[00:42]

[Luke] Hi, Kimberly. I'm so excited to have a second conversation, and I can't believe it's been so many years since your last appearance to the point that I didn't even remember that we didn't do it here in the studio, which you reminded me. I'm like, "Oh my God, that seemed like a lifetime ago."

[Kimberly] Yeah, it-- time

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] Post-pandemic timing

[Luke] Yeah. A lot has changed in the world, not the least of which being your latest book, Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sec-Sexuality and Spirituality. And by the way, I know I already told you this, but for those watching the video on Spotify or YouTube, this is one of the most gorgeous covers, especially within the genre that you write in. Thank you. You know, oftentimes I think books and kind of the healing and self-help realm don't get that well-served by their covers.

[Kimberly] Agreed. Agreed. Yes. There was a lot that went into that cover, specifically my own handwriting. It feels like organic and erotic go together, and so I really wanted the tactile body feeling of everything that I bring to the book to come through in the cover, and I feel like there is some mystery there. At first, the publisher said, "Oh, nobody's gonna be able to read that writing," and I thought, "Yeah, I think people can read it."

[Luke] I think we can figure it out.

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] I can read it. Mm-hmm. So for those listening, we'll put the show notes today at lukestrayer.com/somatic, although I don't know that we'll be talking about somatic so much today because we have a lot of other topics to cover. And there you will find the former episode I just referred to, number 362. And what's super cool is that your book comes out November 17th, which is a very special day to me.

[Kimberly] Our books are twins.

[Luke] Yeah. It's so funny. I wonder, I wonder how that worked out. I mean, it's like, is that like a popular day for publishers or something? No,

[Kimberly] All books come out on Tuesdays.

[Luke] Oh, I did not know that. Do you know that?

[Kimberly] Yeah, so books always come out on Tuesdays, so we knew it was gonna be a Tuesday. Then the November part, I'm not, I'm not sure what to make of that, but they probably-- I mean, they have a lot of common themes in them.

[Luke] Yeah. Yeah. Well, this podcast comes out on Tuesdays too.

[Kimberly] Oh,

[Luke] Perfect. Yeah. There you go. I think that date is going to be Zach Bush, which is a really good one. So yeah, exciting. so another thing that I thought was really cool that you did, you got a cool cover, great book, which I've been digging into and learning a lot Mm-hmm... is you have a free gift. You get to download an exclusive additional chapter from Erotic Seasons entitled "The Body and the Belly" at kimberlyannjohnson.com/erotic-seasons. I thought that was a pretty cool idea. I don't know that Well, here's the thing... none of my like, you know, cutting room floor stuff was cohesive enough to do something like that.

[Kimberly] I hear you. I hear you. And you know, it's kind of common to give away a book chapter I did for my last book, Call of the Wild, I gave away the first chapter for free. And but there's just so much information out there, you know, between all the content that we put on, out on social media, and all the writing I do and emails, and other things that I'm working on. I thought, "Oh, I don't really wanna give away something that's in the book." But I overwrote in this book so much. I don't know how... We're gonna talk about your book and how that process went for you. But for me, there was an really important part of writing this book where my first two books I didn't feel like I became a better writer. I felt like I crystallized ideas. I felt like that the craft of writing itself... I felt like I learned how to write a book. Because as you know, writing a book is its own animal. It's not the same as writing a blog or an essay or a card or... It's a whole other thing, right? Like, so many threads, so many strands, looking at the whole thing together. And then this book was like what wants to be in it and what doesn't wanna be in it. I probably wrote twice as many practices as ended up in it, and I wrote whole chapters that didn't end up in it. And there's also the most probably excruciating part is so many women told me extraordinary stories, and I was so over my word count that I couldn't include all of them. And when I was turning it in, it was it was hurting. It was hurting like, oh my gosh, this, these moments that I spent. You know, sometimes I would stay in a hotel so that I could really work, and then a woman would come to my hotel and we'd talk for three or four hours. And I'd take notes, and I'd write their story after that. And some of them are in it, and some of them are not. But yeah, I... That chapter is called The Belly and The Body Make Room For It All, and it's about the lineage of my family and mother lines and specifically about relationship to the belly. And I didn't wanna make this book only about the genitals. Like, oh, like, because it's erotic, then all we're gonna talk about is the vulva and the pelvis and that's all that women's sexuality is. Like, let's narrow it down.

[05:49]

[Luke] I think that's the way most males think about female sexuality, by the way.

[Kimberly] Well, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of females do too. Yeah. Because there's all this pussy power, right? Like, everyone's pussy this, pussy that, and so it does And there's a reason for it, obviously. It's a magnificent portal of all creation without which we'd, none of us would be here. So, you know, there's a total reason for that, and expanding how we think about eros into every part of us. And so for me, the belly is just a specific reference point because when I was... My grandmother was 75 and I was in a dressing room with her, everything she tried on, it was just about how her belly looked. And she's a very beautiful woman and known for her beauty, and it just made me so sad that at 75, like, still that was what was plaguing Oh, wow... and that's how she was choosing every single thing. And so that chapter is really about, like, how these threads come down and also what we can do with them and how to make room for it all. And for so many women, the parts of their body, the parts of our bodies that we don't like are the ones that make us female: breasts, bellies, ass, and thighs, and that's what we're battling against, and we're going towards this narrow, thin, small, maiden-like, young frame. And so that chapter didn't end up there because books are... This book at least is just a savage, undomesticated prairie pony-... and that chapter just didn't work in the, in the larger Yeah... after the whole thing was there. But it's an important chapter. I've also really strayed from writing about body image in my career. I just haven't written about it much at all because I feel there's so much airtime given to it. Kind of like self-love, it's like body image, self-love, and self-esteem, there's just so much that coalesces there, and so I've deliberately steered away from it. I think I was willing to write that. I mean, it wrote itself. Like, it wasn't like I decided, "Oh, now I'm gonna go here." It announced itself. Is because I have a daughter who's 19 now. The last time I was here she was 13. I mean, it's just so different. Yeah. Wow. I had a pre-adolescent, I had a middle schooler, and now I have a college student. and her relationship with her body and her, like, kind of lament to me, like, "Mom," like, "you've never talked negatively about your body. Like, you've always told me how beautiful I am and how beautiful my body is, and still I hate it sometimes. And why? Why do I still feel this way when you're the way you are?" And so I felt like I needed to write that thread because a lot of times we have this idea that if we do parenting right, that we're gonna be the ones that breaks the intergenerational trauma cycle. Like, we have that power to just do that all on our own. And my experience, I only had one child, and so I've only parented, mothered one in that way in my bloodline, is that both with sexual boundary ruptures and with, like, body image, just my imprints and my knowledge and my energy and all those things haven't been enough to shield her from-

[09:02]

[Luke] Wow

[Kimberly] All of the influences. And I think it's good for people to hear because they assume that, oh, well Kimberly is the you know, she's the person that knows about all these things. So her daughter probably has really just got that dialed. Got it sorted out. Yeah.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] And I do think she's got a lot dialed, and one great thing is that she comes to me with most things, and so do her friends, so I feel like that's victorious. But, like, the fact... Like, it's not like she came through adolescence with, like, A completely intact sense of her animal self that was incontrovertible.

[Luke] Mm-hmm.

[Kimberly] And that's her path to walk too. But the belly thing, like, there's just so much of sucking in of the belly and you know, six-packs and eight-packs and, you know, the a relationship to fat. And I once interviewed Gil Headley, who's an anatomist, and he... At the end, it was the very end of the interview, and he does dissection of bodies, and he knows the people so it's really interesting. Like, you'll learn Ooh... astrology of the person- Word... and you know their life, so you know what might have contributed to how their bones, fascia, and organs are organized. And he said to me, "Well emotions live in the fat." And I said, "Well, how do you know that?" And he said, "Well, when I'm in a room and we're dissecting or dissecting fat, the whole room is teary, and that doesn't happen when we work with fascia. It doesn't happen when we work with bones. Doesn't happen when we work with skin." And that was so profound to me because it's such a... I mean, now people talk about good fats, and most people listening probably know you need good fats and not seed oils and saturated fats, and if you're pregnant, then you know, need animal fats and things like that. But still, for most women, there is an internalized questioning of, "Is this fat okay? Am I not taking care of myself well?" I'm through the menopausal portal now myself, another difference of the last five years, and my fat distribution on my body changed on its own. And I really realized, oh, this fat is protective during this transition, so it's very tender and sensitive, which has shifted now that I'm out of that portal. But yeah, that chapter is really Trying also not to exile anything from the conversation of what most people and women are dealing with when we use the word erotic or we use the word sexuality, 'cause for some people, that's a big thing, is imagining how they look, imagining how they look to another. What does it mean to show pleasure? What does it mean to desire and make that visible and have that be palpable? There's a sense of danger or self-consciousness or shame that comes with it. So that's what made me think, "Oh, I'll give people this chapter," 'cause it's a different way in.

[Luke] Epic. That is so interesting about the body storing emotions and fat. What came to mind is the body and its infinite wisdom sequesters toxins, you know, biological, chemical toxins in your fat too. There's a lot of people that do fast and things like that have a big Herxheimer reaction 'cause they're liberating all this glyphosate that they've been storing up in their love handles for 50 years or whatever, you know?

[12:26]

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm.

[Luke] That's really interesting. Mm-hmm. I never thought about that. I've had experiences. The first one actually was probably almost 30 years ago. I was getting worked on by this this Maori family, and I forget what their particular treatment is called from that lineage. But it's, you know, it's like pretty intense body work, and I don't know exactly what they were doing, but I think they might've been standing on me kinda shiatsu style. And I remember when they got to the backs of my thighs and my calves, I started having like past life regression shit. I mean, it got so deep where I was just wailing, but I wasn't wailing from the pain in my thigh, right? I was wailing an ancient pain that I couldn't even articulate. That was really the first time that I ever tapped into that whole you know, realm of like, oh, wow, my body has been hanging onto some stuff that, you know, is so deeply embedded that my conscious mind can't even access it. It's really interesting. That one really stayed with me. And of course, I've had a number of experiences like that, but I find that really interesting. so, you know, when I got your book, the cover, the title, the premise of the book, you know, of course, I'm like, well, this is a, this is a book for females, right? On its face. But I really like to read books about females because I have one in my life that I love deeply, and, you know, also obviously I interact with women on this show. And so I would say I'm as interested in learning about women at this point in my life as I am about myself or men, because those relationships have become so fulfilling for me, and I just want to love on my wife as well as I possibly can It's like a performance metric, you know? Like, how awesome of a husband can I possibly be? Yeah. Because I was such a jerk for most of my life through my own wounding and just, you know, lack of maturity and understanding. So what would a guy like me gain from your teachings in general and from your book, and just our capacity to understand the women in our life that we love?

[Kimberly] I love that question, and I also, I'd love to hear, I wanna hear more about what you, what was helpful in So I did write a mini guide for men 'cause I didn't think men would probably wanna read a whole book about it, but I want... So let me start here. We live in a culture and a time that's primarily male negative, that's primarily masculine negative, where most of the time it's acceptable to kind of say throw away negative things about men. They're slower, they're dimwitted, they're you know, just can't really keep up only think about themselves. Even though in the obviously dominant over culture, we have really extreme leader-- you can't even call it leadership, but, you know, we have very extreme examples of-

[15:26]

[Luke] Control freaker-ship?

[Kimberly] Yeah. narcissism-

[Luke] Yeah...

