Hi, thank you for joining the Empowered Relationship Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, licensed psychologist and relationship coach. Today’s episode 257, “A new paradigm for understanding true sexual connection and intimacy”, an interview with Diana Richardson.
I am so pleased to be sharing her with you today, as I believe she has done such a brilliant job in offering her teachings and understandings around connecting with our body, connecting with our significant other, and really entering into a landscape that most of us haven’t had access to… So I hope you enjoy today’s episode.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast in the top navigation bar, and there you’ll find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 257.
Before we get started, I wanna take a moment and center with you. I’m gonna be just revisiting the intention for the Empowered Relationship Podcast. As I do so, I just wanna invite you to check in with your own resonance, perhaps your intention, or perhaps just even taking a moment to breathe. As we’ll be talking about in today’s episode, just turning inwards, and as we bring awareness to our inner world, what becomes more alive and begins to emerge.
Again, I’m going to be naming the intention for the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and that is to set you up for success in relationship, helping you feel better equipped, more prepared to navigate the terrain of long-lasting intimacy, so that you can co-create with your significant other a relationship that represents you and your partner, that you feel enlivened by, connected in, feel safe within. At times, this process might challenge us, might ask us to grow, or heal, or develop parts of ourselves that we have not really given attention to, or perhaps suppressed even.
So often what gets activated in relationship is a teacher, is curriculum for our development, if we so choose to engage in that way. And the episodes on the Empowered Relationship Podcast are intended to support you, for you to feel in community with others that are on this path as well.
As I’ve talked about, I do my very best to practice these principles as well. Even though we’re not face-to-face and in direct contact, there is a quality of investment and a high value for relationship, and the development of relationship.
Again, if you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you’ll find today’s episode, 257, “A new paradigm for understanding true sexual connection and intimacy” an interview with Diana Richardson.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Diana Richardson, born in South Africa, is one of today’s leading authorities on human sexuality. Author of 8 books, including best selling “Tantric Sex for Men”, “The Heart of Tantric Sex” and “Tantric Orgasm for Women”. Her interest in the body prompted a personal exploration into the union of sex and meditation – the essence of Tantra. Since 1993, she and her partner host weeklong retreats for couples in tantric lovemaking in Europe.
Diana, thank you for joining us today.
Diana Richardson: Well, thank you, Jessica. This is a real honor to be having this time together.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Agreed. I am just in awe of your work and what you contribute, and it’s just a pleasure to offer listeners an experience of you and what you have to share. As we look at potentially a new paradigm around sex and love-making, can you help people have some sense of where you’re coming from around that?
Diana Richardson: Yes. You know, the whole thing happened very organically for me. I didn’t have any intention, I didn’t have any goal. When I was like 32, or really just after 30, I started experimenting. Now I’m 66, so it’s a good 30 years ago. Or was that 40? [laughter] I didn’t have any sexual problems per se… But I did get some information from two sources; one was Barry Long, who was a spiritual master from Australia, and Osho, who was a spiritual master from India. And they both talked about conscious love-making.
I took a few tips from books or cassette tapes at that time, and started to implement them into my love-making, and I was just so blown away what a difference it made. It wasn’t like immediately you have these cosmic experiences or anything like that; it’s just like “Wow…”, I just started to feel myself as a person very different; how I saw women, how I saw men, how I just related to — I related more to the present, and more from a simple, innocent kind of a space.
So for over five years I was experimenting very solidly, and with the time came really a deep understanding. Along the way you get insights and revelations… But it really wasn’t anything I was looking for. You know, like “Now I want to be a sex educator.” Actually, I was educated as a lawyer, and then a massage therapist. So the whole thing for me has been very interesting, that little steps have all added together and I ended up being a person who does know quite a bit about conscious love-making, and so on.
But what is important, Jessica, for me to share is that my experience is heterosexual. So in that sense, it’s about the male/female connection, but at the same time, many of the principles that I work with, that I play with, can be used by couples in other gender orientations. Of course, there might be some penis/vagina things that don’t fit, but honestly, so much can be adapter to any two people coming together to make love.
