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About this episode

Are you feeling disconnected from your own pleasure, physically present but emotionally absent during intimate moments? For many, the path to sexual fulfillment can feel blocked by a haze of stress, routine, numbness, or the pressure to reach a specific end goal. In a world where busyness and performance often take center stage, it’s all too easy to lose touch with the authentic, embodied experiences that deepen intimacy and bring lasting joy to our relationships.

In this episode, listeners are guided through the steps to rediscover and reclaim embodied pleasure in their sexual and relational lives. The conversation dives into practical, somatic approaches that help individuals and couples slow down, tune in, and get curious about what truly makes them feel alive—moving beyond goal-oriented sex to something richer and more connected. Expert insights and real-life stories illuminate how noticing sensations, embracing vulnerability, and practicing new skills can unlock not just sexual satisfaction but a greater sense of confidence, communication, and intimacy overall.

Susan Morgan Taylor, MA, is a leading somatic sex therapist who helps couples deepen their intimacy and create lasting, fulfilling connections. With over 25 years of experience in somatic healing, she developed The Pleasure Keys Process™, a powerful approach to reigniting sexual and emotional harmony in relationships. After a personal awakening from a sexless marriage, Susan became passionate about helping others remove obstacles to pleasure, love, and orgasm. She is also the creator of the Pleasure Keys Retreats and host of the Sex Talk Café Podcast. When not working, she enjoys hiking and singing karaoke in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Episode Highlights

03:49 The role of somatic awareness in sexual connection.

09:18 Unlocking the first step toward pleasure.

13:53 Susan’s personal journey from sexless marriage to full-body orgasm.

19:13 Overcoming tension and numbness to rediscover sexual sensitivity.

22:55 Redefining orgasm: Moving beyond the goal-oriented experience.

27:11 Embracing discomfort and obstacles to deepen intimacy.

35:29 Notice, name, negotiate: a framework for couples facing sexual mismatch.

37:45 Radical accountability and communication in sexual relationships.

43:09 Prioritizing pleasure: initiation, desire, and direct versus indirect routes.

47:30 How direct pleasure sensitivity impacts every area of life.

52:01 Understanding polarity, giving and receiving, and closing reflections.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Take time daily to slow down and notice sensations in your body, such as breath, tension, numbness, or tingling, to begin building somatic awareness.
• Use the three N’s by first noticing what you feel, naming it, and then negotiating with yourself or your partner about what you need in the moment.
• Shift away from a goal-oriented, climax-focused approach to sex, allowing for more presence, pleasure, and connection in the experience.
• Set aside regular, undisturbed time for exploring your own body or intimacy with your partner without any agenda other than curiosity.
• Welcome uncomfortable sensations or emotions (like numbness, frustration, or even grief) as information and a doorway to deeper pleasure rather than something to avoid.
• Take responsibility for your own pleasure by communicating your desires directly and honestly to your partner instead of relying on them to guess.
• Use deep, mindful breathing to promote relaxation and expand your capacity for pleasure, both solo and with a partner.
• Experiment with consciously choosing roles—such as giving, receiving, leading, or following—in intimacy to expand your emotional and erotic range together.

Mentioned

The Pleasure Keys eBook (link) (ebook)

ERP 287: How To Engage In The Art Of Giving And Receiving: Using The Wheel Of Consent – An Interview With Dr. Betty Martin

Evolve in Love (program)

Connect with Susan Taylor

Websites: pathwaytopleasure.com

Facebook: facebook.com/susantaylorma

Instagram: instagram.com/susanmorgantaylor

Podcast: sextalkcafe.net

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

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Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

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Episode Transcript

Susan, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. I can't wait for our conversation today. This is going to be fabulous.

Yes, I am looking forward to it as well. I don't know that I've mentioned to you, but I know one of your backgrounds and trainings is in somatic psychology, and that's something I utilize to some extent, but have training in. I just think it's such an important modality. Especially when we look at sexuality and physicality as it relates to relationship, having connection with the body is just so important. So I love that you have that as part of what you're bringing.

Thank you so much. I think the somatic piece is really the future of this sexual work specifically, really, getting out of the analytical and bringing body-based experiences to really inform so people can meet. I think a lot of people don't know what that word means, that somatic piece. It just means of or pertaining to the body. There's so many different threads of expression under that umbrella of somatic work. Really how I use it, it's really about using the body in helping.

I mostly work with couples. Though I'm a specialist in women's sexuality, I primarily work with couples. Helping my couples really have that meeting, in real-time, the thing that's actually in the way of their ability to connect, or their capacity to experience more mutual fulfillment sexually, or their capacity to even know what they want. There's ways to actually come into that in a very experiential way that doesn't have to involve any kind of sexual stimulation, we're fully clothed. But really be able to meet it in real-time through real-time practices. I just find that that really helps move the needle more so than just getting stuck in conceptual ideas or just talking about a problem. It's great to talk, but there's a real limitation in that. So I got into the somatic work very early on in my sex therapy journey, and really, it's what gives me the most joy and where I really get lit up the most about helping couples.

