Speaker 1: 0:00

Great sex is about curiosity and feedback. We're constantly checking in, we're constantly attuning, we're constantly reading the song of desire in both our body and our lover's body. That's what love is. It's care, it's a sense of empathizing. You can be wild and animalistic, but also deeply loving and caring at the same time. It's just and it takes training. We have to train ourselves and essentially we're. Essentially, my work is about leading men away from the pitfalls of pornography and unconscious relating into a more conscious understanding and behavior with the feminine, to be deeply respectful and caring for the feminine, but also to understand that there is a part of her that is seeking liberation as well, and that's where men have to find their fire.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Welcome to the Whole Shebang.

Speaker 1: 0:58

I'm Jen Briggs, your host.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Let me tell you what you're in for here. Many of us have been running at breakneck speed, functioning mostly in our heads, and we've suffered from disconnection, burnout and lost passions. I believe it's because we functioned in part and not in whole. So we're exploring a new path embracing intuition, creativity, playfulness and connection in all of life. It's vibrant, powerful and magnetic. So come on with me and buckle up buttercups we're diving in.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Taboo, kink and primal intimacy. Now, if you would have told me five years ago I'd be here publishing this interview, I would have blushed. For sure I'd have laughed, and then I would have wondered how did I get here? All that to be said, I couldn't be happier, more free and proud to be exploring topics that I once held shame around, and I get to share them with you. This is what it's all about Approaching these parts of ourselves that we've relegated to the shadows and compassionately drawing them back home expertise with these topics. This conversation was honest, compelling and full of insight around conscious relating and love. I'm hoping that you find yourself more enlightened and free after listening to this.

Speaker 3: 2:11

Let me tell you a little bit about Alex. So Alex Mishka is a coach and facilitator who specializes in helping men and women harness their embodied power, navigate intimacy and relationships and live a life of sexual sovereignty. He facilitates workshops and retreats globally, working with the themes of eros and erotic intelligence, archetype, shadow work, embodiment and conscious relationship. His North Star is cultivating more life force, energy for his clients and helping them find more safety in their bodies while empowering them to lead lives of passion, play and deeper connection. You're going to hear more about the program he's launching here in to lead lives of passion, play and deeper connection. You're going to hear more about the program he's launching here in just a couple of weeks and in the meantime, buckle up. This is a juicy one I trust you'll enjoy. Alex, thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 1: 2:59

It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me onto your amazing podcast.

Speaker 3: 3:05

Yeah, so I um, I heard about you through Dan Regan, who is a mutual contact on Instagram, and he was like you've got to check out his work and I was like okay. And then I looked like oh, okay, just beautiful work. And, um, also, admittedly, I sent to you in some messages, with my upbringing and my background, something that I that I'm very open to but haven't done a lot of um personal exploration, and so I'm excited to uncover some things with you today. It should be good.

Speaker 1: 3:42

No, I'm excited. I remember you getting in touch. Just the beautiful beauty of the internet is the uh, fascinating people contact you out of the blue and say, hey, I'd like to have a conversation with you and, um, I'd love dan's work. Anything that comes through him is gold, and so, um, and I've seen, I know, a few of your previous guests on your podcast, so I'm in good company and I'm excited to dive into these topics with you. Taboo topics of the dark and the lights, and Eros and awakening and all that stuff.

Speaker 3: 4:12

Yeah, great. Well, can we start with a little bit of background on you? Uh, what drew you to this work? What's your story, what's your journey?

Speaker 1: 4:21

Yeah, yeah, always fascinated by human connection. Um, I suffered a lot in my teens and 20s to kind of create enduring relationships and I went through my rites of passage very late as a man and so I kind of found the intersection of men's work and kind of spiritual awakening and understanding my sexuality and human connection. It all kind of came together in my late 20s after a dark night of the soul.

Speaker 2: 4:51

And.

Speaker 1: 4:52

I've been on that path ever since.

Speaker 3: 4:55

Can you tell me what your rites of passage, what you mean by that, or what they were for you?

Speaker 1: 5:01

Yeah, I lost my father in my late teens and there was a massive void in the family after that, naturally, and it took me a long time to grow up, to actually like fly the nest, to leave home, to lose my virginity, to understand that I had to go out into the world, severance from the mother and from from the home, to become an adult. So that process took me a long, a long time and I always felt like I was very far behind the pack. And then I had to address all the trauma that came from that event and previous events and I have been since then. But that stuff shaped me into the man I am today.

