There’s a lot of stress in parenthood that presses on the couple’s relationship, which Emily and I know firsthand as parents to 6 children. And I know that maintaining intimacy and being lovers while also being parents is a challenge many of us face, which is why I’m so interested in this topic today.
And I had so much fun recording this episode with my guest, Sofia Ashley. She’s a hoot! Sofia has been a sex coach for 10 years and has a program called “Sex After Kids” and she’s the founder of The Happy Vagina Project.
In this episode we discuss how to have a party your libido would like to show up to and the importance of nervous system regulation, effective communication, and emotional support (over depending on outside things like toys or lingerie). You’ll get to hear her strategies for transitioning from being a busy mom to a hot wife. And be sure to stay to the end to hear her black belt sex tip!
Resources:
Episode Highlights
2:08: Bedroom fail
5:12: Novelty falls flat if there’s not deeper connection
6:09: How our nervous system plays in
9:28: When you just feel “touched out”
15:33: Physiological response and the need for relaxation
18:20: Transitioning from super-busy mode, to “I want to have sex mode”
22:41: Creating a party your libido wants to come to
23:50: Pre-launch check list
31:46: Nervous sytem reset exercises
35:49: How to know if you’re disregulated
39:45: Black belt sext tip!
Disclaimer: The opinions and values expressed by guests on the Get Your Marriage On! podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and values of the host. Appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of the guest or their products by Get Your Marriage On or its host. While we work hard to bring you quality and valuable content, listeners are encouraged to use their own best judgment in applying the information or products discussed on this podcast.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
Episode 212
Dan: Emily and I are busy parents to six children. There’s a lot of stress and parenthood that presses on the couple’s relationship. So maintaining intimacy or being lovers while being parents is a challenge. Many of us face. Which is why I’m so interested in this topic today.
And I [00:01:00] had so much fun recording this episode with my guest, Sophia, Ashley.
She’s a hoot. We’re mostly talking to busy moms that struggled to transition to wife mode today. Sophia has been a sex coach for 10 years and has a program called sex after kids. We’re talking today about how to have a party your libido would like to show up to.
In this episode, we discussed the importance of nervous system regulation, effective communication and emotional support over depending on outside things like toys or lingerie. You’ll get to hear her strategies for transitioning from being a busy mom to a hot wife. And be sure to stay to the end, to hear her black belt sex tip.
Sophia, I am so excited to have you on the podcast. Anyone who says they’re the founder of the happy vagina project really gets my attention. So, uh, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?
Sofia: Thank you so much for having me. I’m great. It’s Friday. So it’s a good day.
Dan: It’s [00:02:00] a good day. Fridays are great days. I wanted to know if you could tell me of a recent bedroom blooper, maybe a fail in the bedroom.
Sofia: Absolutely. I’ve made my career out of telling everyone about my sex life. So no problem. Um, so as you know, I specialize in working like you with Parents, after kids, they’re struggling to keep that couple connection alive. And in particular, there’s a pretty big libido mismatch. And I specialize in there for lots of reasons, but one is certainly for me, after one step kid and two children, I’m in that same scenario. So I’ve got an almost three year old now, six year old, 13 year old. I’m working on my things. And, This time around, I’m looking for like new and novel a little bit in our sex life. And I’ve been like, okay, maybe I need some lingerie. Maybe we need some toys. And I absolutely got it in my head, even as a sex coach, that I was gonna go to the store [00:03:00] and Buy some new lube and buy a fun little toy and buy a new piece of lingerie and this was somehow going to magically create a perfect sexual scenario that the lingerie in particular was going to do all the work for me and I was going to get all the magic and all the tingles and all the things with this one little piece of lace. Right?
Dan: Sounds like we’re, I know where we’re heading.
Sofia: So go home. I got to wash the thing, get the thing ready, put it on. It’s doing job number one, which is mainly like, I just wanted to be feeling a little bit sexier. I needed to replace some very old mom underwear that was not doing it for me anymore. So I’m walking around the house in it with my clothes over top and just like enjoying kind of that sensation of like tuning into my like naughty side and like feeling kind of more sexy in my own body.
Great. Okay. So like mission one accomplished hubby comes home and I’m like all [00:04:00] excited to show him and I show him and he’s like all excited. Go to the bedroom. I think the kids were away for some reason. So we had a magical private moment
and uh, we put on some good tunes. So like that’s working for me as well.
