Creating a Succulent Sex Life with Sheri Winston

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have. Hello, and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson, and today we have a very succulent guest, and her name is Sherry Winston. And Sherry is a holistic sexuality teacher. She's also an author of the Woman's Anatomy of Arousal and also succulent Sex Craft. And she is the founder and executive director of the center for Intimate Arts. And I first interviewed Sherry Winston for optimal parenting 101, just around sexuality and sensuality and birth and how to connect those. And I'm just blown away. I did one of her classes, and I'm just blown away by her wisdom and her humor and her playfulness and just her ability to rock it. So I'm excited to dive into sexuality and sensuality with her today. And welcome. Sheri.

Thank you. It's a delight to be here and talking with you again. How fun is that? Yay.

Yeah, I'm jazzed. So let's start off. I'm curious. Why sex for you? Why are you the master goddess of sex? What inspired you to go down this path of mastery and orgasmic bliss?

That's a great question. And it's a. I think it's a pretty interesting story. I mean, I certainly had my own personal sexual experiences, which were wonderful and good, and I learned things. But my calling was to be a midwife. So by the time I was 20, I was going to births and become a childbirth educator. I was a massage therapist, and then I became an apprentice midwife and assisting. And then I decided to get legal and became an RN and then went on to become a certified nurse midwife. So for 20 years, my passion and my calling was birth. And I was not just a midwife, but I was also a childbirth educator. So I was always teaching my clients whatever I could figure out to help them have the most empowered and primal and even possibly pleasurable birth. And I have to tell you, literally, it was 10 years of doing that before I had the epiphany with the help of my partner, actually. And I realized that unconsciously, I was using the things I'd been teaching about birth to have better sex. So I was teaching women about how to. How to get in touch with their breathing and how to use their pelvic floor muscles and how to use imagery or affirmations. And so I was teaching all this stuff. So 10 years literally before I went, oh, oh. The reason sex has gotten better and better and orgasms have gotten easier and more plentiful isn't just that I have a great husband and we have wonderful sex. It's because I've been unconsciously training myself. At that point I went, well, I've come this far without really even trying. What would happen if I started studying on purpose? And at that time it was still for my personal sexual pleasure and anything I could bring to my birthing women. But I started studying tantra and Taoist sexuality and Native American and studying more Western sexological social media. And so I spent another 10 years doing births and babies and teaching. And then I got kind of burnt out on the baby thing. And so I retired from midwifery. I was still doing gynecology part time and kind of in that, well, now what if I'm not going to be the midwife, what am I going to be? And at that point I added a class for women about how to have better sex. And then I had a class for men about how to help their women have a better time and how to understand female sexuality. And then I added another class for everybody about how to have better orgasms. And by that time, it started to become clear to me that this was my next calling and that now I midwife people's sexuality. That's what I do now. Instead of midwifeing the babies, I midwife the part that comes before the babies. And it was great because I transitioned over to what I first thought, really I thought was a parallel path. But now I see it's actually I just went deeper in the same path because it's really so interconnected. So all my sexuality teaching, and I've been doing this full time now for 15 years, all of my sexuality teaching has that foundation of understanding the integral nature of our heart, body, mind, spirit of sex and birth. And that idea that it's learnable, that we can learn how to get better at it.

Very cool. Okay, so why, okay, so I know that some people are sold on sex of like, I know sex is great, it's amazing, and I have an acceptance, whatever. And then there are some people, like, it sounds like it's a good idea, but like, why, like, why actually invest your time and energy into sex when you have dishes and money to make and, you know, you could be watching tv, whatever it is. So tell us, why sex? Like, why do we want to be into sex?

You ask excellent questions, by the way. That's a really good question. So first of all, Nothing is for everyone. Everything's optional. So if you want to go through this life not experiencing the ecstasy and pleasure that you're capable of, that's a choice. That's a fine choice. Personally, I want to get all of the pleasure it's possible to get. And you know what, doing dishes has to be done. And you can do it meditatively and get pleasure in it, but it's not going to be anywhere near what you can get with sexual pleasure. And the thing is, we're actually hardwired for pleasure. It's an evolutionary advantage to be hardwired for pleasure. And the thing about arousal and orgasm is the benefits are enormous. We get the benefits of meditation and aerobic exercise. We get the benefits of all the biochemicals like oxytocin and nitric oxide that are mood elevating and support the immune system and help keep you looking young and feeling young. All of the good things that everything else that we're supposed to do does, great sex does, whether it's by yourself or with a partner. But beyond the 20 health benefits, there's just the pleasure itself, which in this culture we're not very good at valuing. But just having pleasure has its own value. So. And the thing about sex, I would just add, for people who are kind of in the like, maybe it hasn't been that good for them, maybe they've had challenges. I think a lot of people think whatever you have sexually, wherever you can go now, is kind of the hand you were dealt and what you're stuck with. So if it isn't that great, or if it's just okay, that's all you get. Maybe some people were lucky and they got, you know, dealt a great hand, but, you know, you got short change. But the truth is, once we understand that sex is something that we can learn how to get great at, like playing a musical instrument, once we understand that wherever you are, if it's not so good, it can get good. If it's good, it can get great. If it's already great, it can be transcendent, amazing, fantastic. And everybody has the potential to develop that mastery.