Speaker 3: 5:42

But that stuff shaped me into the man I am today. Yeah, those dark nights of the soul, it's like until for me, I'd kind of heard about it and I thought I've been through challenges like my early childhood and I'd went through tough things. But once you go through a dark night of the soul, then it's like, oh, now I know what it is. And and the way that you described the rite of passage to me, I've been sort of talking about these, these portals like these. It is the pain, that's the pathway and that's something I want to. I've got a note. I want to come back to that and just talk about pain and pleasure and the relationship between those two things, Because I think I found that in my spirituality and in my personal life that is showing up, and I'd love to explore that in sexuality as well, Um, if you're up for that.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 6:32

Okay, great, Okay, Before we dive into the deep end with all the taboo BDSM kink topics, um, I know that there are a lot of people that are listening that are curious about actually just finding a person. So you had some challenging dating experiences, it sounds like, and um would love to hear your take on the process of dating. How does, how does one find somebody? What would somebody do to get ready for that process? What would you say to somebody? Right now, that's like man. I really want this kind of juicy, polarized relationship. Where do I start?

Speaker 1: 7:09

Yeah, I love this inquiry. It's kind of really where my work began in the dating scene and I wanted to master that first. When I work with my clients, I essentially am priming them. I want them to feel juiced up, full of vitality, full of life force, to have impeccable boundaries, to understand why they were attracting the wrong partners in the first place, based on their core wounding, and then to go out into the world as a force of nature. I think we have to be able to make an impact in this world if we want to get successful results, and I think that's especially true in dating. We're like beacons, we're emitting a pulse and a signal all the time and I help people prepare for relationship in the way that I had to prepare for many relationships, and often that can mean going off into the wilderness to heal, going on periods of celibacy, going in into deeply expansive places to prepare and then to charge ourselves up so we can kind of magnetize someone to us.

Speaker 3: 8:15

I love that. So for the person that's attracting um people that they don't want to attract, that maybe maybe they're repeating the same pattern in a relationship or they're not magnetizing the kind of person that they want, where, where would you start with them? Like, how do you start uncovering? Like, why am I attracting somebody emotionally unavailable? Or why am I attracting a man that's not grounded in his masculine Maybe? Those are two examples we can start with.

Speaker 1: 8:44

They're timeless examples, though, and uh, the thing is it never goes away. We're never foolproof from we don't. We're not always going to 100 attract the people we want to attract. There's always going to be tests, um, but we really have to look at our core wounding and our kind of relational blueprints, like what were our caregivers, like what have we inherited from them, what feels really familiar to us, and kind of that familiarity is very seductive, it's not always beneficial and and usually we have to break patterns that are generations old, or at least decades old. Their patterns were used to, but they, these people that we keep attracting, feel so familiar that it really takes sometimes Herculean effort to break that pattern.

Speaker 1: 9:31

And usually, once we've broken it, then we kind of clear for a while.

Speaker 3: 9:35

I was listening to something this morning about just kind of the effort that it takes as humans, this kind of idea that we've incarnated here as humans, and the fact that we've done that. It might feel like we're just these babies, like learning these hard lessons over and over, but this human experience is like a masterclass in transmutation and evolution, and so the ability to go through that and have these Herculean efforts to change is huge and have these Herculean efforts to to change is huge but not easy at all.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 10:11

Yeah, well said, it's not easy. It's not easy, okay. So so you do the work, you heal the inner traumas, you hire Alex, he primes you, you get life force flowing through you and then you have a partner and you get to dive into intimacy. So let's, let's go there, let's talk about some of these taboo topics. And you know, I'd like to start with maybe just like a basic question, which is what's taboo and why? Why do you think they are taboo?

Speaker 1: 10:45

taboo is this, this realm of what is forbidden, and many people get a kick out of what is forbidden. Whether it's and it's a mystery why there are psyches, what are the way they are? I mean, whether it's our upbringing could have been very restrictive or, you know, there could have been a lot of control, or, you know, maybe we've just been weird from the beginning. It's a mystery, but some of us are really hardwired to seek out the taboo because it excites us and it actually allows us to feel more alive, which is what Eros is. It's the feeling of aliveness that comes from following the pulse of desire in our lives and that can lead down some very strange avenues.

Speaker 3: 11:27

What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1: 11:29

Well, as my teacher Amrapani has said, we're all kind of perverts in some way and I think the quicker we kind of come to terms with that and the weirdness that we have in our psyche, the weird desires and impulses that we have, the more we can explore that, the more we can liberate what's in there and often often it's the conditioning of our society. Often often it's personal experiences that we've had. Whatever has happened to us, um tends to create ripples in the way we seek connection, in the way we seek experiences, and it's always the experience of feeling more alive which is a good north star for a well-lived life I'm just like it's impossible for me to have this conversation not looking through the lens of my life.

Speaker 3: 12:21

so even just the word pervert is, like you know, it's a thing to say, to like pause and recognize that and say, and and then I'm putting myself in the shoes of the person that's maybe listening to that and going like we don't want to be perverted, like we don't want to pervert, or, in my case, growing up like pervert what was perceived as holy, and if you pervert that, it's no longer holy or sacred. And so I mean you know what is the definition of perversion. So I guess my question is like in that, if somebody is listening and the perversion or the idea of perversion is scary, is there anything for them to be afraid of?