[Kimberly] Essentially, and, like, abuses of power, let's say. But in most of the realms that I work in, and I think probably that you work in too, the men are extremely attentive, desirous of understanding, wanting to be led, feeling a little displaced of, like, the women are so powerful, where do I even fit in this realm? And there's a lot of women in the realm that-- realms that I travel in that treat men like they're dispensable. Like, "Okay, let's make a matriarchy where, like, men just come in every once in a while and just reverse the situation." So I think it's important to name that because it's... And even in the generation of my daughter the 19, and the college-age kids, it's just really acceptable, and even the men have that internalized negativity towards what's male and a real challenge to even understand what it means to be a good man, what it means to be... My daughter's, it's been really interesting hearing her talk about, like, "Oh you know, when I'm in interactions with males, I have to tell them it's okay for them to want something. They're so overly respectful and overly tentative that I tell them, 'It's okay to want something. We might not do it, but, like, I wanna know what you want too.'" So yeah, I wanna preface that with saying that most of the men and the partners of the women that I work with are very receptive and want to know. So what I feel like men might learn from what I've written and what their partners might experience in the writing is that so much of what's out in the culture about what is appealing or what, I guess what women want Isn't necessarily adopting the kind of emotional attunement that feels like it's become imperative in the culture, that because therapy has now become the sort of gold standard of interaction, then people kind of expect that one-on-one therapeutic attunement in many of their interactions. And I think that men feel a lot of times kind of displaced or at a disadvantage through that. Now, in this book, I'm talking a lot about thresholds. So thresholds could be menstruation, it could be postpartum, it could be a big grief moment, a death. It could be perimenopause or menopause and how-- like, what-- basically, what do you do when your partner's in the underworld? What do you do when your partner is no longer likes what they used to like, maybe doesn't understand what's going on with themselves maybe feels mystified and you're-- you kinda want them to tell you what's going on, but they don't really know what's going on, so then who orients who kind of thing. And so what I'm really trying to do is give permission to this wider, broader arc of the main-- in most of the realms that I travel in, which I guess could be the birth world, the body work world, the trauma world holistic medicine, there's this idea that, like, more sex is better and, you know, you need orgasms for your health, and, like, you better get back to sex after you have a baby or else your marriage is gonna fall apart or menopause is gonna cause a divorce. And I think that those messages are really harmful because what it doesn't talk about the potential of those times because it is the female body which is more complex. It just is. in Chinese medicine they say it's ten times more challenging to treat because of our reproductive function and all the energy that goes into reproduction compared to the energy that goes into reproduction from the male side. And that's actually becomes the compass, and it's like a beautiful divining rod for evolution and maturation and sexual and spiritual maturation. And so if it's not considered a default because it's not what it used to be, like, "Oh, I'm not as turned on as fast as I used to be. This thing that I thought I liked and maybe I did like, not liking anymore, that freaks me out." Um-... but maybe we can find a different pathway in. And not-- I think one thing that's important to say is that most men take that as a sign of insufficiency or failure because there's a lot of women that come to a certain point and say, "I actually didn't like that thing that we were doing before." And then instead of the man saying either, "You know, come to think about it, I was a little checked out then too," or, "Huh interesting? What didn't you like about it? What could we do differently?" Most men shut down and feel-- they feel like they've failed, and they feel like dissoluted. They feel misled. They feel that women are manipulating them. And instead of seeing it as, uh... It's not something that's wrong. I mean, it can. Things can go wrong. We know this. But I think we're talking about in a more relational capacity that as a female body goes through all of its cycles and restoration and composting and big changes, that if we don't automatically see that as loss and we see that as ripening potential, there's so much pleasure and beauty that's available that includes grief, but grief isn't inherently not beautiful either. So I think that men can really hold that for their partners of the long vision. You know, they can really hold like, "Okay, yeah, this is a tough moment," and of course it is. You just had a baby three weeks ago or you just had a miscarriage or our sex has become completely tied up in our reproductive desires that aren't happening. Um-

[21:33]

[Luke] Been

[Kimberly] There.

[Luke] LetYeah.

[Kimberly] Yeah. It's-- I mean, these are-- this is-- it's real. And I think men in-- You have this capacity. Of course, you're gonna be emotionally rocked in your own ways, but you also have a capacity to kind of be a steady metronome that says like, "Yeah, this is tough, and it's not always gonna be like this, and it might not be like it was before, but we can-- but I'm gonna stick with this, and let's keep exploring." In-instead of the woman becoming the problem, the woman becoming like, "Oh, yeah, well, once you heal from this, then we'll be able to do this," or- "... once you get over this," you know? Right.

[Luke] That

[Kimberly] It's easy for the female body to become the identified patient, and it's like, "Oh, she's just-- Yeah, well, she's going through this, and she's going through that," instead of like, "Yeah, that's all true, and how do you still create intimacy, and how does the erotic still move through the relationship?" And I-

[Luke] That's

[Kimberly] A good point... I love talking with men about this because I really do feel that I'm able to hold a deep respect for what I see most men that are in my sphere really trying to attend to, and so much so that oftentimes they're really overriding their own need because their own arousal has been seen as dangerous, and they're trying so hard to be good, they're trying so hard to do the right thing that they've actually kind of obscured their own arousal and their own desire.

[Luke] I deeply relate to that as someone who, you know, is quite unconscious about how to move through the world in a way that was conscientious, you know? And now I'm very conscientious. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Especially being in love with an amazing woman, you know? It's like, wow, what... I think it's difficult sometimes, and I'll just speak for myself, and I'm sure many men can relate, but it's like if you grow up Conditioned, well, in my case, really first conditioned by abuse, then conditioned by decades of pornography and, you know, rampant sexual abandon. You know, that tends to feel like something that one should move past, and in the worst case scenario, kind of shut down. And if there's no roadmap for what a healthy relationship with intimacy can look like on the other side of that, it's kind of like, "Well, I know I don't want what I had, and I kind of know what I want, but I don't necessarily know how to get there."

[Kimberly] Mm.

[Luke] You know what I mean?

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm.

[Luke] Yeah, so that's-- I relate to that a lot. And also really appreciate... It's funny, you know, the way that synchronicities move through consciousness, but we were at a book release party for a friend last night, and and someone asked a question, I don't know, something about masculinity or male identity or whatever it was, and she was talking about, and I'll paraphrase, but what I heard was about kind of what you alluded to, that the pendulum of post-feminism, you know, has in some ways become sexist in and unto itself, where all masculine energy or all males are classified as brute, unconscious, dangerous people. And I look around at my inner circle and the kind of men that I roll with, and they're men that would read your book and be like, "Okay, I really need to learn about this." Totally. You know?

[25:06]

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] So it's kind of like, you know, the 1940s or '50s sexism of, "Oh, the woman belongs in the kitchen to pump out kids." Well, definitely we need to move on from that, right? And it's like in some ways, as a man, it feels like it's swung the other way, where I don't know, sometimes I don't watch TV a lot, and especially not commercials, but I don't know, even just in comedic movies and TV shows, just culturally, men are often framed as just total imbeciles, you know? Yeah, it is. And just, like lack any sort of value or, you know.

[Kimberly] Yeah, and of course it's internalized, so I mean, one of the most common things when, especially when I'm speaking with Stephen Jenkinson and we're together, is, like, the lines of young men that are coming up to us to just, kind of just to stand in front of him, but also they feel completely disempowered and kind of like they shouldn't even exist or take up any space or, you know, they're just, they're so Overcompensated and apologetic for even kind of existing in a way.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] And-

[Luke] It's like male guilt.

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] Guilt by association.

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] Well, because those of us that are conscientious also have the capacity to acknowledge the inequity and inequalities- Entitlement and-... of the past, right? Right. So it's like, whoa. I don't-

[Kimberly] And that are still very much present too.

[Luke] Sure. Sure.

[Kimberly] But I think it's the difference between speaking to individuals and speaking to the collective, and probably what we see in social media is 10% on either end, but what about the 80% of people in the middle that are actually are able to see multiple perspectives, do generally consider other people other than themselves, and genuinely wanna engage? But if as, if our conditioning for girls and women... Like, I mean, my I thought I went to visit my daughter at college, and she invited all her girlfriends over, and I was cooking for them multiple nights in a row, and actually I was on a mom mission because her, the first day of the second semester of school, one of her best friends got roofied and raped And luckily they kind of all like gathered, like they were like, "Call your mom," you know? So I was like, "Okay, I need to go over there and like check this whole situation out and like be an anchor and like just nourish them." And they started talking about just how ridiculous all the boys at their college are. And the college has like 12,000 kids, so I'm like, "It's just not possible, you guys. Like, it's just not possible that all the girls are cool here and all the guys are jerks." And, you know, kind of going around with them about that, like, well, there's probably some shy guys that want relationships that you haven't noticed yet, and there's probably this. And, you know, I don't go to school there, so I can't say that with 100% assuredness. But just the facility to be so negative and to throw the words around of rapist and perpetrator, right? Those words are used so quickly and easily now to refer to so many different behaviors other than just very specific behaviors. And of course, I was, as I mentioned, going in a very tender moment.

[28:23]

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] So it probably seems like highly contradictory, like how could I be in that moment with a place of severe transgression and at the same time be holding this wider net for all of them? Because it really doesn't matter who you relate with sexually. It's like we all have to live together no matter what our sex and gender is. We can't just imagine that we're gonna have a world where half of the people aren't there or 40%, or you're just gonna ignore them, or you're just gonna bash them, or you're just gonna, you know, look down on them. And so it was just an interesting moment, and I thought, "Oh, these girls aren't gonna come back tomorrow night. Like, I've crossed a line." I thought, "My daughter's gonna kill me later tonight. Like, she's gonna be like, 'Mom, I can't believe you did that.'" Yeah. But they actually all came back, and they... I can tell they really want... they wanted an adult, like a sane adult around who was-- who's not gonna just pretend to be a teenager, go along with everything they say, reinforce all of their narratives. They like... They want an actual adult in the room.

[Luke] All right. Most of us know we should be eating more nutrient-dense plants, but getting enough of them in your diet to make a dent, that's where things tend to fall apart for me, and I'm guessing for some of you too. You might think, "Well, just use a green powder, right?" Okay, but if you can't trace the ingredients back to their source, how do you know what you're actually getting? Urban Roots Farms grows their plants in Scottsdale, Arizona, then harvests, freeze-dries, and powders them all under the same roof. Their products start with seven organic microgreens. You got broccoli, kale, red cabbage, radish, arugula, pea tendrils, and beets harvested at peak nutrient density. That's their True Micro blend. It's those seven greens and nothing else. Just a potent whole food powder that's super easy to work into your daily routine, and trust me, if I can do it, so can you. Then they've got True Micro. It starts with those same ingredients and adds three functional mushrooms: lion's mane, cordyceps, and chaga. Same greens foundation, plus the shroom stack for focus, energy, and recovery. To get your hands on some real food, go to lukestory.com/urbanroots, and if you use the code Luke, you're gonna save 15% off your first jar. Or even better, get 25% off your first month when you subscribe. I love the transparency and quality of Urban Roots. They let you trace your nutrition back to a real organic farm in a real American city. So again, hit up lukestory.com/urbanroots and save up to 25% when you use the code Luke. Beautiful. What can men gain by getting a greater understanding of the stages of life, you know, all the way from monthly menstruation to perimenopause, menopause, and beyond? I think that's something-- Alice and I were reading about that in your book this morning, and when I got to the virgin, she's like, "Wait, why is it there?" You know, so it's-- You know, obviously, there's more reading required to take it in. But but that part of your model really kind of drew me in because we've been together six years and I've seen a lot of changes. You know, we had a fertility journey and a miscarriage, and she's going through changes and you know, internally and also externally in her life and career, kind of coming out of a period of rebuilding and reclusion, her cave period as she calls it. And so, you know, of course, I'm thinking, "Okay, how can I best support her in this?" And I can only support her to the degree that she's able to articulate her experience, right? But I think even this morning, just reading what I did is like, oh, okay, cool. I can get a more objective point of view that there's probably things about her particular phases in life that she might not even be aware of in a way that can inform how I can best support her.

