that energy is just pure energy. It's kundalini, it is the, it is the force that drives the universe. And as we have desires, as we want, the universe expands with our want because we are, from my perspective, we are one. We are the other side of one another of the we, you know, us combined together. We're just the other side of the one just trying to know itself. So when I have a desire, It's like it's exalting, it's the universe is expanding. It's when I cling to the desire, then it becomes attachment. So I think that the Buddhist perspective really has more, you know, when they kind of come down on desire, I think what they're referring to is more the issue around being attached to one's desire. But actually the suffering and the control that tries to come from trying to fulfill on those desires. But desire within itself is just, it's just feeling, it's just energy. And I think that our desires are being able to feel them is what makes us tapped in, tuned in, turned on. It's that turn on. And again, it's not an easy thing. You know, for me I didn't know what to do with do desire. In fact, I was, you know, I was never. Able to talk about things like self pleasuring with my mother. And it was like, you know, I was waiting to get the sex talk when I was like a child. And when I like my, like waited for my mom to give it to me because that's why I saw parents sit on TV. And my mother was like she wasn't doing it, so I was like, mom, aren't you supposed to like give me the talk? And she looked at me and she's like, didn't they teach you about that in school? And she just like completely, like talk about feeling shame, like the vulnerability to ask. I was just like, Oh, we don't talk about this. Okay, nevermind. And so it was like, for me feeling desire was something that it was like I would have to just extinguish. It was like this feeling that I didn't know what to do with, and it was...

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

like dirty naughty kind of feeling?

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Dirty, naughty, uncomfortable. Like how do you just sit turned on? It was like, if I got turned on, I would have to get turned off. Like you have to turn it off because it's dangerous, right? Because like you might do something with someone that you might regret this lust, this thing might take over you. So it was so interesting because my relationship to my own desire was just then was just like, well, it's easier just not to be desiring, you know? It was just like, just shut that part of you off altogether. Because if you get turned on, you got to just go find some way to turn yourself off and. Finish it, you know? And I don't have time for this.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Oh my God. I think so many can relate to that

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

I so relate to that.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Cycle so, so easily. It's the Eros, you know? It's that which makes the world go around.

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

But then coming to Tantra and learning that actually I can source that and I can actually stay in the turn on. And when I'm turned on, I am magnetic. I'm magnetic to what I'm attracting. I have energy to do the things I want to do. I'm creative, I'm resourceful. It's not a distraction. I can, if I can take that energy in my first and second chakra and pull it up into my heart and pull it up into my mind I can actually source that. And that was just like, because again for me, it was just something I got turned on. Like, got to got to go fire extinguish

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

You gotta go

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

a vibrator. Forget being with oil and, you know, taking the time to love myself..

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Well, I think that really exemplifies the power of being in environments where you are being accepted. And there is permission that the part of us that might feel shame when someone else cares about it and says it's beautiful. You can't believe the story that it's something you shouldn't feel or that you have to turn off. And then that gets more approval, more accepting, and everyone starts to share their light in that space. And it dissolves. It's quite a beautific gift of one of the things Tantra's good at. Well, Emiliya and I have to get to a class. I

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Yeah, you guys

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

I know class started And you asked me about desire. I was like, all right. I texted the class. I was like Leah and I will be on in a little bit.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Okay.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Emiliya, how can people find you and what gift you have to offer people for this?

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

Yeah, well you can find us at www.Theflourishingcenter.com. Lots of free resources on there. Everything from in Free Introduction to Positive Psychology Course to we have a Course On Resilience in there and tons of information on our podcast. And then if you go to www.Liftmy.life L I F E www.liftmy.Life. we actually run a class Monday through Friday that you can take a live class where you can experience positive psychology. The classes are donation based, so you can just show up whenever you're available, pay what you can, and and opportunity Monday through Friday to take your mind to the gym in some ways and learn all of these different positive psychology practices in real time. Would love to see you guys on there live.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Thank you so much.

Dr. Willow Brown | SxR co-host:

Thank you so much, Emiliya,

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

You're welcome. Thanks for having me again.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

I'll see you again in

Emiliya Zhivotovskyaya | SxR Guest Sexpert:

what you're doing. Okay. Bye.