And then, I mean, guess what? Like it was a decent, but like fairly mediocre time, right? Like there was not really a lot of fireworks, you know, my husband did his thing and he was super good at asking me if, uh, like once he finished, he asked me if he could go down on me, if he could keep going longer, if there was anything I needed, but I was so kind of like disappointed really that this lace didn’t create like more spark or magic that I just kind of went into shutdown mode.
And was like, no, I’m good. You finish. I’m done. Let’s just move on. Everything’s fine. You
know, dismiss my needs, dismiss my emotions, just sort of [00:05:00] go into that fawn space. And so it was interesting for me and I’ve been preaching this and also been experimenting, but like I, the new and novel is important depending on the stage that we’re in. And it’s great to play and to add all these different creative things, but without certain core elements or like foundational elements, they are not going to create the magic that you want to see. And I see a lot of people resorting to that because the Cosmo mag advice is get a toy, get lingerie, role play, dirty talk.
And those things are fabulous
Dan: Uh huh. Uh huh.
Sofia: without some nervous system support, which we can talk about more about that, what that means.
And without like actual communication. Those things aren’t going to magically make things better. So I
got to learn that firsthand.
Dan: yep. So Sophia, you’re really disappointed in that, right? Like we’ve
Sofia: Wah wah moment.
Dan: What a letdown, right? Cause you had all [00:06:00] this expectation for what I was going to go. But why is it that when you’re disappointed in the moment, why does it shut down your body? Why does it make it hard to kind of get there? Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.
Sofia: So, I mean, what we’re talking about is our nervous system there, right? And so, I had a quiet little expectation that I was low key aware of, but not really. And I think of them as like a little brain gremlin. Uh, but I had this low key expectation and my body, my nervous system was gearing up for a specific kind of sensation, a specific kind of experience. And when our nervous system lacks a sense of, if it doesn’t feel safe in a vulnerable intimate connection with another human like that,
even if our partner is loving, caring, wonderful. And even if we intellectually feel very safe with that person,
if we have other things going [00:07:00] on in our nervous system, that could be sexual trauma.
That could just be a lot of stress in your life. That could just be a lot of overstimulation from life with children. If your body, not your brain, your body doesn’t feel safe in that situation, It goes into fight, flight, or freeze. So a shutdown would be a freeze response where my body’s like, didn’t go the way I wanted and it’s too scary or will take too much effort to be honest with myself
Dan: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm
Sofia: about my disappointment and to truly feel that feeling,
to share that, and then to ask for what I need to shift it.
My brain just goes, yeah, no, okay, we’ll just shut that down and move on from
Dan: Yeah, it’s easier just to like, yeah, move on right there. Got it. Um, so what is it that didn’t work out for you in that moment?
Sofia: I mean, I think my body had an expectation of pleasure, sensation, where, you know, I was expecting a piece of [00:08:00] lingerie to somehow magically control how my body was going to respond in that moment, in that day, to
touch and connection with my partner,
or to somehow make my partner’s fingers magically touch. better at finding things or to make my partner magically last longer or you know like all these things that were like entirely outside of the control of a piece of lace.
Dan: Uh huh. Uh huh.
Sofia: and also it just leads to this I think This buildup of like, you want to congratulate yourself for having put in an effort. And especially as the lower libido partner in my relationship, I think I was like, Look at me, like, I went to the store and bought some things.
I put it actually on, like, I put an effort in and, you know, my partner’s always appreciative when I do because I don’t initiate a lot. and all that like quote unquote effort that I was convincing myself I was doing didn’t result in the thing that I wanted. So there was a [00:09:00] gap there that my body was like goes into that defeatist brain gremlin of this is never going to change. there’s nothing I can do about this. It doesn’t matter what I do. It’s not going to get better.
kind of downward spiral.
Dan: Right, right. Gotcha. So we’re talking about calming the nervous system or understanding the nervous systems role in sex. Tell me about times like I’ve experienced this in my own marriage and I hear about very often with the people I work with to like you just feel touched out, especially when you have young kids like you’ve been nursing all day and just, you know, or just with their Children all day.
You just don’t. It’s like, Ah, no, no, thank you. I just yeah. really need my own space right now. What’s going on in that situation? Gotcha.
