Feeling stuck or stifled in your relationship with yourself or your partners? Janelle and Andrea normalize this VERY taboo topic, and discuss about how this new form of wellness is helping people orgasm, heal, shed their shame and claim their pleasure. There’s a nod to the Hakomi Method, and the book “The Body Keeps the Score”, by Bessel VanderKolk, M.D., Women’s Health Magazine and author Arielle Domb. You’ll hear:
--Why a stranger’s touch can build libido for your partner
--That it’s not just for men, yo
--How it helped Janelle release ancestral shame, guilt and fear
--Why one woman called this “30 hours of therapy”
--How it helped a Braveheart say “no” for the first time
--Why Janelle calls her erotic massage a Goddess Activation Session
TRANSCRIPT:
Janelle Orion 0:01
Andrea, hi friend, hi friend. And
Andrea Enright 0:03
to the brave hearts listening out there. Welcome to permission to be human. I'm Andrea
Janelle Orion 0:08
and I'm Janelle.
Andrea Enright 0:08
Get ready for some real time relationship. Woo
Janelle Orion 0:11
and wisdom from the front lines with occasional tantrums and tears about
Andrea Enright 0:15
how breaking rules, blurring boundaries and tossing tradition can be catalysts for finding your truth.
Janelle Orion 0:20
Let's debunk the fairy tales we were told as children and create a new map for life. Yes, Disney can go fuck itself if you're seeking permission to choose your own path. Freedom is the new F word. People and want to feel less alone along the way, we got you. Please
Andrea Enright 0:36
note, this is our side of the story. Our partners and metamours have their own individual experiences, and we do not speak for them.
Janelle Orion 0:50
Hi friend. Hey Andrea, welcome to permission to be human. Bravehearts. We're so glad you're here. Oh, today. What are we talking about today. I'm super excited. Me too.
Andrea Enright 1:03
It's about erotic massage. We are gonna tell you five, maybe 10, reasons why you should get an erotic massage, and
Janelle Orion 1:12
we're gonna talk about benefits, where to get one, and why they are all the rage.
Andrea Enright 1:16
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's dive into erotic massage. Janelle, what the hell is an erotic massage for people who don't know? So it
Janelle Orion 1:25
is a full body massage that includes the genitals. And if it's for women, then it can also include the breasts, right? Think about how many massages that we've gotten where they don't we're like, they don't touch the breasts, they don't touch the stomach, yeah, certainly don't touch the genitals. And so this is including the entire body and activating energy through the whole body. And it may or may not include an orgasm. And for women, it can. It often includes an internal massage of the yoni. And so can also be called a Yoni massage, or a tantric massage. Now she's just processing the different level of relaxation you might get different for different people, but
Andrea Enright 2:05
when you're having a full body massage versus a typical massage, like you are, like doing this intimacy dance with that person, because they are touching you. But of course, they're not going near your breasts, they're not going near your genitals. They're being very careful. And so there is just this kind of boundary held, obviously, in any good massage therapist world, right, that they're being careful about. But you can only relax so much when you know that there is a boundary that could be crossed that is not supposed to be crossed.
Janelle Orion 2:37
I don't know. I have the experience if I know, if I know what to expect, then I can relax into that, right? So I know, with a regular massage, right? They're always draping the towel and the sheet a certain way, right, right? So I'm like, Okay, that's it. But what I end up finding in a typical massage is like, Oh, I'd love for you to touch my breasts, or I'd love for you to massage my stomach, right, I see. And so the erotic massage is just saying, okay, all of it gets to be included if you want it to be included. Okay. Now, some people, when I say, like, oh, orgasm can be part of this, might go straight away to a happy ending massage. Yeah, totally.
Andrea Enright 3:14
I thought about this. I put it in the script originally, because I was, like, there was an HBO special. There was an HBO TV series that was all about the massage and the happy ending.
Janelle Orion 3:23
So I didn't, of course, watch that episode or that series. But in so, while there's some like, truth in that, right? That like, if you think, if you're equating an orgasm to a happy ending, right? But the difference with erotic massage in the context of how I'm gonna, we're gonna be talking about it today, is that the erotic massage is really in the realm of sacred sexuality, of spirituality, and that there's a very deep intention of moving energy in our bodies that's part of like a healing modality that isn't just about, oh, we're trying to feel good at its very superficial level. It is really activating something deeper in ourselves, yes, and
Andrea Enright 4:09
it definitely does not feel goal oriented, correct, right? Okay, so some happiness, but not necessarily a happy ending. Got it,
Janelle Orion 4:18
and it is also for men, too. And the difference for men is that if they were going to do any internal work, it would be internal through the anus. Okay?