Very cool. Yeah, I love that too. Because I think that there is a lot of limited mindset. Like if you're not great at it, you're not having ecstasy right away, then it's like, I might as well just give up. But what if you give it 5, 10 years of consistent practice? You can be an orgasmic goddess, right?

Yeah. And you know, the thing is, if you think about somebody who's a master musician. How long did it take them to become a virtuoso? On average, they say 10,000 hours, five years, 10 years? 20 years. And they're still not done learning, because anybody who's really a master musician is always going, hey, hey, what else can I do with my instrument? What other kind of music can I play? Where else can I go? They're always sort of in discovery and exploration. And the thing is, maybe it might take five or 10 years, but if you have people who already have been on the journey and can give you a map and clues of how to get there quicker, you can get there a lot quicker. So you can learn to be an erotic virtuoso much more quickly than you could master the piano.

Nice. And not that the piano wouldn't give you great pleasure, but I mean, yeah, talk about those endorphins and feel good hormones. Okay, so I'm interested in. You said maybe the sex wasn't so great. And I think for women there is. You know, there are some women that have dealt a great hand, and maybe they're watching and they're thinking, oh, I've had ecstasy my whole life. Like, that's just who they are. But most of the women that I talked to didn't start off with that. And it was like, it was okay or it was traumatic. So what do we do about, like, finding our own. Our own sexuality and not. I know for me and a lot of the women that I've talked to, it was about pleasing the other guy, and it was about looking and doing the right sexy thing, and you end up feeling like, blah. Like you're like, even if you had an orgasm, you're like, it wasn't that great.

Right.

So how do we take ownership of our sexuality and our sensuality and really create that for ourselves?

Well, I think there's so many things you just said that I want to respond to. So the first is how normal it is in our culture for women to have to overcome blocks and inhibitions. And really, we have to go on a journey, most of us, if we want to get to that goddess kind of sexuality. Yes, it's true. There are some women, they're just lucky and they got the great environment, whatever. But for most of us, it's a path we have to go on. There are different learnings to do on the path. There's unlearning to do. So let's start with the unlearning. It's kind of like, you know, like, if the blackboard is all filled up with negative messages. How are you going to learn new stuff? We got to get that stuff off. So the negative messages of how we're supposed to look, how we're supposed to act, we should look sexy and be sexy, but not too sexy. Right? We're still, still dealing with the slut shaming stuff that I would have thought would have been we'd still be over this. You know, when I was in junior high school and high school, you could be a slut or a prude. And if you were prude, you were also probably a cocktees, right? I mean, you know, Right. And so, so those were the two choices. And I remember kind of even like thinking like, well, if I gotta go for one, I think I'd rather go for slutty. But at the time, I was doing it from such a disempowered place. I was doing it because I wanted to be touched and held. I was doing it because I wanted to please the guy. I was doing it because I thought it's what you were supposed to do. I was doing it because my girlfriends were doing it. I was doing it because I was curious and I wanted to know what it was about. So I was doing it for all the wrong reasons, which most of us have that experience. And it isn't until I started to look inside and discover, is this working for me? Am I liking this? Is this what, what I want to be doing? And the answers were often, no, it isn't what I want to be doing. I'm not liking it that much. And then I started trying to figure out what do I need to do? And I started figuring out, oh, I have to communicate to talk about it. Oh, that was huge right there. I had to talk about it. I was exploring my own sexuality, my own relationship, and having solo pleasure. But to be able to take what I've learned in my solo sex and share that with a partner was huge. Kind of leap into scary stuff. So we need to be courageous. We have to do things that scare us. We've got to really rewrite those stories that to be a sexual woman is somehow wrong or bad, that you are doing it to please somebody else. So those are all pieces of how we get there. Letting go of the doing it right and this is how it's supposed to do, or this is what you should do. And really learning to look inside, does this feel good for me? Is this what I want to be doing? And those are questions. It took me, you know, until I was out of my teen years, probably into my 20s, to really start asking, what do I want? It feels good to me. How do I communicate that? How do I ask for that? How do I say no? That wasn't a good skill I had, right?

Yeah, totally. And I love the. You're just talking about doing it for the wrong reasons. And I'm curious on your thoughts around. There's like the having sex and there's doing it. And I know for me, a lot of that has been like, I wanted the intimacy and connection and love. So I was doing the sex thinking that I would get those and then my heart would get broken because I did the sex and it was like I didn't get what I wanted. So can you talk about love and intimacy and connection and how we communicate that as women? And maybe this is another question, but maybe the difference between men and women and what they need in regards to their sexuality, that's a big question.

But there's a lot in there. Okay, I know. Sorry, go back. That's okay. Let's start with the beginning of the question. What was the beginning of the question?

The intimacy, love, connection. Like women wanting and men just wanting to have sex.

Well, first, let's just. Let's talk about what is sex.

Okay.

