Ep 80: Part 7/12, Become Your Own Lover: How to Talk about Sex Series

Bravehearts! These are the instructions you’ve been waiting for. Articulate, calm and compassionate, intimacy guide Briana Cribeyer builds a bridge between your pleasure and the REST OF YOU, and lays it all down: You cannot communicate gracefully with a partner until you know what’s within. You’ll hear:

—A reframe and cliff notes of the RBDSM conversation

—How to Emotionally Release without exhausting your system

—Why expansion requires contraction (hint: it’s uncomfortable)

—How self-pleasure is just a start---can you become your own lover?

—Why it’s worth asking: do I need to outsource my pleasure?

—The value of speaking your desires out loud

Briana Cribeyer is a transformational facilitator, and relationship and intimacy guide, and has led trainings in 50 cities across the world with performers, artists, authors and CEOs. Beginning her career in social services and education, leading to non-profit management, her most common thread--and I love this part-- is a desire to serve. She sees all of her past career as energy work, supporting individuals and groups to find their own innate power to heal. Briana believes that deep radical love, coupled with ownership and self-responsibility, will shift the trajectory of humans on the planet. She seeks out farm-to-table meals in every city, likes a nice rock-climbing session and probably has too many plants and journals to count!

Learn more about Briana here! www.brianacribeyer.com

IG = @she_boldly_goes_

TRANSCRIPT:

Janelle Orion 00:01

Struggling to discuss sex and intimacy with your partner, not feeling met, seen or heard in your relationships. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea. We're two midlife Mavericks sharing our own experiences, messy AF and no regrets with marriage, divorce, polyamory and pleasure. We've learned that when you're brave enough to figure out what you want and ask for it, with partners, friends, family and most importantly, yourself, you'll feel more alive and free question everything, especially your mother's advice. There's no rom com formula for this. But don't panic. Being alone matters, honey, I can't miss you if you don't leave, what if your breakup could be your breakthrough? Our podcast is for brave hearts. Anyone who seeks or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms in the spirit of finding their truth. If you're seeking permission to be brave in your relationships and want to feel left alone along the way we got you. Wow, brave hearts, we love having guests. As it turns out, we do love having

Andrea Enright 01:14

guests. Brianna was so articulate and so compassionate and spoke so deeply to my own struggle with getting to know myself, getting to know my own boundaries, understanding my shadow and meeting those uncomfortable places.

Janelle Orion 01:39

She spoke about the power of the pause. She spoke about our tendency to outsource our pleasure. And just gave a lot of embodied wisdom after because she's she's taught probably more workshops than anyone I know in this realm of relationships, repair sexuality and how to navigate those. And she was just, it was so I know what I really loved, Andrea when she gave us the the shortcut on how to have this, like vulnerability conversation with with our lover that we are partner that we have had forever. Yeah, it

Andrea Enright 02:16

was she gave a reframe of the rbdsm conversation, which deepened my understanding of it in huge ways, and she also spoke about the bridge between knowing yourself and then having this conversation about sex and intimacy with your partner. Yeah.

Janelle Orion 02:35

Okay, Braveheart, stay tuned.

Andrea Enright 02:39

Welcome to permission to be human. Hi, brave hearts. I'm Andrea and

Janelle Orion 02:44

I'm Janelle, and we are so excited to have you listening today. This is our next installment in our 12 part series on how to talk to our partners about sex and intimacy. Andrea and I have interviewed each other, and we've also interviewed experts as well as brave hearts, just regular people. And today, we have an expert that we're so excited to have teach us about what she knows. Brianna crib Byer is a transformational facilitator in relationship and intimacy guide, and has led trainings in 50 cities across the world, with performers, artists, authors and CEOs, beginning her career in social services and education, leading to nonprofit management. Her most common thread and love for this work is a desire to serve. She sees all of her past career as energy work, supporting individuals and groups to find their own innate power to heal. Brianna believes that deep, radical love, coupled with ownership and self responsibility, will shift the trajectory of humans on the planet. She seeks out farm to table meals in every city. Likes a nice rock climbing session and has probably has had too many plants and journals to count.

Andrea Enright 04:03

Welcome Brianna. Thanks so much for being here.

Brianna 04:05

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really delighted to be with both of you. So

Andrea Enright 04:10

I love the arc of your career, right? So there's so much that is woven in there, and your desire to serve being the thread that brings it all together. So can you just tell me a little bit about your desire to serve and how that relates to helping couples communicate with more skill and grace? When

Brianna 04:31

I was first working in elementary schools, I was like, fresh out of high school, and I took on a full time position through AmeriCorps, to be in the school system and to work with kids who, for one reason or another, just were not able to bring their focus in, to basically, to adjust to the school system the way that it is, where kids are told to sit still and and all learn the same way. And one. Of the places that I started to delve into the relationship was between the parents and the teachers and the child, and really listening deeply to what each person's desire was and what was and wasn't working for them. And I realized from that part on that I'd been really, really obsessed with relationship management since probably a very young age. You know, what comes out of a trauma response sometimes in our in my family of Orion ends up being a superpower later in life, and I ended up being a deep observer and listener just in my own childhood, watching many, many relationships just move through the household. And although I didn't have the skills certainly to deal with this as a young one, it's something that as I became an adult and continued to be mentored by just the most patient supervisors, and later on, people that I was hiring to bring me up and through to deepen in this, I realized how much like, my passion continuously returned to relationship management, I would actually upgrade that language a little bit from, like, relationship transformation,

Andrea Enright 06:10

beautiful. So, really, relationship transformation and so as it relates, then, I mean, I hear that it's just all about relating with another person, right? That's sort of your obsession, and that's what you keep coming back to. And I'm just curious if you mentioned starting with self in some of your bio, and if bravehearts want to start with the self, how do they do that in a world that keeps telling us it's about the other and it's about focusing on the person you're talking to, or your child or your partner or your parent. How do we come back to self?