Sofia: for safety, whether that’s relational with the person that we’re with or in the environment that we’re in. And we have the sort of rest and digest nervous system, which can be [00:10:00] alert or relaxed, and we can have the fight or flight nervous system, which can be like turned on or turned off, I guess. And so I think, um, of three core elements of that as like safety, does my body feel safe in this context, stress, like how much stress am I experiencing, whether that’s like income stress or time stress or relationship fighting stress, and then I think of the sensory overload, so how much sound, touch, smell, and whatever other sensory overload is coming at me in one moment. And so for moms in particular, but dads and parents in general, right? When you are being touched and grabbed all day, I personally, right now, I’m finding myself extremely sensitive to noise, uh, like when I’m in the. bathroom and the bath is running. It’s so loud. I like, I have way more of a screamer in the bathroom with my kids. [00:11:00] smell, right? You’re cooking dinner or there’s loud music, there’s screaming, there’s squabbling. Like your whole body is just taking in sensory input from all angles, likely on top of some stress as parents in this modern day society. And so it’s like a information overload. And then your partner comes up behind you while you’re washing dishes and wraps their arms around you or starts kissing your neck and like, it’s all very well meaning and pleasurable input, typically,
but when your, your input cop is full already,
it’s not being appreciated in that way.
In fact, it’s a rejection, right?
Um, and so then the initiation, the invitation to intimacy doesn’t get shut down because I hate you personally, or I’m even angry at you personally, which might be the case sometimes. I just, my body literally cannot process any more sensory input. [00:12:00] And if we’re going to transition out of that, into something, we have to find a way to cleanse the palate and calm my nervous system down before we can ask it to take in this pleasurable sensory input,
Dan: Great. I want to get to the how in just a moment, but I want to dig a little deeper here. So, you know, you said the two parts, the nervous system that can be on or off. You have the Rest and digest. That’s like the parasympathetic system. And then you have the, you know, the fight flight side.
That’s the sympathetic. Right. And, I liked your three S’s safety. Stress and sensory overload. And that’s really good to like, Oh, what is it? Why am I feeling agitated right now? Is it stress? Is it safety or is it a sensory concern? What about situations where. You just everything fills off like the bedsheets kind of feel scratchy or you just can’t get in your body and I’ve definitely had times like that for me, you just mentally distracted.
No matter how hard I try to be in the moment with my wife, I’m thinking about work or, you know, projects coming up or other chores or jobs [00:13:00] and tasks and unfinished things that just always plagued my mind.
Sofia: Totally. I mean, I think I was on another podcast the other day and I was having this light bulb moment that a lot of good sex is really about an ability to Relax into the present moment and be present in the present moment. And so any part of your nervous system that’s taking you out of that is going to affect or shift the kind of sexual experience you’re having, right? So sometimes another way that nervous system kind of overload can show up is we’ve made the invitation, our partner has been willing, and we start to get going. And. Our body is sort of setting off the alarm because of that stress or sensory overload by tuning us into everything except for our body. So we’re focused on the lights being too loud, something in the music we put on being off, some weird smell we can’t describe, um, the sheets not feeling comfortable, we’re too cold, we’re too [00:14:00] hot, like we just can’t sleep.
Seem to get comfortable and everything’s distracting,
or we’re very stuck in our head, and that’s the brain gremlins that I always like to talk about, which could be the stress at work. It could be the laundry list of chores to do. It could be how I feel in my body. I am worrying about my balding hair.
I’m. worrying about my post baby belly, like whatever that is. and I think for people with penises and for men, like it can be a lot of like, how long am I going to last tonight? Or, you know, like performance anxiety is a thing for both genders for sure.
Um, how long is it going to take me to orgasm? Like, is he going to get frustrated and impatient?
Right. It’s easy to discount that. Um, and so when we’re stuck in our brain whirling with that, or when we’re stuck in our senses, but like. outside of how does my partner’s skin feel on my skin? How do their lips feel on my lips? If we can’t focus on [00:15:00] what that sensation feels like, then we’re out of it. And so we come too quickly or we don’t come at all.
Um, It’s, or it’s just a low grade kind of experience, you know, my Tantra teacher’s always like, we have orgasms that are just like sneezes, like,
they’re just so, you know, a fraction of what they possibly could be,
um, and so I think that’s really what it shows up as when we’re either making out or as we’re kind of getting into things, um, we’re distracted and we’re not landed and in the moment and present to what’s happening.
Dan: Great. What happens physiologically in arousal? Why do you need to be relaxed in order to, uh, have arousal?
Sofia: So that’s the other piece, right, is when we’re in fight or flight or freeze, our muscles are doing different things. Uh, usually if we’re in fight or flight, they’re contracting.