Speaker 1: 13:12

That's a great question. There's always going to be fear when we're confronting our shadows or stuff that's kind of not been fully owned yet and yet we're drawn to things. We're drawn to things in the secrecy and the privacy of our own minds and hearts. Perversion isn't necessarily something that's always going to be damaging or bad. It's just the way it's viewed in the context of our cultural kind of soup that we live in.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Some of us had very different upbringings in childhood. Some of us had different codings kind of placed upon us about what is righteous and what is good and what is moral, and I think our modern culture has lost its way because we're seeking to be good all the time and I think it's tiring. I think it's tiring because there is a part of us that isn't nice and sweet and good all the time, and I think there's great power in owning that part of ourselves and wielding it from a place of love and kind of healthy respect, as opposed to relegating it to the shadow where it doesn't have a chance to breathe and then it will awkwardly come up, usually in another place or another way.

Speaker 3: 14:26

So so let's talk about that. What is the power?

Speaker 2: 14:30

or what's?

Speaker 3: 14:30

what's compelled you to really dive into the work of this darker eros like what? What's the power that's there? What's unlocked?

Speaker 1: 14:39

I have scorpio and venus, so it's kind of part of my coding to to really go deep into the realms of the erotic and sexuality and, uh, you know, I often I thought I was a sex addict for a long time. It turns out I'm not, I just I. I have to explore this realm as part of my blueprint um, and I believe in providing very safe spaces for people to go into that realm Because we are animals.

Speaker 1: 15:08

The dark is about the density of the earthly animal realm. It's about these human instruments which are very thick and dense. It's about the impulse of our lower chakras. It's about primality, it's about survival and I've noticed, as I was getting into my spiritual path, this addiction to love and light and ascending and trying to leave the body and unite with cosmos or source or whatever. And it took a while, but something felt off about it, something didn't feel, something was missing and what I found was missing was tethering deeply into the animal body as an embodied experience and honoring the denser, darker stuff, while also tethering to the lighter, more rarefied realms of higher consciousness and the heart and equanimity and peace. We need both, I think, for a well-lived life.

Speaker 3: 16:04

It's so interesting that you put it that way. Over the last year or so, a lot of the work that I've been doing has just led me down this path to research and I don't know, explore Mary Magdalene and what her work has been, and so, coming from a religious Christian upbringing, which I didn't mention specifically what it was until now, that's what it was. Um, what I'm understanding, the essence of her teaching is that was sort of stripped from our history was that access to divine is in and through the body, and so this kind of this constant quest for ascension that is outside of ourselves or in seek of a safe like some kind of salvation is, is it's just like we don't need something out here to save us to access the divine. What if the access was in and through the body? And so the way you just described that to me is like I just feel like I'm hearing that, seeing that theme everywhere right now that we're reclaiming not just the experience in our primal body but also the gateway to God.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Yeah, beautifully put. I'm fascinated by Mary Magdalene. I honestly think she was equal to Jesus in her abilities and powers. They were the ultimate power couple and I think what you described there is exactly it. There's a wholesale reclamation of being deeply embodied. Right, the phrase embodiment has become such a trope now, because everyone's trying to have this experience and it's time. That's why it's here. It's why we've got this massive surge in understanding our attachment dynamics and becoming more embodied, because it's actually time for us as a collective to be deeply in our bodies and deeply working through the stuff that previous generations didn't have to cope with.

Speaker 3: 18:03

It wasn't their time to figure out their attachment stuff of being in this dark space of like in your body, in intimacy. One of the things that you mentioned was just how to create safe space, how to create safe space for this darker, primal Eros to live, to unfurl. How do you do that, Especially if there's traumas or there's there's shame or there's there's more that there's um, no, there's more that we can talk about. In that, too, I'm sure we will. But how do you start, how do you begin to create a safe space for that?

Speaker 1: 18:44

Yeah, I was talking with my cohort, melissa Louise, who's an incredible um, sex and relationship coach, and we are.

Speaker 1: 18:51

We're always talking about the, the sanctity of boundaries, desires and consent and an impeccable communication.

Speaker 1: 19:00

So in the realm of dating, in the realm of great sex, in the realm of great relating, in the realm, in in all of these areas where we have to build amazing relationships, we have to be really, really good at how we communicate our desires, how we honor our boundaries and how we create a kind of a slow building climate of safety, because we're never going to be 100 safe in any situation. But if we're playing with more intense flavors of sensual expression, we have to titrate slowly into those areas so that the body and the nervous system has time to kind of acclimatize to what's happening. This is why we have I say the world of kink has the best communication standards going. The world of vanilla dating is bullshit. It just it's just everyone's running around like around with very unclear desires and very unclear boundaries. In the realm of kink you have great conversations pretty quickly about what you are looking for and how you go about creating it and you get much faster to the place that you want to get to safely.