Brianna 06:50

One thing that I recognize is often the scariest for my clients and my students is getting honest with ourselves, and I think that that goes through many, many layers, because what we usually know is our truth in this moment, and that truth changes. Sometimes I look at this through the polarity lens of like masculine integrity is, I am my word forever and ever and ever, amen and feminine integrity from this more receptive place is my truth in this moment is, and now my truth in this moment is and so I really encourage people to look at that both and what are like? What are my personal values? Which a shortcut to figuring out our values is, what do we complain about a lot in the world?

Andrea Enright 07:33

Oh, I love that shortcut. So our values are, what are what we complain about?

Brianna 07:39

That's right, that's right, right. If I find myself complaining a lot that people aren't on time for meetings, then it means that I really value somebody sticking to something, and that like time management is important, and recognizing that time is a limited resource for many of us, and we hold it very, very sacredly and to let people know what these values are, you know, so it's important for people close to us to know here's what I value, here's who I am. And some of that gets lost, I think, early on in relational dynamics. And if we just switch this to being in intimate relationships, it gets lost early on from wanting to show up as our best self. And one of the shadows of showing up as our best self is that we're not always honest about who we actually are and what our needs are, being able to speak to those needs. So that's why I say this is like layer after layer. It goes round and round and round. I think a lot of people recognize this when they're in a relationship transition, like, oh, I have new values. These things are important to me, but that takes a certain level of responsibility and awareness, really, awareness, you know, sometimes people say it's a maturing process, but I think it's an awareness process. I don't want to think of ourselves as being immature, certainly, just because we were unaware that something was a truth for us that's now emerged. But how can I have the courage in and bravery, you know, to use this like this, being a brave heart, bringing my heart forward, to be courageous enough to have these conversations before the chemicals kick in of the relationship, which is often where people lose themselves. Certainly, it's where I've lost myself time and time again.

Andrea Enright 09:19

Yeah, that's beautiful. I love this difference between awareness and maturity, too. It's something that, actually, I've spoken with my teenager about. I've called her mature, and she actually has come back to me and said, you know, Mom, I'm not super mature. She's like, I'm just really aware. I just have a really high awareness. And she's, like, so insightful, like, She's totally right, just having this, like, elevated awareness. I have a, I'm curious. I have another question. Janelle, do you have a Do you have something you want to

Janelle Orion 09:50

ask? Yeah. My question was, is there a way to cultivate that awareness?

Andrea Enright 09:54

I would echo the same thing, like, just, what is the real How does someone cultivate that awareness? Yes, aside from, okay, what do I complain about? But how do they do it when they're in relationship? And how do they do it first?

Brianna 10:06

This is a great question, because I don't think that there's a simple answer to it. I mean, one of the things that I find has been really important, and particularly through a trauma informed lens. And so much of what I do in service is actually working with leaders, and what I see from most leaders is that they overextend themselves and they don't give enough time and space for reflection. And reflection doesn't always come naturally to many of us. You know, some people do that through journaling. Some people do it through working with coaches. Some people do it through meditation or large group transformational processes, but taking the time to not go from peak experience to peak experience, to not go from tick tock reel to tick tock reel, like there's no time for the reflection about what is where am I taking in information, and then where am I putting out information? And like there's a longer pause there that's available. I teach about this in intimacy a lot, when people are having a separation and intimacy, often what's lacking is the time and space for reflection and to be in the pause, to actually sit down in the slowness, to really evaluate. But who am I now?

Andrea Enright 11:18

So on that same note, I think I heard you reference this the phrase shadow stalking. Can you tell me a little bit more about

Brianna 11:27

that? Shadow stalking comes from a number of different places, but actually, literally looking at this first through the Carl young definitions of shadows, the parts of ourselves that are repressed, the parts that we maybe don't like as much but we're not really willing to look at and be with those parts. We're just more in criticism of those parts, or think that they to put it in black and white terms. This is what works about me. This is what doesn't work about me, and recognizing that the fullness and the totality of who we are is part of the process, and it's really about integrating the shadows, not killing them off. But how can I actually welcome them in there's a roomy poem called the guest house that I really, really love, which is that every emotion, every part of myself, everything that comes up, can I welcome it as a guest in my home and host it? Can I actually like nurture this, feed it, welcome it, and sometimes guests can overstay their welcome. So if my rage and my harshness has been coming up often, and I'm getting feedback about that, I might not want to let that in forever, but maybe I want to sit with it for a couple of days and have some tea and really ask some questions of that. So this is happening. You know, my, a lot of my background is in shamanic processes, and I can just really feel like some of this is happening in the subtle ways. And so my personal reflection process is to welcome things in and be with them for a period of time. I take them for a walk on the woods. I take downtime without meetings. Sometimes I do journaling, although less and less, but it's really about, how can I meet it and have a conversation and often out loud, not just ruminating in my head, but out loud, speaking to by myself. Sometimes voice recorded. How can I really be with these parts of myself and say, Okay? Anger, okay, harshness, I saw that you came up when I was communicating with my partner, speaking with a group that I'm leading. I didn't like it. I was uncomfortable with this. Can you tell me a little bit about why you're here? Yeah, so that's, that's one piece of it, and the stalking part of this is really getting into the curiosity. That's the most simple version, is to say, getting into the curiosity of this and trying to be really, really gentle with ourselves in that it's really about the gentleness. It doesn't always need to be a loud, big, cathartic experience. Sometimes it's just bringing it in with some more breaths and bringing in a down regulation process, and sometimes it means that I need to scream into my pillow and have a full on temper tantrum with myself. Play some music in the background to release the energy that's there so that I can listen more deeply, like when I've started to really track those subtle moments of noticing when there's too much charge in my body, like maybe if I'm under resourced, I've just gotten a whole hour of feedback from my teams, and I'm too charged to really be able to look at it objectively. The biggest thing that comes up for me is defensiveness, and certainly, if I'm with my partner, and he is quick to reflect to me, you're being really defensive, right now, which one I'm defensive? I cannot hear