Andrea Enright 4:28
And does this have anything to do with a holistic pelvic floor specialist or a womb Continuum Care Specialist? Because I know we did an episode on that recently, and this seems somewhat similar or somewhat close, help me understand the difference.
Janelle Orion 4:44
I'm gonna use what the holistic pelvic floor especially said to me, which is that there's a spectrum right of genital touch. There is a genital touch that comes from when you go to the OB GYN right and. And you have a speculum, and it's very clinical, and it's cold and sterile, and then that's on one end of the spectrum, negative association, I would say, or I'm not gonna say negative, because it has a purpose, right? Like it is a very health focused Are you sick? Is there something wrong with you, right? Yes,
Andrea Enright 5:19
but I don't look forward to it like it's fine, right? I know I have to do it, yeah, but I'm not thrilled about it, right, right?
Janelle Orion 5:25
And then on the other end of the spectrum would be these erotic massages, which are activating Eros and life force energy. They do welcome, I guess I said like orgasm to release, but they're in the realm of sacred sexuality, spirituality, and then the holistic pelvic care specialist is in the middle of that, right? She's gonna have way more training than I do on or he on the body anatomy. Then an erotic masseuse, most likely, but it's also not going to be necessarily as like shamanic, sexual or spiritual. So
Andrea Enright 6:09
beautifully said, there's a spectrum. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. That helps me understand it. So have you had an erotic massage yourself? Oh, yeah. Why don't you tell me all about it?
Janelle Orion 6:19
I've had many, many, many, and I would say, Well, I haven't actually had that many orgasms through erotic massages. I have become much more orgasmic as a result. I've
Andrea Enright 6:30
had probably more than 10 what does that mean? You become more orgasmic?
Janelle Orion 6:35
It means that what my experience was that I had so much stuck energy in my womb area, and I'm equating stuck energy to feelings of shame, of guilt, of fear around my pleasure. Now I wasn't someone who had pain during sex, and I was able to orgasm, but in getting these erotic massages, I was able to, like so much moved through me and didn't necessarily feel good. I'm gonna say that it's not like, oh, this was like, so relaxing, but it was like, it was a feeling of release. And over time, the more that I had, the more I was able to feel, feel in my Yoni, but also feel all around me. And so I've become much more my orgasms have become much more vibrant, and I also experience now a lot more energetic orgasms.
Andrea Enright 7:32
So what I've shedding of old stock, feelings, experiences, associations, cultural conditioning that you had around pleasure that then you were holding in your body. Yes,
Janelle Orion 7:45
and I would say not all of it was even mine, that, you know, my Catholic lineage, 2000 years on both sides, all the way back where you know, pleasure is shamed, denied, suppressed, that that was also stuck in my body now,
Andrea Enright 8:02
Janelle, you mentioned shame, guilt and fear, and I just want to point out that while an erotic massage, I believe can be beneficial for someone who's gone through sexual trauma, your shame, guilt and fear, is not about that. It's just from
Janelle Orion 8:16
from conditioning, yeah, but shame is the feeling of shame is there. And so I had shame when I gotten, you know, caught making out with a guy that I was dating in my bedroom. You know, by my mom. I got had shame when my neighbor caught me playing doctor. My neighbor's mom caught me playing doctor with my neighbor, and she like, you know, I was like, I never want to catch you doing this again. I'm going to tell your mom, right? Like, these things I was young and like, they really stayed in my system. And there's a book called The Body Keeps the Score, yeah, which talks about, I didn't know this, of course, until I started this journey of understanding that our body holds on to all these experiences of life that we have, and some of this experience of shame and fear and guilt can get stuck, yeah,
Andrea Enright 9:05
yeah. I mean, this is really the basis of hakomi, the therapy modality. And so now I'm thinking about, yeah, I could still think back to having sex with my boyfriend, and I still think of it as this amazing experience, but I had to sneak it, right? It was totally something I snuck. Didn't tell my parents about for many, many years, sneak out of the house. It was like something to be hid. And I guess there's something to that when you're a teenager that I'm even thinking now as a mom, what I am doing, essentially, or could be doing to my child, is punishing them for like, oh, no, you can't be making out. You can be having sex. Don't do this. Don't do that. There is a sort of negative connotation around those physical interactions.