Speaker 3: 20:11

Can you give some examples of how specifically to communicate a desire? I know it's a basic question, but I think some people are like okay, I've got this perverted desire in my mind. How do I? How?

Speaker 1: 20:38

of conversation. There is um, there is a model called the rbdsm conversation, which stands for relationship boundaries, sexuality meaning. There's it's an acronym, and, but you go through stages of a conversation. You can. You can have that on your first date. You could sit down with your partner and your relationship check-in and say, hey, should, should we get to the sex subject now? Or just going through a relationship check-in and going through the layers of what is it that you are celebrating, what is it that you're desiring more of and what things would you like to clear up, like, where have you been, feel that you have maybe been hurt or you've had your boundaries crossed? It's a constant, ongoing conversation.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Great sex is about curiosity and feedback. We constantly checking in, we're constantly attuning, we're constantly reading the song of desire in both our body and our lover's body. That is, that's what love is. It's care, it's a sense of empathizing. You can be wild and animalistic, but also deeply loving and caring at the same time. It's just and it takes training. We have to train ourselves and essentially we're. Essentially, my work is about leading men away from the pitfalls of pornography and unconscious relating into a more conscious, uh, understanding and behavior with the feminine to be deeply respectful and caring for the feminine, but also to understand that there is a part of her that is seeking liberation as well, and that's where men have to find their fire.

Speaker 3: 22:15

So good, can we talk about the pornography piece, the pitfalls of pornography and what you've seen in that.

Speaker 1: 22:24

Yeah, it's the scourge of the modern world Because it's training men. It's deeply, I mean, it's so damaging in a thousand ways that we could we could spend hours unpacking it, but essentially it's desensitizing men and leading them into a very addictive cycle where they're disconnected from their bodies, they're locked into patterns of intense arousal fueled by scenes that are acted by people that are not. It's not how, generally, how sex is that. It's all acting mostly, um, pornography is so dangerous for a million reasons, but it just, it's basically entraining men into a way of being that is completely not of this reality, and it's not how women operate and it's not how sex is. So we have an epidemic of men um basically feeding off imagery and sound that's distorting their minds and their brains and their biochemistry in ways that are very, very unnatural so I'm assuming there's sort of this quick hit with it, right.

Speaker 3: 23:36

It's a bit, like you said, of an addiction and if they're caught in a a loop or a pattern and it's easy right, like it's an easy, easy button.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:49

Why? How do they get out of it and why would they want to? What's on the other side of that?

Speaker 1: 23:55

Well, addiction to pornography is a bit like an attachment wounding. It becomes an ally to men. It's something that helps them feel safe and they can go to it and they can have a massive release of dopamine and serotonin. It's a soothing mechanism in many ways and it's usually because the men were traumatized earlier in their adolescence and then developed a very maladaptive relationship with their genitals, and it's so addictive as well. So it's basically a slow weaning off process. You can't really go cold turkey with these things and expect a high success rate. You have to have guidance. You have to have someone that's going to support you and take you through a process of many weeks, months, showing you how to decondition your mind, how to wean yourself off all of the little trigger points that create the craving in the first place, and then to adopt really healthy self-pleasure habits that don't involve porn, that involve you reconnecting with your body and your body's energetics so that you know yourself more. And that's embodiment 101.

Speaker 3: 25:02

Can you describe what that means more? What does a healthy relationship with self-pleasure look like?

Speaker 1: 25:09

For men and women. It's spending lots of loving time and contact with your genitals and with your arousal patterns and recycling that energy so it's moving through you, so it's not stagnant. There's a thing called the no-fat movement, which is training men to not go near their genitals and to abstain from ejaculation or porn. I think that's a very bad idea, because we need to have a constant connection to our body. We need to be touching ourselves, holding ourselves, caressing ourselves, squeezing ourselves and building up a relationship with, and especially with, our genitals, because that's where the most shame is stored.

Speaker 3: 25:49

Let's talk about shame.

Speaker 1: 25:51

Yeah, let's talk about shame.

Speaker 3: 25:54

I mean where to start on that.

Speaker 1: 25:57

Yeah, the greatest story of the human condition, I think and that's what we're here to unpack and fix for the next few generations is the layers of shame that have been hoisted upon us by the last few thousand years of fear-based dogmatic doctrine.

Speaker 3: 26:19

What kind of shame do you think when you say that our genitals are where so much of our shame is stored? Do you see a difference in sort of the kind of shame or the stories around shame in gender, like male-female? Do you see a difference?