Andrea Enright 14:49

more defensiveness, I would say,

Brianna 14:53

right? But then I can actually name like, Okay, I'm under resourced, and of course, I'm going to work with. Yes, but you're right. You're right. And you know, it's, it's working six times out of 10 that I'm able to say you're right. I need some time and space. I'm far from doing this perfectly, but I'm really committed to the practice of it. Yeah, you

Janelle Orion 15:13

just said so much there, right? That was so good. So I'd love to, let's say, take a moment to, like, to dissect it for the brave hearts. Listening is like one of the concrete suggestions Brianna that you just shared was like, as far as like, creating awareness. So this is before you're even talking to your partner, or maybe as a result of talking to your partner, you felt whether a part come up, whether it was anger or frustration or harshness, or something that I'm guessing there's like, Okay, I'm gonna pause instead of continuing the conversation, you take yourself out of it, and then have a conversation with yourself, out loud, is what I'm hearing, is part of the medicine of letting yourself, hear yourself speak to the part that you're like, tell me what's tell me with curiosity. Tell me what's going on and why are you here? So

Andrea Enright 16:01

I think one of the main things I learned at ista, which was super AHA to me, was the practice of emotional release tools, which I think you just alluded to, and that was really good news to me, because I thought, oh, there's nothing wrong with me. I just have a lot of energy that needs to be dispelled, needs to be released. Needs to be let out. It needs to be processed. And I think this is, this is a perfect segue, kind of, into those conversations, those difficult conversations with a partner, about difficult topics. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, when the rubber meets the road, when we're actually in those conversations, how do we weave that emotional release tool or that awareness when we're in the moment with our partner? I

Brianna 16:49

like that you said when the rubber meets the road, because one of my colleagues refers to this as feeling the rumble strips on the side of the road like we're driving down the highway, and everything's smooth and easy, and suddenly we drift off course, and then we go, and that's our nervous system essentially saying something's off here. And the something is off just means that we're not having the same ease. And the word for any of us that have really enjoyed road trips. There's something about that big, wide, open road that just feels expansive and like there's freedom there. So when we hit the rumble strips, it's saying there's something that wants to be realigned and brought back in. And one of one of these tools, one of the many, is emotional release, which sometimes is thought of as Express and release. And I really like the term of emotional integration, because release sometimes makes people think that some of the emotions are bad or wrong and they need to go somewhere. And the idea is to release them into a space. I think about creating a bubble around. If I'm doing it in my bedroom, I make a bubble around the whole bedroom. I'm releasing it so that it's not in my body. But I'm not releasing it because it's bad or wrong. I'm releasing it so it has somewhere to go. And yes, I do this in the privacy of my own home, but now that I have a more concrete community, like I can do this when I'm having a Hangout with a group of friends, I can do this, and we support each other to do this, like, okay, something just happened here that was triggering. You don't have to hold it alone. We don't have to sweep it under the rug. We don't have to pretend like it doesn't exist. And as the world is shifting and changing, and you were just mentioning your daughter, and I'm like, I know that there's an awareness that's occurring, particularly from younger generations, that it's healthy to be in expression. It's healthy to be in the release in order to reflect and integrate this deep work. Often emotional release is seen as only being productive if it's loud and big. And I really like to play in the subtlety coming from a family where expression was not something that we struggled with. We have a lot of Middle Eastern Syrian blood in my family. We are fiery as hell, and certain things could just come out like there was freedom to express. But what I didn't learn was down regulation, and one of the reasons that people often express is actually to move the energy outward. And in my family, it looks like getting into conflict and being able to express, express, express, because we knew that on the other side of that was actually now we can rest into it, and then we still walked away with stories of each other, because it was usually happening in a fairly confronting way. So there's still some ouch in it, and then there's a lot of saris, but that. Is because we were always turning that dial up to about an eight. So when I learned emotional release tools, I was like, great. This is someplace that I can bring all of that fiery energy to. But I found that that worked for my system as I knew it up to that point. But what I wasn't paying attention to is, where could I actually turn it down to about a three not to repress it? But was there something that I could do without exhausting my nervous system, like yelling and screaming and moving the energy in a big way felt good, and sometimes I was left shaken at the end of it, and so I I'm just very aware that this looks really different for people based on what they learn about what they need in the moment, and it's still not always being taught that way in communities, even in a lot of breath work spaces, I'm seeing like bigger and more is better. And I really want to encourage people that are listening to this like, yes, express, but also tap in and see what wants to be in balance and harmony within ourselves, you know, and I think there's a very delicate balance there. How do I say and express everything that wants to be said, but also not blow myself out?

Janelle Orion 21:13

Can you give an example of that subtlety, like what came up for me thinking about it was, and I don't know if I'm gonna remember this one it, but it's like the freeze. I know Laurie handlers would call it like the freeze, but I think it's what she calls it, where you, like, go into a ball, the fetal freeze. Maybe you go into a ball. It's you're not saying anything, but you are breathing, and you're you are like, kind of holding all your energy, and like, taking a deep breath, holding your body as tightly as you can, and then when you can't hold your breath anymore, you release. Would that be an example of subtlety? Or no, you've got something else in mind.