[32:13]

[Kimberly] Definitely. So when-- what you're mentioning is what I called the four seasons, just like four seasons in the year. in a woman's female life trajectory, there's the maiden, the mother, the virgin, and the crone. So the maiden and mother people probably kind of get what that is. The virgin, in some cultures, they call it Madge or Maga, or some people call it the queen, is basically because now we're living longer as humans. It's-- It used to be the triple goddess. People didn't live that long into menopause, but now we live this kind of another stage. And so I took Marion Woodman's word virgin. It's not her word, but her use of the word, which means a woman whole unto herself, so like an unadulterated virgin forest that's its own ecosystem. And You know, this is the phase that right now is getting confused. People are confused about menopause and if it means you become a crone or what it means, and then the narrative about it is that it's just your own fricking personal hell that you can't possibly enjoy at all and that's you know, taking you away from what you're really meant to be doing at that time. But I think if you have some facility and you have some practice with cycles, then it's really helpful to know that none of these are forever cycles. But if we dig our heels in and we refuse to go into the cave and we just, we just keep pumping the gas and trying to stay above what's happening, the phases last much longer. And so as a man, I think it's helpful to know not to take certain things personally, that there probably will be a lot of movements from yes till no, and we're so conditioned as women to yes. the phase of maiden and mother are yes phases. They're estrogenous, they're effervescent, they're flourishing phases, and the phases of virgin and crone in certain times, in certain ways are more pruning in their death phases. And so there's a natural and very healthy life review of what has worked and what hasn't worked. And if a person is willing to give space for that and not to jump in and automatically think, be probably be afraid that I'm disposable, that I'm gonna get thrown out with this, the less afraid you are of that and the more space you have for like, "Yeah, like I really wanna know this person that's what you're pruning," great. You don't have to stay the same. your use for me isn't-- Your life isn't just about what you're useful and how... A lot of women at that phase, if it's been a longer-term relationship, they don't wanna do the house tending very much anymore. You know, if they've, if they've gone through the mother phase and they've had a couple of kids and they've been in a longer-term relationship, it's pretty common that they're like the estrogen starts to wane, which is the, you know, the harmonious hormone, and they're just like, "I don't wanna take care of anyone else right now." "I wanna do what I wanna do. You know? I'm tired of this pleasing thing." And so that can feel like, "Wait, hold on. We made that other agreement." But I think any beautiful relationship has its own renewal of agreements. And so if you can think, "Okay, well, the relationship that we've had might be dying, but that doesn't mean the relationship as a whole is dying," and that can be generative for both people that Holding that rather than sitting on top of it and trying to manage it, but to be able to see like, "Oh, wow, yeah, we're in this big change again, aren't we?" And wow, this is a lot to... There's not really a map here, is there? But there is a larger map. So you can help the other person. Like, you know, post-miscarriage is a great example. After any kind of portal like that, you're disoriented. That's its function in some way. you've been overhauled. You've been overtaken. You're not in control. And so in that, I call that the wet clay time. In that wet clay time, you need someone else to reflect to you that you're in that time. You know, it's famous postpartum, people... Not just 'cause people are pressured to get back to their body or to get back out, sometimes you just get ricocheted out because you are... You've never, you don't... It's only other people that can tell you where you are. You can't orient yourself. You're not supposed to. It's like birth. Like, you're not supposed to know exactly where you are in the process. That's the human making, learning, mother making function. But as a male, it is your job to run the perimeter. So it's not your job to become more informed about menopause than your partner is and then give them tons of advice about it.

[37:16]

[Luke] Okay. Oh, yeah, I definitely wouldn't advise that one.

[Kimberly] It is your job to understand that maybe her need is being more with her women friends, and that rather than taking that personally, there's a sense of, "Oh, well, what would I be doing if that's what she was doing?" Or there may be a time when she needs a separate room for a little while, and rather than, you know, feeling like it's a crisis that like, "Oh, what does this mean about the marriage and you, and you're not good enough?" Like, oh, what does it mean to make space for that so that there is a coming and going that has a different quality? I mean, I'm riffing, and I Yeah... work with thousands of women, so I do hear different ways that people work with it. But I find this narrative that menopause is gonna ruin your marriage really unfortunate because, well, some marriages need ruining. They do. Like, some marriages are outdated and, or the agreement within the marriage, that version of the marriage needs to die so the next version of the marriage can arise. And who could ever think that you could have a relationship over any period of, a long period of time that wouldn't need those revisions over time? So I think men sometimes... Because once, generally, once men opt in, like you wanna be like, you're like trying to win the husband prize, like you're nailing it, right? Once you opt in, it's so rare that men wanna leave the relationship. They'll hang onto it because they want the, they want what it meant to, like I finally committed, and I'm finally good, and I'm finally like suppressing some of these urges that I've been trying to rodeo wrangle for so long. They're unlikely to want that to be shaken at all. So just this knowledge that you can evolve a relationship without having to destroy its container. A woman's body, I mean, I don't live in a male body, so I don't know. You would have to say to me, "Well, I think the male body is a spiritual path," or, "I think a..." But the female body particularly is a spiritual path because we have these built-in cycles and because it, there's so many fractals in how we can create life and what it is to have the responsibility of that life-giving function in all of the interactions and reproductive choices that we make that men don't have. So That's not a better or worse thing. I think that's maybe one of the things that then women use to say, "Well, yeah, we're more complicated and therefore we don't really... Men are kind of disposable." It's just a different thing that I think men can have awe and reverence for and at the same time not have to merge with it or, like, become the expert about it. I think it's just really important, the reminder that there is, there is beauty in all of it, and that when you're in a hormonal black hole, even when you know it's hormones, you know, you can say to yourself like like, "I can tell this is hormonal," that there's, yeah, I guess a chest to cry on and a, and knowingness that a woman's capacity to grieve, that really has mostly been a female function as well, grieving. And so to provide a ballast for that Without needing to replicate it

[40:46]

[Luke] Yeah, or without needing to fix it. That's been a big lesson for me because of course, you know, something's broken, it needs to be fixed Mm-hmm But what if the thing's not broken? What if it's just different?

[Kimberly] Yeah. What if You

[Luke] Know?

[Kimberly] Yeah, they're showing you another facet of the gem.

[Luke] Yeah. Yeah. What I'm hearing in in the seasons is It has a lot to do with perspective, right? So, you know, I always get a little bit bummed when summer ends and the weather starts changing. It gets colder, there's less sun, and I just innately go, "Oh man, bummer, we're going into the shitty time of the year," depending on where you live, you know?

[Kimberly] Yeah. I mean, that's-

[Luke] It's probably one reason I was in LA for 32 years. Like, I don't like seasons. I just want everything the same every day. It's predictable, you know? But viewing you know, if you have a woman in your life who's going through these various seasons, what I'm hearing is that we have the capacity to focus on the opportunity and the curiosity of what the next season is bringing in or what's being gestated and is going to be ready at some point to be cultivated and shared with the world, right? Rather than seeing it as, "Oh, we have a problem," you know? It's like-

[Kimberly] Yeah, and it's gonna be this way forever. Yeah. I mean, it's hard not to see it as a problem because for a lot of people it arises as an autoimmune disorder or, like, super low energy or complete disinterest in sex or intimacy. You know, there-- I had, I didn't-- I'm not recommending menopause as a journey because it was super easy for me. Not at all. It was really challenging. A lot of things, symptoms, I call them indicators 'cause menopause isn't an illness, it's a life stage, so a life stage can't be a diagnosis. but there was a lot of adjustments that I had to make in my life and a lot of things that I frankly thought that having done all the work I have with my own body, with sexuality, with birth, that it would just be an easier time for me. You know, so I got really humbled by it. Like, oh, even in spite of my unshaming and my connection to the female erotic and my connection, that knowledge and intelligence didn't prevent me from being completely overhauled. I mean, I could say a lot more about that, but it'd be more specific. But I think that what you said about the admission of like, oh, fall and winter are shitty seasons, that's really how most women feel about their seasons as well. Oh, god, yeah... I'd rather be ovulating. My period is a real fricking bummer. Yes, some people, and I hope many people listening, have become more deeply invested in understanding really the oracle that the blood mysteries are. Like, every pe-- I mean, it's the ultimate biohack to, like, read your own period cycle and to be in conversation with that. Like, there's really no greater biohacking Tool out there. It's the fifth vital sign. It's telling us so much about our health. And because of the female body also being a divining rod for what's happening in the environment, it is getting more difficult as the environmental cues are also getting more difficult. Therefore, it creates more tension because it's creating-- it creates more of a puzzle to figure out, and there's already so much incentive for female times between menstruation, fertility, birth to be pathologized and thought of as things that are, like, so challenging and hard. And so we already have that negative bias and frame towards it. But ultimately, it is about learning how to winter, learning how to be able to step out of what the outside world demands from us and go into the inner space so that we can then come back out to then go back in that pulse. And that pulse is something, you know, life and death and inhale and exhale and summer and winter. And so we are just, as females, more designed to be able to do those cycles. And that also means that we're designed to heal trauma differently, and we're designed to be able to facilitate alchemical trauma healing sexually with another because we do know that pulse. It's there. It's there in everyone. And because of the way that our-- I mean, I believe that we can all heal one another sexually independent of our genitals, but there's something particular to the female alchemical function that comes through blood mysteries and comes through creative power, creative and destructive power together.

[45:42]

[Luke] Something I've noticed that's really interesting in observing Allison's cycles on a monthly basis is I feel like I have very similar cycles, but they're on a 24-hour clock, you know?

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] It's like the period of wintering that you just described. Yeah. That's me every morning. Even this morning, Megan reached out and was like, "Kimberly-- Can Kimberly come a half an hour early?" And I'm like, "Whoa, shit." Like, I got-- There's a whole little season I'm going through every morning just to show up here and be in my fertile spring- Mm... and just, you know, to have that sense of vitality and clarity. And then-

[Kimberly] Definitely...

[Luke] In the afternoon, there's another little winter where the-- it starts-- energy wanes a little bit, cognition kinda gets foggy, and I know I need to take a break and do Yeah Afternoon meditation.

[Kimberly] You're basically describing infradian and ultradian rhythms, like the testosterone- Oh, okay... how that works on a 24-hour cycle versus how a female cycle is usually a 28-day cycle. So it makes sense that it's hard for us to understand each other-... because the world is also designed around that testosterone daily rhythm. I mean, the workday is designed around that.

[Luke] Right.

[Kimberly] It makes a lot of sense that there's also that complementarity and that we are, we're each holding this beautiful pheromonal endocrine material and We're, as a culture, we're really neutralizing that. So rather than, rather than yielding to it and, you know, really getting into that, we're actually dispersing it or trying to, you know microdose our way away from it rather than microdose our, or macrodose our way towards it.

[Luke] Yeah, absolutely. yeah, what I just described about just that level of understanding about myself and leaning into that and allowing that to be, it took a very long time because I've been conditioned, you need to be productive 24/7. You know, it's like if you're Mm-hmm... accomplishing something, your social and personalized value decreases.

[Kimberly] You know? Yeah, and most women also have that indoctrination now. So I don't think 50 or 60 years ago women had that indoctrination.

[Luke] Right.

[Kimberly] The measure of what made you productive was completely different, and it wasn't even possible to be the kind of productive that we can today.

[Luke] Right.

[Kimberly] Right? 50 or 60 years ago, you can't write 100 emails. You can't have AI decide a bunch of stuff for you. You can't, like, accelerate things so intensely. But now most women are indoctrinated into this kind of male drive that testosterone is built for, and so then we're measuring ourselves against that, and our own ability to have cave time and our own ability to winter is, it comes as a sense of failure. It comes as a sense... I mean, for me, it was like my menopausal journey and my career were like this, and I'm like, "Oh, my God, I'm at my, like, career peak right now, and yet my body is needing to completely do the opposite, so what do I do?" Right? Mm-hmm. And what is... You know, I don't even think of myself as somebody very ego-driven, but in that moment you kind of realize, well, but it's, if it's my career peak, who's telling me that, and how do I even know? You know? I just know that it's different than it was. But what's... Like, how do I obey my body because for women also, I mean, it's true, like, but the, my body is my soul. And so if I'm obeying my soul path of like, what am I really meant to contribute in this life? What is the erotic really moving me towards? Then I have to listen to that. But I, it's so important to notice all of these conditions that we do have in the West, specifically in modernism, which is that it's continual productivity. Don't slow down or you stop, and if you stop, you might really mess yourself up because how are you gonna start again? You're gonna lose everything. You're gonna lose followers. You're gonna lose traction. People are gonna forget about you are, who you are. You're gonna disappear. You're gonna become invisible. The culture is also telling everyone now, the trauma culture is like, "You gotta slow down," and then people's version of slow down is like everyone's exhausted and like, "Oh, now I can't possibly do anything." And they try to subtract everything, but that's also causing malaise because we're not meant to-- we are meant to move, otherwise we become stagnated, and stagnation makes these phases very hard as well. So that's the part of the book that's about what we do with each other because a lot of this, it's not... That's what I hope it is helpful for everyone, including men, is realizing that a lot of what we're taking personally and thinking is individual is actually something that's collective and communal and environmental as well.