So I think that’s important for me to say at the outset, so then people who do have other orientations can also listen in a way that — yeah, they can find something that also applies to them, although not everything will do.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. And they can be included in the conversation. It might take some adaptation to perhaps the specifics, or what you might suggest, but it sounds like all of it can be very applicable to different pairings.
Diana Richardson: Yes, absolutely. And actually, I have worked – on unfortunately very few occasions – with same-sex partners. Or I’ve had same-sex partners, especially women, write to me, having incorporated some of what they’ve read in my books, and they said how much it helped them.
So even at my teaching, which I’ve been doing for 25 years with couples, is hetero couples. I know for a fact, through these little experiences I have had, through other orientations or other same-sex couples, that it really does have a place and it really does support anybody who is making love.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I agree. I’ve read definitely Love Keys, and I know you have several books that guide people in these principles, and I just remember being so struck by the real contrast of what you teach and how different it is from perhaps mainstream or conventional ways that we perceive sex, and I just remember it being — it resonated so strongly, and also just how it could be applied in any type of connection in sexual intimacy… So I appreciate you really giving voice to that.
Diana Richardson: Oh, beautiful. Thank you, Jessica.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, so for people that are new to you, and perhaps just meeting you for the first time on this interview, can you help people with how your work and what you’re inviting people into might differ from messages that they’ve received in — you know, I’m in the U.S, but more Western mainstream culture around sexual intimacy? How does this differ? I know it’s a big question, but if you could give some people a little bit of the orientation around that.
Diana Richardson: Yes. I think the basic situation is that people think or believe that to have a peak or to have an orgasm, this is what sex is about. So we’re very imprinted or think that we really have to get somewhere, and we have to work for it. And if we don’t reach that end, especially it often happens with women that they don’t have an orgasm – you feel like you’re not really a woman, so it gives rise to a lot of self-doubt. With men, there’s a high percentage of premature ejaculation, so then that also sets up a lot of lack of confidence, and again, self-doubt.
The thing is we enter sex thinking that we have to have a peak. Basically, we’re very much in goal mode, and that is the problem. Not the peak per se, but it’s that we enter sex and we have a goal… So in subtle ways and not so subtle ways we are kind of working all the time towards that peak. So this sets in quite a high level of absence, because we’re always just ahead of ourselves, even if it’s a split second. For instance, generally speaking, with the penis/vagina connection, each person, each contributing partner is interested in the next moment, the next movement, or the next stroke, because that in our minds brings us closer to where we want to get to.
So basically, what’s happening through this goal orientation is a real lack of presence. So the goal makes us absent. So the whole idea is how to be more present with each moment, and without an objective in mind. This is a big shift, when you can take away that pressure that you’ve got to reach somewhere. It enables you to just be more in the moment and let things flow. And what happens is when you’re more in the moment, you actually kind of extend the love-making for quite some time. And this is very beneficial, because essentially, the sex act is relatively short. The universal average is under two minutes. But most people – it can be 10, 15, sometimes 20, 40… But even so, this is still short.
The body can make love out of the present moment for a long, long time… So this is one of the first things that’s helpful for people to understand – that peak is not so important. It’s nice, there’s no doubt about it, and you can have it, but you can postpone it. Or you don’t have to have one, and it’s still a good sex experience. So this is the basic misconception that we have… And like I said, changing the mind a little bit – that changes a lot of things.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, I remember when I was reading Love Keys, and I know you’ve written several books… And this idea of achieving or chasing orgasm, and the tension that particularly we tend to get into in our body to achieve that orgasm – I just think there’s so much that works against us in the way that you’re describing what potentially is available to us. It’s such a different orientation than what we see in the media, or perhaps if people utilize porn, or if they’re used to masturbating in a certain way, and it’s a very specific channel to achieve that orgasm…
And then also what you’re talking about, two individuals coming together in love-making, but perhaps what expectations they put on themselves – there’s a lot to battle.
Diana Richardson: Yes, that is absolutely true. First, it is a psychological tension, but then there’s also physical tension, because we have this belief that we have to build things up, and with intensity, to create intensity and sensation. And in doing that, we tighten our bodies. We literally get more tense. And this actually compresses the sexual vitality. But actually what we want is that that vitality expands through the whole body. So it is very helpful while we’re making love to scan the body and soften shoulders, belly, jaw, for women the vagina, men the anus, buttocks… Even to relax the jaw has an impact on what we experience in our genitals.