Brianna 21:48

Subtlety for me, more looks like if I'm going to move my energy and and this is a pretty easy one for people to relate to, because we watch kids do it all the time, but kids throw themselves on the ground and they won't get up. And you know, it's at the grocery store, somewhere terribly inconvenient for the parents. And the way that this tool looks when I use it is that I'll put myself on the bed and I thrash my body and I hit my fists and I pump my feet and kick my feet. But I can do that in a way that's more at a three out of 10 than an 11 out of 10. And so I don't have to lose my voice. I don't have to hurt my throat, and it's a way for me to be able to really use tools in a more sustainable way than going for a full 20 or 30 minutes in a way that it might be led in ritual. And so an emotional release ritual, when I'm holding that space does look like a room full of people moving a lot of energy. I use breath work as an example, because I'm seeing this pop up in communities more frequently. And there's a lot of encouragement, like, let the emotions come through, let the sound come through. And there's times that I'm really aware that the loudest people in the room will be the loudest people in the room, but I have a consistent curiosity of, if those people that are always loud, because that's the way that they're doing life, if they're always loud, is there a place for them to actually see? What can I tap into in the subtleties? So this question about like, how do I know what the subtlety is? I think a lot of that's practice. And this is the same. I want to just draw this comparison where, how do I know what my boundaries are? Some of that is happening in the subtlety. So whether that's my energetic boundaries, my emotional boundaries, my relational boundaries, my touch boundaries, a lot of that's happening because we cross over them, and I think that crossing boundaries has gotten such a bad reputation, like when I cross my own boundaries, but what I'm doing is gathering very important information, because that's how I know now I have a boundary. If I'm standing on the edge of that boundary, being super afraid to cross it all the time, I actually don't necessarily know I'm just operating from fear. But if it's something like, I go to an event, everyone's giving hugs to strangers, I give hugs to strangers, and then I recognize, like, oh, I actually wasn't available to give hugs to strangers. Then I know, well, the next time I'm going to try stopping, pausing and saying thank you for greeting me. No, I'm not open to a hug right now, which in New Age culture sometimes are like certain spiritual communities. That's edgy. I've received it when I just looked at them with love and said, thank you. Yeah, good to meet you too, and kept my hands at my side. As

Andrea Enright 24:38

beautiful as I feel like I am, so I'm like, I am your I Am your poster child and your example for this. Because I was so relieved to get the emotional release tool, like, Oh, it's okay to do this. Like, I can go, I can stop and be like, Oh, I'm feeling a charge coming up. I can go downstairs. I can pillow scream, and then I can kind of return to the car. Conversation after five minutes and be okay or be better. But what actually happened to me once was I stood right here and and I, like screamed and like squeezed so hard that I actually, like dislocated a rib. And this was so, so just, like, so tragic for me, like, mentally, I was just like, I just released. I needed to release. I don't do it that often, and look what fucking happened to me. And so I was just so, like, I just felt betrayed by my own body, in a way. And I what you're saying now, I think is it is that that taught me, oh, there's a boundary I don't want to cross, because then I was like, injured for a couple weeks. I was fine, but it was, like, uncomfortable, hard to sleep, hard to breathe. But I don't think it really led me into a place of like, okay, well, now what? Because I still want to do that. I still want to, oh, like, scream and kind of like, do this thing where I squeeze and I feel like I don't really have like, what? What else should I do? Like, I guess I'm literally asking you that point blank. I don't know if you have the answer, but yeah, I would. I would love a couple of suggestions for that. Yeah,

Brianna 26:17

absolutely. Andrea, thanks for sharing that piece. The the immediate thing that comes up for me is finding the tools that work where you get to keep yourself safe, just like if I'm going out for a run or doing an intense ashtanga yoga practice, I'm going to modify based on the information that I now have about my body. So in this example that you are using here, it's it sounds like the energy is going down and in and kind of erupting from the inside, erupting enough to move a rib out of place. And so what would be the technique where you can actually maybe put yourself on the ground or onto a soft space and move the energy up through your body? Although this wasn't one of the tools that you may have learned when you first learned emotional release. There's one that I particularly love about bioenergetic emotional release, and it's essentially taking yourself into a bridge pose slowly, and just letting your elbows rest on the ground and bringing your hands both up from a 90 degree angle and then down to the ground while you lift your hips and using breath, sound, movement and some words while you're doing that, because then you're not holding the energy in in the same way. Oftentimes it's more breath, more sound, and not as much physicality. And I think that's one of the ways to turn down the knob, is of the intensity is really to let the breath and the sound come through like it sounds like there's words that want to come through. So even in your example here, it was like a squeezing, like an uh, and then it's not, it's not necessarily coming out, but you're connecting to the emotion. So well done. You know, you're you're recognizing something wants to move through, and you're saying yes to that, and that yes is so important, but now it's just looking at what's the safest way for me to do this, where you're not holding it back. I often say that people fall into two categories of either stuffers, emotional stuffers, or emotional vomiters. And when I think about that, I think about like, what are the best tools to support people? And it's going to look very different, the same way that we, that we navigate all of you know, our fitness and our health and our diets, like we have to find what works for us, and sometimes circling back and then having consultations with experts to find what really works for you. You know, everything says, Please consult your doctor before doing whatever it is good point. So, you know, this is, this is just a different this is just a different way of looking at that, like consult somebody who can really support you specifically to look at this. I mean, my my personal dream one day is the same way that we have. People have their doctor and their lawyer and their accountant. Everybody has a sacred sexuality expert.

Janelle Orion 29:00

That'd

Andrea Enright 29:02

be amazing you,

Janelle Orion 29:04

you and me, you and me, we're both on that same, same path, just normalizing the need for that.