Leah Piper | SxR co-host:

Love, love, love.

Announcer:

Now, our favorite part, the dish.

Leah:

It's dish time for Emiliya 2.0!

Willow:

You just, you just finished her, um, her training, right? Positive psychology coaching

Leah:

I'm a recent graduate of the, uh, Flourishing Center's group coaching program, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Willow:

Oh, that's so cool. God,

Leah:

it's a, it's a, it's a different, It's a totally different way of facilitating a group. And there's something about the magic that happens with the group. It's just hard to explain. Like things just collide. And I think it's, it's what a lot of people maybe have never experienced. If you've never done group coaching, you can't. You don't, you won't know what this is, but if you have, then hopefully you do. What can I say? This, this

Willow:

Well, what's

Leah:

moment right now, I have to say, this, this very unclear moment that I'm having really reminds me of how I felt about the whole interview with Emiliya. Like I was, I was spaghetti on the wall. I felt like I was all over the place. It's like, it's one of those times where you wish you could go, do over. Although she was brilliant, you were brilliant, I was just a knucklehead.

Willow:

Oh, that's so funny. Well, you also were about to present in her class right after the

Leah:

Oh, and I did a terrible job.

Willow:

I'm

Leah:

Terrible, terrible, terrible execution, let me tell you. I thought I was prepared, but I like made every rookie mistake there was to make, so it was an all around kind of horrible day.

Willow:

Maybe it's just one of those days. Yeah, I

Leah:

was! And aren't I lucky? All of it was filmed.

Willow:

The worst day you've had in a long time.

Leah:

That's

Willow:

I got caught on

Leah:

of my test that I failed and there is, uh, obviously this episode everyone just listened to.

Willow:

Well, it was a great episode, I thought. I could not tell you were spaghetti on the wall. It was an internal feeling that you were having.

Leah:

It was an internal feeling. Yes, those internal feelings, man, oh man. Well,

Willow:

time.

Leah:

You know, I haven't actually gone back and listened to the interview yet. I, I, you know, I'll have to put it through the editor and, and see what the final result is. Oftentimes when I think I've just done a deplorable job and I'm like totally embarrassed, I want to put my head back into the the, uh, turtle shell, I watch it and I'm like, okay, you're

Willow:

It's not that bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Leah:

um, we'll see what I think. I should be editing it here in just a couple of days, so.

Willow:

Okay. Good. Um, well I thought her interview was fantastic as far as I can remember. Just a lot around, you know, I mean all of, it's so funny that you're saying like, the deplorable job and I did terrible and all this like sort of negative, critical self talk, which is like exactly what the interview was about. It's

Leah:

And that was like,

Willow:

You know, like find your positive self talk, like let's like, you know, and it's funny. I just actually got off a coaching call with somebody who, who has a big struggle in their physical body, like has a real legitimate debilitating, um, disease that will be the death of her at some point. And, um, and every time I get on a call with her, you know, we go into the Soma, we find the thing that But that hurts and we figure out what's behind it. And at the root of it all is this, like this critical voice, like I'm not worthy. I am doing a terrible job. I didn't do life right. I have regret. Da da da da da. And once we start to dig up that root and really take a look at it and find out what's underneath it and what's behind it, then all the physical pain really shifts and changes and goes away. So I just think it's so interesting how powerful our minds are. How powerful our minds are to create our physical sensations and also our emotional sensations.

Leah:

sensations. Yeah, that's interesting that you bring that up because when I think about one of my most acute shame spirals I ever went through was, it was right after I'd done my, my level one, um, certified tantra educator training. It's like, I don't know, maybe 2002, 2003, somewhere around there. And I was ready to put up my shingle and I was going to teach my first class. And so I, I prepared it all. It was a day long. It was successful. People came, I made money, the whole nine yards. Uh, but afterward, I, I think I stayed in bed for like three or four days. I could not leave the house. I was, it was either the bed or the couch. And I was crippled. I felt utterly crippled and the thoughts that were spinning through my mind were, how could you have done that? How could you have done that? You are a fool. Who do you think you are? Like just ripped myself to shreds and it was actually one of those experiences that it was like, wow, I have got to take this in hand how I'm treating myself is so cruel. It is so deep. It is so ugly. And here I was, I just did this courageous thing.

