The Intersection of Sexuality, Pleasure and Leadership with Marianne St Clair

As a female leader, have you secretly desired to possess more masculine power? And as a male leader, more feminine power? Recognizing that the blend of these two energies really unleash your creativity and influence in your work and life. In today's complex business world, the dynamic and synergy between a muse's feminine attributes and a C-suite leader's masculine energy is more important than ever. Today's conversation with Marianne St. Clair, the world's premier muse, will help you recognize what is causing you to feel numb, lonely, and needing to find ways to escape, even through self-medicating. As well, she will break down the barriers blocking your creativity and therefore your personal and professional growth. With tips, strategies, and advice for gaining greater confidence in yourself and your abilities, and even boost your sex life and intimate relationships. And then lastly, to find new ways to really be open to new experiences that will transform you into a powerhouse leader. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Shading the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms female corporate executives into powerhouse leaders. By showing them how to shed the challenges and overwhelm along with any fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negativity holding them back. I'm your host, Bernadette Boas of Ball of Fire Coaching, bringing you powerhouse discussions each week to share tips, advice, and sometimes tough love so you create the riches in your work and life you deserve. Let's do this. MaryAnn, welcome to the show. I'm so excited for you to be here.

Bernadette, thank you. I'm excited to be here as well.

Yeah. Well, tell us, before we dive into all the business stuff, tell us a little bit about you personally so we can kind of relate and connect with you.

Yeah. So I'm going to give you just a little bit about my work background and then I'll tell you why I am here. So I've been a coach for probably 23 years. I'll maybe give or take a year there. And I'm really a trailblazer. I'm one of those rebels who, you know, gets called in to do the things that a lot of people won't do. So I have been a massage therapist. I have an extensive background in somatic work, which is deep within the body. Um, I have also really been hearing for the past 10 years, the Muse, the Muse, the Muse. So I'm ushering in the Muse. You'll be— you'll hear more about that during the— this interview. But the Muse is the feminine side. And so in the last probably year and a half, what has really happened— or not year and a half, 3 years— is I went into an extensive burnout through caregiving, being the good girl, taking care of everybody else and not taking care of myself. So I went into my own deep journey on reclaiming those parts of Maryann that needed to be brought forth and connecting deep within to my soul. And through that process of reclamation and being actually, um, becoming more sovereign, I, um, had to dive into old wounds, which for me were reclaiming— I had done a lot of work being a coach for years and years, but it came to the parts of reclaiming my sexuality and sensuality. And there was blocks there. There, it was stopping my creativity. And as I began this journey, one of my main, um, ways of healing was through painting. And so I began painting turtles, very vibrant turtles. But here's— I don't have one right here, but this is, you know, one of my— it's— my paintings are very, very colorful, very— so it was coming home to me, coming home to my soul, right? So as I did that, then my work began to really flourish and get clear and this part about the Muse, the sensuality and sexuality, is I really bring that together, um, to help people become a multi-dimensional leader, become that. And I say people, men and women, gender, um, so that they can be fully present, they can be fully whole and complete by reclaiming those parts of themselves.

That's a great segue into the first— I definitely want to understand, you just mentioned that the Muse is the feminine. But help us understand what you mean when you call yourself the, you know, a world premiere, uh, Muse. And then at the same time, your clients can claim that as well. So what exactly does that mean? What does it look like? And what are the characteristics of a Muse?

So yes, for me, the coach is more the masculine. It's more the, I've walked this path, I'm gonna help lead you and take you down. I'm gonna, you know, find those action steps and those goals and help you get there. For me, the feminine is the muse, and the muse is that spark of inspiration. You know, we've heard about muses all the way back in Greek times. We've heard of, you know, that they really sparked innovation and they were highly revered. And it was— they were— as today, you're going to see the muses come more and more, like you're seeing the rise of many fam— feminine archetypes. It's an archetype that when you fully embody— what I do is just spark that within. I light up those, those inner thing lights inside of someone else. So it's not that I'm totally doing something, it's more about who I'm being, which is more the feminine side. So I just fully bring all of me, and then we have conversations. We do. But then I do have the coaching side that helps really help someone embody and get over their traumas. Right.

Okay. So, all right, I need to make sure I understand something. So there's a muse and there's a coach. The muse is the feminine. The coach is more the masculine attributes or qualities of an individual. It's not necessarily that those are two roles or functions of someone. They're more the, the energy that someone's bringing. Is that correct? Right.