So there’s the physical tension, like I said, the psychological tension, with expectations, and the word you used there I think was “performance”, because this is a real big thing, the performance pressure… Which for women it is bad, sure, but for men it is really, very dominant in the man’s mind… Because he is, in mainstream thinking, responsible for erection, so he’s gotta get that, get an erection, he’s gotta maintain an erection, he has to make his woman come, he has to attempt not to come too early, and if possible to come together… So there’s all these things going on in a man’s — like a movie is running underground, which really are creating a lot of pressure, and thereby very difficult for a man to be present and just relax and take things easy.
And then what happens also with women – we are quite imprinted in pleasing, so often we will go against the truth of our bodies in order that we satisfy the man. A simple example is that women tend to allow men to enter them before women actually feel ready.
In addition to working with couples, I have also been working a lot — I do retreats for women as well, and I’m always asking “Which of you women would like to have more time?” and honestly, every single woman puts her hand up.
So there’s this basic feeling for women that the whole thing is a little bit too fast. And it has its reasons, in the sense of there’s this fear of loss of erection on the part of the man, and also the woman… So as soon as he’s got an erection, let’s just get inside… But as far as women’s body goes, a woman is not warmed up enough. And the more warm a woman can be, and the more open and relaxed her body, this is going to elevate the sexual experience for both the man and for the woman.
So yeah, there’s a lot of things playing into the act or into the exchange that are a disturbance, and they don’t need to be. When we can start to identify these things and put them to the side, then our bodies can start to do a little bit more the talking… Because in many ways it’s our mind that is doing the talking, and then the mind, the psychology is pushing the body in certain directions. It’s not actually the choice of the body… Do you know what I’m saying?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, that’s profound.
Diana Richardson: Yes, yes, yes…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And even as we’re talking, there’s almost this sense of lack of trust in the body. It’s almost that I have to follow this script… Or even partners together – perhaps there’s security blankets around what they know works for their body, or has worked in the past, but you’re saying it’s very driven by the mind… And that can be painful at the same time, because it feels like we’re running through the motions, rather than really being present and connecting… But if we don’t know what else to do, we can default to that mind-driven love-making.
Diana Richardson: Yes, and you know, Jessica, a lot has to do with our education; this lack of trust in our bodies. We are taught muscles and organs and reproduction and the body on that level, but we’re not taught anything on the level of body awareness, and being anchored in the body, and feeling our bodies from the inside. Most of us feel ourselves just on the periphery. So there’s no education that really takes us into the inner realms of the flesh and the bones and the tissues, and connecting organically with yourself. So that’s a big gap.
I think the fact that we are in this pattern is not actually a choice or a fault of ours; it’s just our education is seriously lacking, and it doesn’t even need to be sex education. It’s just how to be in the body. We’re very good in doing with the body, or doing in general, but how to be – this is not something that we are educated in. At school it could be one or two hours of sport a week, but then that’s very competitive, and again, it’s more from the outside. You’re playing basketball, or ice hockey, or whatever it is… But not this feeling your body from the inside.
So what I’m definitely doing with couples when I have them physically present in retreats – and also, I do try and do that as best possible in writing – the first thing I do is get people to anchor, or help them to anchor inside their bodies, and then slowly, slowly start to build an inner perception of the body, so that you’re moving more from the inside out, not so much from the outside in. When we have an inner sense of the body, AND innocence… The words sound similar.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know… [laughter]
Diana Richardson: …then we can relax with the awareness into the body and feel the body, and then follow the body. But many people, when they take the attention inside the body, there’s just an empty space; it’s like a vacuum, in a way, or they will feel pain, not pleasure. So that’s one of the things with our bodies, the only time we really feel the body is if there’s pain. We don’t have a positive association with the body. So there could be a lot done on body education, but right from very young; not when we’re adults. Already when we are kids. How we walk, how we sit, even how we go to the toilet. Most people are pushing. You don’t need to push. If you’re relaxed, it happens by itself. Even eating, we’re not really taught how to breathe or maximize the breath…
I think this is the reason for the lack of trust, because it’s like we don’t really know ourselves. We know our minds, we know our thoughts, but you know, “Who am I…?” [laughs]
Dr. Jessica Higgins: This is for me as we’re talking – I feel a sensation of almost heartbreak around what we’re experiencing, and more conventional ways of love-making… There can be a lot of struggle, or a limited range and difficulty. Not only when we speak about the erection, or the consistency of the erection, and the pressure around that… There is also the emotional piece around how people are responding to each other, and if we’re caught in a script, we’re feeling like we need to please, or perform – how are we really connecting?