Andrea Enright 29:10

So I guess bringing this back to the sex and intimacy conversation, what are some other tools you recommend once you kind of know how to navigate your own emotions and your own energy, and you've raised your own awareness. How do you approach a partner about this

Brianna 29:29

topic? Yeah, I want to build the bridge for the brave hearts here between why we would do emotional release and what that has to do with sex and intimacy, because I don't think that's always obvious to people. When a lot of people sign up for something around sex intimacy, what they're looking for is access to more pleasure. That's the number one thing that I hear. I want to be more connected to my pleasure, and I really believe that in order to be more. Connected to our pleasure, we have to be more connected to all of the parts of ourselves. We don't really get to pick and choose. I just want to be more in touch with my pleasure, but I don't want to be more in touch with my anger. And so the idea of emotional release tools is to create emotional currency, and the more that we are releasing what's been stored, which usually has built to some point as resentments, blockages, barriers. So much of that comes from early childhood, so much of it comes from anger, rage, even numbness freeze in our bodies that we store there. But the more that we can tap in and be with those pieces. I really believe that's what builds our access to pleasure, and even from the place of like talking to people about self pleasure. How is self pleasure different from masturbation? How can I be with my body in a way that is pleasurable on a daily basis? That may or may not include touching my genitals, but it's really like, who am I? Me, with me, and then I can go into the relationship with the other. I don't believe that we can only love people as much as we love ourselves. I think that as humans, we have just such a great capacity to love and desire and to project love onto others and those around us, but I think being really committed to the practice of self honesty with self integration reflection, I think that's what builds our capacity to love. So I'd almost rephrase this very popular Instagram quote into something along the lines of, like, if you really want to love somebody. Keep keep working on how you love yourself. Doesn't need to be quite so black and white there.

Janelle Orion 31:47

What you're saying. Brianna is reminding me of what Brene Brown has said about like, when we don't want to feel shame, right? We'll, like, numb ourselves when this is whether, you know, with alcohol or drugs or something else. But when we numb our shame, we also numb our joy. And so what I'm hearing you say is, in order to be able to really fully feel our pleasure, we actually need to fully feel everything, all of our emotions. Yeah,

Brianna 32:14

and this is, this is sometimes not the news that people want to hear when they're coming to really tap into their pleasure and build their awareness around pleasure. And so I look at this as like there needs to be some demolition when you're doing a remodel. And so any I mean, I find this true for so many things. When we set a goal to expand ourselves, there's going to be some contraction, probably in the process, and even resistance. And so to know that if you're doing a remodel, it's going to mean maybe knocking down a wall, and that's going to create dust, and it's going to be really inconvenient for a period of time. And couples will get very far into their intake process with me, and then I mentioned the demolition phase, and I tell them to take some time to really be with is this something that you really feel like? A Yes to like, there will be discomfort, and you will likely experience some resistance in that discomfort that's human, that's natural. Be gentle with yourself. Notice what happens in that resistance. Oftentimes it's defensiveness, but sometimes blame like, and I let them know up front as someone who's guiding them, there's going to be moments where they're going to want to possibly project that onto me like I have accepted that fully, that that's part of the transformational process for people, but it's also uncomfortable for me. So I'm in my own demolition process while they're in their demolition process, but all of this is to get back to a place of more honesty. So this, this circles back a bit to what I might, I think the first thing that I said, which is, when people are looking for tools, it's to get honest with self. It's about me with me first, and then how can I do the next scary step, which is to start having the conversations with my partner or partners, or even just first dates that I'm casually trying to put this out with, and that's another practice. Step is saying the thing, saying the thing that I now have awareness about saying the thing around I need my body to be warmed up slowly, I'm maybe not going to have sex for the first six dates, but I welcome a lot of other kinds of intimacy. Can we experience intimacy of the heart? Can we circle back to some of the deliciousness, as if sex was off the table? Can you just spend 20 minutes kissing my neck? Like can we explore each other's bodies in this juicy way, but that is often skipped over, simply because we're not really given sex education in the ways that I would love to see people getting, like so much information before the age of 12 that we could be working with that relates it's more. Intimacy education than sex education. And so many of us just aren't taught how to slow down and get educated about intimacy, and then we wonder why we're not having great sex,

Janelle Orion 35:11

right? I love how you just phrased that. And we talk a lot. We call it, I know at ista, we learned it as the R, B, D, S, M, a T again, another thing we mentioned all the time. I don't know if that's still the acronym you're using, or is that one that you recommend for people? And can you give a little overview? Yeah, I recommend

Brianna 35:31

any conversation that's going to be a little bit outside of the norm of what you might talk about on a first date. And then I recommend going deeper with that conversation once in relationship, but essentially it's being able to have a framework of a conversation that leads to vulnerability of the heart and also saying the hard thing, even just saying that, I think I'm gonna name a hard thing. Are you open to that? Like, let let yourself be a little squeamish with it. And should I talk through the rbdsmt conversation a bit? Yeah, we'd love to hear

Janelle Orion 36:05

your perspective. Yeah, we've, we've talked to it so many times, and we're not experts on it, you know? We just, yeah, go ahead. I