That's the way, that's the way I look at it. I mean, within us we have, you know, we have our gender, but then we all have within us the masculine and feminine. And so much of the world is run off of the masculine. We've become a very over-masculized culture. To where the feminine in us is rising. And so that's what the Muse does, is really bring the things out of the ethers, bring the, the innovations, those ideas, and bring them into the present moment in your mind. And your— what— when you get those sparks, ahas and stuff, that's more coming from the feminine side of you.

Right.

And so by being around people, we know that we can really take on, we mesh those energies together. And so being more from that feminine, I can spark that within other leaders. I'll give a quick example. Back in the '60s, we as women thought that we needed to become men. To be like men. So we put on our pants, we left the homes, we put on the blue, we became more masculinized. I don't know if I said that right, but more masculine. And I'm making up words, and I do that all the time. So, um, but you know, if you think about it, we burned the bras and we left the homes, left our, our creativity, and went to be more, you know, grow shoulders and grow those, the tough attributes. And it's now that we're realizing that you need both polarities. You need the masculine and feminine, just like a battery does. And that's why we're seeing such a huge epidemic of burnout. It's because we're truly— men and women aren't fully embodied.

We understand now what the muse is and what a coach is. Um, how does— our whole topic is around sexuality and pleasure and creativity, and immediately people's, you know, alarms will go off about, well, wait a minute, sexuality, sensuality, what does this have to do with my leadership? You know, because they close up when it comes to the work stuff, so to speak. So you mentioned that, you know, people are struggling and, you know, and they're, and they're all of a sudden finding themselves, you know, kind of lost and numb, in your words. What— where does sexuality and pleasure and sensuality and creativity, where does that all, you know, come together to ensure that one is a powerhouse leader, as I like to call them?

Yeah, very good. You know, we don't have to come in like the bull in the china shop. We don't have to come with our, our aggressive, you know, make stuff happen. It— when you understand what sexuality and sexual energy is, it's the most potent energy that runs through our body. It's the most potent energy. If you remember, most of us have read, and maybe some who haven't, but they, they need to go grab it. It's online is the book by Napoleon Hill called Think and Grow Rich. In Chapter 11, we talk— he talks about— and the, you know, he studied all the wealthiest people. And through time, you know, these— that was only meant for the elite. That, that information was kept sacred and secret. And in other teachers too, Neville Goddard, and, and there's a lot of teachers that are We're getting the information now on sexual energy and sexual transmutation. But if you are closed down in your sexuality, you had traumas when you were young, or, you know, you're not having what I call intentional sex— if you're doing things like porn, or you're having a mistress, or you're doing things that really are a lot of putting your sexual energy out without intention, you, you start depleting your energy. But when you learn how to cultivate it— sexual energy bursts, it is creativity, it is creative energy. And so when you learn how to really maximize and cultivate and harness it and then bring it forth you become very powerful within you because you know how to transmute that energy. And so I teach people how to do that.

Well, and you know, I'm going to be disclosing a lot, and this I've never disclosed to any— any— well, I shouldn't say anyone, but definitely not on my show. But I will be upfront and tell you that in my 20s and 30s and early 40s, when I was really struggling you know, within myself, um, just trying to figure out kind of, you know, the person I wanted to be against who I was. I was extremely promiscuous, um, and, you know, you mentioned, you know, affairs and porn, and those are often attributed to men, but I wanted to make sure the women also recognize within themselves, um, and if I can help, that's what I'm here for, because I definitely, in your words of numbing and, um, and trying to just to, you know, kind of medicate, uh, mine was in the vein of whether it was smoking, drinking, being promiscuous, you know, not ever having a very stable, secure relationship because it was just I needed that immediate, you know, yes. That immediate fix. So, you know, I just want to make sure the women out there are also thinking about kind of how are they projecting and how are they actually responding to some of the junk that they are dealing with. Um, and where we could be just as, as, uh, hard, hard on ourselves as men are with the things that you've been talking about. So yes.

It's, you know, I have this book back here where, um, it's a compilation book that I'm one of the authors in, and my story is all on reclaiming your sovereignty. And, you know, the, the part of mine is— so we have the— it's, it's about reclaiming my sex, sexuality, and being able to own my body. And we went through this as, um, the MeToo movement and being able to begin to ask for what we wanted. But have we fully come to a healthy, whole place of not using our body for, you know, seducing, or thinking we've got to get naked, or thinking we've got to please men, or thinking we've got to use that part of us. Now we can, and— but be clear why you are. And I'm not one who's sitting here— I love sex. I think sex is— whether or not you want one partner, 10 partners, whether or not you— that is up to you and the other individual, right? It's healthy to— but just don't keep it shut down. And then begin to really know what you have inside of you. There's this wealth of energy that when you bring it on board and you learn how to use your own sexual energy, you, you can just create worlds, you know. You can create wealth, you can create, um babies along with relationships, jobs. It's not the quick fix, but it is something that we are not using to our fullest potential that we have right within us. We think sex is a shame, guilt, you know, all the, the stuff around our bodies that we really need to shed. We need to shed those those traumas, right?