Speaker 1: 26:37

it always. I mean, if you really want to lump it down to two essential places, it's the core masculine wound which is I'm not enough or I'm too dangerous, and it's the core feminine wound of I'm too much and I'm I'm going to be hurt, I'm not safe Because there's. So I mean, if you think about a woman's yoni or her pussy, it's the ultimate portal for life. There is the most immense power there and you know we have our positive and negative poles in different places as men and women, and negative poles in different places as men and women. Um, and strangely, we live in a planet and a culture where there has been a systematic kind of targeting of these areas to shut them down, because you, if you have people that are connected to the sensuality, their sexuality and their genitals and are empowered and full of life force, they're going to be a threat. So we're here to unpack that.

Speaker 3: 27:44

It's just like a such a simple and profound truth that I again it's like in this Mary Magdalene piece I'm like, historically, why, why, why were these people that came in and and shut down? I don't mean to sound so negative, but like there was, there was patterns, there still is in society today that has shut us off from our body, from our intuition, from our sensuality, like from our connection to our body. And why? Why is the question? And to me, the obvious answer has become it is the gateway to God, it is the gateway to divine, it is the gateway to empowerment and if we have access to that, it's what you just said. It is a threat, whether it's like to personally or to a structure that's in place and, um, and it's been so like turned upside down and inside out. There's a there's a bit of a frustration there for me and like, how did how did centuries go by with people just like stripped of their power?

Speaker 1: 28:46

Yeah, it's, it is, it's, it's, it's. It's very challenging to look at. I mean, we go through cycles of awakening and then slumber and deep sleep and there are various forces that will capitalize on the ebb and flow and the flux of consciousness in the species and we're coming out of a deep slumber. I think we're coming. It's. Everyone's talking about a great awakening. I, I see a great awakening happening right now and it's directly connected to our eros, our sexuality and our embodiment. So we have a lot of work to do, but it's a. It's a. It's directly connected to our eros, our sexuality and our embodiment. So we have a lot of work to do, but it's a good work, you know it's worthy.

Speaker 3: 29:24

So the male, the major or the most predominant male wound is I'm not enough or I'm too dangerous, and I know I've seen in your work you've talked about I want to make sure I'm getting this right the sensual, the connection between the sensual and the savage.

Speaker 1: 29:43

Did I get that right?

Speaker 3: 29:44

that's. Yeah, that's a piece of the work yeah, yeah yeah, can you talk about that too dangerous piece and sort of that, the savage within and and what you mean by that?

Speaker 1: 29:53

Sure, the masculine mindset has largely been sanitized and overly domesticated and feminized over the last few decades. So we're going through our process and the women are going through their process and we're looking for ways to reclaim our power. Power, embodied power is a really deep connection to the body, to your innate abilities, to your physical fitness and to your natural expression. So the savage and the sensual blend beautifully together if they're tempered by a conscious, awake mind. I think that's where a lot of the work lies. For men is kind of reclaiming their actual testosterone driven desire to be primal animals and again mixing it with slowing down, attuning, being essentially awake person that wants to care. The two can coexist beautifully. They just dance around each other, um, and that could be a single moment in a sexual experience. Or it can be a tire, an entire week of um foreplay. You know you're building towards a moment. It can be the way you treat your pets. It's everything, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's in, it's in everything we do I've heard david data say that in sex I'm gonna butcher this.

Speaker 3: 31:22

I should have googled it. I feel, like you probably, you know it probably way better than I do but that there's a moment of like killer. There's like a killer in the man, in the in sex is that. Would you agree with that and can you tell me about that?

Speaker 1: 31:38

totally, because deep nested in deep inside every woman is a desire to feel the killer in her man, but know that he has the ability to control it. Um, jordan peterson says it beautifully every man should be uh, be a killer, but know how to control it. That primal part of us directly connects to her ability to feel safe. Like this guy's got my back. If, if we're attacked, this guy can defend himself, he defend me.

Speaker 1: 32:07

That's, that's in our genetics, that's never going to go away um, and it's extremely arousing in moments of sensual or intimate contact because we get a flash of the primal, and the primal makes us feel wildly alive. It's visceral.

Speaker 3: 32:29

Is it possible to take that like? I've heard men say that they're afraid of that part of themselves, that within sex, that they're afraid that that could go too far, or what is? What is the fear about and what? What do they do with that? And is it? Is it? I mean anything's possible, but what do you do about that fear of, like, taking that primal instinct too far?

Speaker 1: 32:56

It's a great question and it's something we're working with for the rest of our lives and we're going to cross boundaries and sometimes it's not going to be peaches and cream, because the reason we're afraid of it is because we actually don't want to actually harm someone we care about. Another reason we're afraid of it is because we're actually scared of that part of us inside ourselves. We're scared of what we're capable of. It's why men have to get in tune with their inner killer, because it will always be a shadow in the background that threatens him. Once you get in touch with that piece of yourself and you start playing with it whether it's martial arts or hiking or climbing or wrestling or anything that involves high intensity impact, you know, you get punched in the face a few times. You find out what you're made of. You start throwing punches. You find out what you're made of um. You start facing death. You find out what you're made of, and then it's.