So most of the time when we say sex, most people think penis and vagina. Heterosexual intercourse is what sex is. At this point, I define sex as any erotic experience you have. And so for me, it's this really, really, really big category. And if we expand our definition of what sex is and we want to be sexually intimate with somebody else, and we're at the point in our lives where we have enough self awareness and self confidence to communicate about that, then we can actually say to somebody, well, I'd like to cuddle and I'd like to make out and I would be fine with being naked, but I don't want to have. I don't want to have hands or mouths or genital. Genital contact, or I'd like to keep my clothes on and have energy sex, or I'd be happy taking my shirt off, but that's as far so I want to go. So I, again, when I was a teenager, I had no skills to negotiate that there are all these different kinds of activities that we can have with another person, including cuddling without having sex.

Yeah, I know, totally. We did that when we were teenagers. I was thinking about this the other day, like, I cuddled with my high school boyfriend all the time, and then all of a sudden it like, goes away.

Yeah, we forget. Yeah, like making out. That's another thing I know, right?

For hours.

Hours, right. And now we're like partnering and we've been together, whatever, and it's like, when's the last time we had like a kiss that lasted a few minutes, much less hours of, you know, making up? Okay, so there's lots of fun things to do when we start expanding our idea of what sex is and we let go of the. Once there's erotic energy, I am now obliged to do everything, including penis and vagina. And the thing is that also what I don't think I understood was as a female bodied person, different sexual activities have different emotional and energetic fields for me. So making out is one thing, Breastplate is another, hands on genitals is another. Oral sex to me is a very intimate activity. And intercourse is like an intensely intimate activity where somebody else's part of their body is in your body. And so it's something that, you know, as an adult I could say to somebody, I don't, I would be happy to have orgasms together and have sex with our hands, but I don't want to get to the next level of intimacy of oral sex or intercourse until that seems appropriate, if it is. And so suddenly we've got a big spectrum of activities that we can play with another person with without going all the way. And I think for a lot of women, we're pretty hardwired for connection and attachment and our hearts and our genitals are pretty hardwired together and it's often hard for us to separate. Now there are women who can have unattached casual sex and have a great time and I'm not shaming them at all for that. And what I found for a lot of women is we do that or we try to do that and then discover, oh, my heart got it somehow. I didn't mean to. I thought we were friends with benefits and then suddenly we're like, oh, I'm feeling connected when I didn't even intend to be. So I think it helps to be conscious of that tendency. Now, I know a lot of men also who only want to be sexual with somebody that they're connected and intimate with. And yet more men are able to have sex that's doesn't involve the connection and attachment and bonding. And part of the. Partly it's how they're wired, partly it's our culture. But I do think that there can be something of a difference. So I just think as women we need to be good guardians of ourselves and decide very consciously what we want to share and with who as opposed to. Well, we're being sexual, so that means intercourse. Even if I'm not sure if our hearts are involved or if I want my heart to be evolved or my energy field, I just again, as a receiver and I think this goes for anyone who's on the receiving end of a penis. I support. I guess it's OLO too, but really mostly a PETA. But you're letting somebody else into your energy field and we should be thoughtful about that. And if you're the type of person, male or female, who can do that and have it be wonderful and fun and great without the connection, great. But discover that about yourself. And we need to do that.

Yeah, I love that. The boundaries of being willing to say no and yes and, and just being clear about what you want. I mean, my mom is amazing. She was great at talking and she has like crazy sex. And I don't want to share too much about my mom's sex life on here, but she's like a very sexual woman and she's amazing and I love her. But I still like even having her as a role model. I still didn't learn how to communicate. I didn't. Where is this stuff? Like, we need to be learning this in class. How to communicate and talk about it. We're all going to have sex, but we never are educated on this. How to say no and not feel pressured and learning about your body and touching it, I don't know, it just gets me fired up that we just didn't learn and now I'm 35 and having to learn about this stuff.

Yeah, well, I think if we're lucky, we got what you got, which was probably a lot more information and empowerment than most people get. But there's another step and it's not, it's not being taught even in comprehensive sex education. Mostly it's not in our cultural milieu. We're sure not going to see it in porn. We're not going to see it in romantic movies or, or romance novels. So there's not an easy way to learn this. We have to kind of consciously say, okay, I want to learn how to talk to my partners about sex. I want to learn how to negotiate. I want to learn how to check in with myself. Because even with a long term partner where we've done everything, that doesn't mean that's what I want to do tonight. Right in our sex play. So, you know, it's like if, again, back to the musician analogy. If I'm playing a duet with another musician, we're probably gonna, like, talk about what do we want to play? You know, how long do we want to play, what instruments, where do we want to go? And we might, you know, just spontaneously have this amazing musical improv, but we might stumble, and then we might need to check in and. Right. So. And just because I brought my instrument over doesn't mean I even really want to feel like playing music tonight. Maybe we'll decide we just want to have dinner. So if we reframe all of the expectations and look at it as an improv that we co create with a partner. When we're having partner sex, obviously with yourself, you can. You can do whatever you want, but when we're having playmates, it's that we're always in that opportunity to discuss, negotiate, and discover and play. Yeah.

Okay. So I love this play idea. And, you know, I know you're writing a whole book on. It's almost ready, right?

The succulent sex craft so close to again.