That means it’s hard for our muscles to actually relax and open into pleasure and orgasm because they’re doing the exact [00:16:00] opposite. blood flow is also super important to arousal. So if your muscles are constricted, it’s hard for blood to flow to your genitals. And that means it’s hard for like a full erection or full arousal for, vaginal and vulva anatomy. So even from a physiological level, nevermind a mental one, when we’re in kind of that stress state, we’re limiting our body’s ability to do its sexual thing.
Dan: Got it. Great. Okay. How do you get out of it? What are your steps to how do, or do you have a story of a time when you were kind of starting in that way and then you’re able to apply tools to kind of get you out of it?
Sofia: Yeah. So
for me, there’s a couple of phases.
Dan: that. Yeah.
Sofia: Yeah. All the things. So the first step is of course, whatever we can do to be managing our overall stress levels always feels like the impossible dream, but it’s worth saying.
Dan: Yep.
Sofia: Beyond that, it’s increasing the [00:17:00] amount of Pleasure in your life in general,
and that can look like mindfulness or not, but it looks like Choosing a two minute dance party with your kids or for yourself while you’re washing the dishes Having a big family tickle fight like any time you can choose the option to be silly fun or playful It gets you out of the fight or flight mode and it’s actually literally medicine for you so when you even manage to just like deeply enjoy the first three sips of your coffee, even if you only get three sips,
or if you’ve got two minutes and you’re doing your makeup routine or your morning routine or you’re in the shower, like actually like smelling the lotion deeply, all of those things release hormones in your brain that are kind of the antidote to the cortisol and the adrenaline, which actually supports you just kind of on a baseline level. So the more you can do that broadly in your life, the better you’re going to do. Um, and then also we can just apply that same principle to our sexual [00:18:00] connections. So the more playful it can be, the more helpful it is. And what I like to do is, one, is what I call the palette cleanse.
And so it’s really trying to think about, especially when you are sensory touched out.
Let’s say you So this is part of why I’m a fan of scheduling sex, but whether you schedule a sex or not, if you’re trying to go from like super busy mode to like, I would like to have sex with my partner tonight, or I would like to attempt to have sex with my partner tonight,
um, just like Let’s say you’re going on a date night, right, just leaving the door with the screaming kids or whatever
it is
Dan: Uh huh. Mm
Sofia: and walking into your date night without any kind of palate cleanser in between to just mindfully go, I am leaving that part of my day and I am entering this part of my day. It’s tiny, but it’s helpful. And that can literally be three deep breaths.[00:19:00]
And some eye gazing before you hold your partner’s hand and go for a walk together or whatever. It can mean you’re preparing for a sexy date and you just take five minutes to put on a song that really makes you feel good in your body, dance to it in the bedroom or the bathroom by yourself. and then you’re done. Have that shower and lotion up and shave your legs, uh, like do anything that’s just gonna land you in your skin, in your body, and make you feel good. I am loving Janelle Monae’s The Age of Pleasure album right now.
It is working on, for me, on so many levels
and I put it on and I’m just like instantly in that mode.
Dan: Uh huh.
Sofia: So you’ll notice here I’m talking a lot about like sense of smell, sense of taste, sense of touch, sense of sound, but anything you can do to like with deliberate intention. It doesn’t have to be magical. Just with deliberate intention, cleanse the palate. Um, other things can be like putting your legs up the wall for 10 [00:20:00] minutes.
Um, if you have 10 minutes is a huge, nervous system, vagus nerve support tool,
or there’s lots of little Uh, you know, I have to dive deeper into the vagus nerve piece, but these are just tools I’ve learned from like nervous system folks. So there’s things like leaning your head to the side and looking up with your eyes at the ceiling
until you yawn.
That’s a vagus nerve reset. And the vagus nerve is kind of central to your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system.
Uh, so sometimes it’s just these little two or three minutes. Resets, whether they’re breaths, legs up the wall, these little vagus nerve stimulators. Uh, sometimes it’s something like putting a certain dress or, you know, like there’s that ritual of getting ready for a date, which is almost the ritual of like embodying. the, you know, sexy mama. I’m, I’m going, I’m dressing up. I’m putting on the costume of me being my partner’s wife and like [00:21:00] sexual plane mate
Dan: Yes. Uh
Sofia: out of my daily motherhood costume. And that seems superficial, but it also helps you to like embody and connect with a different part of yourself. Right?
Dan: hmm.
Sofia: So palate cleansing is huge, whether it’s a transition to just a date with your partner or to like actual sexy times. Creating connection is the other piece, because the connection piece is where the safety piece comes from. And so the best example I can give for that honestly was, I can’t remember if it was first or second baby, maybe second, but we started booking a sitter and we were, you know, very fortunate.