Speaker 1: 33:50

I mean, women always tell me that. Why, why are women attracted to men that are constantly on the edge of death, whether it's formula one drivers or, you know, heroic men? It's because it's this. It's something very sexy about that, because sex and death are intimately linked. They're two sides of the same coin. So I think we want to feel more alive in our, in our endeavors, and especially in the bedroom and some men that can turn on that texture and bring it safely. It ignites something deep within her which is connected to her primal eros as well I want to circle back to now.

Speaker 3: 34:26

This primary like wounding of the feminine, which is I'm too much. How does that show up in relationship, and how can a man? Well, maybe we can address both sides of it. First of all, what would you say to the woman who feels like she's too much?

Speaker 1: 34:44

Oh, there's two answers. There's two things that happen in this moment. One is your conditioning from your culture has always told you you're not allowed to truly express yourself because it's too much, because most people can't handle it, and certainly men can't handle it, because we're not trained to handle feminine eros or feminine emotionality, because it's wild. Right, it's just. You have a moon cycle. Your hormones are constantly shifting. Your creature's designed to literally have pulses and currents moving through you at high velocity. It's a mystery and there's no place for that in culture or society. There's no place for your moon cycle in the modern world. It's completely ignored, which is shocking, right, when we understand that as men, we understand the pressures that women are under to have. You're constantly being put in boxes, tight-kn boxes, where, where you're having to be like can I just pause you and be like I feel so seen?

Speaker 1: 35:44

I, sister, I feel you, I get it. I mean, I'm not a woman, but I I sympathize because I have a deep connection to my feminine as well, and she does not want to be put in a box. She's wild, um, um, so there is the fear of being too much, because no one knows how to handle it. Um, but then the work on the side of women is that, um, women have to integrate their masculine father energy and they have to understand that they, they're, they have to be accountable for what they do. This is where the idea of the feminine storm can become quite controversial, because, yes, we have to hold space for our partners' outbursts and intensity, but we also have to invite our partners to be more accountable for the way they're acting. Sometimes it's not giving women a free reign to be completely wild and volatile all the time, but there's so much pent-up energy there that's just been compressed by our culture that it's constantly needing an outlet.

Speaker 3: 36:46

Yeah, I feel like for me it's been and will be a forever journey, like you said, this journey of letting the pendulum swing and be like I was kept in a box, or I allowed myself or I put myself in a box for a really long time. How can I be as big as I can be, how can I be as much as I can be? And then you know the sort of heroine's journey of reintegrating the masculine and knowing that I can trust myself to hold space for myself, that my inner masculine can hold space for my inner feminine. And just yesterday I was taking a walk and I was thinking about this conversation. Today, and the more that I'm leaning into this masculine, feminine, polarity work, it just seems so obvious that maybe obvious isn't the right word.

Speaker 3: 37:34

I would love to get your take on this. Like, how similar is the work that that we're doing as male and female Cause? At the end of the day, the goal is sort of the inner union of the masculine feminine within me, right, and then within a man. It's just as you said you, you have a good relationship, a healthy relationship with your inner feminine, which I don't hear a lot of people talking about right now in in men's work, you know, and and then it allows the two parties to actually dance right To like. This is all theoretical, at least in my mind, instead of leaning so heavy on like the, you be this and I'll be this, because that just isn't, that isn't whole and healthy. What's your take on that?

Speaker 1: 38:21

Oh, it's. The great work of our time is the integration of our inner masculine and inner feminine energies. As Justin Patrick Pierce and London Wintons call it, the alpha and the omega, which is beautiful. We all have these energies within us. Generally, the women I meet want to be more surrendered and open and melting into their pleasure, because they're in the realm of sensation and they're out of their logical minds. Some women are very alpha. They love building businesses, they love being in structure, but they also love being in their pleasure.

Speaker 1: 38:58

I think a fascinating topic is the topic of containment, especially for the feminine in all of us. But for a lot of the women I meet, they want the healthy version of being in the box, which is a containment field which is being bound by the rope, which is being safely contained by a masculine presence that knows how to hold her, how to her, how to move her, how to help her drift into subspace, which is the most delicious gift for the feminine, because she just gets to melt and let go of everything, and that is a deep gift, I think, for um, the feminine in this time is subspace.

Speaker 3: 39:42

Can you delineate or like, flesh this out a little bit more, because this is a big deal, like the difference between being put in a box and feeling constrained in an unhealthy way and then healthy containment or a structure, creating a structure that that allows her to melt, like, like. That's a.