So I feel like we the instrument, and I love the musician. Examples of, like, it's fun. We're just jamming, you know, there's no stories and baggage. It's just like, improv fun. But I find that for sex all of a sudden, and I have this. All of a sudden, there's like a serious tone, right? It's like, serious. This is very serious. I have stuff all of a sudden, like, I don't know, we just get serious. So how do we bring more of that, like, flirty playfulness into our sensuality and sexuality with our self and our relationship to our bodies and our partners and who we choose to engage with?

Well, you know, the thing about sex, just like music is there's all different moods, right? So sometimes it is intense, and sometimes it is kind of serious, and sometimes it's really loving, and sometimes it's tender, and sometimes it's wild animals, right? I mean, there's all these different places it can go. And I think the more we can bring playfulness in, the more fun we'll have, the more relaxed we can be. Because what can happen, I think, is when we're taking it really seriously, then if something isn't working, it's like a disaster, right? It's like a tragedy or something. It's like, ah, it's this horrible thing. And if instead we could just kind of be playful, like, oh, well, that riff didn't work. Let's try another one. Oh, that just went off the rails. Whatever. But if we can, right? So I think bringing playfulness in Begins with remembering. This is like saying like, hey, this is. Can be playful. Let's make it playful. We can also actually bring in kind of games. We can kind of, let's play games. You know, I'm feeling like, like playing, you know, I don't know, pirate and captive. Let's be tigers, you know, whatever. Or, you know, we all also have all these different sub personalities. Yes. Right. So maybe my, you know, saucy wanton slut wants to come out. Or maybe my innocent little, little girl wants to come out and kind of like be like, like, wow, I've never seen one of those before. What do you do with it? You know, or maybe my, like, well, you know, experienced older woman wants to come out, whatever. But the more we can tap into those different parts of ourselves again, the broader our spectrum or a palette becomes. So we can kind of go with whatever energy is happening. So we can create games, we can play games, we can remind ourselves to be playful, remind our partners and also to be creative. Because one of the sort of killers of long term relationship sex is boredom. So the more we can be playful and creative and get out of ruts and be new and try new things and not feel like, oh, I've done everything. I know, everything. I'm just so, you know, like, boring. Those are all good things.

Do you recommend having like the games? Is this something that you kind of sit down with your partner or lay in bed or whatever you want to do and kind of create a ritual or like a game together? Like how. If somebody wants to start playing these games, what would you recommend of how they start creating the space for that?

Well, there's a couple of different things I think that are extremely useful. So I think there's, there's communicating about our sex when we're not having it. So that's like sitting down and having a check in. How's our sex going? What's happening? What would we like more? What would you like more of? What's really working, what's not. So I think it's important to have conversations where we're not horizontal. Right. We're not being sexual.

Yeah, yeah, very cool.

Then there are conversations during sex and those are about feedback and requests and maybe turning each other on with words. So there's the words that happen during our sexual. And the thing about our words during sex is they can be. We don't want to get too far down the road of thinking sex is more animal, embodied things. So during our activities we want to have maybe like code words or shortcut words. And so then the third thing is actually what I call playpens, people call sandboxes. But it's a time where we set up a container for a game. And the games are about communication and play and exploration. So the sandbox might be, well, you know, honey, I'm having a hard time asking for what I want. I'm afraid you're gonna feel criticized or told what to do. So let's have a playpen. Let's spend a half an hour, set up a time frame, let's do it on the couch, and let's play a feedback game. What do you think about that? Your partner might go, well, yeah, that sounds good. And then maybe you're going, well, what would be the easiest body part or way of touching to have that back scratching? Foot massage. It doesn't have to be sexual. And so you go, okay, foot massage would be good. Okay, so let's take 15 minutes and you're gonna massage my foot and I'm gonna give lots of feedback in a positive way and then we'll switch and then you get to give it to me. And then let's take another 15 minutes to talk about how that went. So the thing about introducing games is there's lots of ways, I mean, you could also just be in the middle of your regular sex play and go, hey, let's play tigers. So but I'm sort of distinguishing between the just the conversation, the communication that happens while we're being sexual. Setting up a separate time for learning games. And then from your learning game, you might get, I'll get better at giving requests to my partner instead of orders.

Right?

Because maybe, just maybe, I have a tendency to give order and just maybe my partner hates being ordered around. Just perhaps. So I need to learn how to get better at making ever quest in a sexy way that's gonna make my partner go, oh yeah, I'd love to do that to you.

Right.

So let's. And together my partner and I can come up with ideas and we could play different kinds of games until we get good at that. And then we can keep creating games to play in that special time and space for games. And just also want to note a playpen could be five minutes. It doesn't have to be two hours because hey, we're busy lives and work and friends and kids. And so another piece of this is what if we just did a kissing play pen where we do a one minute long kiss. Let's do a kiss play pen. And today in the kissing playpen, I'll be the initiator and sort of the leader of the kiss. And then tomorrow or maybe later when you get home from work, we'll do another one minute and when you'll be the kind of initiator and leader and maybe before we go to bed, we'll do one where we kind of see if we co lead. So we'll do three one minute kissing playpens today. How's that sound? Sound good?