[50:43]

[Luke] I got a message for you, BiOptimizers. If you already made one of my favorite supplements, why the hell would you mess with it? That's exactly what I was thinking when BiOptimizers told me they were upgrading Magnesium Breakthrough. I've been taking this stuff for years. Because unlike most magnesium supplements that give you just one isolated form, Magnesium Breakthrough combines seven forms to support sleep, relaxation, and recovery. It's one of the relatively few supplements on earth that earned a permanent spot in my daily routine. So what could possibly make it better? Well, BiOptimizers apparently decided seven forms of magnesium weren't enough, so they went ahead and created Magnesium Breakthrough Advanced 10. They expanded the formula to 10 bioavailable forms of magnesium, then added vitamin B6 and ionic trace minerals to support absorption and utilization. Now, I still take the original on the daily, but Advanced 10 is for those demanding days when I'm traveling more, working harder, or just dealing with extra stress. So get your stress and sleep dialed in over at bioptimizers.com/luke from November 9th to 22nd, and you'll save a whopping 25% off sitewide. Just when I thought they couldn't raise the bar on one of my favorite supplements, these guys did, and Advanced 10 truly delivers. So again, hit up bi optimizers.com and get 25% off sitewide now through November 22nd. What do men often get wrong or have limitations around in regard to women's sexual desire and arousal? Again, because we experience things differently, I think oftentimes we have the tendency to transpose our preferences, what things feel like, look like, smell like, the whole experience. We can-- It's very difficult to not be subjective, right?

[Kimberly] Hmm.

[Luke] And I mean, if you think about pornography, right, and I think you wrote about this in your book, right? Where it's like, I mean, it's largely created by men and marketed toward men, and so if that's the version of female sexuality that you've been shown and trained into, it's like that's pretty limited. You know? It's not like women are out there making... You know, I mean, I'm sure there are subgenres and stuff that I'm unaware of. I don't watch porn, so I wouldn't know. But it's like there isn't an like a women's sort of educational or empowerment movement to help males understand what the experience is like for you. Hmm. So we're just kind of left in the dark like, "I don't know. This is what my uncle taught me to do." You know what I mean? It's like, I mean, I remember my dad actually having conversations with me, which I won't share, when I was probably way too young to have those, but it was essentially around like, "Here's what women like. If you wanna please them, here's what you do." And he had a couple good points in there just in terms of f-foreplay ideas, I guess, in general. But, you know, I've learned since that he had a very limited understanding of the entire organism and all of its layers, physical and non-physical, you know? And I guess I could gear the question more specifically around the seasons, right? you know, if you're together with someone, a woman, for two years, there might not be that much of a fluctuation in how she experiences herself sexually or how you experience intimacy together. But if we're unaware of these seasons as a whole, it's like, well, what she enjoyed and responded to 10 years ago is likely gonna be very different than today, and how do I update my own understanding and sensitivities around that?

[54:23]

[Kimberly] I feel like I'm gonna have to make some sort of categorizations which will be sound binary, but have a lot of space that lives between them. And maybe one helpful paradigm is something I do talk about in the book that I feel like helps people sometimes, which is hot sex and warm sex.

[Luke] That was one of my points. Thank you.

[Kimberly] Okay. So hot sex is generally adrenaline based, and warm sex is generally oxytocin and estrogen based. I want to say that I want everybody to be able to have whatever kind of sex they want, and I personally like having the full spectrum. So the book is really about what a person wants their own sexuality to be and about what the obstacles are to... What a lot of women tell me is that they know that their sexuality is like a treasure chest, and they've been to it, and they've unlocked it maybe once or twice, but they can't figure out how to get back there. And they're not sure if that's dependent on another person or a such situation. They don't understand what-- They can't reliably get into it. So warm sex, I would say, we could say is a little bit slower. Hot sex is a little bit faster. Hot sex would be like high friction. Warm sex would be less friction. And again, it's not to say like, oh, hot sex should never happen. It's just like if that's all that's happening, that's usually based on a maiden sexuality, an earlier version of sexuality, younger version. and generally what we see in the culture and in porn is an exaltation of the maiden body, small, kind of available exuding of effervescent, available to anyone, kind of naive and unaware of the power of what that's doing. You know, now these days people walk around in, you know, like, the shortest shorts and little tops, and that's... People wear it just outside. You know, you live in Texas, I live in California. You're kinda like, "Wow, that... Is that workout gear? Wow, that used... That would have even been skimpy for workout gear." But now that's just walking down Main Street. And there's an energy to that. You know? There is, and it's infectious. Like, I've at, uh... My daughter is in that phase of life, and so when her girlfriends get together you're just like, "Goddamn. Whoa." You know? I mean you can feel... Anybody could feel it. Now, what you do with that is just the next step of it. So it's good to just name, yeah, wow, there aren't really a lot of versions of mature sexuality around. It's just not really what we see. And if we do see it's mostly women clamoring to demonstrate that they can still be that. "I can still wear that lingerie. I can still walk this way. I can still embody... Like, I'm not gone." That's... But, and eroticism can look so many different ways. But I think that also I feel like because hot sex is... It's usually power dynamic oriented, and it's what you see on posters, and it's what you see in porn generally, and it's what's considered to be good sex. I mean, Bridgerton was just... There was no warm sex in Bridgerton. It was just fricking, you know, throw somebody against a wall and, you know, a two or three-minute, five-minute affair kind of thing. You know, 'cause I feel like the typical advice would be like, "Well, you need more foreplay," and like, "Stretch it out," and like, "That's what women need to get warmed up till you can, like, really get to the main event." As if we could, like, just really erase that whole mentality of what where sex has to go and what has, what it has to be, that some of the time it could be five minutes of just genuinely breathing and being together, and other times could be multiple hours of exploring different things that each person brings to the table as desire. And that there doesn't always have to be orgasm as an outcome, that's not the measure of if you've done it well. It, for some reason, it registers to the male system as like a demotion. It's like, "Oh, I didn't get to the goal," and that's both frustrating in my own body, and it's also frustrating 'cause I maybe wasn't, like, good enough at it, or I didn't, I didn't have the trick that got to this place. But if men could also understand, like, the incredibly beautiful, circuitous, and winding road that actually ends up in much deeper and greater and more frequent connection, they might be willing to stay with it more. Because it's-- as a man, it's actually very possible to create the conditions where, like, the woman is just rolling out the red carpet for you all the time when you're willing to take cues and you're willing to not be just, like, in a linear agenda, which doesn't mean not approaching. It just means having some sophistication to that approach, and also not buying into this whole thing about, you know women only wanna be ravaged, and so therefore you need to, like, man up and, like, do it this way. It's like, no, ha-have some capacity and ability to shape-shift. And I would say if I do have one tip, I think a lot of men bring a lot of anxiety and, like, excessive energy to sex, that if they would just go for a run first and then come back and initiate, their partner would really appreciate it. 'Cause women don't Yeah... to feel that they're their partner's stress reliever. And it's understandable, and it's and this is all outside of a shame of frame-- a frame of shame. Like, I don't like to shame any sexual behaviors. It's just, like, a lot of women say I'm saying I don't want sex, but it's actually I do want sex. It's just not the sex I'm being offered. Uh-huh. And I don't know how to say it differently.

[1:00:29]

[Luke] Yeah. Yeah. The nonlinear element of it, I think, is really important. That's what stands out to me in terms of the idea of warm sex, right? Mm-hmm. Because even as I was describing before, what little education I had from my elders was, well, this is how you get to the end goal. It's like the foreplay is not to enrich the experience. The foreplay is to get what you want and to make sure that you meet as little resistance and hopefully reciprocal pleasure and desire, right? It's-- But it's still like a staircase that's going somewhere rather than kind of a horizontal plane with Mm-hmm To explore.

[Kimberly] And also you're like in that zone, you're like kind-- you're kind of trying to like unlock the puzzle, right? Exactly. Like it's like, well, if you just do that and do this, then she'll let you do this, and like, then you can get to here, which is really kind of a reproductive sex model, which I think for your listeners is interesting, is like reproductive sex is one thing, but most people listening to your podcast are really interested in conscious evolution and like what it means to actually what does liberation mean? And so to me, sexual energy is arousal energy, is birth energy, is healing energy, and so the woman is gonna-- in that non-circuitous energy, you're kind of beyond those realms. You're in endorphin realm, you're in cosmic consciousness realm, you're in memory retrieval realm. You're in spontaneous words that the other person needs to hear in that moment that untie that knot realm, where you do become each other's healers, but not because you're doing that from here, like, "I'm gonna heal this person." No, you're doing that because when that circuitry starts moving, that's the rapture. Yeah. That's the ecstasy. And it's a combination of hot sex and warm sex that gets you into that rapture, which is the space of ever-evolving waves that actually continue on way beyond when your bodies separate, that you're in that orgasmic field.

[Luke] Yeah. Yeah, it's like a multifaceted bonding rather than a narrow bandwidth of like purely physically bonding. Mm-hmm. It just reminded me of something. I always think of things that I probably shouldn't say, and then I say 'em anyway, so I'm gonna do that. one time a few years ago forget if it was exactly during or after intimacy with my wife, I had my eyes closed, that's for sure, and I was having like full on visuals, like I had taken, you know, mushrooms or something, which I hadn't. I was totally stone cold sober. And it really got my attention, but I have no idea how I got there. You know, it's kind of like, "Whoa, what was that?" And then it was very fleeting. It was gone, and there wasn't, there wasn't a formula to it, right? It was just like, whoa, I'm, I just feel completely safe. She feels completely safe. It's a, I think, a different level of spiritual intimacy than either of us, you know, in the relationship as a whole had ever experienced, and I don't know that, you know, she even knew how I got there either, right? It's kind of like, "Ah, what was that? That was really nice. I hope that happens again." And I might've had similar experiences, but not one to the point where I was like, "What the fuck was that?" You know? Mm-hmm. I was in another dimension. What I took away from that was kind of You know, there was a brief depth of union that went beyond, that went beyond form. You know, I went into a formless sort of unmanifest space- Yeah... through physicality, which I've had in other ways. But yeah, that was just it was one of those fleeting moments that, man, I wish there was a, I wish there was the 10 easy steps to just make that happen every time. But it Yeah... it was kind of just grace. It was grace of I think maybe God kind of tapped me on the shoulder and go, "Hey, man, there's a lot more to this game than you've ever experienced- Yeah... and probably could ever know," you know? But I think when I was reading about the warm sex and the part of it that's not goal-oriented, you know, that's a tough kind of inertia to break oneself out of, at least as a, as a man, you know? It's kind of-

[1:04:34]

[Kimberly] Yeah, and because the desire is strong. I mean, hopefully. Hopefully, we are experiencing that, and it's, you know, you gotta corral the energy, and that's really kind of like, men have to learn that. Like, how do I? Like, when it's just everything is just swelling, like, how do I contain it, and how do I... But not contain, shut it down, or dampen 'cause I think that's also what's out there is like, "Oh, my, like I, it, this is just too much, and so I need to just, like, stuff it down." But it's about distributing it and sharing it and circulating it and also, like, some of the time letting it happen as it happens, you know? It's, it is this pulsation that's, that we're entering in, at different, in different dimensions and at different times. But certainly very psychedelic, and I mean, my internal world is quite psychedelic anyways. So when people ask me about psychedelics, I'm like, "Oh, yeah," like, I just don't need that. Like, that'd be- It's just too much more, so much more to manage than I'm, than I'm already trying Yeah... yeah, trying to learn and understand and direct. But for sure, I think that's what a lot of people are looking for. And I think when people say they want spiritual sex, that's what they mean. They want, they want an experience of dissolution. They want an experience of merging. They want a, an experience of their body moving them rather than them moving their body. They want a no-mind experience of like my front- Yeah... brain is no longer deciding, imagining how I look or trying to understand what the other person wants to please them or serve only one function. I want an experience where I am in rapture and I can trust what I say, I can trust how I move. I don't care if I'm drooling. I'm doing something that's so weird, I call it the hookup, where like there's just a contact and it's like magnets and you're like, "Whoa, like I never would have thought to put my, you know, finger in my eye socket," but that's just the perfect union, like the Sistine Chapel fingers, and there's-- that's doing something and there's magic here. And this is it. It's, it-- this isn't it so that it has to go somewhere else. It can go somewhere else, but like it's here right now. And then when I feel that hookup and that circuit, and then can I amplify the pleasure not by doing anything else, by rerouting myself again towards like, it's okay to feel this good, and I-- and can I just let it feel this good? Because most time people think, "Oh, I want more pleasure," if they do, 'cause a lot of people are like, "I'm afraid of pleasure and it's taking me away from productivity, and I don't know if I can handle it," and you know. But if people are like seeking pleasure, they think about it as another sex act or another, you know treasure, pleasure chest, or another MDMA thing to bring in so that you can enhance it, rather than just once I notice it, can I stick with it, and then can I fill myself with it by allowing allowance?