Speaker 1: 40:03

that's a big difference, very different things yeah yeah well, when a woman is having an emotional and a highly charged emotional moment and a man can hold space for that with that and he's not too triggered by it and he can regulate through it and provide loving, calm, attentive presence, maybe even firm her some way to kind of help bring her back, that generates an immense amount of trust in the moment that he can handle it and he can hold it. And that's what a lot of masculine embodiment training is about. It's like how do we hold space for the tides of life and stay fairly upright and grounded and present. It's like martial arts training.

Speaker 1: 40:47

It's a beautiful endeavor but sometimes a woman does want to feel kind of it's like the cat in the goldfish bowl.

Speaker 1: 40:59

They slide in because they want to feel wrapped. It's's the boundary of the river, lake or riverbed, it's the perimeter fence. We actually like to go to our boundaries and test them, but we like to be contained and there's something that women describe constantly about this feeling of being safely contained so their nervous system can relax and in that relaxation, relaxation they let go and in that letting go there's a freedom and in that freedom deep joy and a deep pleasure because suddenly the weight of the world is not on them anymore. It's a deeply healing space. The boxes that feel like an imprisonment or a confinement are to do with, where there's no choice, um, and that there's an immense amount of stress because it's placed on them in a time when they don't want to hold it. So the nine-to-five working week, an office block or the environments that they have, or maybe an abusive relationship where the man isn't able to hold her or direct her, it's a lack of containment, it's a lack of direction and it doesn't feel good for her.

Speaker 3: 42:06

Yeah, yeah, can we give people a practical like? If they were going to sexually contain, so bind her with a rope or other example, like how would they do that in a way that felt safe? Can you just walk through like a practical and you? I think I read something on your Instagram too. It was just, it wasn't even it wasn't going into sex, it was just a foreplay kind of containment exercise, if you will, can you describe that?

Speaker 1: 42:40

Oh yeah, this is a gift I love giving my partner when she she comes back from a long day and she's just needs to rest. Um, I would, I would invite any man to learn a couple of basic rope ties. Upper body rope ties just takes a bit of time to learn. You can do it on a mannequin or or train with someone. Um, and it's the art of it really is the art of slowing down your partner's nervous system blind, inviting them to stop thinking or stop talking, gonna make a cup of tea.

Speaker 1: 43:12

Can I blindfold you again, checking in, asking for permission, but you're leading as well. Can I blindfold you? I think you need to thinking. So the blindfold goes on and is slowly tied, and then you say I'm just going to tie you quickly, so just relax. And then you start binding the rope around the upper body.

Speaker 1: 43:36

Every time the rope is touching the skin it's a sensorial experience and because now the woman can't see because she's blindfolded, she's going deeper into her somatics and further away from her mind. Every minute she is further away from her thoughts and in her sensation she's a little bit freer and probably more content because she needs to relax. And so the beauty of a slow, unfolding rope tie is that she feels the pressure of the rope around her, but it feels really pleasurable and very safe. And if the man is moving slowly, with confidence and using his body contact and his presence and his energy, he's also adding to that containment field. So she feels safe with him and feels that she can melt into his guidance. It's freeing. It's freeing for her, it's empowering for him and everyone wins. And so subspace is a deeply beautiful trance-like state that we go to. I invite men to go to this place as well and it just feels amazing.

Speaker 3: 44:47

Thank you for describing that. I mean, I think I'm just outing myself. This, this whole episode is me just outing myself. Here's another thing Jen has never done. Here's something she'd like to do. Here's another thing Jen has never done. Here's something she'd like to do Is that it's like okay, somebody is going to come in and dominate, they're going to take charge without you really having a say in it, without it being tender, and tie you up for their pleasure or for their desire, versus what you just described is a completely, well, mostly different experience, completely well, mostly different experience. And so, if there are people that are listening that haven't explored these darker eros, or maybe there is a man well, you tell me, there's a man that's listening that has this desire to dominate that maybe isn't connected to heart, or where would you, where would you draw the line or where would you say, hey brother, like here's, that's maybe a flag to slow down before you dive into tying somebody up or or going that direction.

Speaker 1: 46:20

Yeah, yeah, the great, the great, greatest piece of advice is always to slow down, slow down, slow down, go even slower than you think. If you think you're going slow now times five, slow right down because that grabby kind of impulsive testosterone driven um, it's quite gross in its nature. Men are very grabby and gross. They want to slam it and hit it and penetrate and do all the things right. And so we're constantly training men to slow the slow down, slow down and attune. If you can't feel your own heart, you can't feel hers. If you're not reading her responses, you're not present with her, it's not going to feel safe. You've become too carried away with your own hunger. Hunger is great, but you have to temper it with sensitivity and it's a constant back and forth in every moment. It's like the yin and the yang. It's like the masculine feminine. They're never isolated, they're always mixed in some degree together, like a kind of flowing, oscillating pattern. So I invite men to slow down and reconnect with their own hearts first yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3: 47:29

That's maybe a good lead-in to um. So you're you're launching a course called dark lover. Yes, um, and I saw on your on your website, just the um. Make sure I get this right. Dark lovers code of conduct. Can you walk us through, like what that code of conduct is and and what?