Yeah, that sounds good.

It sounds doable, right?

And like those little things are so important, I think especially for long term relationships. You know, I've been with my husband for seven years now. You know, you just kind of miss those. You just don't do them. You just like you said, you get in the ruts and you just. Life happens. But what, what energy can you create in love and intimacy in a minute?

Yeah. Right. So yeah. And also isn't it lovely if one day your kids at, you know, grandma's house and you've got two hours to, you know, have you know, some playpen and a lovemaking session, you know, so it's also good to look at our schedules and kind of go, wait, I want to value my sex enough to make some time for it and also look for those little things I can do to keep it juicy and keep learning. Yes.

So talk to me, talk to us about, about this, of like cultivating this flirty, tantalizing, inviting, like how do we do that throughout the days? Or do you have any games that we can play in that regard? You know, so that you're not just, it's outside of the bedroom and you're not laying horizontal or doing whatever. But it's just little ways of planting, see seeds so that the sexual energy can flourish.

And this is really important for everyone, men, women, whatever. And how we, if we want to keep the, we want to keep the juice flowing. So I'll go back to the kissing for a moment because it's one of the things that we did a lot at the beginning and seven, eight, whatever years down the road. Suddenly you're like that little peck on like, bye, honey, I'm going to work that little peck. What? So one of those is kissing. And I mean wet kisses, not the dry little peck. So reinstating kissing. And if we think again about kissing, we can kind of bring ourselves back to what did we do at the beginning when we fell madly in love. If you've had the gift of falling madly in love, that is mother Nature's template for connection. Now the biochemicals that Fuel that only last a couple of years for most people. Maybe three or four if you're lucky. And there's those rare couples where it just lasts decades. The vast majority of people, those chemicals run out. And so I like to look at the falling in love period as the training wheels for relationship. That's the template that we should learn from and then keep doing. So what else did we do when we fell madly in love? We looked in each other's eyes. Look at you. Oh, look at those eyes. I mean, we eye gaze. We paid attention. And we're very interested in what the other person has to say. We lean forward or like, aha. We're listening and we're giving this feedback. I'm interested in you. That is something we also tend. Right. After a while, we're kind of like, I've heard all your stories. I know all your jokes. It's just not that interesting. Or we're talking, but we're doing something else. So go to a restaurant and look at couples in a restaurant, and you can probably judge how long they've been together by how much they look at each other. Right? Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally.

Okay, what else?

We just had this the other day, too, of, like, this sweetness. Like, we walked back, this couple, and you could tell that they were newly dating. They're holding hands, and there's like, just this, like, sweet paying attention, eye gazing. Just like, oh, you're so perfect.

Giving each other that adoration, admiration, all of those things, which, again, if you're living with somebody, you know, especially over time, we forget about things that are interesting, exciting, admirable, adorable, right? So pay attention to those. The other thing is touching again. That couple you saw, they were holding hands. They were. They looked for excuses to touch each other, right? And so touching. So here's one of my things. I think we have four languages of touch. A positive touch, right? And the first one is nurturing touch. This is how we touch babies. And this is the touch that tells us we are loved and lovable. So nurturing touch. Hugs, holding, rocking face stroking. Just little angel kisses. That little kiss on the forehead. Oh, my baby, are you gonna be so much. Okay, so nurturing touch. Then we have therapeutic touch, healing touch. That's, you know, oh, God. I've been at the computer all day, and if your partner comes up and starts massaging your shoulders, oh, that's so right. You have a headache and somebody strokes your head. So any kind of touch with a therapeutic, healing intention, then there's sensual touch. And that's touch that's there to arouse your senses, but not your sexual energy so much. Right. So sexual touch is about arousing your sexual energy, getting turned on. Sensual touch is just about the pleasure of being stroked, of being fondled, of waking your senses up. And really in that actually we could even throw in things like smell and taste and anything that wakes our senses. So I think there's these four languages of touch and we all need all of them. And what happens with our intimate partners is we stop getting all of them when we're first together, we get all of them. We automatically just adore our partners and we baby them and we give them that loving the same again. Like just how you are with your son. Of course. We just love them to pieces. We just want to.

You can't stop touching them, smelling them. Like I just, I'm always like kissing its forehead, kissing its head like all.

The time and smelling them.

Right?

Like their head smells. Okay. You know, and their babies were like nibbling their toes. Right. We're just gonna eat them up. Okay. So those kinds of things, what happens over time in long term relationships, we might still be doing the sexual touch, but the other three, not so much. So touching in all the languages. So if you give each other really good hugs in the morning and you know, later in the day, a little neck massage and a sweet little angel kiss here and there, and then a flower flirty little sexy touch and it feels balanced like that, then we're really gonna be turned on to our partner and engage that way. But what happens if you just get the sexy touch?

Yeah, that's what I was just gonna say. We just skip all those and we're like, okay, now all of a sudden, let's get the sexy on.

And how does that feel?

Not good.

No, you're like, oh, all you want to do is grab my boobs?

I'm like, ah, yeah, totally.