[1:07:42]

[Luke] You've done quite a lot of work around trauma and there's a a subchapter in your book about the sacred wound. And I think in my own experience, getting to some of these places or at least you know, setting the compass towards some of these places and doing my best to get there has often been difficult both for myself and partners because there's things locked in the body, you know? There's traumas in there that are no matter how much your soul wants to expand and experience that sense of oneness with your partner, your body has other plans. You know, your body has other defenses that are difficult to override and perhaps shouldn't be overridden in that way too. So let's speak to what maybe some of the blocks are that, you know, that we can begin to identify and heal that avail us to a more broad experience of intimacy.

[Kimberly] It's a beautiful question, and it's a huge question. And I don't take it lightly at all. I-- It's in chapter nine of my book. It's called The Sacred Wound, and I really didn't wanna write the chapter. it's the last chapter that I wrote. I was hoping I could write the whole book and get away with not writing it, both because, as you know from completing a book recently, to write it well, you have to reinhabit it. And-

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] Uh-

[Luke] Jesus.

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] Oh my God, yes.

[Kimberly] And I... Yeah, I didn't wanna reinhabit it, and as someone who's worked with thousands of women and touched thousands of women's pelvises and sacred anatomy my work is so redemptive, really. Like, I-- People go, "Well, how can you do that? It's so dark." But the actual power of the touch and just presence outside of arousal space or medical space is so powerful that generally things change really fast. And so I'm-- I get to participate in the part that's the putting back together-

[Luke] Mm. Mm-hmm...

[Kimberly] Rather than the damage.

[Luke] Mm-hmm.

[Kimberly] So, you know, if you really give yourself over to the amount of transgression that's happened in the female body, it's pretty devastating. And I really wrestled with that of the world that I believe is possible together with the world that we have together with the historical evidence and, um, Yeah, I, so I wanted to be able-- I've already written a book on trauma too, so I was like, "Okay, I've written the a book on trauma." Like I wanna write this from a different perspective because also the trauma language is now just so ubiquitous and it's so throwaway a lot of the time. Like everything is trauma and like you can't possibly do this because of your trauma and your intergenerational trauma, and I really feel like it's a crippling lens at this point. Like I-- the existence of trauma is obviously incontrovertible and something that every human being on Earth has to address. There's no person that doesn't have traumas in their life. And hyper-specializing in trauma seems to be weakening us rather than strengthening us. So that's part of wanting to write something that's into the collective rather than like what do individual people do because sometimes that's driving it deeper rather than lifting it up or-

[1:11:25]

[Luke] Do you, do you think one of the reasons that it's, that it's sometimes driven deeper is because people have the tendency to over-identify with it? To like infuse that into their identity? So to some people

[Kimberly] That I think it feels more real to people than everything that does work. I think it comes from psychology where there's such an emphasis on analyzing your parents and all the ways that they didn't do the right things for you, and there's not a lot of emphasis on like what they did do for you. And so it's-- we have an idea that what being personally responsible looks like is a deep excavation of everything that's gone wrong for us. Very little about what's gone right for us. And so-- and I'm like the least Pollyanna person. Well, Stephen Jenkinson's less Pollyanna than I am, but, uh-

[Luke] I think you guys might be head and head there. What is the word? Head-to-head, you know?

[Kimberly] Okay. Well, that's good. Yeah. That's a good compliment. So I'm not a gloss over person. I'm not a spiritual bypasser. I'm not somebody who wants to wrangle people's trauma bone out of their mouth. But as a trauma resolution practitioner, in every instance where there's a rupture that occurs, you cannot heal that rupture without identifying something that was pleasurable, positive, someone, something, a bird that flew out the window, the wind on your face. It's even as-- not a spiritual principle, just a fricking physiological actual principle of how you untie the knot. You have to have something that worked. So but this doesn't answer your question. There is always just so much more that's working than not working that we're even able to sit here together, and both of us have experienced a fair amount of boundary rupture. And if we understood our own nervous systems better and we understood each other's nervous systems better, then we wouldn't necessarily be working so much with the past. In the present moment, what appears is everything we need to do those renegotiations, not reenactments. So that was my big hope for my last book, which was the last time we spoke, which is called Call of the Wild, was that through the animal language and through abstracting it a little bit from the personalization, that we would have developed a language with one another that allowed, for instance, someone to understand when someone was in a freeze, for instance. Because when you're in a freeze, it's-- depending on how deep in it you are, you often can't communicate from that spot. But the other person or people that are there could notice that you were in a freeze. And it would be, in an ideal world, I guess we could say it would be a mutual responsibility in our sensing function to know where the other person was. But then also if we don't, to quickly be able to know, "Oh, okay, I was in a freeze and I didn't tell you to stop." And that doesn't mean that you're now a bad person. It means that my part of it was I didn't, I didn't have wherewithal in my own system to communicate it. You're just learning my system and you didn't know. So next time, here's what we could do. Rather than what happens now, which is like a big like blame and shame fest, where people just get retracted and retracted into their points of view. So we all cross boundaries, and we all have our boundaries crossed. There's no such thing as no risk. There's no such thing as absolute safety. And in fact, the absence of the risk is why there's so little public erotic. It's why so many people have no polarity in their relationships. It's why one of the reasons fertility is really challenging. It's how we're getting to a place where people think it's just okay to really not have sex and intimacy and that it's okay for them to have AI girlfriends and boyfriends maybe and dolls will do and- You know, um-

[1:15:43]

[Luke] Oh,

[Kimberly] Man... we're afraid of body to body contact. Like I know why you're laughing, but for me, this is like really like survival of the species level important because like body to body is really what we are as humans. Mm-hmm. So these abstracted functions create so much distortion and so much loss And so much existential grinding that goes into despair and goes into futility instead of generativity, instead of like, okay, yeah, there-- the environment's changing and we're still alive Yeah, there's a lot of, um abuse and misapprehens- apprehension and scars, and there's a lot of life. And as humans, this is how we make life together.

[Luke] Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. I walk that very narrow line often just looking at the collective, just looking at the melodrama of humanity as a whole, right? And there's always just seemingly an ever-increasing amount of darkness.

[Kimberly] It's a kink, right? It's gotta be a, it's part of the kink. Yeah... it's out there. It's personal kink. It's like, it's a fixation on death.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] But not in, not in a way that's, like, not real death because we're completely we're so distant from what real death is that it's-- I think those two go together. We're so distant from what real birth and real death is, meaning birth and death that actually happen, that then we-- But we've got this other, like, dark door death kink where everything is doomsday, and you're not really paying attention if you're not just completely f*cked all the time about- Yeah All the bad things that are happening. You're bypassing, and you don't get it, and, you know. And yeah, so, like, to me, the body to body, flesh to flesh proximity and everything that comes through that is why I wrote the book, is why eroticism is not just sexuality and not just spirituality and not just the feminine, but it's like, it's being with the pulse of what life is asking of you, which then also is connected to your life purpose, is connected to what you're meant to be offering and how you're meant to be serving.

[Luke] Congratulations, my fellow humans. We created a technological world our biology can't keep up with. Everywhere we go, we're surrounded by wireless signals, notifications, screens, and an endless flow of information whizzing through the air. And while technology has definitely made life more convenient, it hasn't exactly made it less toxic. That's why I've become so intentional about creating a calm, supportive environment in our home. I hardwired the internet and did a ton of EMF mitigation. But there's one thing I use that doesn't require any new equipment or tech. It's called Quantum Upgrade. Quantum Upgrade is a remote subscription service that creates a coherent quantum energy field all throughout your house, and it's designed specifically to help harmonize the EMF in your environment. And the beauty of it is that once you set it up, there's nothing else you need to do. It runs on full automation. And you can even customize your experience with boosters for sleep, recovery, creativity, and meditation. To get your house locked in, here's what you do, folks. Visit lukestory.com/quantumupgrade and use the code LUKE15 to start your 15-day free trial. 'Cause the fact is, we can't outrun the wireless world, but we can make the environments we live in more supportive to our biology, and that's why I love Quantum Upgrade. So go to lukestory.com/quantumupgrade, and don't forget to use that code LUKE15 to get 15 days for free. Well, I've spent the past few years really teasing apart the idea of connection to all things, you know. And the funny thing about it is that I've discovered, at least in my own experience, is that oftentimes connection has been difficult because of past traumas and experiences that I, and you know, as you said, everyone has had, where connection starts to feel unsafe. So we seek out in many cases even less safe-

[1:20:25]

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm

[Luke] Approaches to connection. Mm-hmm. Or just look for it where it can't be found or where it's unavailable, right? The thing that I'm finding that's so counterintuitive to me based on my, you know, spiritual framework is, you know, I'm looking for connection to the totality of all that is, right? I mean, that's where I feel at home. Those were those colors I was seeing in that exper- you know, experience I described earlier. It's like that's the place I'm really comfortable in. Yet at the same time, I'm in a body for a reason, and it's such like a cosmic joke to me that it's like one of the, if not the primary ways that I can get there, you know, the greater there, is through the immediacy of form. So I've kind of wrestled with in my own spiritual journey of, I think discounting form, including the erotic nature of us humans and myself as like, ah, that's like not necessary. I'm just gonna go straight to the source, right?

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] And kind of dismissing the capacity and potential-

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm...

[Luke] Of finding the greater connection through Mm More immediate and intimate connection.

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm.

[Luke] It's like the whole, it's

[Kimberly] Very well said. And it's also about like you're using the terms form and formlessness. It's also, it is an implicit hierarchy that spirit is out there and the body is keeping us here. Yes. And therefore, spirit is better-... and the earth and the body is worse.

[Luke] Exactly. Exactly. Yes.

[Kimberly] And the extension of that is then that male is better and female is worse. Because as a female body, we are bloody and, you know, there's, it's messy. It's a messy proposition, and the female body is closer to the earth because of what we have to do with the earth. And so that, I think it's D-Descartian, but also it has a lot to do with, you know, the As one of the kids said to me, the top three religions, monotheism in general, is that spirit is white and outside and pure, and then the body is, you know, in a woman's case, like red and bleeding and lower. And so we're... And impure. And so part of peeling that apart is realizing that there's a lot at stake when we have these internal fractures, which most of us do. And yeah, another reason why I make that statement about, like, the female body is a spiritual path, because out there isn't more real than in here.