Willow:

Right.

Leah:

this thing that was such a big deal

Willow:

it was a

Leah:

I was celebrating, it was a success. It was all these things. And I just couldn't believe that I felt so terrible after having such a big moment that it would crash on me like that. And since that moment, I have, I have been walking myself down a path of like, not taking any of this so seriously. And so even though like, and this whole journey of podcasting and doing online courses and being in front of the camera more and more and more. I'm starting to have so much more self compassion, you know, like I could just, I'm sure when I watch the episode I'll cringe, but I don't have to hate myself, I don't have to go through a shame spiral, I can just laugh at myself and, and invite other people to have a giggle with me, and it's not, and it's not even that self depreciating. You know, like it's, you hold it loosely and, and then what a relief. I'm so glad I have that ability now. And I think positive psychology really helped get

Willow:

Yeah. I think it's, it's really helpful in that way because I mean, ultimately we're all going to just die someday anyway, and it's all going to go away anyway. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is going to last forever. So we just do the best we can with what's in front of us in any given moment. And what you went through with that cathartic moment, I think it's really an initiation. Cause when you have a big expansion and you show up in the world in a different way. You're gonna have a big contraction that follows. I had that myself over the last year and it was fucking intense Yeah I mean I just stay with the contraction when it comes and do my best to when the Expansion comes because the expansion's fun, right? You gotta ride that wave But know again that it's gonna be followed by a contraction. It's not gonna last forever So is the contraction. It's not going to last forever. But stay with it. Stay with the emotions that come. Know that they're not who you are. They're just waves passing through. You know, and be the sky. Just be the ocean. Be the, be the, um, That's what I've really learned this past year. It's just, uh, Just to drop in back into that place of, of, you know, the greater, the greater is ness that,

Leah:

that,

Willow:

that I'm not actually this woman, this persona, this emotion, this body, this thing that I am, but actually being witnessed into being by something greater. So.

Leah:

Yeah, I love that, this whole idea of contraction that comes after expansion. If you are listening to this think of, uh, a breakthrough workshop maybe you attended or some sort of seminar or therapy session that was like really impactful, or maybe it was a romance or a vacation or something that you just flew so high. And then like you come home and it just kind of cripples you, you know, like that, that big expansion turns into a contraction of depression. Or anxiety. I've got a student right now that's going through that. Just finished the CTE one, not unlike myself back in the day. Um, and had like, like that feeling inside of longing was met. She was hanging out with the like minded people who wanted to swim in the deep end and like, oh my god it could be possible this thing that I long for could really come true. And then everyone goes home to their day to day life and she's like, Oh my God, I'm afraid I'm going to lose it. Like, how do I transition? I feel like all those good feelings, they're slipping away. They're slipping away. I don't know how to get them back. And that's what, you know, begins the journey of a self cultivation practice and where you start to, you know, first come to gratitude. Of all these things, how the contraction is pointing out truths for you. And then from there, you can start to sort out, okay, what are the next steps I need to take so that I can live this? I can integrate this more and more and more into my day to day life. So that's not something that you have to always rely on that's outside of you, but it's something that you can find inside.

Willow:

You find it inside, yeah. And so I think that, that part of the initiation process, that part of the contraction is, is the pinnacle point where you get to find it inside of yourself, like you get to become what you experienced in the exterior.

Leah:

Yeah, and I think Emiliya, just to like, you know, to round this all up back to Emiliya, you can really see, I mean one of the things I love about just hanging out with great teachers is the embodiment.

Willow:

yeah.

Leah:

Of their knowledge and of their wisdom and of their lived experience. And I think for such a young woman, she really exemplifies that. I mean, she's not even 40 yet and she's accomplished so much in her career. And the work that she's doing in the world and how many people a year she's really helping. Um, and I just love the, the bombs of like embodied wisdom that she just dropped throughout the whole episode. You could really just see how bright and talented she is. That's so fun.

Willow:

Exactly, yeah.

Leah:

All right. Well, Hey, go check out the flourishing center and come check us out at www.sexreimagined.Com. Love, love, 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.

People on this episode

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Dr. Willow Brown

Host
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Leah Piper

Host
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Emiliya Zhivotovskaya Mazor

Guest