And conversely, there’s a lot of attachment to it needing to look a certain way, so that we can feel good. We battle rejection, we battle not feeling good enough, or there’s a lot that gets activated, even emotionally, in this conventional way of approaching love-making.
Diana Richardson: Yeah. And the words you use (heartbreak), it is like that; it is tremendously sad, because like you say, it does lead to a lot of disturbance in just really normal relating. And it’s certainly not helped by this obsession to look good, fashion etc. etc. But again, this is all from the outside in. So even if a person looks good, it had all the — whatever the person does to look good… But they still don’t feel very confident inside, as a person, as an individual. So this is also interesting.
But if one can start anchoring and feeling oneself more from within, then you do feel good, really from the inside. One of the things without imprinting, just with the bodies in general and in sex, is this thing of sensation. So everything we do – we go bungee-jumping, or paragliding… Everything is sensation-oriented. So really what we have lost is the capacity to sense our bodies, and to work on our senses, which are in-built. We come with them.
So we’ve lost a lot of sensitivity. The more we go for sensation, the less sensitive we become. So there’s a lot of things through the sexual misunderstandings, or just the body misunderstandings, that are impacting us in fundamental ways… Because if you are dependent on sensation, and then after a while you get numbed to that, and you need a little more sensation; and a little more sensation.
So in the end, sensation has a deadening effect. Whereas if we start to work more with the senses and start to value the small, little, subtle happenings in the body – which are ongoing; it’s like a universe in there… To start to give value to the subtle, and these subtle, delicate, fine, good, sweet feelings in the body, they start to expand through the body. So in that way, when you know your body is installed already with good, sweet feelings, and you can start to identify them… Because that’s the problem – people don’t identify them as such, because we’re looking for something bigger and more intense. So the little things get by-passed. And that is a real help for people.
What I find, working with people so long, is to come down to the delicate and the fine… Because again, it’s the mind that wants the sensation. Okay, the body receives it, but it’s like this kind of a drive.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Mm-hm. Diana, as you’re describing this, I’m wondering if part of what you’re talking about with sensation is this interaction with the outside world and how we might have sensation from something that we’re experiencing, versus connecting and having awareness of subtleties that then can amplify and permeate and circulate in ways that are really powerful if we attune to them and connect with them.
Diana Richardson: Yeah, absolutely, Jessica. We’re getting a lot of sensational input from the outside, and the very most simple and obvious thing that we’re looking at today is people continually on their iPhones, or their phones… Because it’s all about sensation, something outside. They’re gonna get a message from somebody etc. So all the attention is on the outside. There’s nothing falling back inside. So it’s not per se wrong that our tension is outside of ourselves, but if it’s constantly outside yourself, then you by-pass all these things that you just described, that are actually very empowering. The subtle, delicate things in the body.
So I think it’s not like either/or, it’s more that we need to find a balance. And I think the need for the balance is getting more and more urgent. Because you walk around – there is hardly anybody just sitting quietly, breathing, feeling their body, awaiting for the train to arrive. It’s just not happening. So just like a re-evaluation and a reappreciation of the body. The thing about the body – it is a bridge to the present. It’s the only way the present exists.
People talk about the present and it sounds quite abstract, but actually, it’s the body that is the bridge. So the more inward flow, or a backward flow that we can have into our bodies – this automatically or naturally brings us more into the present moment.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And what’s available. It sounds, like you said, even the cosmos — like, what capacity is available is quite large.
Diana Richardson: Yes. And then you can start to have really incredible experiences. Not as goals, but more as outcomes of being connected with yourself on a cellular level. Because once you tune in — it’s amazing how the body responds to [unintelligible 00:29:33.06] because that’s effectively what we’re doing; we’re shifting our attention from outside to our attention in side. So we’re using the awareness. And the body is so responsive to awareness. It’s just awesome. Just acknowledge a little thing, and suddenly, it starts buzzing and spreading in the body.