Thank you for just spelling that out a little bit. How I'm interpreting what you're describing is, perhaps what we notice in our body, certain sensations, perhaps it might feel tingly or might feel a little shut off, or just where the breath is flowing. Do you have examples around the felt experience, for people who are listening, and what that might look like?

Yeah, I love what you're describing. What's so important about what you just said is that's really the first step, is that ability to notice. So I have what's called the three N's: Notice, Name, and Negotiate. Noticing is that very, very first step, which it sounds extremely simple, but it's remarkably, for most of us, much more challenging than it seems like. Because we have to really slow down and shift our awareness from being in the logical mind, the prefrontal cortex, so we're thinking, planning, doing problem-solving, and we're slowing down to shift our awareness in a different aspect of our beingness, which is the somatic awareness: being in the body. The noticing of sensation automatically shifts us from that thinking mind into this present moment here and now, where we're just what's here now.

A lot of times, people who are new to the somatic work, a lot of times what you'll hear, the response is: Well, I don't feel anything, I don't notice anything. I feel nothing. I always say that's the best thing. Because if you feel nothing or numbness, that is something. That's not nothing. That is something. Most of the time, almost always underneath the nothing or the numbness is a whole mound of sensation or feeling or emotion. So it's just a matter of that slowing down and learning to notice what is happening, what is available to me right now in my awareness, what can I notice right now? That's really the first step. That ties in, and we could chat about this too, but the two types of pleasure. We need to have that in place when we're talking about pleasure, and how do we have more connection and deeper intimacy in sex and intimate relationships. The two types of pleasure are really one of the keys to that, and noticing is the first step in opening one of those pathways, which I'm happy to chat more on that, if you want to hear about that or your listeners would like to hear it.

Yes, I do. I just want to also comment, in that as you're giving some context to what people can start to pay attention or bring more contact with the body, the present experience, that that can be an access to pleasure, as you're going to likely talk to us about. It also can perhaps give a lot of information. So whether or not we're just focusing and being in the intellect or planning and anticipating, we're not necessarily being in contact with what is alive in the moment. Or perhaps there's certain messages. I mean, the body is always giving us cues. Oh, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm uncomfortable, or I need to move, or something like that. As it relates to pleasure and sexuality, that there perhaps are ways in which we can use that feedback or those cues as forms of information. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. Because a lot of times what's happening, or at least when couples come to see me when they're stuck, and I think this is probably true for a lot of people, they might not realize it. But it's true for me in my own story and my own journey, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute. It's really that we get sort of this goal orientation. 

So when we're in that state of mind, we're really just shutting off all other potential for other types of experiences that can happen. A lot of women, in particular, have challenges reaching orgasm. There's a whole reason for that too. So we're kind of in this mindset of, I'm going towards this goal, and there's a lot of mind involved in that. When we're doing that, we're usually not slowing down enough to really start to notice what else is available right now. When we get rid of the goal, then we're able to actually access a completely different realm of experience. We're slowing down. We're noticing. We're keeping our awareness in the body on the physical sensations, instead of in the mind on the end game of where I'm trying to get to. It's a completely different thing. And what can happen when we do that, when we slow down like that, shift our awareness into the body, get rid of the goal, we actually can then access much deeper states of pleasure and orgasmic experiences, which then bring us into a feeling of deeper connection within ourselves, our own sexuality, and with the person that we're with.

I want to hear more about that. So let's hear from you a little bit. I mean, you mentioned your own personal story. How did this become a focus for you in supporting couples and women's sexuality?

It surprised me as well. It was interesting because I was in a sex marriage for about 10 years, and I was the one in that marriage that was totally not interested. So I want to make that very clear. Because a lot of times when I say that, people think that it was the other way around. But no, I was actually the one that was so not interested, didn't want to engage in that way with my husband at all, and there were a lot of reasons for that. There were a lot of things happening relationally that caused me to just lose interest in that kind of intimacy. When we were intimate, I didn't have any problems. I got lots of orgasms, not a problem. But it was over pretty fast, maybe 10 minutes, I'd orgasm, it was great. But there was really this deeper thing missing for me. I wanted a deeper connection. I wanted to be more spiritual. I wanted to have these full-body orgasms that I'd heard about, but always felt like: Oh, that must just be for somebody else, that's not for me.

Long story short, fast-forward, the marriage ended, and I find myself a couple years later in another relationship with someone that said: Oh, I can rock your world. You want to feel full-body orgasm? I can make you do that. Now, this person had actually studied sexuality and had some training. So I thought, wow, this guy is really going to deliver. He did not deliver.

So I ended up finding myself in the same place of really realizing, wow, I noticed that I had always made my partner responsible for my pleasure. That was the aha moment. I thought, my goodness, I don't want to continue this pattern. I had really put my pleasure in somebody else's hands. I made my husband responsible for it, and he didn't deliver. I made this new guy, and he didn't deliver. So I really just said, well, wait a minute. This is my body, and if he said he could do that to me, then surely I can find that pathway within my own sexual nervous system, my own body. Surely that exists within me, and I could find a way to open that within myself.

