Sex Is Medicine

Show Intro and Guest Preview 0:00

Welcome to Hotness, the podcast that brings you practical tools to balance your hormones and rekindle connection, confidence, and desire in midlife and beyond. I'm your host, Dr. Liz Lister. Hotiness is a safe space for honest conversations about menopause, sex, identity, love, loss, reinvention,and desire, because you can embrace your hotness at every age. Welcome, Hot Ones. Speaking of hotness, wait till you hear this conversation with Dr. Willow Brown, Chinese medicine doctor and Taoist sexologist, which she explains.

She is the host along with Leah Piper of the Sex Reimagined podcast, a wonderful podcast that I've been listening to for a really long time that we'll link to you. Boy, we really had a fun conversation that Pleasure as medicine, that our sexuality is so much more than what is out there in the culture that addresses sex, okay? We really talk about transformation. I always talk About libido, not just about sex. It's about life energy. And we really talked a lot about that. She has incredible skills and knowledge in that area.

If you can watch the video, it's got some gestures in there. that are also pertinent and fun to our conversation. And it really is humans with our sexuality as human beings, not necessarily, it doesn't have to be men or women, It doesn' matter the type of relationship,

Taoism, Yin-Yang, and Sexual Energy 1:35

but really who we are as humans beings. It was a whole new perspective for me and I am so excited to share with you my conversation with Dr. Willow Brown. Welcome to hotness. Dr. Willow Brown, I'm so excited to have you here. I have figured out why I love you so much. Oh, good. Why is that? Because we both see sexuality and pleasure as a big missing link. Yes. for people's happiness and their healing. Absolutely. It's like essential. it's the root, baby. We're talking about the Root Chakra. So we got to get that one on board.

Everyone's all up in their spiritual omingness that we want to start from the ground up. Yeah, that's what really drives home. Not only like more pleasure, more joy, and more fun, or laughter, but also more vitality, longevity, balanced hormones, balance emotions, right? Right. Yes, the sort of a upward spiral. Right, because I also help heal women who are in midlife. They're having they might have been pain with sex issues with the body as well as the mind. Obviously, they're not separate. So I'd love to start us off.

Could you please explain Daoist sexologist? You always say that title on your podcast, which I love your podcasts will be putting a link to it. And you can say a whole bunch more about that. But can you enlighten me a little more about that. Yeah, totally. So on our podcast that I co-host with Leah Piper, which is Sex Reimagined, I claim to be the Taoist expert. And I claimed that in a lot of places in the world because I am a Chinese medicine doctor. If you know any acupuncturists or Chinese medical herbologists or doctors or Qigong masters out there in the world, they are Taoist masters.

We're all coming from this lens and this view of Taoism. So Tao ism is kind of like a philosophy or a way of life that's very, very much based in contraction and expansion. yin and yang. So if you've ever seen that little yinyang symbol with the black fish and the white little fish, and then they've got the little eyes, you know, so there's ying within yang and yong within yen. Everything in contraction and expansion is relative. So, this is what Daoism really is. It's a way. And what does that mean?

The way is the way of nature. So we're looking to the natural world and our bodies and minds, our psyches, everything. We're look at ourselves as humans as not just part of the nature world, but we actually are the natural world, we are nature. We've got the same mountains and rivers and streams and valleys and oceans in our bodies that the earth has. So, when we look to nature, Okay, the sun goes down and it's contraction, it is night time. The sun comes up and its expansion, its daytime. Winter time comes and is contraction and then summer time come and expansion.

So everything is yin and yang. Everything is contractions and expansions. And there are seemingly these dualistic poles, right? But actually they are this like one and the same, like they don't exist without each other. Like we can't inhale forever. We have to inhale too, right? Right, wow. Okay. Night lasts forever, there has to be day. And we don t have any reference for what light is if we do not know what darkness is. Right? And so, in our lives, it's such a spiritual thing, because it is like if we don't go through the dark night of the soul, the difficult times, this fall and winter seasons of our life, if you don' t go though that, we do not know what spring and summer of your lives is.

Shame, Trauma, and Pelvic Floor Healing 5:53

We don t know joy and laughter and expansion. It doesn't have the same depth or meaning. So that's pretty much what Daoism is, right? It's looking to these rhythms that we naturally just go through. And our hormones run them hugely, especially if we're looking at a woman, her fertility years, you know, Her cycles going like this, or hormones are going this all month long, so she's expanding and contracting, and our emotions are following that flow. So then when we bring in sexuality to this whole party, then we're looking at like at what times in our journey, whether we are in an expansive moment, maybe in a fertility years, if we were in fertility then, we get into expansion when were ovulating.