[Luke] I think that's, that idea is there's a lot of wisdom in that, and it's counterintuitive to, you know, again, my sort of I guess spiritual perspective or worldview. After having been so mind-body identified for most of my life and becoming aware of the suffering that caused for me and other people, I've gradually moved toward a more broad awareness of my actual identity, right? Like, when I speak of loneliness, I speak of it as a case of mistaken identity, because you can't be alone. You're you, Mm. You might feel alone, right? Mm-hmm. On the material level, you might be alone, but it's impossible to be separated.

[1:23:37]

[Kimberly] Mm.

[Luke] Right? At a higher level. So there's kind of a dismissal or a discounting of the body because of the It's like a, again, a pendulum swing, kind of like we were talking about with feminism, right? It's like, okay, wow, I really start to understand I'm more than just this body and these thoughts and sensations. Therefore, I don't need that old thing at all, right?

[Kimberly] Well, I think that's such a great point. And for me, that came in as a response to my own trauma. So my first big boundary rupture sexually I was sexually assaulted at college, and I left the college, and I had a court case go on there. What my response to that was yoga, because I was... I didn't, I don't have religion. I felt so, like, my world was turned upside down, like nothing that I understood made sense anymore. So I thought, "Okay, I gotta try, I gotta try something." Like I'm grasping, like I need something. So I went to yoga and spirit, and yes, I was using my physical body, and I was chanting, and I was meditating, and I was also doing asana. But I think that's very common, that when there's sexual boundary rupture, we go to the spiritual and because it's out there. And so it looks like an embodiment practice, but it's sometimes a stepping stone where we're in a kind of a freeze, and it's just a positive freeze. And then the next level is like, how do we... I alway- I think about it all the time, like, what would my, at that point, 20 years of yoga practice have been if I wasn't going into it with this deficit in my nervous system? Because I was really using it as a survival tool, which is a pretty good one 'cause, you know, sometimes you might use drugs or alcohol or other kinds of addiction. So it was pretty okay. But at the same time, there was still an underlying feeling like, I know I'm still... Medicating would be a strong word, but like I know that I'm still-- I'm not getting to it. I'm just making it I want, the word placate keeps coming, but that's not what the right word is. It's like sublimating it. I'm taming it, but I'm not... It hasn't been alchemized or metabolized.

[Luke] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Kimberly] And I wanted to say too That I think we're all in this together of, you know, coming-- whether it's sexuality or friendship or relationship, like we're, we are swimming in this framework of trauma and therefore, I think sometimes it even creates more trauma rather than the idea would be like, oh, if you shine a light on trauma, then therefore it will have a chance to go away. But sometimes you shine a light on something and it multiplies. Well, I just wanna share that I've been working on a body of work that's called Mothering the Bones, and what it is it's teaching women to touch one another's pelvises. It's clothed and we don't touch genitals. We hold each other's bones. And it's a-- I call it a lay practice. So because the reason I'm saying it now is because I was talking about trauma and my suspicion about trauma and trauma world and like continually seeking trauma repair, which makes total sense because if you-- if something keeps repeating and you're like, you know it's happening and you know it's your obstacle, it makes a lot of sense to try to keep figuring out why that's happening. But trying to figure it out oftentimes drives it deeper too, because that-- the sensitive places kind of curl up and hide when you're going straight for them. So Mothering the Bones all of the work is done either in a group or in trios or quartets, so that there's one person as the practitioner and there's one person as a receiver, but there's witnesses. And some people say, "Well, I got raped, so like I can't be witnessed in a session." And it's like, "No, but why? Why is that so special?" Like we all know that's in the field and probably most people there have had some kind of experience that's related to it. And it distributes the holding of it so the holding isn't just practitioner-receiver. Now it's widening out in a net that can hold it, which is what I feel like was really lacking in the first wave of the Me Too, where so many women came out with their experiences and then rem-- had all these memories of violations and then all this violation and wreckage was like out in public, but there was nothing to hold it. And so individuals oftentimes went down because there wasn't a collective holding of it. And that wreckage I think has to do in some ways like that was my daughter's sexual coming of age. Like that-- Twenty-seventeen, she's nine years old and hearing all men are dangerous and all men are harmful. So this Mothering the Bones work is really my attempt to care for the land of the places that I'm invited to do it, care for the midwives that are there because midwives are actually retiring at a really high rate. They're very, The lifestyle is really hard without village-mindedness and elders aren't really respected well in midwifery anymore, and then there's so much litigiousness. They're really at risk now. so I've tried to serve places where midwives are maybe trying to serve, but they're either burnt out or about to retire, where I can kind of infuse their community, because then we bring people from the community in to receive the work And I just say it not because I think that everybody needs to come study that with me, but because I think that thinking in a broader way about how we come together intergenerationally, how we come together through touch and body to body when there's so much online training. You know, nowadays you can get trained as a massage therapist online. You can get trained as a doula online. All these things that are highly visceral and tactile have even been removed in how the training is done.

[1:29:47]

[Luke] Mm-hmm.

[Kimberly] And so I just offer it as I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who have healing practices and really are devoted to community making and community building, that one of those ways is to imagine that every kind of healing that we do doesn't have to be one-on-one stuck away in a room. That cultures like the Maori people uh, all over Brazil, the lomi in Hawaii, the-- it's part of community health. It's part of caring for each other. A lot of the last workshop that I taught in Canada, we had people that worked on the farm in the room with us while we were working, getting body work with other people so that it's not healing's not so hyper-specialized that-- and so therefore the practitioners don't get as burnt out, and there's a way that their apprenticeship is happening through the witnessing- Yeah So that we don't have to hire people for everything, that we can actually start to get used to what that might be if we could do that for each other as neighbors and community members.

[Luke] That's beautiful. What comes to mind for me is that there's, it's like there's more surface area for transmutation, right? It's not just the responsibility isn't One hundred percent... healee and healer. There's-

[Kimberly] Yeah. And the surface There's a broad container... and then, like, this way too, like tensegrity. Right. So yes, spread and then the depth, right, of where these points on the net... I mean, it's a lot of what's happening with us now. Like, we have this five-year connection, and how did it come? And then Steven comes in and weaves in and and then is, like, the net of how support can happen when it needs to happen is already in place instead of a crisis happens, and then you try to form the net, and then you try to find the pinpoints, right? Like, you have a baby. You've never seen a baby be born. You have, you've never been in a somatic space where somebody's in the underworld, and now all of a sudden you've gotta, like, find all these resources. It's-- or menopause or whatever. It's like Yeah, we have this, it's the in the, in the literal physical charge of it, right? Because to be able to run the kind of energy that eroticism might demand of you if you're gonna start going into the fractals and you're gonna start, there's a robustness that has to be there so that you don't just fritz. And that happens communally as well as individually.

[Luke] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What else comes to mind for me is the having spent a lot of time in 12-step meetings, the power of unity. You know, it's just this, it's this intangible thing, but if you've observed it enough times, you realize there's really something huge happening there. I mean, miracles take place solely by the fact that you have a room full of people with an intended purpose that is ultimately not self-serving, although in the immediate sense it's to kind of save your own ass. But you also have the understanding or you start to gain the understanding that to save one's own ass, you better get busy helping to save other people and get out of that self-centered sort of survival you Yeah... way of, way of operating, you know? This just was constantly fascinating to me just to, you know, see someone come through the door and you just wonder, "Hmm, man, I don't know if this one's gonna make it." And many don't. Maybe most don't, really. But the ones that do, it's like, how did that happen? You know, that didn't happen because they sat down with a therapist and intellectualized their past and traumas and, whoa, why are you, what are you trying to escape from? Not that doesn't have a place, right? It's important and it served me, but there's something unspoken that's transmitted that is deeply transformational and healing and seems to be more powerful when you have more souls in the room.

[1:33:45]

[Kimberly] Yeah. You

[Luke] Know, provided

[Kimberly] There's It factors expertise and centers elderhood because Yeah... experience of the program which is through my father and my grandfather, is that there is, there is actual elderhood there.

[Luke] Right. Right, 100%.

[Kimberly] And the eldering doesn't take away from, um It's like it's healthy hierarchy through years.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] So it's, you know, it... But the person's not saying, "I'm better than you. I know more than you." They're just saying, "I've walked this road longer than you have."

[Luke] It's a leader- Absolutely... it's a leadership based on volunteering Yeah Versus imposition- Yeah... and dictatorship, right? I mean, in the case of the 12 steps, I mean, it's, that's baked into the system. No one's in control, no one owns anything, no one makes money.

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] You know, no one has really any gain outside of their own, you know, wellbeing, I guess. But yeah, the elders are a really important part of that, right? I mean, I just always contextualize things 'cause I have so much history with this. But say if you have, say, let's just take a 12-step group. You have a room full of 20 people who are all under 30 days sober. The chances of that sticking are pretty low. Mm. But it only takes a couple elder anchors. You know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and there's there's kind of an, a baked-in respect for that because you know how far you are from that, and you can only imagine what it takes to maintain that. You know, to be able to not only embrace that liberation, but to be in a place in your life where contribution and service has become primary, that's powerful. That's powerful.

[Kimberly] Yeah, I feel really indebted to the program, not having experienced it myself. I mean, experienced it by proxy. but it, like, saved my relationship with my grandfather, and also You know, we haven't talked about it in relationship with sexuality, but for a lot of people, a lot of the transgressions happened when someone was drunk or high or drugged, or drugged themselves and blacked out.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] And a lot of people come to me and they say, "You know, I kind of feel like I'm starting over again because, yeah, intimacy is hard for me because I used a substance all these years to be able to be intimate, and now I feel so much more naked because I want to go here, and it feels like a starting over."

[Luke] Oh my God, yes. I relate deeply to that. I remember you know, when I was first sober, oh my God, you were talking earlier about, you know, getting caught up in your head, getting trapped in the mind, and that, you know, you're inadvertently disassociating from your body and the, and the sensuality and physicality of the experience. I mean, that was like, that was a constant for me. You know? Mm. I just could not... Like, I didn't know how to be in my body-

[Kimberly] Yeah...

[Luke] Without drugs and alcohol.

[1:36:45]

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] It was very difficult to connect and That's partially

[Kimberly] Why you're using them, to not be there, and-

[Luke] Yeah...

[Kimberly] It's I think a lot of times when people are evaluating where they are sexually in a relationship, like a common scenario is two people get together, they party a lot together, the woman gets pregnant. She stops partying because she's pregnant. The partner maybe stops a little bit, but maybe still drinking beer sometimes. Then the baby's born, then the woman kind of loses interest in partying. But then the man's coping mechanism is oftentimes drinking or something. And so the paths just go like this because they're not on the same frequency Yeah They're not dealing with stress the same way and their priorities have completely changed, and-

[Luke] And what's required of them is vastly different, right? Yeah. It's Yeah... you know, the male is just, obviously can have a much more passive role in that, you know, the male's not breastfeeding, for example, right? Right. There's a different level of responsibility or a different type of responsibility maybe.

[Kimberly] Yeah, and I think that's a great point because I think you're right. I think there's different levels of responsibility, but because there's so little real fathering going on, that people, they... And there's the conflation of the roles, then men feel displaced because they don't have the same role the woman has, but they don't really know what the role is. And so then it's like, okay, well, it's easier to check out, 'cause also if I was using my wife to regulate me, and I was using... My wife's attention was, like she could mother me before she had another baby to mother, and we didn't even know that was happening. Then I feel neglected and lonely and-

[Luke] Yeah

[Kimberly] Abandoned, and I don't know... I don't have other men around me that are like showing me, well, what does it mean to evolve into this role. And I also think that, you know, it's pretty unusual for someone to have family incest without there being alcohol or drugs involved. So I think it, I didn't anticipate we'd end up here, but I think it's important because people oftentimes spin around a lot of things about trying to, in my language, uncouple, you know, untangle all these things that are tangled up. And oftentimes because, you know, you go to therapy for a long time before your therapist ever asks you if you drink or... You know, I mean, it's kind of appalling. Like, I have relatives that are addicts, and they're in therapy, and they're not getting better, and I'm like, "Yeah, 'cause your therapist doesn't know that you're using all the time." Like, how are you're just going there and showing a completely different side of what's really happening. And I find that the normalization of drinking in some ways is, like, women And, I mean, I'm, these are binaries, but 'cause I know a lot of things are in reverse sometimes. But they're trying to make something happen within that configuration that only sobriety is gonna be able to help.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] And, you know, you can, like, wind yourself around, "Well, if I only came to it this way, and I only asked-" "... this person to do this, and if I only express myself differently, and if I only..." Yeah. You know, but there's only so much of a level of contact that can happen when there's that. And I do wanna say, too, like, I've been in the rooms, the 12-step rooms I've been in 'cause are usually going for, like, when my dad's taking tokens or something like that. It's really hard. You can tell it's, like, a really hard place for me to be because so much of my lineage is that's where it's coming from, and so it's, it... And I'm just such a natural griever. When I'm in those rooms, I just feel such a tremendous amount of grief, and then I also am feeling like this isn't even my place in a way, you know?