So I took on the study of my own sexuality. I made a commitment that I'm going to learn this, I'm going to figure it out. The day that I made that declaration, so many amazing things started to happen. I had made a date with myself once a week. I said, I'm going to work with my body, I'm going to touch myself intimately, and I'm really just going to start to explore and just see, what do I feel? That noticing piece. Now, I didn't know any of this, what I know now, and I've done lots of study, I've studied with people. But I didn't know any of this. So I just said, I'm going to slow down, I'm just going to start to pay attention, become more aware.

I had a couple of crazy things that happened. The first one is, I had an unexpected interaction with a somatic sex therapist that absolutely changed my life. I had a couple of sessions with this therapist that were absolutely life-changing. I was also in graduate school at the time, getting my degree in professional counseling. So I was blown away, and I thought: Wow, I don't know how this person just did what they did with me. But in two sessions, it was like night and day. Then during one of my pleasure dates, so I called them pleasure dates. I had two hours once a week, put on candles, put on music, got undressed, and was just with myself intimately. I began to have a full-body orgasmic experience, where I had this wave of pleasure that just came up through the bottom of my feet, shot out my heart. And I had this realization in that moment, this love just pouring out of me. I had this realization in that moment that nobody gives that to you. Like, you can't bring pleasure to somebody on a platter, you can't give an orgasm to somebody. It's a state that exists naturally within us, within me, when I had removed some of the things that were in the way of my ability to just relax into that.

So that's what I had done up to that point. It was just really a few weeks into this experiment. I had started to really clear away a lot of the tension. So tension is really one of the biggest obstacles to pleasure, the thing that gets in the way that prevents us from being able to feel, to notice more, feel more. There's a whole bunch of other things that go with that.

But what had happened for me, I slowed down, I started to notice, and I encountered a whole lot of numbness in my genitals. Beyond the numbness, there was deep grief and sorrow, anger, frustration, and just all those emotions that came out. But what happened when I let myself just feel them deeply and let them move through my body, I had developed much more sensitivity. Fast-forward a few weeks later, I had this full-body orgasmic experience, and I knew right then and there that if more women knew this, if more people understood this, the world would be such a better place. So I knew right then and there that I was going to go into sex therapy. The somatic piece came in very early on actually in my sex therapy career, just a couple years in. I just really recognized that that's really the pathway to pleasure. I had found that. That's the name of my business, by the way. I had found that pathway in myself. I think when we have that clarity, when we know how to access what do we want, what do I want, what do I need, what feels good for me, what do I not want? When we can have that level of clarity, it's so much more enjoyable to connect with another human being.

I was very blessed, a few months after starting on that journey with myself, to attract a lover into my life who was very supportive and super open-minded and just ready and willing to learn. So I had a chance to really test some of this stuff out, relationally speaking. So that was really game-changing. That was really the start of my journey with sex therapy, and then specifically, the somatic work.

Thank you so much for sharing. I'm just sitting with how this was more or less an experimental intuitive process for you, that you really gave yourself this permission to tune into you and your body and your experience. Yes, there's so many teachers and ways to get guidance in this, and yet you let your body be the teacher, and how honoring. I guess the way that I'm hearing that is just your unique experience and your unique expression, that you were meeting that in this real present way, and the fact that it was two hours. I mean, when you talk about tension, sometimes people achieve or attempt to achieve the climax, or orgasmic climax in the way that we traditionally think, through tension, through just seeking pleasure and really focusing on pleasure. Just that sensation, and then that helps have that experience in the traditional sense. But you're speaking about something that perhaps lives in us, is part of our vitality and our energy and our expression. But oh gosh, when you were talking, I was almost getting the sense that maybe many of us are walking around in this disconnect with our sexual self, and that have we even explored our unique? Tell me.

Well, sure. I know, and I love what you're saying. So there's this idea of climax orgasm, this one pointed focus on like, let's have this one experience—or multiple, maybe you can have multiple orgasms—as a thing that happens, an event in time and space. That's why I call it climax, because orgasm is truly like, it's literally life-force energy. It's the ability to notice, feel, and respond to sensation or stimulus. So wouldn't it be really cool to become orgasmic rather than have an orgasm? So our bodies are capable of so much more than what we realize.

I think what happened in my own journey, when I was starting out there was, I had a way that I could reach climax. It was through a certain type of physical stimulation, it was always reliable, and then I used a lot of mental fantasy. Now there's nothing wrong with that, that's fine. But one of the things I did was, I experimented with what if I got the mind out of it completely? Because I can always go back. I think people sometimes feel a little threatened by it. Like: Oh no, because what if it doesn't work? We're really attached to the way that we know how to climax. So I really was desperate for something different. You'll do anything when you're just like, I just wanted this so bad, I wanted to have a new experience. So I really trained myself, and I'm not going to say it was necessarily easy, but I learned how to just put away the mental fantasy. I'm just going to put that on the shelf over here, and all I'm going to do is just be with the physical sensation.