You know, were peaking at that moment. That's like our summer moment wow. everything's happening, like, okay, let's make a baby, create, right? And so ovulation is an obvious point of expansion that we can play with sexual energy in a certain way at that point, because already peaking naturally inside of your body. So it'd be a great time to explore new possibilities in the bedroom, to exploring new positions or ways or rhythms or touch or whatever. You're making me think of myself and a lot of the women I work with in midlife who are not cycling.

So does that mean we have this opportunity available to us all the time? Yes, I was going to say, so if you no longer have a moon-womb cycle, then you have the moon in the sky cycle. So carry with the rhythm and the expansion, the contraction of the moons cycle so when we're in a peak full moon, energy is going be higher. This translates to male bodies as well. I've had so many men, and I have made so much of my clients like trap their energy, their sexual energy. That's amazing. Almost unanimously, they're like, oh yeah, when the moon is full, I'm definitely full.

That is so funny. We always used to talk about that on labor and delivery. If there were more babies being born or whatever was happening, we would talk You won't be surprised to learn that someone tried to do some kind of study about it and didn't really find that, but that's not a problem. We're talking about people's personal, individual experience. And I definitely, this totally tracks with my study of Kabbalah. Okay, interesting. In so many ways, because there's a lot of the science of astrology, the Science of Numerology, a lots goes with that.

With the spiritual teachings, definitely what you said about the darkness in order to see the light. It's like a moment by moment, like an everyday opportunity when we're feeling challenged. So that's awesome. Yeah, it's our perspective that makes the world around us, you know, and so many of us are stuck in a dark perspective. which might not even be our own. It comes from parents and grandparents and society and what should be. And pretty soon we're just shitting all over the place. Right, it's on ourselves and each other, yep.

Where your authentic self lives. I really feel like Taoism gives us opportunity to be in relationship with our most authentic Self. I love that, that's absolutely amazing. All right, thank you for that. That's gonna stick in my mind, it's just tremendous. I want to also now jump to a little question for you. If you could erase one damaging cultural belief, speaking of societal beliefs, if you can just take a magic wand, erase 1 limiting or damaging culture belief about sexuality, intimacy, or aging overnight, what would it be?

Where would you start? I mean, pretty much that sex is shameful, that we should be ashamed of our bodies, We should be ashamed of having pleasure. We shouldn't be. Ashamed of how we get pleasure, how desire pleasure you know if I could erase shame from the world. I think that a lot of powers that have a lotta control would not have the control that they have anymore. And once upon a time I created something that was called immune to shame, immune shame. Because I remember somebody said something to me one time and then later on my girlfriend was like, I felt like that person was trying to same you when they said that.

And it didn't even occur to be as like a shameful thing, whatever the fuck it was. I don't remember. But, you know, it's like maybe I'm immune. So I started to kind of like, I mean I'm not, but you know I am human too. But I've started- But you have tools. I know you've got tools because I listen to you speak. Yeah, exactly. Okay, love that. Sorry, go ahead. Well, yeah, just that, you know, I think that if we wiped that out, a lot of the beliefs that we have about ourselves, our bodies, aging, the world around us, what we should or shouldn't be at a certain age in our life or a point in a journey or whatever fucking season we're in,

Transformational Sex and Creative Life Force 11:24

like I really think we would be having a very different view. Speaking of carrying shame in our bodies, I work mostly with women. I do have been in my practice, which is really fun, as I really like that as well. But a lot of women who are carrying same particularly in their body, they may have experienced trauma. So I want to ask you more specifically about pelvic floor work, because I know that's one of the areas that you focus on. And so I wanted to ask you, what have you seen manifest? What happens in the body when someone spends years carrying that shame or grief or trauma in her body?

Does that look like what is due to her sexuality and what does the release from that looks like? I love that. That's a juicy, fun question. So, I mean, what it looks like when women are carrying shame in their pelvic bowl is it can look like a lot of things. It can like pain, endometriosis, PCOS, interstitial cystitis, vaginismus, painful sex. it could look no physical symptoms at all, but it look embarrassment, insecurity around sexuality, not sure, excited about sex, curious about it, interested about a sense of not feeling safe in your body, a sens of feeling like you don't belong in the world, like, you can't find community, can find friends, don t have home, and your bodies are in a world.