[1:40:23]

[Luke] Right. Right.

[Kimberly] Like, one time I got up to speak, and my dad's like, "You can't talk today." You know? I'm like, "That's so typical, Kimberly." Like-... I've got my hand up like, "I have something to say here." My dad's like, "It's only for people that are in the program." I'm like, "All right. We'll talk about it later." but there's so much, Ancestry moving in those rooms. There's so many untended spirits that appear there, and so if you're alert to that, it's just like a lot of-

[Luke] It's a lot of energy for an empath...

[Kimberly] Sound and energy.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] But I there was a time in my life where I was aware of the female ruptures. Like, I was aware of molestation that my mom experienced or things that happened with my grandmothers. But then there was a time where everything flipped and I became aware of transgressions of my grandfathers through a weird 23andMe rabbit hole. And it just made me realize how it's coming through most of our lines in some way, so we are in a unique situation without the constraints of traditional gender roles and marriage. We are in this kind of different time where we're unwilling to create external... Well, some people are going to religion and have religion for that to tell them their moral codes to decide how they're, you know... And I think we, people need that. Like, there are people that it's just better that there's like some rules to follow rather Yeah An internal ethic.

[Luke] If there were no social agreements, no one would agree to them. Maybe

[Kimberly] So. Yeah. But I, Yeah, I guess I say all that to say it's really easy for people to look from the outside and to make assumptions about... We all make assumptions about what other people's lives are like and how they've gotten to where they've gotten, and I think sometimes we make the assumption that if people are whole or healthy or dynamic, that it must have been easy to get there, which is usually the opposite. 'Cause we all know the feeling of somebody who's never really been through much hard stuff, you know, kind of the silver spoon feeling. We know what that feels like. So I don't come to this moment in my life, just like I said about menopause, like I didn't come to the other side of the menopausal porter portal because I did everything right and it was easy for me, and I didn't even notice when I stopped my period and I just kept on going. The same is true of like some kind of experience with the erotic. I didn't come to that because I had an unbridled, untainted erotic expression that-- And I have teachers that did come to it that way, and it's quite something to be with somebody who really had free expression from the beginning and that never really got damped down or distorted. But that hasn't been my path here. And I say that to say that like wherever someone is a starting point and a turning point, and there is always more pleasure available if you can include grief in pleasure. And there is, no matter how scarified you are internally or externally, no matter what kind of birth trajectory you've had, heartbreaking, heart-warming, you know, expansive, contractive, long underworld stays, like there is always more erotic available to you, not just through a shift in perspective, but also by opening oneself up to what is around us. And when we orient ourselves to that, it often starts spontaneously arising, but it's life responding to life.

[1:44:28]

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[Kimberly] Activationproducts.com/luke, and the code is Luke.

[Luke] Yeah. It harkens back to what you were describing earlier in finding the value in past suffering, right? And not only looking at, oh, the dysfunctional family and yada, but identifying the benefits, too, that what you just described to me is, like, the emotional range that becomes available when you've spent a lot of time in pain-

[Kimberly] Mm...

[Luke] And the access to empathy- Mm... and compassion. I know for a fact I would be much less of a feeling person in general if I hadn't felt what we would call, you know, negative emotions or trauma to the depth that I did.

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] In other words, like, there were parts of myself that were touched figuratively and literally that caused so much damage that it's like there's a pretty wide bandwidth of feeling that is accessible to me now that I don't know would've been possible had I had a very cookie cutter, quote, "easy life"-

[Kimberly] Mm

[Luke] That had much less adversity. You know? Mm-hmm. It's back to the perspective thing of like, okay, yeah, let's acknowledge. Let's not bypass. Yeah. But let's not get stuck there either. Yeah. You know? That's been a real, I wouldn't say a challenge for me, but something I've been aware of in my own, in my own journey, you Mm Is to, is to really find the gift in all of it, and I would never have been able to have forgiven the people that victimized me if I wasn't able to access that first, you know, of really zooming out at the full context- Mm-hmm... instead of just the details of a particular incident of abuse or experience. It's like, okay, there's more going on here than I will ever understand, and there Mm... there was meaning to be harvested. There was value to be harvested even from the things that I would term as absolutely, unequivocally, objectively negative.

[1:48:01]

[Kimberly] Right.

[Luke] Like, can you really say that about anything? Because we Yeah Don't know, you know? It's like-

[Kimberly] Yeah...

[Luke] We're not God.

[Kimberly] It takes time.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] Right? Like Yeah... and it takes perspective, and it also takes going through rage and anger, and it takes going through naming yourself, being willing to say, "I was a victim. That was unequivocally wrong. That should never have happened, and it did." Okay, and, you know, there's a lot to that, and there's a lot to secrets and what happens when we're keeping secrets. And that if you prematurely go to forgiveness, it's probably not gonna hold, and you probably will get sick, and you'll derive it in a deeper place to find. But if you especially female nervous systems, like have to go through this process of anger and rage and indignation 'cause we skip so fast to forgiveness. We skip so fast to understanding the other person's trauma and why they would've done it and analyzing them rather than just like, "No, this is-- That belonged to them. They were in power. I was not. I should've been protected. That shouldn't happen, and it did." And so now it's mine to move forward with and to figure out where does that live in me and and how much airtime does it get? And sometimes it announces itself, and I don't get to choose, and sometimes- yeah.

[Luke] Totally. I mean, whenever I have conflict with anyone, especially my intimate relationships, it's like This actually happened this morning. I wouldn't say it was like conflict, but I don't remember what I said, but right when I woke up, I had said something that instigated some movement of energy in Allison, and it was a little jarring because I'd just woken up and I'm a very slow riser. But immediately I started going to, "Hmm, I wonder what was actually behind that." You know? It's like-

[Kimberly] Mm... "

[Luke] Did I hurt you?" Or, "How were you hurt?" Or, "What are you afraid of?" Right? It's like I'm finding I have a greater capacity to go beyond what's immediately in front of me. In other words, I'm just more oriented toward the root of something than I am the symptomatic aspects of something. And in that, I'm able to find more faster resolution-

[Kimberly] Mm...

[Luke] And much easier access to compassion.

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm.

[Luke] And much less of a propensity toward defensiveness Mm-hmm... offensiveness. There's Yeah... kind of neutrality in there when you're able to look past something. I

[Kimberly] Mean, that's such a superpower because if you can do that and not, and have the other person not feel like you're trying to analyze them, but that you're sensing through it, then you're kind of fast-tracking back to connection.

[Luke] Exactly.

[Kimberly] But if you're in the like, "Okay, now I'm gonna try to NVC you and, like, tell you what I think your underlying need

[Luke] Is-" That's a great point because I-...

[1:51:01]

[Kimberly] That's gonna

[Luke] Because I didn't... Those, that inquiry that I had going on internally- Mm-hmm... I didn't mention to Okay... for a couple more hours. You know, I was just like, "Okay this... I gotta breathe through this and, you know, take my shower and get ready for my conversation with you." It's like I don't have time and space to get all twisted up over something that was extremely mild anyway. But the curiosity persisted, you know? Mm-hmm. and then I asked her later, I was like, "Do you see that there's a possibility that this thing or that thing was behind that?" And she didn't actually really identify with either.

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm.

[Luke] You know, it was, it was another. It was just like, "Oh, no, I'm just having an experience. It's unrelated to anything really." But yeah, I highly advise against it, especially if you're in a relationship with a female. Do not try to explain why they're having their feelings while they're expressing their feelings. Very bad idea. It's going to be very counterproductive. It will not go well for you. I can almost guarantee that. the last thing I wanna touch on is you know, I know our last conversation had a lot more to do with trauma because that was your area of focus- Mm-hmm... and the theme of your last book. But as you were saying how, you know, trauma-informed languaging and all of these different models that people have is very socially prevalent, and for good reason. I think it's great that we're addressing this. Also, some downsides, as you described, that people can start to kind of fall into that and not be able to get their way out. But one of the things that I see in that realm quite a lot is this idea of nervous system regulation and self-regulation, and what I hear in that sometimes from some people sounds to me more like Suppression or control versus, I don't even know what the word would be, integration, allowing, awareness. There's some... I feel like there's some more elevated and productive version of that.

[Kimberly] Mm-hmm.

[Luke] And it could just be semantics, you know. Mm-hmm. But it's like-

[Kimberly] I don't think it is. I think you're totally onto something. I think that it is another way of trying to sublimate, and most women, that's what they're going for. They're feeling anxious, or they're feeling depressed, or they're feeling exhausted, or they're feeling like they're out of touch with themselves. They're, they have a role for everybody else, but they don't feel that they're... What they what they want is really too big of a part of the equation. And so it's like, "Oh, I need to calm down," which is interesting because that's what the culture tells women, "Calm down."

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] Like-

[Luke] Also bad advice.

[Kimberly] Yeah. Relax. Don't tell, don't say relax. Have to articulate

[Luke] That.

[Kimberly] But that's what we're saying to ourselves, "I should just relax. I should just calm down." And so what's out there right now is a lot of extended exhalations meditate, do things that decelerate the valve system when really what most women need... 'Cause also as a human species, a human North American species, we're moving so much less than bodies are meant to move and move in so many different ways is how energy flows, how emotion flows, how sensation flows, how imagery is even possible to arise, right? So that's the backdrop is most of us aren't even moving remotely enough. Our eyes are fixating on screens, which is a threat response. We're narrowing our vision literally. but so there's all these things. I'm not so hip to some of like the hashtag things, but I think there's something called the Slow Girl Era or something. Um-

[1:54:40]

[Luke] I'm not hip to it either.

[Kimberly] Yeah, it's like Slow Girl Era and then there's something else called Couch Rot, which is basically where like- It's like laying That doesn't sound good... the couch a lot. It doesn't. It sounds terrible, but people use it affirmatively like, "Oh, well I'm just too tired so I need to lay around. I need to rest more." Right? Resting. Resting is a great example. Most people do need to rest more. Most people don't know how to rest, and so stagnation is not rest. Lethargy is not rest. Resting requires action in order to be able to rest most of the time. Now, the degree of activity, the degree of heart rate acceleration, the degree of sweating or what you're doing changes, but we can't actually rest if we are not also active.

[Luke] Well, if you think about the nervous system response of freeze, there's a, there's a clash between that and rest, I mean, just on its surface,

[Kimberly] Right? 100%. One is a positive expression of parasympathetic dorsal response, which would be rest, digest, hibernate. That's where that lives. the storage of energy, you know, when you need to like... I'm sure you had this experience writing where you're like, "Do I have writer's block or am I like incubating an idea?" Same thing, same different side of the same coin. Am I procrastinating or am I just storing-

[Luke] Yeah...

[Kimberly] For when I'm gonna go?

[Luke] Yeah, totally.

[Kimberly] And with a freeze response, a, an intense freeze response which physically manifests as irritable bowel syndrome, constipation hyperfunctionality sometimes, yeah, you can't just martial arts your way out of a freeze response. You can't just cardio your way out of it, otherwise we'd all be in pretty good shape. There's a there's an elegance to it. There's a coaxing to it, but it does require activation. And so I just 100% corroborate that this emphasis on self-regulation and nerve... What was the term you used? Was it self-regulation? Yeah. Yeah.