Yeah. But if we got all that whole spectrum of touches and you know, a nice abundance of them, then that, you know, the, you know, the hand on your butt or whatever, then that's sexy and delicious. Not putting us in that, like all you want to do is.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Okay, so I love this. This is fantastic. So especially for us women. So how do you communicate this with a man or your partner, that this is what you need in order to get that sexy on? Because I think that men, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, that men just think that touching and grabbing your ass and like, whatever is that's going to turn you on. And maybe it turns you on sometimes, but for me, most of the time I'm like, eh, so tell us how we communicate this and how men and women are different in this. Like, we all need it. But yeah, and my husband has the complaint to me that I don't do enough of the nurturing, you know, to him. And he misses that, like, you could touch me more. And I'm like, oh, I guess I could.

Well, when we often when we have a kid, we have a baby, a lot of that nurturing touch goes to our infant and then our partner. We're like, you're a grown up. That's a good thing to notice. Yeah. All right, first, how do we say this? Remember that I was talking about the three kinds of communication? This goes in the let's sit down and have a conversation over dinner or while we're driving in the car or something saying, hey, I heard this thing about these four languages of touch, and it really made sense. And I realized that we'd be both be happier if we were getting that. And let's see what we can do to make that happen. So that kind of a conversation, not a, you know, blaming like, you're doing it wrong or not doing it enough or saying like, wow, I just realized that this is something I want, and here's a. Here's a map to it. Let's see what we can do together to make it happen. Yeah, that's the conversation.

Very cool. Yeah, I love that. This is one of the reasons that I love doing these interviews, because I learned something new, and then I go to my husband, I'm like, I just learned this great thing.

Right? Yeah. I mean, that's why books and classes and things are so good also. I mean, one of the things that's great about a going to a class is, you know, if I have a couple in the class and they both hear me say this, then she doesn't have to go tell him. He doesn't go. They heard it from the teacher.

Totally. That's your homework.

You know, look at this book. I read this, right? So that can be useful too. So that's the conversation piece. But the male female difference piece is really significant and tricky to talk about because we're making generalizations, and anytime we do this, it's so easy to make somebody feel like we're not talking about them. So I want to be inclusive when I talk, and I don't want to make it sound like all women are one way and all men are a different way. So it's always a conversation that I like to bracket with a framework. And one of the frameworks I use is about energy that each of us has Yin and Yang energy. Yin is energy of receiving, of opening and receiving. And Yang is energy of penetrating, of doing. Yin is giving energy is Yang energy. So we each have both. I have energy of receiving an energy of giving and doing. Right now I'm in my Yang energy, right? I'm penetrating you with my words and my ideas and my right. So right now I'm being really Yang. I'm being focused, more or less and goal directed. And so I'm in my Yang energy right now. Later, if I was going to get a massage, I'd get all yin, right? I would just be lying there receiving. So we all have these two different energies. When it comes to our sexual energy, we tend to be most polarized. There. So one of those energies, for most people, one energy is stronger and more central than the other. When it comes to sex. Most women, our core sexual energy is yin. Except for the women who it's not, right. Most women, it's yin. Most men, their core sexual energy is Yang, except for the ones who are wired the other way. And we tend to partner with somebody whose energy is the opposite pattern. So even if I was with a same sex partner, one of us would probably be more Yin than the other, more young. That makes sense.

Yeah, totally.

Okay, so the thing about Yin and Yang energy is they move in different directions. Yin energy, the core sexual energy of most women, it starts out here in the connection and the context and the story and the relationship. The energy starts out here and then the energy kind of comes to, to the edges of us, to the non sexual parts. And it's got to flow past all the other energies. It's got to go past our thinking and our communication and our heart and our power. And it's got to come up past our root chakra, our safety center, because we have to feel safe before we can open. And only then does it finally get to our sex center. Now, this is why Korean people are prone to distraction, right? Oh my goodness, look, I have the dust. Oh, I forgot to make them. Oh, I'm supposed to be having sex, but I forgot I have to do the red. Okay. I can't shut my brain off. I'm thinking too much. I feel like I have something to say, but I can't say it. Oh, what about my heart? Okay, so we, the energy can get blocked, inhibited, distracted. And this is why for most women to get Fully aroused. To get totally deeply turned on, it can take 20 to 45 minutes because the energy has to go there. For most people who are core young, that would be most men, their energy goes in the opposite pattern. Guess where it starts?

In the genitals.

Right. Or even in the sex center of the brain, but in the sex center. So if my sweetie hops out of the shower naked and I just grabbed a hold of his pg, we're supposed to be here.

Oh, whatever. Anything goes.

I grabbed a hold of his cock and I started playing with him. He would be happy.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

And women who are guys, are you listening? You're kind of like, yeah, not all the time. Maybe. Maybe if he was in a really yin mood, it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work with all men. But most men, most of the time, you could dive in and go, you know what? I'm just gonna spend an hour playing with your cock. And they'd go, okay, good. Thank you. And they would be turned on by that.

Yep.

Now, if you hop out of the shower naked and your partner grabs your crotch, how do you feel? Yeah. What are you doing there? I'm not there yet.

Yeah, that's my feeling.