A lot of root chakra stuff, safety, security, home. And then, of course, it can manifest physically. So when I am pulling shame out of women's vajayjays, which a lot times is put there by previous generations, mothers, fathers, and grandmothers, grandfathers, so on and so forth. It's a lineage thing most all of the time. So it doesn't have to be something that happened to me specifically. Correct. Instead of it could be put into my body generational. That's interesting. Because we're coming off of eons of shame, right?

It's so epigenetically, it's in all of us until we pull it out, we have to get in there and get it on out of there. And when I'm doing pelvic floor work, I go in and I look for tender points inside the bejeejay, inside of the walls. of the vaginal canal Bernie, it feels sharp. Okay. When you tune into that Bernie sharp, what do you see anything? I see an ice pick or I a dagger or whatever, you know, or, I just see a red blob, whatever they see. And then we kind of go into the vision of that. Some people see stuff and some people don't.

We go in to whatever it is, we go to the emotion, the visual, go the experience of it and we talk to it. What are you doing here? What do you need from me at this point? You know, we have a somato-emotional release conversation. A lot of times, tears will come. Sometimes we get sound out, so make the sound of that hot, burning, sharp thing. You get that out of the tissues. I mean, women get off the table and they're like, They're like a plant that just got watered. Like, their eyes look different.

They look way more in their bodies. they feel like their feet are more on the ground. When they go pee, they're, like, well, that was the best pee I've ever had, you know, because, it's like more sensation and availability in the bodies Incredible. That also reminds me of what you said about contracting and opening because the cells that's happening at a cell level and then the tissue level then an organ level right all the way up to us and out to everywhere. I mean this is amazing for this podcast which is all about hotness and about women in particular reconnecting, not only balancing hormones, but also reconnected with confidence and desire.

I talk about that all the time, that libido is not about sex, it's about motivation and life energy, so that's where it is connecting to what you're saying. Can you talk a little bit about When people think about sex i mean we're in a challenging moment at this point in the world what people thinking of the sex you know i have two young adult sons and. I'm their mom we talk about these things but you don't young people and of all ages really exposed to porn so this idea of sex versus transformational sex.

Can you speak to this idea of what is good sex versus what I think you and I have as an intention, which is transformational level of sex? That's such a good thing. I mean, there's a range of sexuality can be. You know, this is why we named our podcast, Sex Reimagined, because we're like, let's see if we can help people reimagine what's possible. I mean, I'm having orgasmic experiences standing at the ocean edge, doing Qigong and breathing, you know? So like there's, that's a sexual experience for me.

That's my perception of it. that how I experience. So that what real for, me, and I think so many of us learn like our sex education is just absolute shit. It's puberty education. A friend of mine put her finger right on it. It is not sex education, it is puberty education anatomy, so not talking about sexuality. Exactly. And I think a lot of us learn about what sex should be from both our peers and pornography. We have this idea, especially male-bodied people think that it's like, Well, I get it up, i get in, get off, and get out.

That's successful sex. And don't mess my hair up. up and coming of age going like, that's okay, I don't really enjoy it that much, you know, because nobody's ever really taking the time to pleasure the female embodied people the way that they really deserve, right? I mean, our bodies are designed for pleasure. It's really incredible how the anatomy of it all works. and like how that leads to these endorphin, these chemicals in your body. I'm always saying like the only medicine you need is already inside of your, you just need to know how to activate it.

Which brings me, circles me back to Taoist sexology, which is like, let's learn how activate all these chemical and all of these places and structures in you body and your brain and heart. that can run creative life force energy, which what you just alluded to. It's beyond like, I'm horny, let's fuck. Let's create. I want to create something. So I think, it was funny, that I sent a text the other day to a friend. And I was like most people have no idea what good sex is.

Menopause, Energy Reclamation, and Healing 18:58

They just don't even have, It is not even a concept of what is possible. a friend of my mom's, who's now 90, and her granddaughter is a grown woman with children. But her grandmother was about three or four years old. She was giving her grand daughter a bath. And her Granddaughter said, Grandma, you should just touch right here. You should touch there. It's good. So she's like, that's great. That's really nice, except for you, should do that another time, or whatever she said to her, like do it on your own, something like that.

No, no, really, try it right now. Yeah. And I just love that story because that's like a three-year-old girl, three year old girls could run the world. If you just ask them, right? Like we are born with that kind of agency and we're taught to look away from it or to rewire in some way. But anyhow, you made me think of that. I love the story. Yeah, so good. I know. We're so connected to our creative life force energy. That's maybe where I was. Creative life-force energy is what sexuality is. Like we could create a whole new life from that.

