Scar Tissue, Shame & Restoring Pelvic Sensation with Makia Mullen

What happens when sexual healing moves beyond the mind and into the tissues of the body?

In this episode of BodyJoy After Hours, Melissa sits down with somatic sexologist and pelvic floor specialist Makia Mullin to explore the powerful intersection of nervous system regulation, sexual health, and embodied pleasure.

Drawing on two decades of experience in pelvic care and somatic sexuality, Makia shares how emotional states, trauma, shame, and cultural conditioning can live directly in our tissues, shaping sensation, arousal, and our relationship to pleasure.

Together they dive into topics that are rarely discussed openly, including foreskin restoration, circumcision scarring, Peyronie’s disease, pelvic trauma, and the role of scar tissue in sexual dysfunction.

The conversation also explores how healing often begins not with intense erotic practices, but with something much simpler: learning to listen to the body’s language of sensation and bringing small moments of pleasure back into everyday life.

Melissa and Makia a also discuss:

• why talk therapy alone often isn’t enough for sexual healing
• how nervous system states shape pelvic tension and arousal
• the surprising prevalence of foreskin-related conditions like phimosis
• how shame can live in the tissues of the body
• the role of pleasure practices and community spaces in erotic healing
• why learning to appreciate a soft cock can be a powerful shift for men after prostate procedures

This episode is a thoughtful, nuanced look at how sexual health, nervous system regulation, and embodied awareness are deeply intertwined.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body, your pleasure, or your erotic aliveness, this conversation offers a compassionate place to begin.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Makaya Mullin
02:00 Household “pervertibles” and playful erotic exploration
04:20 Why the body is the doorway to sexual healing
06:30 Limits of talk therapy for sexual dysfunction
08:30 Shame, nervous system states, and pelvic tension
10:50 Peyronie’s disease explained
13:30 Scar tissue, inflammation, and erectile tissue health
14:20 Phimosis and foreskin-related conditions
16:30 Emotional patterns behind genital conditions
17:00 Circumcision scarring and pelvic work
19:00 Teaching clients to work with their own tissues
21:30 Foreskin restoration practices
23:00 Prostate surgery, erections, and adapting to change
25:00 Learning the language of the body
26:30 Micro-doses of pleasure in daily life
28:00 Discovering sexological bodywork and Joseph Kramer
31:00 From polyamory to monogamy: Makia’s personal journey
31:40 Group pleasure practices and erotic community spaces
35:30 The healing power of witnessing bodies without sexualization
36:00 Self-pleasure retreat in Spain

Connect with Makia

@eroticabotanica

https://www.makiamullen.com

somatic sexology pelvic floor healing sexual healing sexological bodywork foreskin restoration circumcision scar tissue peyronie’s disease phimosis nervous system regulation embodied sexuality shame prostate surgery pleasure practices erotic embodiment sexual wellness podcast intimacy and nervous system

Transcript

Melissa D (00:00)
Have you found anybody that's re kind of grown or restretched their foreskin like went from being circumcised as a baby and then growing it back as an adult male?

Makia (00:10)
Yeah, I've definitely known folks that have been able to do restoration practices. there's a technique I've seen used from one client who was using Gorilla Tape, which I maybe don't recommend. That's pretty abrasive. Yeah, it was, yep, yeah.

Melissa D (00:22)
No! No! Gorilla tape on

your tissues? Okay. Okay.

Makia (00:27)
they've curled tape on the tissues, but it

stayed on for longer periods of time. they were, you know, I think they're a little kinky as well. So there's a bit of an erotic element to

Melissa D (00:46)
Welcome to the Body Joy After Hours podcast where I have the deep pleasure of speaking to Makaya Mullin. Makaya is a somatic sexologist and stream pelvic floor specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. With two decades of experience and a deep specialism in pelvic care, she brings a trauma-informed whole person approach to sexual health, nervous system repair, and erotic embodiment.

Makaya and I talked a lot about foreskin, communal erotic practices And the healing that may be available. I hope you enjoy our conversation and.

Melissa D (01:32)
Makaya, thank you for joining all the way from Ireland.

Makia (01:36)
to be here. It's almost midnight so yeah I'm enjoying spending my last bits of the evening with you.