And so again, bringing it back to leadership, can I understand, um, or take away from this that once one can tap into their sexuality, their sensuality, what really pleases them, what they really truly want, um, within themselves and for themselves, as well as in their career and their work and their life, that's when they are they are able to be a really what I call powerhouse leader because they are so in touch. And they might not be so in touch, but they're at least tapping into all those, you know, areas to where they're a much more energized, you know, optimistic, positive, authentic leader.

Can I take that away from what would be Yes, you can take that away. And you can also— what I like to, um, really, you know, say is that we, we don't really have— I just lost a— okay. Feminine energy to me is pleasure and play. And when you become more focused on your prioritizing your pleasure And I'm talking about everything from, oh my gosh, this cup of coffee this morning, as I connect with it and I breathe it in and it lights up my sense of smell and I really am deriving pleasure from it. We need to start being more consciously aware and embodied as we— and mindful as we go through our day. Finding the things that give you pleasure, because the more you are finding pleasure and embodying it, the more you'll have. It's like going to the gym. If you don't ever go to the gym, you don't ever, you know, work those muscles of, you know, create— creating muscles, creating stamina. You, you can't just all of a sudden one day go, okay, I'm full of pleasure. You have to begin the journey to prioritize it. And I do something called a pleasure mapping session with people to begin to reawaken that because a lot of people don't even remember. They've forgotten how to dream. Bernadette, you can probably remember when you, before you left corporate, it was driven. It was, you probably couldn't even remember what it was that lit you up about your job, what it was that lit you up about life.

Right, I agree.

It's begin to spark those things. It's begin to awaken your own internal compass of pleasure.

Yeah, and that's important because— and I want to make sure, because one thing I heard that I almost went, whoo, uh, is when you were talking about throughout the day, you know, find those things that, you know, pleasure you. And I'm sitting there going, okay, guys and girls, there's no like self-sex at work, you know, that's not what we're talking about here. You know, right?

Putting something like Grease up on your computer and looking at it going, oh my gosh, look at that, that water, it fills my soul. You know, no, it's, it's little simple pleasures. Pleasure is a full gamut, a full spectrum. It is not just sex, right? That's where we've gone wrong.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Is— I think we got overdriven toward those physical pleasures that we don't even consider the simple internal pleasures that we're given by. Even like, I love walking out into my yard and watching the dogs play to kind of like break up my day from a, you know, just a stress or, you know, I need creativity, I need some energy. And so I, you know, take a break for even 2 minutes, walk outside, watch them play. Take a deep breath, look around, look at the sun, and then come back in. And, you know, so it's those little, little things. So what do you— I mean, it is a very complex, complicated world these days, but what are you really finding is causing the loneliness and the numbing and the really sense of being unfulfilled when many people look at those people in the, you know, C-suites and, you know, even VP suites and think, oh, they have it all. So what is it that's causing them to feel so empty?

One, we're, we're going through the motions of life and we are living everyone else's expectations. We're living, you know, our bosses, our kids. We're trying to please everybody else, and we've got into this roller coaster ride of You know, I used to say, what about me? When is it going to be my turn? When is it going to be, you know, the turn to focus it back on me and the things that make me happy? To where— so I really think that there's an excavation that needs to happen, you know, getting rid of the things. I call it turning off the barriers, belief, and bullshit, those things that doing for everybody else that we're— we've got too much on our plate. Do we really need to take the kids to every kind of function that there is out there? Ballet, soccer, we're sitting on the field. Uh, you know, when we get done with work, we're coming home, we're cooking. Do we really need— where can we lighten the load?

Yeah.

You know, where can we get rid of some of the beliefs that have been placed upon us where we are taking on too much to where we're numbing because life just isn't fun anymore. It isn't. We're in this grind. And so then we begin to tune in. We tune into our bodies. We tune into those simple pleasures, spiritual pleasures, mental pleasures, emotional pleasures, physical pleasures. And yes, all the way from self-pleasure. Give yourself a hug. We're in skin deprivation. We're starving as far as our skin hunger. You know, put cream on your hands as you sit at your desk and just give yourself some physical touch because we're not doing that. We're walking past each other. Right. Pandemic just exacerbated everything.