Yeah. And of course, our partners are more well trained than that. They never would, but we'd be like, what are you doing there already? My energy isn't there yet. Right? You've got to. Our energy needs to go there. Then we want to be played with.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Right. For most young people, their energy starts there, and it doesn't have to go that far. Right. So for most penis owners, their sexual energy can start in their genitals and explode out their genitals and just be a genital event. Which is why more men than women can have unattached sex.

Interesting, right? Yeah.

Because it can be more of a genital experience. For most women or Korean people, the energy, by the time it gets there, it's gone through everything else. It tends to be more connected and harder to separate out. And that's why most men are quicker to get aroused and often easier to get aroused. Not often. And that's why women. It takes us a while. Although we can learn how to do it a lot faster, we can learn how to do it really quick if we want.

Right?

Yeah, that's the learning part. And also recognize that for both men and women, if we take longer, if we take 20 or 30 minutes to get deeply, thoroughly, totally aroused, whatever your plumbing or energy, the experience is going to be way better.

Okay, so I'd love to talk about that, the arousal. And that was amazing and super helpful. And I'm curious, you said 20 to 45 minutes. So in that 20 to 45 minutes, and then it comes from out. So it's not like you, for 20 to 45 minutes, you don't want him like to be, I mean, I guess it could work for some people, but strictly on the clitoris or strictly on your boobs or just like hitting that for 20 minutes and then all of a sudden you're going to be like, okay, let's have sex.

Yeah, exactly. So we're talking, let's say 45 minutes of turning on your mind, turning on your skin, turning on the non sexual parts of your body, turning on the secondary sexual parts like the back of the neck and knees, and then bringing the energy in, then being more generally focused, and even then. And this is both for men and women too. If you really want to learn how to have amazing sex, it's about managing your sexual energy. So that means turning everything on, bringing the energy into the genitals and the other sex centers and then spreading it back out again, slowing it down, bringing it in, bringing it out, heating it up, cooling it down and playing with. The more you do that, the more the energy expands and then the more energy you have to play with.

Okay, so how do we know, I know you talk about this in your book, but how do we know when we're fully aroused?

Well, I would say for a lot of women and men have not even had that experience. Fully aroused, you're in. Let me back up a step. Arousal is an altered state of consciousness, a trance state. And among other things that happen when we're in altered states is our brain waves change. Where we are right now, we're thinking, we're talking, we're in what we could call mundane consciousness. If we move into a light trance, that would be like early arousal where we're starting to get carried away, we're starting to get taken out of this mundane world, but we can get called back really quickly. The phone rings were back. As we get deeper into arousal, we get to sort of mid level arousal. We're starting to go deeper into trance. And then for a lot of people, they never get to the deepest level of trance during sex. So you might get to that third level of trance, but you're not getting down to the fourth level of trance. So really deep arousal when you're in that deepest trance, it's very much like labor, by the way, when you're at that deep Level. You don't have to think. You're just in it. You are. Your most animal self is tapped into the collective unconscious. Whatever knows how to get ecstatic.

Yeah.

Same way women in labor can get to that place. If they get to that deepest level of trance. Most people, most of the time, only get to the third level. So how do we. How do you know when you're really there? That's a great question. When you're there, you know it. Yeah, I don't even know.

There's no thinking.

If you had sex where when you came back from the journey, your head was hanging off the foot of the bed and you're going, how did I get here? I didn't even realize I was in this orientation with the room. Then you were probably there.

That is awesome. Okay, so is this that fourth trance state? Is that, like what they say in psychology is that you're in, like, the zone, like in flow, that you're just. Or is that one?

Yeah. Although I think, you know, that's because I think you can be in that. I think you can be at that third level and be pretty flowy. But there's, like, this deepest level where you're just sort of in it even more. But, yes, that. That flow. That experience of flow is in the. Is in the third or fourth level of trance. Right.

Very cool. Okay, so then female ejaculation just popped into my head. So.

It just burst into your head.

Female ejaculation. Let's talk about that. So what is female ejaculation and the benefits of it? And that obviously happens in the fourth state.

Well, here's what I think. So, first of all, all women have the equipment and the potential to have profuse ejaculation. Ejaculation is a fluid that's produced by glands that are in a tube of erectile tissue that surrounds the urethra. And when there's lots of engorgement, lots of blood flow to that tissue, which we certainly hope there is, to all of the wonderful erectile tiss that women have that provides the fluid. The liquid actually comes from the fluid. Part of the blood goes into those glandular tubes and then can squirt out that fluid. I now believe all women make at least a small amount of that fluid anytime we get aroused. But usually, unless there's a lot of engorgement, we don't notice it. So it just mixes with your vaginal juice and, you know, all the other gooey stuff. But when you get a lot of stimulation to that erectile tissue, then you're going to get a lot more fluid. And the fluid can come out the urethra, or if we hold back and don't let it out, it will back up into the bladder. When we learn how to encourage and release that fluid and we do it with orgasm, it is a pretty goddess experience. I mean, it is intense, emotional, energetic, sacred, wild, slutty, fabulous, wet thing that happens when that's connected up with orgasm. So it's a learnable skill. There are some women who are natural ejaculators. There's a small percentage of women. That's just what happens. That's what they do. It's always what happens. Most women who ejaculate have learned how. I think it's really worth learning because it's a very intense expander of orgasms. It actually can be stimulated without orgasm. But then it's just like, so what? You know, it's kind of. Some people are like, it's like a parlor trick that you play with the tissue and fluid spurts out. But if you're not combining it with full arousal and orgasm, it's kind of like, so what? So now I have more laundry to do. But when it's combined with orgasm, it's amazing. So it's learnable. The fluid itself, I believe. I have no data to support this, but just for my understanding of the body and anatomy and how things work, I believe that that fluid is antimicrobial. And I think it's there to protect women from urinary tract infections.