Janelle Orion 9:55
I think there's just so much fear around it, and there's not an open acknowledgement. That whatever feelings are present are normal feelings. They're okay, those feelings, yeah. And so now, what's the healthy way to express those feelings, right?
Andrea Enright 10:12
And that's the Mic drop. Like, what's the healthy way to express those feelings?
Janelle Orion 10:16
And how can you feel safe expressing them in your body is the person you want to express them with, right? Do you feel safe with them? Are you feeling coerced by them? I mean, like, these are worse. There's so many skills in this area that we don't get taught at all. And I also just want to call out the hidden part, right? Like, self, pleasure, how many of us were like, oh, you can't talk do that. Not supposed to do that. Yeah, can't talk about it. Can't talk about it, can't be seen doing it, things like that. So pleasure is suppressed in so many ways in our culture. Yeah, okay, so I know that you offer erotic massage. Why don't you tell us all about that?
Andrea Enright 10:49
What does that look like? So
Janelle Orion 10:50
for me, the way that I do it is I actually also combine it with a ritual Cleopatra bath. So for women, there is a warm bath with milk and honey and Epsom salts and rose petals, and then I'm outside the tub, and I'm there to witness, to bathe, to receive whatever comes up. And that can be emotional. It could also just be talking. I'm holding, often this archetype, oftentimes a mother archetype, but a feminine archetype. And for many of my clients, this is the first time in maybe ever, but certainly in years, where they're having this much like loving, attention and presence poured into them, and they just get to receive that love from me, and then after that, then we transition to doing the Yoni massage. And the whole experience can take about two to three hours.
Andrea Enright 11:53
Yeah, sounds amazing, brave hearts. Don't you all want an erotic massage and a Cleopatra bath?
Janelle Orion 11:58
Yeah, I actually call it my sessions. I call goddess activation sessions. Goddess activation
Andrea Enright 12:03
sessions, nice in the goddess temple. So Janelle, what made you want to offer the erotic massage?
Janelle Orion 12:12
Basically, I had such a positive impact through my journey of getting in touch with myself that as I started doing becoming a practitioner, that I wanted to offer this to women, and I've become such a huge advocate. Really, it's like my life's mission to normalize the need for education and skills in the areas of pleasure and intimacy, and prioritizing erotic wellness as a way towards healing. So Janelle, what
Andrea Enright 12:41
is erotic wellness? How do you define it?
Janelle Orion 12:45
Erotic wellness is a personal journey where we are unlearning our conditioning that we've received, that pleasure and sex is bad or wrong, and instead recognizing that it is foundational for our well being and our health and our erotic energy, our life force energy, when it is flowing, we feel more alive, beautiful in my experience, when I learned to listen to my body and to release my cultural conditioning and The Catholic conditioning regarding what pleasure and shame was that I started to feel much more radiant, much more vibrant, and felt much more alive. And so I want that for others, prioritizing our erotic wellness, just like we go to a therapist now, right? Mental Health didn't always used to be on trend, right? I'm just saying, hey, erotic wellness, it's the same kind of like we need this in our everyday life in order to feel more whole and
Andrea Enright 13:46
more human beautiful.
Janelle Orion 13:50
Erotic wellness is a journey where we deepen and understand deeper layers of ours, and that journey can include breath, work, conscious touch, energetic exchange and power play, and once we start to experience these dynamics and understand ourselves better, then all areas of our lives can transform. Would
Andrea Enright 14:13
you suggest doing erotic massage with a partner? I
Janelle Orion 14:17
believe our erotic journey and our erotic wellness journey starts with ourselves, and that it's great if you want to learn education and skills with your partner, super important, but that I really believe that there's a huge benefit to hiring an outside person, a professional, to help You embody some of these skills and practices, because then you can become a better lover for yourself. And my experience has been when I became a better lover for myself, then I knew what my pleasure was, I knew what turned me on, and then I was able to become a better lover to my partners.