Brianna 36:13

think this conversation can be looked at through through few different ways, and there's a number of different acronyms to help this, but essentially, it's looking for the vulnerability and the conversation. I really suggest having this conversation well in advance as one of the tools to kind of vet yourself and somebody that you might engage with intimately, and that the decision isn't actually made before this conversation happens. This conversation is so that you can even be with the information and see, am I still a yes to this based on what I just heard? Sometimes people take this as, oh, I'm just going to check the box before I have sex. I've already made up my mind that no matter what they say, I'm going into it. But that's a little bit of old paradigm thinking, like I'm just, you know, to rush things. And I love the long game. I mean, one of my personal kinks is just like longing, expectation or longing, and like just waiting for it, yes, just like waiting in that anticipation moment to really be there with it. So the first, the first part of this is around relationships, and it's, again, this is it's getting clear with self. It's practicing this conversation with myself. It's getting clear before I go on a date with anyone. What do I actually want in a relationship? What is my personal desire right now, knowing who I am, so I might have started chatting with someone online, or I met somebody at a party. It's been a month or so of build up. We've decided to have a first date, but maybe I was, you know, in my ovulation phase at that party, and here I am three weeks later, and I'm in a different phase of my cycle. And maybe I was, like, really gregarious and I was open and I was embodied, but now I'm feeling a little bit more withdrawn, but the date's still happening tomorrow, so I'm sitting down with myself and really thinking, Okay, so we've already exchanged sexy pictures. We've already set some framework that might look like we're going into one thing. But if my truth right now is I'm actually feeling a bit withdrawn, I need to move slower, then I can still do that. And so it's letting ourselves off the hook of some kind of societal expectation or even pressure that we put on ourselves, that I need to be a certain way because I'm making up that that's what they want. But healthy relationships come from a place of meeting each other time and time again with whatever that new truth is that's being revealed. So relationship is both identifying the kind of relationship that I want, but is there any other information about who I am in relationships that might want to be revealed so that might be a relating style. Do I am I really feeling like I'm monogamous? What do I know about myself in monogamy? That word doesn't even mean the same thing to everybody. For some people, monogamy means I would never even talk to somebody from, you know, the gender that I'm attracted to, because that is how some people function in monogamy. And they have that assumption that that's how everybody functions in that if we're just going on a first date, but I say I'm monogamous, does that mean that I'm only going on one date with people? How long like we want to stop pretending that we all think the same way, or that our assumptions are shared across even my city's culture, but we all come from different backgrounds, and we have different types of relationships with who we are, so this question about relationship is not so simple, and so it's really, I think this is an opportunity to start taking the assumption out of it. And I'm going to circle back again and again around like the assumptions, the assumptions, the assumptions that create the anxiety that's usually underneath the surface of a lot of intimate interactions.

Janelle Orion 39:59

Yeah. Yeah, and what I'm hearing is, you know, as you're gonna go through these letters that you're having, like you're revealing to yourself, like before you're having the conversation with the other one, like you're the other person, that you're like, Oh, who am I today? And

Andrea Enright 40:16

you're saying it out loud and listening yourself, that's right, yeah,

Brianna 40:20

you're saying it out loud, yeah. And I'm, I'm quite an external processor, and so I'm often having these conversations with my friends in these weeks before, like we use each other to bounce these ideas off of and maybe I'm not saying, Hey, I'm going to practice my rbdsm conversation with you before I go on the state. But it comes through in these in these ways of being able to talk about this. So B is for boundaries. What are my boundaries in this specific thing? A lot of that we just talked about, but not making assumptions. And I like to do a head to toe scan about what my physical boundaries are. And again, it can be really helpful to talk about this with someone that can prompt and ask questions. It's a lot of what I do when I'm COVID. I'm coaching people, when they're trying to figure out how to have boundaries, particularly if they've never named boundaries, or never knew that they could have boundaries, which I think is so common, it's so common for all humans, of all gender expressions, to not know that they could have a boundary about something. Just want to let that sink in, because I think it's a it's a big piece,

Janelle Orion 41:27

yeah. And I also just want to, like, tie in quickly, like, something you mentioned earlier on in the episode was boundaries are also not just physical. They can also be, like, emotional or energetic. And I think that's also like Oh, poof. What?

Andrea Enright 41:41

Yeah. So a name that I've I've also gotten kind of like the deer in the headlights. Look, who's like, Oh, what are your boundaries? I don't know. I don't think I have any. Like, that's that tends to be like the initial because we haven't discussed them out loud. You felt them but not voiced them. You've actually had trauma or therapy around them, but that you think they don't apply here, because it's something different. And so it just it feels like, the more I think about the rbdsm conversation, it feels like not a multi hour conversation, but a multi day or week conversation in an ideal world.

Brianna 42:15

Absolutely, absolutely. I really, really this. This is why I really love the long game, because I get to be in that exploration. So this piece around the energetic boundaries too is like, what am I really available for and for someone who's on the receiving end, this is not just about how I'm expressing these things as the person communicating it, but from the receiving end, I love knowing what people's boundaries are. I love it because it really allows me to feel like I'm safe to be me. I'm safe to touch their body, if that's part of how we're interacting, I'm safe to bring my fullest expression forward with them. And that I can, I can bring up anything, you know. And the other thing about boundaries that's good to name is just because we set it in my boundaries doesn't mean that a new boundary might not arise. And so there's a power of the pause in learning, in any intimate connection, I can say, Oh, can we pause for a moment? I'm just noticing that I have a new boundary that's coming up. And as someone who's receiving that sometimes there is a moment of discomfort, but again, normalizing discomfort. Discomfort doesn't mean bad, wrong? But that takes practice, like we have to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations to normalize discomfort. Okay,