So it was a constant like: Oh, my mind is wandering. Nope, I'm coming back to physical sensation. It was frustrating because I didn't feel a lot. So I didn't have problems reaching climax or orgasm. But when I really slowed down and got present, there wasn't a lot of sensation in my genitals and my clitoris. It was kind of numb. So it was very tempting to be like, well, let me just default back so I can just go for it, so that I don't feel frustrated, because I know I can make myself orgasm. I said no, I really want something different. And what I encountered was a lot of frustration. I'm like: Oh my God, I don't feel anything, but I want to feel something.

What never works—and this is another key to pleasure, by the way— is trying to tell pleasure where to go. We can never force ourselves to like something we don't, or force pleasure and tell it that it has to go here. I have to feel good in this way by touching myself in that way. That just doesn't work. We find sensation where it already lives. We find pleasure where it already lives. So I slowed down, felt the frustration, and that was when I had these massive emotional releases and these big openings that happened. Then all of a sudden, once I let all the grief come out, or whatever it was that needed to be felt, suddenly I had more sensitivity and more sensation in my genitals.

We can learn how to become orgasmic just from having the wind blow against our skin, or looking at a beautiful sunset, and feeling just the ripples of joy and pleasure that that can bring through the whole body, not just the genitals.

Do you use the term ecstatic and orgasmic interchangeably? For people listening that are like, what do you mean? I'm getting kind of this ecstatic, lit up, and I can feel the pleasure, I can feel the waves, and it feels in that orgasmic territory, but it's not necessarily orgasm. But also, people would liken that to a heightened state of the ecstatic experience or peak experience. Can you help us a little bit more?

Yeah, that's so great. Thank you for asking that question. Because I think when we hear the word orgasm, we immediately think genitals. We don't tend to think skin, sun, wind, gentle, just touch on my neck is orgasmic. There's an important distinction, because where I see a lot of people get stuck, especially and particularly in working with women, if you're familiar with let's say a clitoral orgasm or even a vaginal orgasm, a g-spot or cervical orgasm, and even a full-body or heart orgasm, these are completely different experiences. So what we'll do a lot of times is we're looking for that kind of experience in our whole body, or in our cervix. It's actually not the same sensation. It's actually extremely different. Those types of orgasms and orgasmic experiences are accessed through relaxation, not through tension.

Tension and release, which is what you mentioned earlier, where we're tightening our muscles, we're creating lots of friction, lots of excitement, and then it's like, oh, and then it drops off. Literally like a little vocal, and it drops off. The orgasmic experience is really, it's a willing. That's why it's so important, getting rid of that goal-oriented frame of mind. Because we go in looking to make something happen, and then we're like: Well, I'm just not able to have a full-body orgasm. That's what I thought. Or I can only have an orgasm in missionary, let's say. So we get really in these ruts.

One of the things that I did with myself, when I was having that experiment with myself is, I told myself: Well, wait a minute, that's just a limitation. I can have all different kinds of it. I started to reprogram my mind so that I could then allow for new possibilities in my body. So it's just getting out of this rigid structure that we're in and opening up. Orgasmic is a better description because it's, again, that definition of the ability to notice and respond to stimulation, or to receive and respond to pleasure is another way that I've heard that defined before. It's so much more expansive. It gives us so many more opportunities and options for pleasure in our bodies that's not just focused on genitals or a linear climax.

Yes. I'm aware of breath, as you're describing with the orgasmic, through the relaxation and the noticing and using breath, that there can be more possibility and expansion. Again, as you said, part of the noticing, and I don't know if it's a second point or a similar point of just not directing, not trying to lead pleasure, but allowing and meeting it with breath and with awareness. Is that right?

Yeah, and breath is a big important part of it. A lot of what I do at my couples retreats, when I'm working with couples at the retreats, is really helping them to slow down. We work with breath, and we work with presence, and we work with awareness. We also work with, in very experiential ways, learning how to tell the difference between being directive and goal-oriented, versus being more in the opposite of that, which is diffused awareness in the body, in the feeling sense. There's some really, really fun practices that I do with my couples to help them experientially, and in their bodies, learn the difference between those two things. Because the beauty of it is, we really ideally want to have range. We want to have access to everything that's available to us. We don't want to be just stuck in one or the other. We want to be able to pick and choose which one would serve this moment the best—which would serve my partner, which would serve pleasure, what would serve this relationship right now—and to have that ability to move between the two. So both are really important to have.

So as we talk about the couple, as you mentioned doing the retreat work, I'm aware that as you talk about the narrow focus or more rigid definition of climax, that that's a pursuit of that, and that could be seen as a script. That we have a certain way that we know, that we trust, that we feel reliant on. Then as a couple in a couple bond, that there's a way in which the couple has a routine or a norm or a way that works, and they resort to that. Then there's also this unknown territory, that people perhaps have to confront their own anxieties around this unknown if we're exploring pleasure. Talk to us a little bit about the couple dynamic with this.

Love it. First, we have to be willing to screw up and mess up and have bad sex. If we're in a couple, in a long-term relationship, and we're in the routine, we're in the rut, the habits are there, it becomes very comfortable. It's kind of like, you know the pathway, but it gets boring. It gets boring. So we have to be willing to try new things and get curious. The quality of curiosity is one of the best things that we can bring, especially in the sexual domain and in long-term relationships. To be willing to not have to get it right. 