Andrea Enright 14:56
So what I'm hearing is that you're creating more. Intimacy with yourself, and once you do that, you can create more intimacy, or better intimacy, with a partner. Yes, that's big,
Janelle Orion 15:07
yes. And I also recognize this is edgy, this is taboo. This is what we do here, on permission to be human, and so ideally, you're able to have these open conversations with your partner. I recognize that even approaching this subject can already feel maybe edgy and threatening.
Andrea Enright 15:23
Yeah, okay, so let's get into our reasons. So why would someone get an erotic massage? How we can incoming encourage our brave hearts to think about, huh? Maybe I need an erotic massage. What
Janelle Orion 15:36
would lead you to an erotic massage? Could be that you feel stuck in relationship with your partner, if you feel stuck or unfulfilled, in relationship with yourself, if you would like to discover your pleasure pillars.
Andrea Enright 15:52
What are pleasure pillars? Again?
Janelle Orion 15:54
So pleasure pillars are the things that help you feel safe in your body, and in my case, their trust a relaxed nervous system and laughter. And another reason for aerotic Massage is that you have Unspoken desires. And a fifth reason is that you have pain insects. You have low libido. You have trouble
Andrea Enright 16:23
orgasming. It sounds like perimenopausal or menopausal women might be going through some of these symptoms, thinking they don't want to have sex, when really they need to reawaken their life force through a neurotic
Janelle Orion 16:37
massage. Yes, right? Yes. That's has been my experience is that I've heard many women say, Oh, I just don't want to have sex anymore, and view that I want to say as a life sentence, or just like, This is how it is now, going forward and like, it's over. It's over, right? Too late,
Andrea Enright 16:57
I'm done. I've hit menopause. I've hit the wall and like, Oh, it's so that's so sad,
Janelle Orion 17:03
right? And in my experience is that we know so little about menopause. We know so little about our bodies. We do not women are not encouraged to prioritize their pleasure, that by reframing our relationship with our pleasure and understanding of our bodies, then it actually can awaken our libidos that there are lots of reasons, and all of them justified as to why women don't want to have sex. And it could be that their partner is also not very good at sex, that like they've been with them a really long time, and it's nothing that's that's not that great. They haven't enjoyed the sex that they are having, yeah, so understandable not to want it anymore. Easier to say, Oh, I just don't want sex anymore. But my experience with my clients and with myself has been that actually when I've learned what it is that I desire, when I speak, my boundaries, when I feel safe, when I have trust, all of these things have actually have reawakened sexual desire in libido in women. So there are lots of reasons why women don't want to have sex, but I don't think, especially in our 50s, in menopause, that it is a biological thing that we are destined not to have sex again.
Andrea Enright 18:15
This is fucking amazing. Y'all. I mean, this is huge for so many people that I know and talk to who are done with sex, not interested in sex, feel like and they're not even depressed about it. They're just like, very matter of fact,
Janelle Orion 18:29
right? And for me, sex is this euphemism of thinking, Oh, it's like, oh, I just don't want, like, P and the V kind of thing. But what I was that
Andrea Enright 18:40
I is kind of a new one for me. Like, like, you said this, I think, recently, and I'm just like, P and the V, okay, yeah. Like, it totally makes like, it feels like an acronym A teenager would use. It was probably true, but yeah, right, I've never heard of it before two months ago. And
Janelle Orion 18:56
of course, we're also like, heteronormatizing this conversation here, of course, so that's our experience. But so two women who are having sex, who are both in menopause, could have this exact same feeling, right? So I want to acknowledge that, okay, what we're missing out when we think of sex as an act to be done, yeah? Then we're missing out that what we're trying to activate is our Eros and our life force energy, put that on the fly, act versus activate, and that when our life force energy is activated, we feel more alive. And that's what I want for women, is I want them to feel more alive.
Andrea Enright 19:38
So good, so good. All right, so I guess I guess in mainstream Magazine did an article on erotic massage recently, which was huge, huge, huge shout out, right? Shout out to women's women's health,
Janelle Orion 19:53
right? But despite the fact that it's not accredited yet, right? Yeah, this is what was so impressed. About this article that Ariel dome wrote about was she wrote it from the perspective of why more and more women are paying for erotic massages. When I read this article, I was so excited to share it with you, and so I know you read it too. And so the article mentions like they she interviews a couple different clients, as some practitioners, and one of them is a couple where the husband actually encouraged the wife, who no longer, who had a low libido, no longer wanted to have sex, yeah, encouraged her to go see a practitioner, saying something along the lines of, I'm fine if you have orgasms with someone else, just don't, you know, fall in love with them. Yeah. And she went to this practitioner, and she did end up having this incredible orgasm that activated her libido, that when she got back to her husband, that really reawakened a robust sex life between them.