So, what life do we want to create for ourselves with that energy? So there is a practice in all of this ancient esoteric sexuality that I teach that's very near and dear to my heart, which is sex magic, Which is all about manifesting or co-creating. I really like the word co creating over manifest. Yes. Co-creating with the universe or cocreating with The Yoni-verse, you know. whatever it is that you want to bring to fruition more in your life, whether that is more money, more joy, love, happiness, health, all of that, is fair game.

And if you think about every time a man ejaculates, that's 200 million potential human beings. It's a lot of chi. That's lot energy. A lot vitality. So if he can learn how to circulate his energy and bring it back up into his body, he's going to have so much more energy, vital, and chi to work with to create whatever he wants in his life. Women, female embodied people, they don't you know, ejaculate out potential lives. So where they lose their life force energy is when they menstruate. Every time we're dropping eggs, we are losing our side of the potential life-force.

That's why when we have our cycles, I just lay here for the day, you know, like we lose our energy for that. The opposite of creating is just want to just hunker down and totally. And so there is a practice. It's a very big practice in Taoism, what they call turning back the blood, where Taoist priestesses would basically, they live in the temple. They don't live They live in the temple, they meditate all day, but they're able to stop their menstrual cycles on purpose. And then they stay that age, whatever age they kind of stop it at, through ovarian breathing and various Taoist sexual practices.

It doesn't mean that they don't go through menopause and they like they still go through that, but they stay that age at which they turned back the blood and halted their cycle. That is amazing. I'm going to put more thought into that because I am going choose to go from what you're saying to thinking about myself and women and menopause where we have that opportunity all the time. Yes, exactly. And I mean, that's what we see naturally with menopause too. Women are all of a sudden, they're like, wait, it's all about me.

I've been doing it. Everyone else and now hang on, I want to turn the energy back into myself. and I wanna do what's important for me and i want do on any of all that shit. was for everyone else that I don't really care about. Wow, that is so amazing. Turning back the energy and blood is energy. I did that practice when I was early on in the Daoist sexology path. In my early 20s, I'm going to turn back to blood. I'm gonna do this, right? So I was meditating probably like two hours a day doing all these different practices with Taoist work and basically what happened for me was I had had

Self-Pleasure and Closing Thoughts 23:38

extremely painful painful periods my whole life and very difficult like acne and just you know just the whole hormonal dysregulation to the nines. And so all of that healed, all that completely healed. Like I was able to smooth out my menstrual blood, I had no more cramping, no pain, my skin cleared up, like all kinds of things changed. Yeah, it was really... And I'm going to guess that people doing work with you would not have to spend the hours meditating that you did with the methods that what?

I'm sorry? Because I had to figure it all out. Yes, you figured it out for women. I love that so much. And of course, your work with men. If people want to learn more about you and work you, what is the best way to reach you? Go to my website, drwillowbrown.com and you can find everything there, all my programs, memberships, private coaching, Private Retreats, group retreats. Everything's there. So yeah, and just book a free consult. Let's just chat and see where you're at and what's right for you.

Wonderful. That is fantastic. I want to wrap us up with a question I ask each of my guests. Now, I'm sure you have a lot of possible answers to this question, so you'll have to pick one. What is one, maybe your favorite way that you reconnect personally to your own hotness? Oh, God. Well, I set up a little nest in my zone and I get the candles and the music and everything just right the way I like it. And I just make love to myself for like two or three hours sometimes. Sometimes it ends in an orgasm, sometimes it doesn't, you know?

Sometimes I close it off with pulling a Celtic tree card. Because I'm a Celtic dork. And other times I just roll off to bed and go to sleep. So I think like self-pleasuring, self loving is so much of a crucial practice over masturbating. You know, I said that to someone. Right. I was like, not you self pleasure. I'm like, that's different. For three minutes. And yeah. Right. Wow. That's amazing. Well, I knew this would happen. I know that you and I could talk forever and ever and knew you would leave us wanting to learn more.

So I am sure that we will follow it up again another time. Thank you so very much for joining me on Hotness. Thanks for listening to Hotness. Help more women find these practical tools by liking, sharing, and following the show, as well as leaving a review. As a gift for listing, go to drlizmd.com forward slash hotness for your free midlife guide filled with powerful support for you mind, body, soul, because you can embrace your hotnes at every age.