We don't have to come in perfect. That can create a lot more spaciousness for new experiences to happen. I think the other piece of that too is, couples get afraid if they try something new and it doesn't “work”, that someone is going to be upset, or it's not going to work, or it didn't work that time. We have to get out of that mindset of something working or not. Because especially when we're learning to shift our awareness into the somatic realm, or in the body-based sensation of slowing, it's a whole new approach to sex really is what we're doing. At the outset, you probably aren't going to feel a whole lot. Because we're not working with excitement and sensation, we're working with sensitizing and sensitivity. So these are two different things. Excitement is a lot of friction, goal orientation, it creates a lot of tension. Whereas, sensitivity is the opposite of that. It's slowing down, it's noticing. If we've had a lot of the other kind of sex, because we're so used to that, that's what's all over the media and what we're taught is normal.

Very little foreplay, and then just getting to it.

Yeah, stick it in. You're supposed to orgasm in two seconds. That's just not the way that it really works in the real world for most of us, especially not for women. So slowing things down, and at the outset, it's going to feel like not much is happening. That's the truth. Then the beauty is that we're going to meet the things that are actually in the way of our deeper pleasure and our deeper connection. We're going to meet those things, and those are obstacles, what I call the obstacles to pleasure. Those are things like guilt, shame, fear, anger, obligation, shame, these feelings that we don't want to feel. That's the stuff that's going to come up. So it's not that sexy at the outset.

That's what I was thinking. We have to tolerate some of the discomfort to meet some of that for the transformational experience.

Absolutely. I love the word embrace, so that's a word that I use a lot in my work. It's about meeting and greeting the thing that is there in that moment, no matter what. It's also an aspect of truth, which is another really big value in my work. But embrace is really beautiful, because we're not in a battle with the “negative” feeling. It's not that I shouldn't feel that, I don't want to feel that, or I'm afraid to feel that. That's very common. I'm afraid to feel the anger, or afraid to feel the fear, even afraid to feel the desire because we've been let down so many times. Or what if I get judged, or what if my desire is too big for my partner? So there's a lot of fear that happens.

But what we do is, we learn how to just meet exactly what's there. So if I'm afraid of feeling the thing, then we feel the fear. That's actually the fundamental emotion that's present. It's not the shame, it's that I'm afraid of feeling the shame. So we feel the fear, we invite the fear, and this is going to sound crazy and kind of masochistic, but we turn the volume up on the fear. That's really just a way to take the tension away, to get the resistance to dissolve. So it's just a matter of saying yes, and what if I said more, bring me more of that, turn the volume up on that. How can I feel more of that? The only reason we're doing that is just to take the resistance away. And when we do that, that fear or that emotion can be fully felt, and the crazy thing is it's connected to our life-force energy, which is orgasm.

So it is possible to have experiences where some “negative” emotion, like fear or anger, let's say, can literally shift into a full-body orgasmic experience. I've had that happen, and I'm sure other people out there listening possibly have had that same type of experience. It's not unheard of, and it's not uncommon. It's a matter of what's my relationship with my body and with the energies that flow through my body. The more I can say yes to all of it, then the more access I have to connection, pleasure, and orgasm.

Yes. Thank you so much, Susan. So as I'm listening and we're talking about an individual body and sexual energy, and we're talking about perhaps a couple interaction and bond and relationship, do you help people navigate or get some bearings around? Because I can appreciate if both people are approaching a sexual space together, and one person is having a lot of uncomfortable feelings, or what we might label intense or difficult feelings, and the other person is too. Do you offer people guidance around how to go into this unknown territory?

Yes, absolutely. That's one of my specialties, is helping couples with what's clinically called desire discrepancy, but you might more commonly hear mismatched libido or just differences in desires in general. Maybe your libidos are fine, but you just both want different things. It's a specialty area. It's a lot of what I do at the retreats and in my private coaching work with couples as well, is how we do that. There's really a very simple structure and a simple pathway to it. Now, it's harder because we're coming up against our own psychology and our own emotional things that come up, and all the baggage that we bring with that. That's the work. But the structure is very simple.

So a lot of what we're doing when there's a situation like that happening, it's the Notice-Name-Negotiate. So let's just say that we have a couple and, and one part of the couple is having the experience you just described. Notice: what am I feeling right now? Name it: I am feeling X. Then the negotiation is just: Am I able to identify what I want or need right now? That's the negotiation part. There's about eight sub-steps in each of those, Notice-Name-Negotiate, and there's a whole bunch of skills that go with that. But at its most fundamental level, negotiation is, can I identify what I need or want, and can I either give that thing to myself? Maybe it's something within myself I can resource. Maybe I need to breathe. Maybe I need to relax. Maybe I need to focus on my body sensation so I can shift out of my mind. Or maybe it's something relationally that I can ask my partner to provide for me. Could you hold me right now? Would you just look into my eyes? Would you tell me that you're here and you're not going anywhere? Would you tell me you love me?