Yeah, right. Absolutely. And we're, you know, even hesitant to go in for hugs because it's like, you know, what if I, you know, all of a sudden they cough or, you know, they, they breathe? What does that do for me? I absolutely agree. I think there was a— there's been a lot of numbing, you know, as a result. At the same time though, Mary, and I, I think you're, you're of the same ilk, that that's not the excuse that we should be playing over and over again in our head. If we don't like where we are, you know, what do you say to those who don't like where they are? They're not happy, they're not fulfilled, they are feeling numb. What, what do you say to them?

It's time to do something different. It's time to hire Bernadette or hire myself to, to change your mindset, to change your pattern, to— I mean even after you get done with some of Bernadette's, you know, wonderful coaching and mindset and changing and everything, I'll take you into your body and really light up. And, and there's just so much when you become a fully embodied human being. It's— you're not living from here up. So it's, it, it really it's take that first step. Because trust me, 10 years from now, you'll look back with regrets. You'll look back and you'll go, I'm in my 40s, I'm in my 50s, I'm in my 60s. I just turned 60 this year. It doesn't stop.

Yeah.

So now is the time. Now get— we're changing, the world is changing. And so what my daughter says is, when the world is changing, change everything. It's time to change, right? And fully embrace the change.

And is there, um, is there a realistic expectation we can have that younger people, you know, in their 20s and 30s— because oftentimes it takes the kind of life and wisdom and, you know, of your 40s and 50s and 60s to realize that, you know, things have to change. Is there a way to get ahead of it and really educate and provide the coaching and the musing to our 20-somethings and 30-somethings as they're just entering the workforce, you know, to kind of proactively, you know, prevent, you know, this path that many, many of us have taken over time?

Sometimes it's listen to them. Sometimes it's, you know, they're not putting up with the stuff that we did. They don't want all the garbage and baggage that we're carrying on our backs. They're keeping very light and they're moving and they're changing. And so sometimes that's, you know, we need to listen. I listen to my kids. The wisdom is they're already born fully for the future. We just don't need to muck it up for them. But we, you know, that their kids are born are fully with the computers and all that, we don't need to teach them. They're teaching us because they're already hardwired for it. So I think one is listen to and quit thinking the millennials and the Gen Xs or Gen Zs and everybody are lazy. We can also find if we can co-create with them, if we can co-create and bring our wisdom of what life experiences, but not think that we have all the answers. Because they are bringing a lot with them also, that it's, it's right there. And I think it's also, um, just, it's keep open and creative. It's not closed down to fixed ideas and that, you know, it should be done the way that I say it always should be done. You know, there's new ideas and new ways of doing business today, and I think that's what we need to do, is we need to look for what the pandemic has had us do, this huge shift, and begin to embrace it, begin to look at who do we need to be now for the leaders of tomorrow. And I say part of that is become a multi-dimensional leader, and you can't do that without fully owning your body, your pleasure, and embodying you, and quit living from here up.

Right, right. Love it, love it, love it, love it. All right, now you, um, talk about unseen barriers, um, and, you know, and you do, and a lot of your work is centered around helping people kind of identify those unseen barriers. Help us understand, um, walk us through the process of really how you work with individuals and how you even help with this intersection of sexuality, pleasure, and creativity. Because some people might be sitting there going, am I going into a room and like, is she giving me like toys or instrument? Like, what exactly are we doing here? Especially— and again, I have to keep pulling it back to, um, leadership, you know, because this show is all about, you know, being that powerhouse leader at work and at home. So help us kind of paint a picture of what it would look like to really do the work that we've been talking about.

So back during the pandemic, it really showed us that there's no separation between you and I right here. We know that through Zoom we can connect if we choose to fully connect, you know, and not think that we're in different locations. So I can create change energetically. I work a lot with the energy of the body. I look— work a lot with the mindset. I work a lot to create when the mind changes. Bernadette, and I don't know if you know, but it's something a lot of people can look up and study, but the chakras in the body Right. But if we understand the chakras and how the chakras work, when you change your mind, you open up different chakras. They're gates, the way the energy comes in. Then it runs through meridians and it goes to all the areas of your body, your organs and everything. Well, each one of those chakras really— if you're closed down in your heart, you see a lot of people hunched over and they're like this, and they're, they're not letting love in. So we begin to find those areas. I'm very intuitive. I went to medical intuition school. So it's connecting with the person and then finding those areas, those things within their body that is trapped because trauma is trapped energy. It's like if you go to get in a car accident and you go, you're trapping all that trauma in the energetic body, in your body. And so what we do is— what I do is help find those unseen, those invisible traumas in your body and help you release them, help them move it out so you can put in, you know, more powerful energy in your body. So we work over Zoom. Or in person. I do VIP days in person. We do also what I call a Cruise with the Muse, where you come and you go on a 3 or 5 day cruise with me, and it's life transformative. Changes the traumas.