Speaker 1: 47:50

maybe we'll start there yeah, the code of conduct is very important. It's essentially six steps um on the on the path to holistic care and love-driven dark eros, and it essentially involves that he will honor his primality, that he will honor his desires and speak them boldly, that he will honor his lover's desires and create time for those desires to be explored, that he will honor his shadows, his compulsions of um, shame and unmet needs. You know that he will constantly be tracking for his shadows, um, and that he will honor the themes of containment and liberating feminine eros via his integrated dark and light, so heart and cock. So it's a kind of code, a code of conduct that helps keep the men on on course is there more about the course that you're?

Speaker 3: 48:58

do you want to speak into that a little bit more like what people could expect from that?

Speaker 1: 49:05

Yeah, thank you for asking. It's a four-module course broken down into. Each module contains a series of chapters erotic demos, masculine embodiment practices, interviews with leaders in the scene and it just kind of builds a slow uh, a slow building palette of textures to do with dark eros and really it's about body handling and body safety. It's a primer for men, um, it's a primer for men who want to go deeper into this, but it's really about the essentials and, as all my great teachers have taught me, we have to drill the basics for life, the foundation of everything. So this is a foundational course to help men get in touch with their primality, their dark masculine leadership in the bedroom and their more kind of kink and darker eros energies, if they want to explore it so great.

Speaker 3: 49:57

One thing you talked about was and I I'd love to just kind of um connect the dots on this is this work, that that that you're doing, the work that men can do with you, or you know? I guess I would say this work in intimacy, darker eras. How does it parallel to all of life? Like, how do you use what's the ripple effect of doing this work?

Speaker 1: 50:28

use. What's the ripple effect of doing this work? You feel if you can safely lead a woman into these places, you feel powerful, you feel like you really take up space and that has a ripple impact, um ripple effect into your business, into your creativity, into all your other relationships, because you get great at expressing things and communicating and honoring boundaries, but you're also coming from a place that's more empowered. It's healthy, clean power and, uh, that's I think there's. We need more of that in this world.

Speaker 3: 50:56

It's beautiful. Okay, is there anything we haven't talked about that you wish that I would have asked you about?

Speaker 1: 51:06

no, it's been a really well-rounded discussion.

Speaker 3: 51:10

I think you've brought some beautiful questions here, um so thank you for like just riffing yeah, off each point yeah okay, I have a few um last questions that I just want you to like finish the sentence. If you will, of course, I'm going to give you a prompt, I believe.

Speaker 1: 51:32

I believe that men and women have a right and a duty to deep pleasure and expansive lovemaking that makes them feel alive.

Speaker 3: 51:43

That's good. Our greatest opportunity is.

Speaker 1: 51:48

Our greatest opportunity is every time we get challenging feedback from our lovers. That is the place for us to grow.

Speaker 3: 52:00

The world needs more. The world needs more the world needs more orgasms, satisfaction and embodied freedom and joy.

Speaker 2: 52:20

That's going to be my only real.

Speaker 3: 52:27

Everybody else says love, which which I mean the two are connected right, orgasms and love. Hopefully are connected.

Speaker 1: 52:37

They're very much connected and they feel great, so let's have more of them.

Speaker 3: 52:51

Alex, thank you so much. Thanks for your um, for your candidness, for your work, for helping guide this conversation. I'm yeah, I can only speak for myself and the women that I'm talking to that there is, I would say, a craving. There's a craving right now for for the masculine, for the healthy, embodied masculine, and there's a craving for women again, even alpha women, you know and I would have put myself in that category that are just done, they're exhausted and just like it's.

Speaker 3: 53:23

It's why I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I saw that pattern so explicitly in the working world that women and in their relationships were just like I don't, I don't, I mean, yes, I want to be fucked, that's a big thing but like I really want to be held, to be contained in a safe space, to be, um, free to be too much. You know, and express that and and have that seen as even a gift, that, that life force, that nourishment. So, um, I'm just like when I first started to get into this polarity container community online, I was like, oh my God, people are talking about this. Of course they're talking about it, but there is such a need for it right now. So, thank you, thank you for your work.

Speaker 1: 54:22

My pleasure. Thank you for your work, we thank you for your work. We're all in the trenches together trying to liberate this stuff in the collective and in ourselves and in our relationships. And it's bold, beautiful, messy, brave work. So deep bow to you as well, jen. Thank you so much, thank you.