We can sometimes go to my mom’s place when she’s out of town, so we have like a little free hotel room.
And, I was not in the mood. I was having a really hard time. And so we just did what I call naked sexy fun time, which means there’s no pressure. The pressure has to come off, and that’s a big part of the nervous system support, especially for your lower libido person.
Dan: Mm-Hmm. .
Sofia: But we got [00:22:00] naked and we played a board game. Instead, and we may have done like a strip poker ish version of this board game, so we tried to get a little playful, we tried to get a little silly, we connected and had a fun time in a non sexual way so that my body could feel safe and like there wasn’t anything expected of it and there wasn’t any demand. And it took me a while and we were lucky that we had the evening, but after about an hour of that, like, I was at least ready to be open to. a makeout and the potential for more. Um,
Dan: But not right away. It took, it took that
Sofia: No. Yeah. And so I always say like, with something like naked sexy fun times, like you have to create a party your libido wants to come to.
Dan: Yes.
Sofia: And so part of this for couples is about like identifying What does each person’s libido need to show up to the party and some people might have more demands than others and that’s fine. We honor how our bodies [00:23:00] work and we honor where our nervous systems are at. Um, and we know that like, not everyone wants to like, walk into a sex play party like right off the bat. Some of us need to like enter the foyer and have a drink and warm up a little bit to what’s happening in the back room.
Um, and so knowing that I think is an important part, piece of the puzzle, right? Like my, my partner and I are at the point now where like, If he gives me a look and an invitation, and I’m like, yeah, I think I could be, he knows what playlist to put on that’s gonna be supportive for me.
He knows how to put the lighting in the room that’s gonna be the best supporter for me. And I know those things, and I can do them for myself, too. And we have this little, like, pre launch checklist, almost,
of, like, what are the things we can put in place to help essentially remove the breaks, right? Um, so, yeah, with, I [00:24:00] mean, we could go into a long explanation of the dual control model, which I’m sure you’ve talked about before on the
podcast, right? Um, But like those brakes, when we’re talking about nervous system, it’s so much about getting the brakes off so
that whatever little libido I’ve got can press the gas pedal and go.
Dan: I love this idea. Sophia of, of the like prelaunch checklist, every couple should like sit down and talk about it with their spouse. What are the things that we can do that really help? Take the pressure off the brakes. is it the music? Is it the lighting? Is it, do we need the laundry full of an out of the bedroom or whatever it is that’s easily starts to draw you away from being able to really settle down into your own skin, into your body?
What are those things? And then you can work on those things. And maybe, and I like the other story too, when you went to your in laws house, on that date night just giving yourself permission that sometimes it’s not going to be right away. Go some, I love that your husband like has the wisdom to like chill [00:25:00] at that and not freak out that, Oh no, we’re cutting into our sexy time or whatever.
Like, no, that you can actually. Kind of zoom out a bit and kind of see the big picture of like enjoying this time with you. And that might mean we’re at maybe a different pace and different level as far as arousal goes. But at least there’s a collaborative alliance between the two of you. Wanting to both get there and working together to kind of get there.
That’s really good. Mm
Sofia: Well, and I think, like, again, for the partners that kind of have the higher libido that kind of need to hold that space, um, you know, if you’re in a situation where it has been quite a while since you’ve had sex and you’re, you’re really caught in this negative feedback loop, right? Where even the initiation is a constant turndown or Um, your partner’s doing it to please you, which is not really a great motivation, so then the sex you are having is typically not fantastic.
Dan: hmm.
Sofia: It creates [00:26:00] this negative feedback loop where like every attempt at is viewed by my body as like an invasion, essentially, or every time we do do it, it’s kind of viewed that way. our, it’s experienced that way in our skin. And so our nervous system braces for that next time, which creates more of that dynamic, right?
And so we have to reverse that loop. And what that might mean is for the next who knows how long, but for the next few date nights or sexy date nights, our only goal is to have a positive naked. Slow pressure interaction and if we do that, and if she generally, but whoever the
lower libido person is left with a felt sense in their body of having their limits respected and having a good time, their body is going to go last time was good. Let’s, [00:27:00] I’m willing to go further next time and then we’ll reverse that loop and then it does get quicker and it does get shorter and it does, you know, I think the other objection I get, you know, I’m sure you get objections all the time to like scheduling sex is, um, a lot of this stuff can sound like effort and I, I really equate it to, I, um, I just went through a parenting coaching program.