Don't necessarily have to be big things. They could be car accident.

It is all those childhood things. That teacher that told you were— you were stupid. Right. So you live your whole life trying to prove that you're smart, so you get 3 PhDs, or you, you know, it's, it's the times that you were left at the schoolyard. Your mom had something happen and the alarm didn't go off or something, and she left you there. So there's abandonment, you know, all these traumas that got put in place in our childhood and above. It could be you went to college and and something happened. So those, those traumas, it could be later on that you— but most of it happened. The patterns got happened. And I'd like to say, Bernadette, thank goodness you didn't feel like you fit in, because you became the woman that you are today. You became the leader that you are today. And if you tried to fit in and be like everybody else, right, right, right, right. Who you are. We have to own fully who we are and connect with it and know that we are enough, you know, in our, in our wholeness.

Yeah, this has been awesome, Marianne. Absolutely awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being part of it and for bringing us so much wealth and knowledge. But I do want you to leave us with one tip that you would suggest to someone right now who may be struggling, who may be, you know, have those unseen barriers? What would you tell them that they could start doing right now on their own to help them move forward?

To make pleasure and play a priority. That is— I can't stress it enough— that when you begin, you know, there's so many of us that are walking around life unfulfilled. We may have a perfect life that everybody sees on the outside You've got the kid, you've got the perfect job, you've got— but you're not fulfilled from the inside. So you're numbing, you're doing the 2 glasses of wine at night or whatever it is just to cope and go through your day, right? What you can do is find the simple pleasures and begin to— and play a little bit, doodle, doodle on the side of, you know, your work. Paper, bring out those childlike attributes of discovery and what makes— ask some deep questions. What would make me happy right now?

Right.

Asking questions. What would make me feel just a little bit more— find a little bit of joy in my day? What can I do today? Drive a different way. Get out of your ruts. Get out of your patterns. Do something different and it'll begin to make a change.

Awesome. Fabulous. Thank you so much, Marianne. And everyone, please, um, go to marianne stclair.com and learn all about her and how she could be supporting you and whatever you might be dealing with, especially those unseen barriers. At the same time, you should— you can schedule time to talk with her about these unseen barriers but also around her personalized experiences that she, that she mentioned. And so you can do that at marianneclare.com/call. Um, so be sure to reach out to her and, um, and, you know, start working on that intersection. You know, find that pleasure, find that, you know, the sexuality, sensuality, the creativity, because it'll all lead to you being a very successful leader. Thank you so much, Mary Ann. I so appreciate it.

Thank you, Bernadette. It was my pleasure to be here and to really, you know, bring forth a message that not everybody wants to talk about and thinks is taboo.

Right, right. It's so true.

It's so true.

All right. Thank you so much. Unbelievable, that conversation with Mary Ann, how to really tap into both your feminine power and your masculine power, what she calls the Muse, the feminine, and the Coach, the masculine. So a couple of things that I walked away with— I'd be curious as to what you walked away with— but the fact that the Muse is the feminine side and the Coach is the masculine, uh, she even referred— when we were talking about the intersection between sexuality, creativity, and pleasure, she even referred to a book that I adore, and I have read multiple, multiple, multiple times, and that is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And she referred to the chapter 11, which he talks about the power of sexuality when it comes to being a powerhouse leader in your work and life. So you could check that out. Um, but she talked also about the fact that feminine energy is about pleasure and play. And her recommendation, as we closed out the discussion, was the one tip to walk away with was to ensure you're looking for more pleasure and play in your life and in your work. And lastly, one thing that I thought really jumped out of the conversation, um, that many of you and I can even leverage and ensure that we're focused on, on a regular basis is the struggle many people have about— around, quote, quoting Marianne, we're living everyone else's expectations. So the question I have for you is, are you living everyone else's expectations? Are you unsure or confused or struggling to really identify what it is you want out of this one life that you have to live that goes really, really, really fast?. And if you are struggling in any way or you simply have questions, then book a call with me at coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall. And let's be sure to get you on the path to becoming a powerhouse leader in your work and life. See you next week. Bye.