Andrea Enright 20:52
Amazing. Yeah, amazing.
Janelle Orion 20:54
What did you find about the article?
Andrea Enright 20:57
I just found a couple quotes that were just kind of mind blowing in that she mentioned that women find after going to these erotic massages, that paying for sensual services is empowering and it's enabling them to fight back against the misogyny, misogynistic norms that make them feel unsafe, unheard, unseen. This really resonates with me, because I feel like I've read so many articles where they mention, oh, online dating is not what it used to be. You know, dating apps are terrible. People are texting back and forth. You know, it's all this like, sort of exchange transactional, rather than actual relationship based. And women are just like, ugh. I don't want to be treated like a woman in a in a in a porn video, right? I don't want to sort of just have this experience again and again. They only know women's experiences. I'm not, you know, I'm not saying all men are doing this, either.
Janelle Orion 21:53
And it's also like not even your experience, right? I
Andrea Enright 21:57
have not experienced that with the dating apps, but I've heard plenty about it. And women also in this article talked about being turned on mentally, physically and sexually and that. And I noticed there it's not emotionally right, like they're not emotionally attached during this, this erotic massage, yeah.
Janelle Orion 22:16
I mean, I think that's the design. Isn't that it's not, it's not supposed to be. But I will say this. It is what I really want to call out on that is that this experience right? You could someone might be like, a brave heart might be questioning, like, Okay, you're going for, what a three hour session, or one hour session, and you're having this intimate experience, how can it not be transactional? How can it be more than that? Yeah, and my experience, which is just really profound is that with the right container, with the right practitioner, like this deep, vulnerable intimacy can happen between strangers that is so nourishing, that is so healing, and that there are skills to be able to tap into this side of us. And as the quote said emotional, as the quote said, physically, spiritually, mentally, that we're not getting in other parts of our life, not even in our partnership, sometimes simply because we have so many other things that we're focused on. So to have a couple of hours where we're really devoted to ourselves, with being held in trust with a stranger can actually be really transformative.
Andrea Enright 23:24
One of the other women in the article said, after having the erotic massage, she came out with kind of this empowering statement where she said, Wow, no one is entering me with their penis until I've had my first orgasm. I
Janelle Orion 23:41
remember. And
Andrea Enright 23:43
and this is just an empowering position, not to say that there's anything wrong with your partner or what you've been doing, just that. I think women think, Oh, I can't, you know, it's not worth orgasming. I can't orgasm. I've never orgasmed before. Sex before, so it's never going to happen, and it's just sort of the ceiling. And now they're going to these erotic massages and thinking, Oh, this is totally possible. We're just we just need a new approach,
Janelle Orion 24:10
a new approach. Are the conditioning right? How often are we conditioned to a make sure that the our partners orgasming first, right? That the intention isn't on us that it's taking us too long. I mean, I suffered from, like, goal oriented orgasms and hours taking too long for so long. So whether it's, you know, whether this woman said an hour for someone else, it doesn't have to be that, but it's knowing what brings you to pleasure and whether it's an orgasm. But like, where is your pleasure? What does it need? And then being able to speak
Andrea Enright 24:41
it, yes, it's claiming it, claiming it, knowing it, and claiming it, yeah, and
Janelle Orion 24:44
communicating it, and saying to my partner, this is what I want. And then my experience, again, personally, and then also with clients, is that when we are standing firmly in our pleasure, that actually is in so. Service to the other person, the other person, if they are, it's a healthy loving relationship. Wants us in our pleasure. It's up to us to claim it. Yes, it's not selfish to claim your pleasure. No, in fact, I would actually argue it's selfless, yes, because then we are able to be have greater capacity to show up in love and in patience and in presence, with our children, with our colleagues, yeah, with our partners,
Andrea Enright 25:27
yes. Created
Janelle Orion 25:30
a new industry here people. That's happening.
Andrea Enright 25:33
Oh, my God, so big.
Janelle Orion 25:36
Okay, and so
Andrea Enright 25:38
we have a surprise for you, drum roll, right,
Janelle Orion 25:42
which is in anticipation of this episode, but also because we are close, close friends, that Andrea just had an experience. We just did the goddess activation session.