It’s delicate to talk about such things, because so easily one sets up expectations [unintelligible 00:30:03.23] That is one thing that I have found that is a bit tricky in being an educator – it’s that you can say “This is our potential, boom-boom-boom”, and then people expect that. So you’ve got an expectation on a level, not only with the orgasm, like “I want to have an orgasm” expectation, but it’s like “Okay, now I’ll take my attention in, and… Where is it? She said that it should be.” [laughs] Yeah, so it’s delicate…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know, and I was gonna even ask you, for the people that are listening and perhaps new to these concepts, what does more conscious love-making offer? What are some of the possibilities around it? But then I hear how delicate that is, that you don’t wanna put too much descriptive language to set that up as expectations either.
Diana Richardson: Well, absolutely, one has to be careful… But for sure, what happens when two people are more present and in the moment, there is this real bonding or connecting power that happens, including afterwards. Usually, if we really look at, say, love-making… You know, conventionally, we reach the peak and it’s over, and generally speaking, people feel very disconnected from each other afterwards. [unintelligible 00:31:27.23] men just go to sleep, and women often feel very lonely, abandoned, also disconnected, sad…
So this kind of peak – it’s very nice and everything, but it does lead to disconnection. Whereas if one can extend the love-making, or even try and make love without coming to a peak… After 2-3 hours you stop, you go and have a cup of tea, you will feel that bond, and it can last for days. That is one thing, is connection.
Also, the interesting thing – and it’s one of these blessings from awareness – is that awareness creates love. It is just a spiritual alchemy. And any two people who are together in the awareness and present around each other, with each other, in each other, love grows. And I’ve just been watching couples in so many years – it would mystify me in the beginning, like “Why does it work every time, with every couple?” Admittedly, we do need seven days to get this all straightened up. Obviously, I knew what I was doing in terms of teaching, because I was just teaching people what I had done with myself… But it’s just like “How come that it works every time?” and it’s really this thing that awareness creates love.
The thing is, we meet somebody, we’re very present with each other in the beginning, and then things kind of slack off, and we go into our routines, and daily life, and live more parallel. And many people come to the workshops in a quite disconnected state. Many haven’t made love for a long time… Just a feeling of no real connection, and it’s amazing how fast that can be rebuilt. But you know, it’s not a process, it’s not an analysis, it’s just very simple body awareness, and staying in the body. So that’s really a lot, and that’s without talking about anything lovely, that can and could happen inside, that might create expectations… But certainly, what does happen to couples is they get into a routine, and then they just go around and around and around… And it also breaks open, you know, from the routine.
The routine is there because we feel safe, and we’re generally quite afraid of the unknown, and especially in sex. We’ve got our path, we know that it works, we stay with it. So it does need a little bit of an adventurous spirit, but it’s just interesting. It opens up a new life segment. I started pretty early, early thirties. I have many couples coming in the 50s, 60s, kind of the autumn of life. And for some people even the winter has started. But honestly, it’s like a blossoming; you suddenly just see a whole new view, or something to play with that’s interesting. So it brightens up the future.
But listen, Jessica – one thing I want to say that’s really important… When I talk about not coming to a peak, not having an orgasm, with men that does not mean ejaculation control. And this is so important to realize, because there are many techniques taught, how men can control his ejaculation; you know, building it up, pushing it down, up-down, up-down… But this causes then a tremendous amount of congestion in the prostate, in the whole genital area… So definitely, our approach – I say “our” because I teach with my partner – is if ejaculation is [unintelligible 00:35:15.27] really the whole thing is to cool down.
And this is one of the basic misconceptions about sex, is that it’s hot. And you hear it, “How would you like your sex life to improve?” “I’d like it to be hotter.” It’s all this sensation-based thing. Heat leads to discharge, to explosion. Too much heat is actually one of the reasons why there’s such a high prevalence of premature ejaculation. So the whole thing is to keep it cooler. So not to keep building up, building up, building up, but just to cool down. And not cold, but just take it easy. If excitement comes, then you just relax; and when excitement arises again, you relax again. So you’re balancing, you’re playing with the fire.