[Luke] Yeah. And I'm equating that with kind of suppression and control-

[Kimberly] Right...

[Luke] At times.

[Kimberly] Yeah. And it's because we are, we're overstimulated up here in our eyes and in our head, but we're understimulated in the rest of our bodies. And so people confuse like, "Oh, my heart's beating faster. That's bad." It's like, no, we need our hearts to beat faster sometimes. And so that's really what all of my Jaguar courses are about, is helping women handle more fight response, healthy fight response, healthy aggression the ability to hold arousal, the ability to hold the rising up of energy. Yes, sexual, but also just the capacity to surf waves. And only pressing the gas pedal will not get you there. You have to throw pebbles of activation into the pond. And I tell everyone, and I know you'll completely know this, is like, you don't learn how to regulate your nervous system and then life gets easier. You get to be a better surfer or a better swimmer.

[1:57:42]

[Luke] Yeah. It doesn't make the waves go away.

[Kimberly] No, it makes the waves, the waves get bigger.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] The legit waves- Yeah... get better, bigger. But even, but in the good way too. The orgasms get bigger, the capacity to handle more money gets bigger, or the capacity to handle less money, depending on where your ego's involved there. Like, you full spectrum living. Like, you're peeling open the spectrum of life rather than nervous system regulation, which is actually very white, very linear, very, like, tamp it down, keep it down, contain it. And the opposite of that is not catharsis, but the opposite could be called expression. It's under-expressed. You're not making art with it. Like, I feel like we're nervous system regulating our way out of art Like, are you going to therapy regulating your nervous system, or are you writing a song? Are you going to therapy to or are you doing your breathwork and your extended what are you making? What are you creating? What are you generating? What are you building? Who are you accountable to? you know, what kind of world do you wanna live in? And I understand because people feel like, "I'm so f*cked up. I feel so terrible. That's all I can focus on." That's-- but that's part of the problem 'cause if we're in village times, then we don't have that luxury because we have a function. We gotta go out and milk the cows. We gotta go out and shovel the sidewalk. We don't have a choice. We can't be too tired to do that. We have to do it. And that actual real work, like I just walked down, I don't think it was here, I think it was when I was in Asheville, and I saw an auto lawnmower. I'd never seen-- Have you seen that?

[Luke] Yeah. I used to use one.

[Kimberly] Really? Like a remote control lawnmower?

[Luke] Oh, no. I'm sorry. I thought you meant like a manual lawnmower.

[Kimberly] Oh, I wish I saw that.

[Luke] Yeah. With the-

[Kimberly] No, I saw like, you know how people have things-

[Luke] It doesn't spin

[Kimberly] Unless

[Luke] You're

[Kimberly] Pushing it... that vacuum their floor for them?

[Luke] Yes,

[Kimberly] Those little-

[Luke] The robots?

[Kimberly] Yeah. Yes.

[Luke] Yeah. Yeah.

[Kimberly] Well, there's that for mowing the lawn now, just like there's cars that drive themselves. But, you Yeah... I just wonder for people like, okay, so when we've got machines doing every possible conceivable thing for us, do we think that's not related to the degree to which people feel so dysregulated? I mean, more people than ever would say, "My nervous system is so dysregulated. I'm so fight or flight. I'm so this." But then we have less and less actual physical labor because we're outsourcing all that labor, and I think those things are connected. And I think it's also connected to the erotic because it's like the erotic lives in the made world as it is a, it's also our bridge. It's also our, like, intergalactic tether, but it's not here.

[Luke] Right. What you just described makes makes such sense to me and something that I've I wouldn't say I've learned. Maybe I'm beginning to learn. If I feel overwhelmed, which would be, like, fairly common, unfortunately, because I'm just a go-getter, it's Mm-hmm Resting is difficult. But if I'm feeling overwhelmed or stressed, my immediate inclination is, "Okay, I'm gonna meditate, I'm gonna down-regulate, gonna chill, take asana, take some time in stillness, some time in solitude, contemplative," you know, that kind of energy. And oftentimes, I'll find that the stress is actually compounding Because I'm not getting it out of my goddamn body, you know? So I'll do experiments. Okay, I feel like I need to go rest. What if I got on my, you know, high intensity interval training bike and just went absolutely ham for 15 minutes until I'm about to pass out? 'Cause it seems counterintuitive. I'm already stressed and overwhelmed. Why would I go do something physically stressful? But I've tracked this and I actually find, and I hate to admit this to myself 'cause it will mean I have to get on that goddamn bike or whatever version of that movement is that day, I'm actually much less overwhelmed from overwhelming myself physically. I think as someone who lives a lot just in the mind, I'm just thinking a lot, and what I do is speak and communicate, right? So I've gotta read your book, take notes. Everything is in the mind. It's in the computer.

[2:01:35]

[Kimberly] Yeah. Well, we convince ourself that it's more real, and that's so related sexually too, because it's like people are like, "Well, let's just talk about it." And it's like, okay, well, talking is good, but also at some point you gotta like add the touch into it. Right. You can't just analyze your trauma away. Not having a positive reparative experience isn't you have to have positive reparative experience in order to be able to really engage and loosen the negative experiences. It's that I think people think of that as an override, but it's like, it's not. And I mean, I, this is the, that just very simple dilemma is basically over time, your body just chooses that for you, and that's what people wanna hear. Like, you know, your body knows. But our bodies also go towards habits, so our body will often do the habitual thing. So it does-- it's not necessarily that you're feeling exhausted or overwhelmed, and then your body might tell you, "Lay down." There's so many times that I also have been like, "Let me just go try," and like, "I'm gonna go walk around the block just once, and if I'm tired when I walk around the block, I'll come down back and lay down." And then it's like, "No, I wanna keep walking." It-

[Luke] Yeah...

[Kimberly] It's the engagement that we're craving.

[Luke] Yeah. Do you think there's something, too-- I keep thinking it's my last question, and then it's not, but I swear this one will be. It seems to me there's also... When there's an imbalance in the amount of kind of mental strain and stress that you're having and you're not putting your body through any kind of regular stress, that there's a mismatch or a lack of congruency there, where it's like your body's going, "Hey, we need to..." I don't know. It's difficult to say. I don't mean, like, stress yourself out in your body so that you have an equal amount of stress in the mind, but something close to that. Yeah, I do. But it's like if all the stress- I also think that-... is kind of in thought form, there seems to be just an

[Kimberly] Imbalance... I think that it's crazy that the word stress wasn't even really in the lexicon, like, 40 years ago. Like, this idea to say, "I'm stressed out," nobody said that until, like, 40 years Oh, really?... which I just think is interesting. But also, like, you're using the word stress, and I understand the frame for the body, but it's also just motion. It's not really stress.

[Luke] Right.

[Kimberly] It's just action. Right. Which would normally we would need, we would need to walk somewhere to get food, or we would need to hunt an animal or, you know, there that's would be built in. I mean, just, it's just crazy, like, where I live. I have to, like, go for a walk. I'm not, like, walking towards anything generally. Yeah, same. I'm just walking Yeah... walk. But that, even that is-- I talk about it in the book. Impulse, action, satiation. It's like most people are stuck in that circuitry. They can't feel an impulse. A lot of women will say, like, "I just don't know what I want. I can't feel it. I'm not sure. I don't know what's good for me or what I should want, and so I'm pulling wants out of what I hear other people say or what I've seen or the images." And then the action is, like, bridging between a thought and, like, which is really a fantasy or, and then do the thing, act. And then after you do that, do you feel that was what you wanted? Did it scratch that itch? Or are you just on a loop in one of those, right? Like porn, I would say you never get to the satiation. You might just remain impulse, action, impulse, action, 'cause you're and it's barely even an action 'cause you're a passive receiver of what you're looking at. You're not, like, an active participant. So we can get stuck in these different parts that we can become so satiated that we become it's not even really satiated. It's like eating too much, that you've overeaten, and then you can't find the next impulse because you overindulged, and so that genuine impulse isn't there. But I definitely think, I mean, I feel it a lot being on, when I'm on the screen a lot, that just what's happening in my eyes, it's like, yeah, I need to involve the rest of my Yeah... and get it out of this-

[2:05:47]

[Luke] It's like maybe a, like aiming toward an even distribution of energy, right? When there's a lot of thought energy that I would just call stress or overwhelm. Right? It's like-

[Kimberly] Not the good kind of thinking.

[Luke] Yeah, it's just, it's all, it's all just energy, and if there's a, if there's an inequality between the, you know, the mental energy and the physical energy, maybe that's what it is. It's more of a balance and a, an even distribution where you're allowing energy to move not only through, like, rumination, but, like, whoa, let's do something somewhat strenuous, or at least, as you Yeah You know, include some motion so there's more of a broad template for that energy to move within and-

[Kimberly] Yeah, like the tensegrity we were talking about. But I also do think, and I wanna mention, that as somebody who had a lot of freeze in her system and a lot of flight in my system, and I was much more in the prey part of the predator-prey dynamic, that for me, switching my physical activity from yoga, which I still do love yoga and I still do it sometimes, but switching to martial arts, to things that have, like, actual impact and that are relational some of the time has made a huge difference in my own system because I'm practicing the healthy fight. And then the quality of your thinking changes because it's informed through the body rather than, you know, trying to solve and figure and wonder and manage and sort, that there's, it's coming from the other direction and the meaning-making- Right... function arises

[Luke] And I've, I'm assuming with that boundaries become more intuitive and innate too, rather than something you have to-

[Kimberly] 100%.

[Luke] You have to really intellectualize, right?

[Kimberly] It's Yeah, boundaries are real boundaries.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Kimberly] Boundaries aren't, "I should do this, and I'm gonna journal about it, and I'm gonna

[Luke] Get my-" Or, "What are they gonna think?"

[Kimberly] Yeah.

[Luke] And, "Oh, I don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings." It's like-

[Kimberly] You, your boundaries become incontrovertible because they're palpable. They just are. You it's a felt thing, body to body. It's not... And yeah, okay, you're still gonna have to have relational conversations, and you're still gonna have to express yourself, but as far as people overstepping or your kids grabbing your boob all the time and you don't want them to touch you anymore or, you know people talking to you in a way that's just not cool with you just happens way less because your energy shifts the space. You're not waiting for, you're not searching all the time for the safe space and scanning every place you go. You walk in and you make it safe.

[Luke] Yes. Hot damn. That's a good mic drop right there.

[Kimberly] Okay.

[Luke] All right. I wanna encourage everyone listening and watching to pre-order your book. You know, I think a lot of people that don't write books don't know the pre-order period is really important to authors not the least of not the least of which being my own, you know, experience of being a first-time author. So again, don't forget about the free gift where you can download an exclusive additional chapter from Erotic Seasons entitled The Body and The Belly at kimberlyannjohnson.com/erotic-seasons. And we're gonna put all that stuff, including your prior episode and your other incredible books, will all be found at lukestore.com/somatic2. Oh, I think I said Somatic before. This one is Somatic 2. Last one was Somatic without a number. But it's all at that link, and thank you so much for taking the time today.

[2:09:14]

[Kimberly] Thank you.

[Luke] Great to see you after a few years and just feel our mutual evolution. It's been really fun.

[Kimberly] Thank you so much.

[Luke] Big thanks you guys for hanging with me on this week's episode and making me part of your journey. Now, before we wrap up, let me tell you about a project I've just leveled up. After years of neglect, my YouTube channel just got a makeover, and if you haven't checked it out lately, you are missing out. Every new podcast episode now comes with a trailer so you can sample the vibe before diving into the full show. And with a library of 600-plus episodes to explore, you'll always find a conversation that hits home. And there's another cool part. YouTube is also a place where you get your questions answered from me directly. So drop a comment, and if your question's a good one, I'll do my best to answer it. So if you wanna get in the mix, head over to youtube.com/lukestory and make your voice heard. Whether you want a quick hit from the trailers, to binge through the years of archived wisdom, or to join the conversation yourself, youtube.com/lukestory is where it all happens

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