Andrea Enright 25:53
Yes, I just had a goddess activation session, like two days ago.
Janelle Orion 25:58
Look at her now. Is she glowing? Do you see it? Do
Andrea Enright 26:01
you see me glowing? Yes. So, yeah. So
Janelle Orion 26:05
I'm excited. Andrea, okay, how would you describe your experience with Ray? Well,
Andrea Enright 26:10
I know Janelle, well, obviously, but I did come in the house and she floated down the stairs in this white dress I had never seen before. I said I was in my ritual ceremonial whites, right? Absolutely. I'm sure you always wear that, but I had never seen it before, and she said, your bath is ready. And I thought I already felt held in the feminine and by you, this is a really big treat for me. I don't have a bathtub, so I never take baths. And what Janelle didn't describe earlier is that there's rose petals all in the tub. There's coconut milk, regular, right? Regular milk, yeah, honey and Epsom salts. And honey and Epsom salts
Janelle Orion 26:49
candles are lit
Andrea Enright 26:52
totally. So I closed my eyes and got in the tub, and, you know, I felt held by the hot water and she did a series of sounds and washing on my body where and it took me a while then to feel completely held, received, totally focused on myself, out of my head and into my body, witnessed, really just completely surrendering. It was, it felt amazing, but I didn't anticipate that. You know, I was just like, Okay, we're gonna take a bath. And then she connected me even more to my body by doing some sacro cranial work in the back of my head, by touching, by washing, they making sounds. And that's when I started breathing, and the tears started to come, and my emotional release came. And then I voiced what was coming up. And I was thrashing a bit, and, you know, moving through my chakras. And it really was, it was a beautiful spiritual experience that I did not expect to have in the bathtub.
Janelle Orion 28:08
Yay, yay. And it's such an honor. I'm just gonna throw that in like, not only, obviously, we know working with Andrea, but with any of my clients, it's such an honor for me to witness a woman's experience of feeling witnessed and being able to release the weight of whatever it is that she's been carrying. And again, there's no outcome on any of these experiences. And your experience was different than all my other
Andrea Enright 28:34
clients experience. Yeah, I think the goddess activation for me was about being witnessed and held and received, not for a second in a hug, not quickly in conversation with a friend, but, you know, for five minutes and then, oh no, it's keeping going. Oh, it's still here. Oh, I'm still being received. I'm still being witnessed. And then slowly, my entire body relaxes, and then it relaxes some more, and then it relaxes some more. It was beautiful. And that was just the first part of it. I
Janelle Orion 29:14
started doing these baths because this, to me, feels like what priestesses did in the temples back in Egypt, right? And I've read books, of course, on this as well, but that we held each other, right? These are, this is like a ritual cleansing of whatever is going through a woman's day in her life, like the pain that we hold, the experiences that we hold, that we are get to be held in sisterhood, specifically to help release those Yeah,
Andrea Enright 29:44
and I felt that that's why it's called the Cleopatra bath. So we moved on to the massage part. I got out, I was dried off, very lovingly taken care of, and then I. She started the music, and she gave me using oil, she gave me a massage across my entire body. Then there was a discussion of consent and boundaries, and then a permission to go into the Yoni area. And then she performed a gentle massage on the external part of the vulva, the labia, the clitoris, and then followed by a 360 degree massage of the inside,
Janelle Orion 30:27
yes, and just calling out that there was consent, multiple opportunities for consent along the way, yes, right? And for sure, constantly checking into making sure that are you feeling, saving your body, yeah, to go forward
Janelle Orion 30:39
and this experience for me, brave hearts, was not sexual. It was a deep relaxation into a different state of consciousness, a very poignant stillness. I felt like I was in a different plane and just either deep within myself, protected, nourished, witnessed, held. It really wasn't something I'd never experienced before. I think ultimately, it's the worship. I don't know if that's too strong of a word.
Janelle Orion 31:14
No, it's the correct word. There's a worship. There's a devotion to the whole, to the wholeness of you. In our culture, we have it said anything to do with the genitals means sex or sexual Yeah. And what erotic wellness is really speaking to is that no we are actually cannot be whole humans if we do not include this part of us. And so there are multiple ways to be able to touch our genitals. Some are sexual, and some are not. And the experience that you had was me just feeling that, oh, here is this beautiful, open, what vulnerable expression of a woman, of a goddess in front of me, and honoring your journey, honoring your path, and all of you, including your Yoni, is part of who you are. Mm, hmm.