We can advocate for ourselves in the relational space. That's the thing that creates a deeper connection, because we're now more deeply connected to our own self, and then we have the skills, ideally. Or if not, work with professionals like yourself or me, work with Jessica or myself, to get those skills. Because that creates the clarity, and when we have clarity, we have more confidence, and connection is a natural result of clarity and confidence. That's what everybody really wants. 

So the clarity is really that first step, and that's where those three, Notice-Name-Negotiate, that fundamental skillset really comes into creating that clarity. Really, when you get good at that, the sky is literally the limit. You can do so many more things with somebody when you just get that foundation in place.

I'm imagining that the learning curve of this, I don't know if you see this, but I imagine people may be in the practice of the Notice-Name-Negotiate, and then there's some type of tension, and then they're like, boop, go back to what works. I know what works, let me just abort, and they just go into what they know. Do you find that people sometimes have to get a little bit more comfortable sustaining, especially if their partner is having their own reactions?

Yeah, there's a couple responses to that. Ideally, you have a common language. Ideally, you have a proven format and a proven structure, so you both have a common lens that you're now looking through together at the relationship, and at the sexual relationship specifically. That helps a lot when we have that. Now, it doesn't solve all of that, because we're humans. We're still going to sometimes be like: I'm afraid to say that, or you said that, or you hurt my feelings. We're still humans, and that's going to happen. The next piece that I would offer is to understand that you are 100% responsible for your own pleasure, or you're 100% responsible for the experience that you're having. So if you're having an X, Y, Z experience, and you want something different, it's on you to bring something different. If we're defaulting into the patterns of avoidance, let's say that's the pattern. Like: Oh, I really want to express this, but I'm afraid. So I'm just going to not say it, I'm going to do all these other things around it to try to get what I want.

So what I would do in that is say: Okay, I notice I'm doing this. Notice. What do I need? That's the naming. What do I need right now? Okay, I just need my partner's full attention. I need him just to sit down with me and just listen. I just need him to listen and not say anything. So now I can ask for that and I can negotiate that. I can ask to receive that. So it's really about that radical accountability for my own experience in the relationship. Both partners are 100% responsible for their pleasure in the sexual relationship, and that little piece can be such a game-changer for so many couples. I've seen the light bulbs go on, as I've worked with couples now for over a decade. That piece, it's so simple, yet it can be so enlightening and so groundbreaking to have that.

Absolutely. I'm so glad that you've been emphasizing the importance of recognizing when one is in the practice of noticing, naming, and negotiating. That there's the option of: what can I resource, what can I give myself, what can I be in a place of offering support to that need personally? That gives so much freedom, rather than feeling dependent or hinged on a partner to give, especially if they're confronting their own fears or insecurities. That it doesn't get gridlocked, and that there's a lot more space there. Is that right?

Absolutely, yeah. I'll be honest, it can still sometimes get gridlocked. It's not like it works perfectly every time. But the beauty of that is, if we have the common language, we can help each other in the relationship. If you see your partner is stuck, you're like: what do you need, what can I do? Like, we can inquire, we can use those tools. That's why having that common language in the framework, as a couple, I think is just so important, and that's the foundation. Then you're both looking through the same lens at what's going on. You're both resourced in the same way. So that if I'm stuck, then my partner is so good, he can know, I'll ask her what does she need? If I see him having a hard time or something happened, I can inquire, what do you need right now? And sometimes we know. Ideally, we know. But we don't always know. That can happen too, and that's okay. Then I can just say, I don't know right now. I don't know. That's totally valid also, we don't always have to know all the answers all the time.

It seems like an access point. I love that you're acknowledging that really there's a whole range here, and that it's okay. It might not go the way you hope, or that feels synergistic. And also, if we don't know, that's okay too, that that's perhaps just a starting place. So the first thing I wanted to respond to is just, perhaps in a couple bond, that both partners are on the same page, that they value or that they're in practice of this. That there's a shared agreement that this is part of the relational dynamic and utilizing this tool, that offers a lot of containment or container for this exploration.

Then the second thing is, in modern living and people's pace of life and busyness, it occurs to me that some people really get caught up on just initiating. One partner might be tracking, do they look available, are they available? It's like, how do we even find each other? Do we schedule it? Or does it just happen and there's a way in which we're more resourced, like weekend morning? But I think that this is potentially really helpful, that okay, let's hold space, let's be in practice, and let's just start with noticing. Let's just notice.

I love that. And what I'll say to that is, one of the best things to notice in a situation like that is this one question that I think every couple should learn how to answer this question in a moment like that. Whose desire am I following right now? Whose desire? Is it for me or for the other? Whose desire am I following, my desire or my partner's desire? Because when we know the answer to that and we have clarity on that, and ideally, you're equipped with some of the other skills that come along with the Notice-Name-Negotiate piece we've been talking about. To be very simple, if you can identify, is this something that I'm desiring right now? Am I desiring to hug, touch, kiss, or make love to my partner? Is this something that I want? Then we have the answer for how to go about initiating it, ideally, if we have the skill. There's a lot of ways that can look. It can certainly be like checking them out, sort of like the less direct way. But there's also ways to be very direct about it. Would you be willing, are you interested in, can I invite you into the bedroom right now?