And it comes out in the urethra. That's what you said.

Yeah. Well, they're little glandular tubules. So the urethra is like a tube that goes from your bladder to your pee hole. And that tube, the urethra, is surrounded by a cylinder of erectile tissue. Think of it like a roll of paper towels. The urethra is the cardboard tube and the paper towels are the erectile tissue. And when it hasn't been stimulated, it's like we are sort of at the end of the roll of paper towels. But when it's been thoroughly stimulated and there's full on intense arousal, it's like a brand new roll of bounty. It's big and fat, filled with engorgement, which is blood basically filling up all those capillaries in that tissue. The glandular tubules are like the hair roots of a plant. They're enmeshed in all those erectile capillaries. All of those little tiny tubules empty into the urethra. There's about 30 different little places where they empty their fluid into the urethra. So like I say so with. When there's plenty of fluid, it's going to go somewhere. If we encourage it, it will come out the pee hole. If we don't hold it back, it'll back up in the bladder and then the next time we pee, it'll just come out with our pee. That makes sense.

Yeah, totally. Very interesting.

Yeah, it's very.

I've had that happen to me twice. And the first time I thought I peed myself. I was like, I had one of those moments of like, trance. Like, what the hell just happened? I mean, those are like peak mind blowing. Like, what just happened?

The good thing nowadays is people are aware of female ejaculation enough that most people go like, was that because 20, 30 years ago, these poor women had this experience and not only were they sure it was pee, their doctor told them it was pee. Women had. Were medicated. They had surgery to correct the problem. So before this was a. There was a cultural awareness of it. For women who were natural ejaculators, it was really a problem who wouldn't let themselves have an orgasm because they were afraid they would pee. Yeah. So wait, so what happened the second time?

Well, the second time. Well, this is actually really funny. With my husband now. We had. We were engaged, then we ended our engagement, and then we had like the craziest sex we've ever had in the three months of ending our engagement. And it was in Bali. And literally I can remember what I was wearing. I mean, it's like, you know, etched in my mind. But yeah, the second time was in Bali in a little hotel. It was very, like, it was very slutty. We had ended our engagement and here I am. And it was just like nuts. I mean, it was literally my peak experience of like, that energy taking me over of like, wow, just a taste of like, what's possible. And then that came out again and he was like. We were like, oh, my gosh, that was awesome. I mean, it's. As you know, you have these experiences often, but it was just like, I.

Learned how to do it. I didn't used to. When I was younger, I learned how to do it.

Nice.

Learnable, learnable.

That is awesome.

But it is most likely to happen when you're in. The deeper. The deeper the trance, the more aroused, the more erotic energy you have, the more likely it is to happen.

Jeez, soul. I dig it. Okay, wonderful. I think that's a fantastic place to complete for today. But can you share where we find more about you, your classes, your books, and where we can learn more from you?

Well, if you're looking for me by name, you got to spell it right. So it's S H E R I, Winston W I N S T O N. That one's easy. So you can find me by looking for my name. My website is intimateartscenter.com intimate, like the intimate arts because it's an art and center spelled the American way.

That's awesome.

Dot com. And once you're there, you can find everything. You can get my current book, you can find my information. But getting on my. Anyone who's listening to this, who wants more, get on my email list because the new book is going to launch really soon and we're having this big, exciting launch thing with lots of free goodies and all kinds of fun stuff. And there's articles and there's blogs and there's a free orgasmic abundance ebook and videos and, oh, there's just a gallery of interesting vintage erotic art. Yeah, it's just like there's a lot there. Yeah. So, coming to the website, get on our email list. Get the new book when it comes out. Get the old book if you haven't got it already. Because you, you know, really all the stuff you need to know, all the anatomy, all the stuff that nobody else will tell you about because they don't know yet.

Yes. Fantastic. Amazing. Awesome. I just feel.

I do coaching and I do coaching and consulting also.

Okay.

Anybody wants to talk to me one on one, that can happen, too. Very cool. And I teach.

You have online classes and things like that?

Oh, yeah. Online classes, too. In person classes. Online classes. I'm not teaching a lot right now because I'm finishing this book. But I'll be back. Nice.

Yay. Fantastic. Well, thank you. I appreciate you. I appreciate your wisdom and your commitment to mastery. And I hope all the women out there feel turned on, because I do.

Yay. Well, thank you so much. It's just always a delight chatting with you.

Thank you.

Excited to see what you're putting out in the world.

Yay. Fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. So sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess. Com. Until next time. Keep rocking it and have an awesome day.