Andrea Enright 32:11
There's a wholeness to it, really. And I think ultimately, this deep attention of one person's hands focus energy in that area without the distraction of, oh, I can't find the right spot. Oh, am I doing it at the right pace? Like, how does this feel? Does this hurt without those interruptions or goal oriented actions,
Janelle Orion 32:43
right? You're not worried, and you're also not worried about my experience,
Andrea Enright 32:46
right, which is huge. Of course, I'm not like, oh, character. She's impatient. I feel like I'm fortunate to have had at least a couple of lovers, not until my late 40s, early 40s, that were interested also in worshiping and kind of exploring my body from a non goal oriented perspective. But I think when that happened for me originally, I was like, Oh, this is new. This is so different. It's completely foreign experience, really, from how it had been in the past. And this was again, though, something altogether different, because it was someone who I trusted, also someone of the same gender, who was someone who I knew was completely focused on me.
Janelle Orion 33:40
Wow, beautiful, yeah. And you call something out, right? There's people, there's practitioners of both genders doing this, right? So whether you see, you seek out an erotic masseuse who is the same gender or a different gender, right? It can be both, my experience, especially for women, it might be counterintuitive, because you, because we're associated to sex, thinking sex like, Oh, I'm not attracted to a woman that you wouldn't see a woman, yeah, where my experience is that you can feel safer with a woman in your body, not true for everyone, that that's what I'm offering. And so you're getting to reprogram something like because it's like, almost less complicated,
Andrea Enright 34:20
yeah, for sure. And I also felt, upon further reflection, after I got home and then slept and had went about my life the next day was that I'm constantly trying to tap into my body and make sure that it that it's speaking as loudly as my mind is, and I don't succeed, probably, I mean, much of the time, right? Because my head's in charge, my head's in charge, my head's in charge, and I just tend to stay there. And so it's really important I know that I keep tapping into my body, and I do that by going to yoga or meditating or, you know, just feeling i. I think this was a great form of maintenance to tap back into my body and say, Oh yeah, my Body Keeps the Score. Oh yeah, I should be listening to what my body's saying. Oh, I am in this body for the rest of my life, so let's make sure that I'm present inside it. So. Janelle, what are a few things that other women have said after the erotic massage?
Janelle Orion 35:26
Yeah, I'm so good. Because every what's so fascinating is that, for all of my clients, everyone has a different experience, right? Like, what it is that I'm doing is this isn't a prescribed five minutes of here, five minutes on your head, five minutes on your arms, right? Like, I'm doing a bathing that looks a certain way. Yeah, I'm meeting each woman where they're at one woman expressed that it was like going to 30 therapy sessions all in one that she just got to speak right? Like so much came out of her mouth. She just talks talk to me the whole time that she was in the in the bath, and I was just reflecting back to her what I was hearing, what I was hearing, what I was hearing, and she was like, Oh, I'm like, you said this is your pleasure, but this is what's going against your pleasure. So it was that one was a very verbal experience. Yeah, another woman who was in her 60s, who had just in the past couple of years, discovered her Eros and connecting to her sexual energy, and found it to be with her husband, and found it to be so exquisitely beautiful that the desire in her was to share it with another woman. But so she only understood sharing it as sexual, and then in her journey, realized that that's not what she wanted. And so when she heard about my goddess activation session, and she had one, it was being she wanted to share this beauty, this feeling of aliveness that her having, her like Eros, run with another woman through this intimate connection. And then, when I was giving her the massage, our energies were like in flow together. And so what she how she described it, was that the goddess in me was activating the goddess in her, and the goddess in her was activating the goddess in me, and we were in this beautiful circuit. Wow, together, wow. I had another woman say it was this most beautiful experience of her life, like the trance state that she went into was one of pure bliss. And then I had another woman who, during the bath portion, shared the sexual assaults that she had experienced when she was in college and had never spoken those out loud, other than to a therapist, and was still holding so much shame. And so the bath really allowed a release of some of that. And then during the Yoni massage, as we've mentioned, right? It's so much about, you know, are you yes to this or, you know? And when we got to her, Yoni, I could sense in her that she had starting to freeze. And I said, you know, you can say no. And her eyes got wide, and I said, Would you like me to enter you? And she said no. And I said, Great. And she started crying because she realized that was the first time in her life she had actually ever said no to anyone touching her, and she had had a lot of non consensual touch. Wow. So the experience can happen in any part of that journey, right in any one of those three hours, some people are more affected by the bath. Some people are more affected by the massage. Some people are just affected by this three hours of spaciousness, ideally with their phone off that they're pouring into themselves. Yeah, right. So I never know where the medicine is going to be. But then I then I had another woman just go into a very trance like state where she realized that she was when she gets to be so relaxed and so trusting that she's in this deep state of surrender and stillness that she hadn't experienced that before. So
Andrea Enright 39:16
after an erotic massage, women have said it felt like 30 therapy sessions in one one of them shifted their relationship with the feminine. Another one said it was the most beautiful experience they'd ever had. Another felt like it was the first time she had ever said no to anyone's touch. And yet, another woman felt in complete surrender as she was being bathed and touched something she'd never felt before. This is huge. I mean, this erotic massage really makes a difference in the way we feel in our bodies. So Janelle. So Braveheart wants an erotic massage. Where do they get one like besides coming to you if they're not in Denver, right?