There's ways to actually invite that so that we're honoring our desire. Because what happens when we're disconnected from that, we don't have voice, we're not able to name and do the negotiation piece relationally, what ends up happening is, I mean, we could do a whole podcast series just on that topic. Either people try to sneak, or they manipulate, or they hint, or they put it on the other person. Do you want to have sex right now? Instead of: Hey, I really want to rock your bones right now. I want to go get naked with me. I mean, that can be really hot too. I'm just going to own it.

So there's a certain amount of work that has to happen for a lot of couples. Again, it's meeting the fear of rejection. A lot of it is fear-based. I'm afraid I'm going to be rejected. I'm afraid my partner might not want it. But what if they say yes or they mean no? So all that kind of stuff needs to be cleared up, so we can have a clear space in which we're relating. There's clarity. We know whose desire are we following? Who is it for? What role am I in, the giving or the receiving role? My job is different depending on which role I'm in inside of that. When we have that clarity though, then the pleasure can actually live in that space between, because now there's no more guessing. There's no more like: Oh, is he liking this? Is this what she wanted? Did I do it right? She liked it last time, I can't tell if she's liking it. We can get rid of all that stuff that's just mind chatter, that just gets in the way of the joy and the pleasure and the connection.

Absolutely. I love just, again, the owning it and the way in which we can have more clarity, and then approach and be more in integrity, if you will, or aligned around it. It also occurs to me too, Susan, that there might be people that are so much in their head, they maybe don't even know their desire, or even whether or not one is a little bit more spontaneous in their desire versus responsive and might need a little bit more of that contact to feel the arousal. I guess I wonder what you would say about just prioritizing the sexual space. That we don't know what's going to happen, but I'm a yes to being in a space with you and just seeing what emerges. It doesn't necessarily mean sex or intercourse, but can I show up and just see what I can start to name or what I can start to notice? What do you think about that?

Absolutely, yeah. I love that, and there's so many things that we can bring in. There's not just one way to do anything. I think I very much look through the lens of what principles are at play. I think in what you just described, you're right, with the different types of arousal: the spontaneous, versus contextual or responsive, which is the contextual desire where I'm plugged into my environment depending on what's happening around me, I'm getting turned on or not. It's critical. It's a lovely thing to know and to understand if you're wired that way or the other. But regardless, in order to really be tapped into what I want, the pathway to that is actually through awakening our capacity for direct pleasure.

So no matter how you're wired, spontaneous or responsive, we need to have the ability to access our own desire, and we do that through waking up the pathways to direct pleasure. So I said at the beginning of our conversation, there's two types. Let's talk about that real quick.

Yes, let's go right back.

Okay. So there's two ways we experience pleasure. We have the direct route and the indirect route. The indirect route, it comes through the visual cortex. So it's like, if I see my partner having a great time, I'm touching him, and he's like: Ah, that's awesome. I'm like: Wow, I'm really getting turned on by that. That's indirect, it's coming through the visual cortex into the brain. Something like watching pornography is the indirect route. Even just seeing a beautiful sunset and getting a lot of joy from it, that's the indirect route. It's through the visual cortex into the brain, which is a valuable way to access pleasure.

Problem is, a lot of us tend to get overly dependent on that way of experiencing pleasure versus the direct route. Things can happen over the lifespan that disconnect us from the direct route. The direct route is just what it sounds like. It's the nerve endings in the skin, in the whole body, not just genitals. Hand, lips, and genitals have the most nerve endings of the whole body, those areas. So the ability to notice sensation on the skin, it goes direct from the nerve endings on the skin up to the brain. That's the direct route. And what happens is, there's a whole host of reasons why we lose contact with that route of pleasure. There's social conditioning, religious programming, shaming as children when we're sexually exploring. A whole lot of stuff can cause us to make that route feel very unsafe. Yet, that is really the route towards knowing what I want, what I don't want. Being able to access in my body, what's my yes and what's my no, what's my limit and what's not my limit.

So there are practices and ways to start to cultivate that and to open that pathway. That was a lot of what I had done in my story I shared. I didn't realize I was doing that at the time. That's what I was doing when I was slowing down, noticing sensation. I had a lot of numbness, and then there was a lot of grief, and then I felt the grief. Then I had all these sensations, and I had full-body orgasm from that. It was opening that direct route. And many times what we encounter is, when we start to really intentionally work with opening that direct route, we're going to meet the stuff that's in the way. We're going to meet the shame and the sadness and the obligation and the fear and the sorrow, and a lot of that stuff that doesn't feel so great. But the beauty is beyond that. Once we let ourselves just feel all of it through embrace and saying yes to that, from that, that's where the more sensation becomes available. More pleasure becomes available to us. We've now expanded our range of experience and our capacity for pleasure.

We have the indirect routes, it's fairly simple. That direct route is really the key. So that's really the starting point with that noticing. That's how we know what we want. Then we can have fun experiences like what you just described. Well, I don't know, let's just see what happens, I don't know how I'm going to respond. But you're going to do a lot better if you have that pathway accessible.