That is important for me to mention, because when men build up and suppress their ejaculation – so they’re building up through intensity and sensation, then suppressing – this literally can lead to pain. Very many men are like “Oh, that doesn’t work.” Or “Look, I’ve got sore testicles now.” But that is because this tension keeps being suppressed, suppressed, suppressed. Like you say, it’s a paradigm shift. You just approach it in a whole other way.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I’m wondering if you might be able to speak too, for listeners that recognized having experienced disconnect, like you said, whether or not it’s not having very much time and space for love-making, there’s demands on life, being busy, perhaps children, and there being a very narrow window, and then the expectation of how it’s supposed to just happen, and be quicker, good sex… So there’s that perhaps disconnect, or perhaps there’s the emotional disconnect, or even having had some pain, or just pleasure during love-making, and not being attuned to that with one another, or again, rejection… What might you say for people that are listening that are perhaps having fear of the unknown, of “If I let go of my routines or what I know, I’m afraid all this crap is gonna come up, or all this trauma and pain”? I wonder if you could help people with that.
Diana Richardson: Basically, when we start to make love in awareness, it’s an incredibly healing experience. Look – for sure, things can pop up. Ultimately, many many things and disturbances that we have can be healed through conscious sex. Often, the situation is one partner will feel used by the other one. Now, if somebody’s conscious, that feeling of being used, or sometimes even abused – that evaporates.
There is a high percentage of women who feel pain in sex. But it’s very, very hard to say to your partner “That hurts.” So for many, many women sex and pain come together… But this is, again, because the body is not warmed up, the vagina is not really open. And also, men tend to just push their way in; because until they’re in, they don’t know they’re in, and they’re very anxious to get in. But really, what we teach is to go in very slowly, and very consciously. Obviously, a lubricant helps… But really, to travel that canal moment by moment by moment, and then that enables the woman’s body to open, expand, and trust, and not be apprehensive and start to tighten up because of potential pain.
All women know, it’s the cervix. The entrance to the womb is hit, and it hurts. So we’re all holding ourselves, protecting ourselves, even in the moment when we are entered by men. But if the woman knows the man is gonna be conscious with this wonderful instrument that he has, enter very gradually and consciously, and you can have eye contact and so on – honestly, it’s just such a flowering that happens…
And also, pain can be healed. Women have many pain points inside the vagina, which are related sometimes (often) to different injuries. It could be from the past, from abuse stories, or even unloving sex, and gynecological visits, or terminations of pregnancy… If a woman feels pain, she reports it to her man, and he stops. Now, not stops having sex, but stops exactly in that place, and pulls back just two [unintelligible 00:40:25.09] So he’s not pushing on the pain.
Little miracles can happen, because the head of the penis is like a highly sensitized magnet, and it has the capacity to catalyze old holdings, or tensions, or pains in the vagina. And also, through doing that, the male organ is also purified of pains and injuries… Which men also have; also abused, and there’s a lot of not being loving enough with the penis through masturbation, and so on.
So there’s just so many things that we can use our sexual energy and consciousness that we can heal ourselves from many, many things. And it’s not like you need to understand “Well, now my body’s shaking” or “Now some tears are moving”, but why that’s happening. The body is healing, and you just allow it.
So it easily happens, and for men also. Just the sheer relief of just being able to be relaxed and conscious. Old unexpressed feelings come to the surface, maybe sadness. You talked about heartbreak earlier – everyone’s a little bit heartbroken, in different ways.
So people do — we work too hard, we do too much. So the thing that is the most healing and nourishing is the last on the list. So we do need to prioritize and actually create time. And it’s tricky with parents, because they have children… But honestly, children – the best education that children can receive from their parents, or the best education that parents can give to children is that there is a vibration of love between the parents… Because so often that disconnect, or what I call emotionality… Well, disconnect AND emotionality, and all this arguing and fighting and toxicity, children – this causes them to shrink on the inside. So when children feel that parents are shining, they love each other, they’re conscious of each other – children can perceive love very immediately. It’s that parent bond that is so important to nourish; but because of all the demands on our lives, with work and children and getting everything done, we do fall short on the love… Whereas it’s just so easy to rectify. You make a date to make love. Exactly.