Dan: hmm.
Sofia: Which, of course, I was extremely defensive about at the beginning. I was trying to sign my daughter up for some anxiety work. And they were like, Yeah, but we want you to do some parenting work first.
Just to see.
Dan: No, no, no. I don’t have the problem. It’s my daughter. Uh huh. Uh
Sofia: Yeah, and I’m like, I’m cool, but I also know all this stuff. Uh anyways. And I watched myself, especially in the later parts, where we were working on some more complex skills of, negotiating with her, uh, like a bit of a problem solver.
So like, when this happens, what could you do, kind of thing.
Dan: Mm hmm.
Sofia: And I was feeling overwhelmed at the amount of, like, mental labor [00:28:00] that was going into me. Thinking about the conversation I needed to have with my daughter, preparing for the conversation I needed to have with her, actually even making like visual cues for her, having the conversation, then implementing the thing.
I was like, this is so much work.
And part of me just wants to be like, it’s easier to just fight with her, right?
Dan: Yeah. Uh huh.
Sofia: And The more I do all of those things, the more they will become absolutely second nature, and they won’t be work at all. But they feel like work now because I’m thinking really hard about them.
And I would say the very same is true for a lot of the skills. I teach for sex, which is not how to give a better blow job or 10 sex positions to whatever.
It’s, I’m asking you, like you said, to like, take some non sexy time to sit down and go, what are my brakes and my gas pedals? And how can we make that list?
And then the next time we try, I’m going to say, go to the list. And [00:29:00] it’s going to be very mechanical and awkward. But we do it five times, and then I just have to look at you, and you know what the list is, and you just do it. You don’t have to pull the list out,
Right. So, we have to get over the hump of the intellectual part of planning it out, the first couple times of trying it awkwardly and failing, and like we have to expect to fail, we have to expect it to be awkward,
uh, we have to learn from it, observe, do some debriefing, and like then it can be just baked into how we naturally roll.
And I think people just want the easy, spontaneous, effortless from the get go.
And you’re like, that might’ve been true in the early part of your relationship,
and it might’ve been true before children, but now A, you have kids, B, you’re not in the early stages of a relationship anymore, and so you can’t get away with being that lazy about your sex life anymore, if you want it to be good.[00:30:00]
Dan: I love that. It’s like choose your hard, right? Do you want to choose the hard up front and then have more freedom and ease in your relationship afterwards? Cause you’ve put in the discipline. That’s the D word we hate, right? But it’s a little bit of discipline up front, but man, it pays off. Or do you choose the hard of, you know, keeping with the status quo, keeping things as they are at a lower level of functioning because it seems easy, but, but you pay for it with interest over time for the things that you’re missing out on.
And it’s not just missing out. On good sex. It robs the couple of the intimacy and the joy. And you end up with poverty in the bedroom, right?
Sofia: Totally. Well, and I mean, worst case scenario is like cheating or divorce. And like, when I think deeply sometimes about the work that I do, honestly, like how many relationships are sexless for no good reason other than people lack the skills because of our culture around sex,[00:31:00]
Dan: Right.
Sofia: and how many relationships are ending for no good reason other than.
Dan: Yes.
Sofia: and it’s a good reason to end a relationship for sure, because without the intimacy piece, which is really what both people are craving through the sex, right? then, of course, you don’t want to stay in that relationship. That makes sense. And, if that’s the only reason and it can, you know, it’s not the easiest thing in the world, but it’s not the hardest thing in the world to repair either. you know, I care so much about the children that are in our relationships and how many relationships end simply because we have so much taboo around this topic that people can’t talk about it and work on it, you know?
Dan: Great. Before we end, I’d love maybe two or three more tips on what people can do to really calm down their nervous system. There’s one exercise that my wife and I have done time to time and what I prescribed to some of my clients. It’s a hugging exercise and you do it fully [00:32:00] clothed at first. And the challenge is, can you hug for 10 minutes?
But for a lot of people, that’s actually. It sounds easy, but it’s actually hard to pull off because, you got to work at calming down your nervous system when your body is pressed against another person, but that’s the exact learning. It builds new neural pathways in your mind as you learn how to like really calm down in it.
And if you repeat that exercise, you know, night after night, or, you know, Every other night for a few weeks, I have found in my own life and those that I coach, it really helps them get to the point where, like what you said, their nervous system learns how to trust this. If they find there’s good, you just, you kind of click in that moment.
