The Power of Pleasure with Stacey Ramsower

2023-01-19

Stacey Ramsower is a somatic sex educator, holistic perinatal consultant, and doctoral student in clinical psychology. Combining guided somatic awareness with ritual and ayurvedic wisdom, Stacey’s calling is to educate and empower women to ‘imagine inhabiting your body as a site of power, pleasure, and trustworthy wisdom.’ “Pleasure is the primary motivational force… Pleasure is the impulse for that capacity to create.” This conversation was so powerful! When we think of the most fundamental underlying ...

“Pleasure is the primary motivational force… Pleasure is the impulse for that capacity to create.”

This conversation was so powerful!

When we think of the most fundamental underlying belief that inhibits a woman’s agency and sense of self as an authority, we unearth the belief that our bodies are dirty, shameful, and unworthy of love and respect. This belief - which is instilled in women from birth - keeps us small and in cycles of shame and self-hate, and in people-pleasing and neediness for approval and external validation.

How do we change this and claim the power of our sexuality and embodied self? We change our relationship to pleasure.

In this conversation, Stacey and I discuss:

discovering the pleasure of simplicity in the midst of overarching complexity
external vs. internal rituals as energetic orientation
how the body is primary to our experience of well-being and healing in relationship
the year of saying ‘no’ and how boundaries are loving even when you’re keeping them with yourself
how we discount our creativity in favor of productivity, and that to create space for creative play, we often have to say ‘no’ to other things, even things we enjoy
the connection between women’s pleasure and women’s agency in the world
how lack of nuance and binary thinking leads to shame and secrecy around pleasure
outcome driven sexuality and how that’s reflected in our outer lives
the power of women’s sexuality to transform the way we move in the world
understanding our embodied sense of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ so we can recognize if something is truly for us
the simple practice that allows us to increase our own ability to recognize what is in alignment and what’s not
the Wheel of Consent (Dr. Betty Martin) and the way we are habituated to be in relationship to our pleasure
expanding our own capacity for pleasure and recognizing the externally imposed expectations we bring to the bedroom (and the rest of our lives!)
the energetic impact of blame and resentment and a ritual to move through it to determine your own needs