And even if you need to get babysitters, or if your children are old enough and you can leave them alone – you just say “Mom and dad need some time together…” You know, when they get older, you can even say “Mom and dad – we’re going to make love now.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know we’re getting close to the end of our time – I’m curious, do you find that it’s important for both partners to be aligned or open to this paradigm shift, or this more conscious way of being together?
Diana Richardson: Look, Jessica – yes. [laughter] Yes… I mean, certainly, if one is anchored and has experience how to be present and how to create this shift within themselves, one can impact somebody else coming into your field, there’s no doubt about that. But if we’re kind of starting out as beginners, in a way, it does help if we’re both willing to try something different.
At the same time, if it’s a person, a one-night stand or someone you’re just having sex with one time only, or whatever – of course, to be more conscious every opportunity we should, or could. But it can lead to misunderstandings, if you know what I mean. [unintelligible 00:44:28.29] if it’s just the first time, “Look, I’m just interested in taking it a bit more easy.” It’s very difficult to find the words. “I’m not so interested in — I want to stretch the love-making, so I’ve heard that if we just take it easy…” It’s not also so easy to be so open in the first meeting.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love it. So essentially yes. And how to people start to begin — it sounds like there’s many opportunities to learn from what you’re teaching, and from people that are intrigued or wanna learn more, what would you recommend?
Diana Richardson: I think reading is good. Like you said, you talked about The Love Keys, which is the first book I wrote, called now The Heart of Tantric Sex… And really, that just gives so many details, tiny little things that all together make a huge difference.
So reading is good, and — I don’t teach online yet. I’m really thinking about it. I really love to have people with me, because then I can work more directly with their bodies. I’ve given some talks, a TED talk, and so on…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And how about your workshops?
Diana Richardson: Well, they happen in Switzerland, so it’s quite a long way from the States. At the same time, we do have a steady trickle of people coming from the States. That is awesome, because you have seven days committed to this project or this exploration. There’s time to get more body awareness, start to feel more from the inside; we do exercises, we do different bodywork exchanges… It’s all within the couple. It’s only for heterosexual couples, because there’s so much genital-specific information.
It’s totally respectful, it’s totally private, there’s no nudity, [unintelligible 00:46:21.03] but what is good there is we give daily talks, and then people have time to practice. So you’ve got all these different aspects building in together. Look, if a couple can come, that is awesome. At the same time, really if you do take one of my books and read it, and just start with little things, that definitely is a way ahead… Because in a week, we give a huge download. So everyone gets this download, and then you have to decompress over the months and years ahead. Whereas if you do it in your own pace, homeopathically, then it’s little increments. Because that’s how I did it. It was a homeopathic thing over years.
So this is why I am now finally surrendering too to online, and trying to find a way that — you know, with travel being more difficult these days, and who knows when things get right again… But yes, Jessica. It’s been so lovely to talk to you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, thank you so much for spending this valuable time with us. I’ll make sure to put all the links on today’s show notes.
Diana Richardson: Okay. My website is livinglove.com.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I’ll make sure to put that on today’s show notes as well. Anything else that you wanna say before we wrap up?
Diana Richardson: No… Really, it’s been so joyful talking to you, and also that you engaged and you have your own experience that you bring into it, and your own perception. That really makes the interview very – for me – of value. It’s been a joy.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s interview with Diana Richardson. I encourage you to check out a book of hers, and perhaps engage with some of these principles more deeply, as I really feel as though she has something to offer in such a profound way, and helping us access new territory in the realm of love-making and sexual intimacy.
Again, you can access today’s show notes and links mentioned at DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast there in the top navigation bar, and you can, again, find today’s episode listed there. Again, today’s episode is 257.
I encourage you to check out other resources on the website as well. You’ll find book recommendations, courses, opportunities to engage in coaching, as well as interviews that I’ve been on other people’s shows, as well as a whole range of other podcast episodes on the Empowered Relationship, all there at your fingertips… As well as other free guides that give you deeper access to some of these principles, depending on the topic. Again, I just wanna invite you to hop on over to that website – again, DrJessicaHiggins.com.
Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode, and thank you for your listenership. Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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