I would wonder, and I'm imagining if you can speak to this, that if someone has been nurturing and developing that direct access to pleasure, that this perhaps affects every domain in life. Just feeling clearer on your yeses and your no’s and your pleasure in any domain. Is that right?

Absolutely, that's the thing too. We don't really start with sexual touch. When I'm working with a couple, obviously people come to me because they're having challenges in that domain, but we back it way up. We're actually starting more with the building blocks of pleasure and the building blocks of intimacy, which is just a skillset and a learning how to access this direct route, and the noticing and the naming, and then the whole act of how we go through the negotiating and who's giving and who's receiving, having that clarity. So yeah, very much.

Well, I know we're winding down, and you just spoke about the giving and the receiving. I love just the clarity around the giving and receiving. I interviewed, is it Beth Martin who wrote?

Oh, Betty Martin. Well, I've trained a bunch with her, she was a big influence in my work. So a lot of what I use in my work is from her body of work called The Wheel of Consent. She's great, love Betty.

I love it. I'm curious, how do you feel that fits with? I know there's a lot around polarity, around erotic, like masculine and feminine. I mean, that's probably a whole podcast episode, at least, for sure. But anything you want to say about how that fits?

Yeah. So I can speak to it how I view that, because I do a lot of polarity work as well, and I've trained and have some amazing teachers in that domain. I think, with that piece, we have to get out. You hear the word masculine and feminine, and they've been very misinterpreted and misunderstood. It doesn't mean man and woman. It doesn't mean what genitalia you have. So we have to get rid of that mindset. So some teachers of mine use the words Alpha and Omega to describe those two energies, which I just love that, because it's so much more expansive.

I do polarity work as well with my couples. The beauty of that, we talked a little bit ago around being in the directive. There's experiential practice that I'll take people into, like how to feel what it's like when I'm in what we would call masculine or alpha. There's a beauty to that. It's not a bad thing, we need that capacity to get shit done. We couldn't have this podcast right now, Jessica, if we didn't have that. Nothing would happen, we'd just be in a totally different part of our brain. So we need that. So that's just the ability.

I love to use the analogy of partner dance. I've been a dancer my whole life, and partner dance is one of my absolute favorite, favorite, favorite. Any kind of ball or any kind of partner dance I love. We have a leader and a follower. Doesn't matter what your gender is, either gender can lead or follow. But the leader has to be two steps ahead in his brain or her brain. You are two steps ahead at any given moment. You know where you're going, you know what you're doing, and you also are leading your partner into these moves. You'll be a terrible lead and you'll hurt your partner if you're not knowing what you're doing, knowing where you're going, making sure you're not running her into the wall, and you know you're two steps ahead. That's our masculine capacity.

The feminine is the follower in the dance, and I love being in the follow role. That's my favorite. I lead and follow and dance, but I love to be in the follow role. A good follower, her awareness will be actually diffused and in her body, and sensing the whole environment rather than directed on: I'm taking the steps this way to the left and then that way to the right. We don't have that as the follower. We're soft, we're fluid, we're surrendered, and when we have a good lead that we can trust, it's a beautiful dance that can be created in that dynamic. So it's the same thing sexually. 

Some of that I believe does feed into The Wheel of Consent work in some ways. Because people try to put polarity onto that all the time, and she has a lot to say about that. But what I have to say is that there's a doing and a non-doing. So if we look at that through the lens of masculine and feminine, that's all that is. Those are two energies: the doing and the non-doing. One is surrendered and in the flow, and the other one is more active and doing the thing. So I see that whole thing as the yin and the yang. Oh my gosh, I could so go off on a tangent.

I know. I'm like, we're just scratching the surface with this. Well, what a treat to have you on the show and just all the work you're offering for people to be able to learn more about their sexual experience and what's possible. How would you encourage people to get more connected with you and what you have to offer?

Aw, well, thank you for that. For anyone listening that wants to go a little bit further on the how of what we've talked about, this Notice-Name-Negotiate and some actual practices, I have an e-book called The Pleasure Keys. So your listeners can get a copy of that at PleasureKeys.com, and that'll help give them some structure and take you a little bit deeper on the conversation in terms of how do we actually apply this in real life. So PleasureKeys.com for that. Then all of my other stuff, including information about my private coaching and my couples retreats, which happen several times a year, we've got one coming up in I think April this year, and the fall. They happen several times a year. But all that information lives at PathwayToPleasure.com. That's my main website where everything else lives.

I'll make sure to have the link to both of those websites on today's show notes. Is there anything else you want to mention, that you want to let people know about?

Well, I just want to thank you for having this platform and for doing the beautiful work that you do, Jessica. Really, you're bringing beautiful work into the world. And for having these conversations. I think it's so important that people know that they're not alone and that we can talk about this stuff, and that there is support out there. It's not shameful to need help and guidance and support. So people need to know that it's available and it's not a thing to be ashamed of.

No, and I love just your personal share and just your journey. I do my best to talk about my learnings and my being on the path and developing, it's a process and an unfolding. We need support. We need teachers. We need guides. I'm so grateful just how clear you are in providing your support. So thank you.

Thank you.