And, um, it’s a beautiful thing.
Sofia: totally.
Dan: Other practices that a couple could do maybe one or two more.
Sofia: Yeah. so one of my favorites is, one of the pieces in Tantric Union Breathing, which is, really about eye [00:33:00] gazing, so I think similar to your hugging.
And, you know, people laugh their butts off. It’s so uncomfortable, but like, set that timer for five minutes.
Dan: huh. Uh
Sofia: gaze. into each other’s eyes, you know, put one, your hand on your partner’s heart. Go through the giggles and just see how that feels. Um, and I think another piece which adds to the kind of safety piece is just sharing gratitudes. Three gratitudes that you have for your partner. Like that alone, eye gazing and sharing a gratitude for your partner can be game changing to just Get in the moment. and it can be a gratitude of like three things you find super sexy about their body. It could be something really sweet they did yesterday. It could be sometimes you have to reach and that’s fair. it could be, you know, you try to think back to like when you first got married or like to a time where your relationship was more positive and you think about, something that you appreciate there or something you appreciate in their parenting or who they are as a human [00:34:00] in general.
Um, and especially when we get really caught up in the kind of the resentment dynamics, um, trying to staying focused on some of those gratitude pieces is important to keeping our connection, uh, strong or at least maintaining it.
Dan: Mm hmm.
Sofia: Um, Yeah, I’m trying to think. I mean, the senses for me are really the big key piece of like just working with that sensory piece.
And, um, yeah, the another one, which I could probably couldn’t explain it in the podcast, but it’s, if people are familiar at all with Betty Martin’s wheel of consent work,
they can check out her website, but there’s something called the three minute game. I’ll be adding a little demo of it on my Instagram soon, but it’s essentially about practicing different forms of touch and being in different roles
as the person who’s touching and the person who’s receiving as well as practicing that communication piece. a big piece of this picture with your [00:35:00] nervous system is your sense of trust and safety with yourself.
Dan: Yes.
Sofia: There’s a lot of self abandonment.
Insects, where we don’t voice a limit or we don’t voice a desire. I think this happens to everyone and when your own body can’t rely on you
Dan: Uh huh.
Sofia: ask for the thing, then it’s shutting down as well.
And so finding a practice, even in your day of like pausing and asking yourself like, what 5 percent more pleasure? Right now in this moment
can be a way of reap and that and then giving yourself permission to do it can absolutely be a way of like rebuilding that self trust and like rewiring that nervous system piece
Dan: That is so good. For some people, they’re so used to their nervous system being agitated. They kind of have this baseline of, this is normal.
I think of it akin to people who are used to only getting four to six hours of sleep. They never get a [00:36:00] full night’s sleep. They become accustomed to that. They’re used to that. They don’t know what a full night’s sleep really feels like. And so they’re, they’re They think kind of being a little sleep deprived and tired is norm.
How does this happen? How, how do you recognize that in yourself? If this is the way you’ve been operating and how do you calm your nervous system there or how do you unlock, how do you know? Oh yeah, this is me. I need this because you’re kind of blind to it.
Sofia: I think a big one for me is almost like the more discomfort you have in doing any kind of mindfulness practice. So like if stopping to take five deep breaths. Like really present ones is extremely uncomfortable for you, or hugging your partner for five minutes. Like you get agitated and jittery and awkward and weird.
Like all of those are for sure signs that, there’s a disregulation there. I think. I mean, in all honesty, if most people’s parenting lives are like mine, which is [00:37:00] most of us are dual income because we have to be, lots of expectations around parenting, not a lot of village. Like you can pretty much count on the fact that as a parent in today’s society, especially if you have children like under five, and especially if you’ve got like neuro spicy kids, like that you’re dysregulated. And I think another, it, It takes two different forms, and my husband and I are perfect examples. So, uh, I go into, you have your middle, like, zone of regulation, right? And then you have hyperactive and hypoactive.
And so I am hyperactive,
and the more stressed out I get, the more hyperactive I get.
Uh so the more critical I get about things not being done perfectly, the more I add to my plate.
Um, and even things like, It’s hard for me to, like, sit on the couch and read a book. It’s hard for me to walk slowly,
even. and so, if you can say that about [00:38:00] yourself, then definitely, these are things to start working on. And titration is a big word in nervous system management as well, where you just, just start with three deep breaths. And get comfortable doing that, and then add more, you know? Um, but the other thing to be aware of is the hypoactive,
which is where my partner goes, and that’s more the depressive side. And so, the more stressed out my partner is, the more he gets zoned out in front of Star Trek. Um,
the less, yeah, the less functional essentially he is, right?