Andrea Enright 43:36

let's keep going. What's the deal? Like? There's so much content here,

Brianna 43:42

so in desires again, that comes back to like, what am I really available for? Can I express some of my fantasies, even if I'm just saying one or two about what would I what I would really desire, how I would desire, and I often am expressing this from the feeling space. I My desire is to feel free to express myself. My desire is to laugh a lot tonight. My desire is I might try to think of one or two physical things, but since I already named boundaries, I want them to also be free to be in some of the spontaneity. But if there's something particular, like, I really want you to rub my feet. I really want you to slide your fingers between my toes with oil on your hands. I just personally really like that one. Or if they're another thing, like if I if you really desire kissing to say it. And so if you're somebody who knows this conversation, and you're interacting with somebody that doesn't know this conversation, you end up being the leader in it a bit. But it's it's modeling. It's modeling like this is how I want to be treated. I want you to be as transparent with me as I'm being with you. And you know, just as a woman who is raised in a very action oriented, penetrating, kind of more masculine way of being, from school to my profession, sometimes this can be like, I don't want to be the leader in this. I don't want to have to be the leader, but then I remember how much permission giving it actually creates there. So I just really want to encourage people to embrace being the leader in moments like this, because we're setting the stage for the vulnerability to teach someone else how to hold us and to lead us in the future. And that's part of what my desires are. Is like I want to be held. I want to be led, but they might not know what that means. And then S goes into sexual health, but also deeper layers around that, not just revealing when I was tested last, a lot of people start to clam up around this, because there's an almost like this, expectation or assumption that that everyone has been tested, and if you haven't, then, like you have to be quiet about it. But even just revealing oneself, like I've been in monogamous relationships, I haven't been tested in 20 years. I was just coaching someone around this and to just share that, and to say, like, I haven't explored that before. I'm kind of new to this testing culture. I haven't been dating, and then what some of the the preferences are around sexual connection. So again, if you're playing the long game, you have plenty of time to see what's important for you around my sexual health. What would you like to know few people use barriers during oral sex. That is what I experienced. Few people use barriers during oral sex, but it's not if we can approach this not coming from shame, and just be like, Oh, great. That's something that we're both just knowingly saying yes to if we agree to engage sexually. Yes, I I completely accept that you may have not used barriers with oral sex, and that feels fine to me. I just want your mouth on my pussy. But we're but we're knowingly saying yes to such things, and then also thinking about when is the right time to have barriers in place, and when is the time to not have barriers in place? And sitting with that again for days before you would say yes to a communication and interaction. And this feels like a lot for people, like, usually I get to this point in the conversation and teaching it, if you were like, Oh my gosh, this is so much. There's something about still talking about sexual health and sexual preferences that starts to bring up shame in our own bodies and fear, and so I recommend sitting with these conversations until that passes, until you've gotten support around this, until there's been some time to digest some of this information.

Janelle Orion 47:35

I just wanted to elaborate, because I remember as someone who's 50 now, right? Like, I'm in menopause, like children is, are not in my field, but if you're younger, right, part of sexual health is, you know, like, oh, a reason to use protection is because i What's your desire for children that could go into the relationship? But like, what's the risk you're willing to take around protection if children, if you know a pregnancy was to happen? So I found that one to be really relevant for for younger people.

Brianna 48:06

And what's super interesting about that is that our basics of sex, of sex ed, were just around procreation for many of us, and yet, then we're not talking about the repercussions of procreation from having sex. And it's almost like it like it becomes this taboo line of like, well, that probably won't happen. And we're like, but we actually know that pregnancy does occur. And so what's it like to have that conversation ahead of time? You know, what's it like for people to really be honest about it? And it's scary to be honest, but honesty is what prevents breakdowns.

Andrea Enright 48:38

And I just want to note that this rbdsm conversation. I know we've been framing it for people who are dating or it's the first time, but this rbdsm conversation can happen between a husband and wife who've been married for 20 years. It's gonna look a little bit different, but I just invite brave hearts to consider this at any stage of your relationship, and just look at it as an invitation to be curious, you know, because you probably haven't talked about this in a long time, maybe never, and so to just kind of start with that clean slate and and explore each of these in a sense, as though you are dating for the first time.

Brianna 49:18

Yeah, and I'll give a little bit of a shortcut when you're having these conversations with somebody who you're in deep connection with, and I'll give that right after I talk about the meaning and the aftercare with meaning, I think that it's one of the assumptions that a lot of people make. But the thing is that I've never seen the meaning the same between two people, or very, very, very rarely. Meaning is, what does it mean if we're to engage in intimacy, does it mean that you're my new boo? Does this mean you're going to call me? Does this mean that it's just a quick hookup? Does this mean that we're going to stay in touch and build something from this and being able to again? Courageous conversation to say, like, this is what I'm really looking for right now. And I think this is the deepest place of information revealing, where people can choose, is this a good match for me right now? And just because the conversations may not align doesn't mean that you can't find a meeting point in this. But I think that's, again, the honesty. So there's so many different stages that happen that I don't suggest really having this conversation and then moving right into sex, because it does take some time. Like, okay, I'm hearing what it means to you is that you know we're going to take it as it goes, but I'm hearing what you really want as a long term partnership, like you're looking for that person to meet you, and I might not be that person. What are we both still available for now and just allowing that to be enough now, you mentioned T and a T is is there any trauma that I would need to know about? You don't have to recount your entire trauma history, although you may want to reveal some pieces before you become intimate with someone. My heart and my pussy are very connected, and when one gets penetrated, they're often in cahoots and having a conversation with one another. And so for me personally, that's something to reveal, but I also make choices that reflect that. Even as someone who considers myself like very slutty energetically, I don't always open one without opening the other. And so that's important for me to let people know if I'm going to engage with them intimately. It's like my heart wants to love and are you available to be loved by this giant heart, because she's going to do it if you start connecting with me intimately. And it's taken me a long time to get courageous enough to say that and to not feel shame about it. And then the A in it is after care, which sometimes I put into meaning is, what do I really what do I already know that I need? And one thing that I know that I need is a debrief conversation after I'm intimate with someone, sometimes that's just like the pillow talk afterwards, but I want to know that someone's willing to be there with me, to have the conversation, to have the check in afterwards, maybe it's the next day or a few days later, just to dive in and be like, what do we both want to hear here in a little post intimacy check in, you know? And is there anything that wants to be revealed after the fact and naming any contractions that may have happened so that I'm not sitting with them alone? Some of this could be like, This is so serious because I just want to hook up like, I'm just trying to reconnect to my pleasure. It's been a while, and so I recognize that that could be there. And so it's not a hard and fast, you know, but I think as people are listening to this like especially as brave hearts, Where Are we recognizing that we can bring ourselves in to these and be brave, to be brave and having these conversations. And you might just pick and choose a few of these and try them on like it doesn't need to be okay. We're sitting down at dinner. I have a checklist, but maybe these are the things to consider that are coming up in conversation.