Janelle Orion 40:04
So fortunately, there are a couple of sites that I would recommend. Before I go into that, I just want to call out what this article I think did such a great job doing. We started out talking and joking about happy endings, right? Paying for erotic touch has often been in the realm of men, and it has also been judged, right a man is bad for doing this, or, you know, like he's going outside of his marriage, or there's so much negative connotation. So we're looking this article, I felt did such a great job of kind of breaking open, not acknowledge, not discussing that, but instead saying, what are the benefits here and women specifically? What are the benefits for you, if you choose to pay for central touch, for erotic touch, and that just normalizing it and seeing that actually, if all of us normalized it and then sought it out, that it can be it can be helpful for having more fulfilling relationships with ourselves and then with others.
Andrea Enright 41:13
Wow. Okay, so if this is a form of wellness, should I be having an erotic massage on a continuous basis? Is this something I should maintenance? It's
Janelle Orion 41:23
definitely possible. The article speaks to like, some women in the article had one experience, and it changed a lot for them right away, right? It took me many, many experiences before, not before I had it. Had an experience, but like, it was like, Oh, I was in a journey, right? I was like, Okay, I'm in an experience of trying to unlock something. And it didn't happen overnight. For me, it didn't happen in one session. So again, every woman is going to be different in this realm. And I would say, yes, just like we go to a talk therapist for maintenance, yeah, yeah. And we've spoken to about about this regarding holistic pelvic care, right? This is a maintenance thing, but I also acknowledge that we are dabbling in these areas of us, even talking about this, we are broaching subjects that are laced with shame, that are hidden, that people don't talk about. And so even being able to say out loud, I want to go to see someone like this is already having to break through to a deeper layer of ourselves. Yeah. And so then if you acknowledge that you want to see someone, then who do you see? There is no accredited practitioners. And so the really going through trusted resources. I know lots of facilitators are also welcome to reach me out. I know them around the country, but you can also there's a couple of sites. One is called sacred arrows.com, and we'll put it in the show notes. Another one is called sensually.com that's actually mentioned in the article, and I'm actually on both of those sites, and I'm not personally like advocating for any individuals on these sites, but these are people who are skilled, trained, devoted to sacred sexuality, to conscious touch, And who view this work as a healing modality.
Andrea Enright 43:23
Lovely. Okay, thank you for that summary.
Janelle Orion 43:26
Thanks for asking and thanks for doing the experience with me. Yeah, thank
you and brave hearts. You
are you. This is a window into a deep, deep passion of mine, for men, for women, that we can be more in touch with our bodies, that we can heal our like these feelings of shame and guilt around our sex, around our pleasure, and acknowledge that our eroticism and our erotic wellness and prioritizing that will make us feel more alive. And I am an example of that.
It's true. It's true, beautiful. Thank you for listening. Bravehearts, you can always visit us online and permission to be human. Dot live or join us for our brave heart conversation. We love you. Bye, bye.
Do you need permission to be human? You got it? Listen, subscribe and review on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, learn more about us at permission to be human. Dot live you.