Like the more he’s just, he’s resting a lot, he’s sleeping in longer. so that’s another sign your nervous system is kind of overwhelmed as well. And your body just goes in a different direction with it. so either way, and yeah, I personally have a theory that we’re dealing with a lot more autoimmune and like neurodivergence and stuff like that these days just.
because of the like pressure cooker, 24 7 social media, like everything that we live with. And [00:39:00] honestly, probably one of the simplest things people can do is make better rules about their phones
Dan: Yeah. Put it away. Uh huh.
Sofia: I can go a long way to, regulating your nervous system to just not have like alerts going 24 7 from the minute you wake up to the minute you go to bed.
Cool.
Dan: Love it. All right, Sophia, let’s say we learn all the things you’re talking about today. We put these tools and practices into our life. We’re disciplined. We, uh, figure out what our breaks are and we, you know, make our to stop doing list. We figure out how to tools, the things that work for us to calm down our nervous system.
And we create a party that our libido wants to come to. What are your black belt sex tips or what’s the tip to take things from there to the next level?
Sofia: me, I think. And I mean, there’s no surprises. I’ve trained as a Tantra coach, but for me, the next step after that is really about adding some energy work to your practice [00:40:00] and deepening that connection to so you can get. To those juicier, more spiritual, just even deeper levels of like connection.
Cause you, you need that baseline to get to that place. And that’s where we add energy work, breath work, and tantra work to kind of the practice.
Dan: What’s energy work.
Sofia: that’s the fun place you can go. Uh, well, I mean, Tantra work is, what’s Tantra? So I’ve learned a Tibetan lineage of Tantra, and I think people get all funky about Tantra sometimes.
Tantra literally just means blending light and sound with form. And so, Tantra work is the way I got explained. So sutra would be like physical work that we do. So it’d be like the physical moves that you do on your partner. If you’re talking about like penis massage or vagina vulva massage, the actual like massage techniques or touch techniques are the sutras. And we do tantra when we add the physical work [00:41:00] with the energy work of Tantra. And that just means we’re visualizing a color and chanting a sound and visualizing a shape of a certain elemental energy or healing energy that we work with. And so Tantra’s powerful non sexually and sexually it kind of does two things.
One, it’s a powerful healing tool for trauma. So it’s a somatic healing tool where if I’ve essentially got a bunch of trauma in my vagina, my muscles are tense, I’m lacking sensation, or I’m experiencing pain and irritation, I’ve got to find where that trauma got locked into my muscles and massage it out, but also use energy work to help it come out of my energy system and my nervous system. That opens me up to more pleasurable sensation and connection and all that fun stuff. And then on the other side, it just helps us to go into like, way deeper levels of connection. I worked with a couple, a while ago [00:42:00] now, and they, they talk about like, They go to this place called the void when they have sex,
when they use tantric tools, like outside of space and time. Uh, and they can be there as long as they want. It’s like pretty wild. I’ve talked about how with, penis practices that my partner and I were working heavily on when I was in my certification and we’re slowly kind of rebuilding that into my life. But, um, when your partner’s working on semen retention, All I can say is it literally feels like a, like a lightsaber is inside of my vagina, like in a good way,
Dan: uh huh,
Sofia: not a cut you up way.
Dan: yeah, uh
Sofia: so that energy work piece just opens up the kind of sex people are expecting. Right. And
in my Tantra practice, we often talk. Yeah. Well, we talk about how people just jam genitals together and hope for this like mind body, like explosive thing. And you’re like, no, no, no. We got to do like mind, body, soul,
heart, mind, and genitals [00:43:00] here. so yeah, Tantra would definitely be, uh, where it’s at for, um, people once they’ve really solidified their nervous system work.
Dan: That’s great. Where can people go to find you?
Sofia: They can go to my website, which is thehappyvaginaproject. com, or they can find me on Instagram, at thehappyvproject. I’m always happy for people to ask questions in the DMs, and chat with me there.
Dan: Very good. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to this episode, please share it along with our apps and timidly us. And just between us with their married friends. I promise they will thank you for life. If you want a more meaningful sexual and intimate connection in your marriage, I invite you to check out my, get your marriage on program.
Over a hundred couples have said this program packs tremendous value and has helped their intimacy grow to the next level. Now go get your marriage on.
[00:44:00]