Andrea Enright 52:50

Wow. I just love how you made that conversation, just like so accessible, and I feel like I just reached a new level under of understanding about it. So thank you so much for articulating that.

Brianna 53:02

I'm so glad. I want to give the super abbreviated version, because with people that I'm involved with sexually on a more regular basis, the three things that we always cover are desires, fears and boundaries. So if I'm setting up a date with the man that I live with, we might say, what are your desires for this date? Are there any fears that are that you have right now around this, anything that's distracting you, anything that any concerns, or anything that wants to be named, and then, what are your boundaries for us moving into our dynamic tonight, and we set some intention also to really create this, as you know, even if it's a quickie, can we still create this as A moment that matters and like a moment of connection that matters. And we're really both tuning into this, even after years of being teachers and coaches in this world, like we're continuously learning new information about ourselves in this process. I

Janelle Orion 53:56

just think, like, just what you just named right there with, I want to say the DFB desires for his boundaries. Conversation was that I loved what I heard. It was that like for people who have been relating for a long time, I think actually, in our last interview, someone said, like, this conversation is actually part of the intimacy, right? It's not separate from it's part of so that when you think of a quickie, oh, we have to have this conversation, it's like, oh, this is part of the Quickie, right? Like, because this is going to allow the Quickie to be better, because we're going to know this information about each other, and we're going to have checked in with ourselves to know, how could it be the best quickie ever, right? For this today, for this day, all we're talking about is, like, you know, you could have had this really long, exhausting, four hour meeting. You had planned a quickie, and now you're like, great, we can still have it, but I don't want to move you do all the work. You know, it could just be something like that. Yeah, I love

Andrea Enright 54:50

this little abbreviation too, because when, when Janelle first brought me the rbdsm conversation, I was like, dude, like, come on. Like. That's just not practical. It just It sounded like too clinical to me. Like, what if I just want to hook up? Like, I'm 25 I'm not doing this thing yet. Like, of course, like I would be a different 25 now, but certainly when I was 25 I was not thinking about this, nor would I have bothered with it. But so I just feel like that is a nice like, Okay, how about just like, PDF, like that. That addresses something that you know is going to be a little smaller or just have a little less weight. Says, really appreciate that

Brianna 55:27

absolutely. And I, and I encourage people to at least ask what your desires are, and to get as honest as possible in that, because that actually reveals, do we even need to have a longer conversation? And so it can be as simple as, what are your desires for this? And then, if they're like, I want to fuck your brains out, you can go in and say, like, you know, I'm actually super open for that. And are you open to a couple of touching conversations before we move into that so that we can just be all in that, like, let's just go all the way into that portal, but let's have some conversation, so that our brain isn't just running in the background the whole time. Like, how good is it when your body can fully do the thing that you want to do? Yeah, and you're not, like, waking up the next morning, like, I didn't name that. I actually need to check in, and you didn't even heart my message. And what else do I need so that I'm super happy about getting what I want.

Andrea Enright 56:22

Oh, beautiful permission. I love this. Wow. Brianna, do you have any simple beginning assignments for our brave hearts where they could start? The

Brianna 56:33

first one that I almost always think about is self pleasure, getting to know our own bodies, and allowing whatever emotions come up in that process to be there. I think that's one of the most simple. And when I say self pleasure, it's taking the time, finger by finger, millimeter by millimeter, on your own body, to touch light enough, slow enough, but eventually maybe to work up to taking yourself as your own lover. Like really take yourself if there's something that you desire for a lover to do, pull your hair, smack your ass, grab your neck, whatever it is, push yourself down on the bed. It could look a little crazy from the outside, but nobody's watching. But I really encourage people to get in touch with with this self pleasure, so that they stop outsourcing it. And I think that's one of the things that I see over and over again, is that people want to move into intimate connection, to outsource their pleasure, and they're not even considering how to be their own beloved

Andrea Enright 57:32

Wow, so good. Be their own beloved outsourcing pleasure. I love the mix of this like outsourcing this business word with pleasure too. Oh yeah, keeping it so real. Janelle, do you have anything else?

Janelle Orion 57:51

Just love to hear how people can get out any brave hearts and get a hold of Brianna.

Brianna 57:55

Yeah, absolutely. Well, because my name is completely unique, I'm the only Brianna kribire, in the world, I'm super easy to find on socials, and so following me, particularly on Instagram, was a great way to do that. Also. Brianna kribire.com if you want to read a little bit more about my work and I teach a number of things around this all the time, from the most mild entry level, get in touch with self, process emotions. Be gentle. Have an online gathering once a month, up to doing deep dive, intensive seven day or more workshops, retreats. And then also my deepest passion, like I said, is being in service and really working with other leaders. So I lead advanced facilitator trainings. I take people who are already doing this work into places of really being able to be in their most authentic, congruent expression of self. Thank

Andrea Enright 58:43

you so much for being on the podcast today. So grateful,

Brianna 58:47

so happy to be here. Yeah.

Janelle Orion 58:48

Thank you, Brianna. And not only that, but you were my teacher. You were my very first teacher of emotional release tools and the rbdsm conversation, and I still remember you pillow stomping and showing me all the things and they've changed my life. I have said this many times in this podcast. They have been so fundamental to who I have become, and so I'm grateful that you are spreading the word throughout

Brianna 59:09

such a pleasure to know you.

Janelle Orion 59:14

Thank you. Thank you for listing brave hearts. Take it all in, and we'll see you next time. Love you. Bye. Hey, Braveheart looking for permission,

Andrea Enright 59:26

work with us. We offer Braveheart coaching. Follow us on Instagram, meet us in real life at a Braveheart conversation. Subscribe to our newsletter. Do all this and more at our website. Permissiontobehuman.live