Melissa D (01:43)
Wonderful. Yeah, I also hear the rain in the background. It might hear a little fuzzy maybe for their listeners, but it's this beautiful rain that's just dumping on you right now.

Makia (01:54)
Yeah, it's a little bit of an ASMR effect, so hopefully that'll just stimulate folks.

Melissa D (01:59)
Awesome. So I want to go right into kind of how we met or how we know one another. I was based in Nevada City, California for the 10 years before or 10 years. And then I moved to Austin, but you came in with these amazing vulva chocolates and some elixirs and just shared your

your beauty and your artistry and then I got to also just see just how you navigated spaces and so it was really sweet to kind of get to know you in this sex positive community.

Makia (02:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess that was almost 10 years ago now. And I definitely like, still think of you every single time I walk into a warehouse or a kitchen store and I'm looking for like household pervertibles, because that was one of the first workshops I attended of yours. Like how can you kinkify your life with just little tidbits from, you know, totally inane parts of human life.

Melissa D (02:57)
I love that. Are there any pervertibles, basically household items, just like what you said, but we're eroticizing them. Is there any items that you still have kind of in your kit or close to your play today?

Makia (03:12)
gosh, yeah. I mean, I've been really geeking out on electrical tape as of recent and like doing kind of self bondage work and also like playing with slowly ripping off the electrical tape and all the different sensations that happen with that. And then of course, just the normal household preferables like spatulas and silicone, like oil brushes and things like that. So.

Melissa D (03:33)
Mm-hmm. I think there's a gift that's still somewhere on my You know which one Okay, now now everyone's gonna be like scouring the Instagram to find it but it's basically this hot red spatula and it's Right on Makai's booty and it is wonderful. So yeah, have fun finding that one ⁓

Makia (03:39)
Yes, I do. Yep, I totally know. ⁓

That's going to be

a deep dive into the archives, I think.

Melissa D (03:59)
Uh-huh. Yeah, you have to go way back. ⁓ So, Makaya, I'm really excited to bring you on to just chat about your work because, we have a lot of overlapping education and training, but you specifically work a lot with the pelvis, you know, not just sexological body work. And there's some other credentials to that kind of round out your training, which I'd love to hear more about. But, you know, in your

Makia (04:01)
Yeah, very good.

Melissa D (04:24)
kind of show notes that you sent to me or the application, you know, you mentioned the body as a doorway and this is the language that you use, which is so beautiful. And the body is the real entry point to sexual healing and I couldn't agree more. So for you and your lens, what do you see happening in people when they rely on things like talk therapy,

Makia (04:35)
you

Thanks.

Melissa D (04:48)
⁓ in order to address the sexual issues and dysfunctions.

Makia (04:52)
That's a great question. Yeah, I would say the majority of my clients, especially since moving here to Ireland, have come through psychotherapists. So I get a lot of folks that have been in traditional talk therapies for years, and they have a pretty good sense of what their challenges or issues are. But they still feel stuck in these nervous system states and patterns of how they relate to their partners or their own pleasure or feeling like they cognitively

Melissa D (05:13)
Mm-hmm.

Makia (05:20)
can rock what it is that is kind of holding them up, but when they're in those states and in those moments with a partner or with themselves, they still fall back into old patterns. So a lot of that I do is kind of getting people literally into their own viscera and into their own flesh and tissues and starting to actually...

Melissa D (05:30)
Right.

Makia (05:37)
⁓ I say this really delicately, like provoke an experience from their own tissues to start to tease that out and draw that out and bring in new experiences into their bodies.

Melissa D (05:49)
I love that because yeah, I'm talk therapy and psychotherapy Generally speaking, know folks are sitting there and they're really processing up in their minds. They're not really Going into how it shows up and what's actually happening. So I love that that's what you're doing so you get referrals from psychotherapists that are really understand the importance of Enrolling the body

Makia (06:10)
Yeah, absolutely. There's, mean, I think there's a lot of great overlap with like, there's so much that's outside my scope of practice where, you know, I'm not equipped, I'm trauma informed, but I'm not equipped to deal with like really deep trauma when it's super activated. have capacity to get space for things and support people coming back to a more resource state. But, um, I really love being able to work with other practitioners and kind of like just refer back and forth to each other and help someone become more whole and integrated as an erotic.

Melissa D (06:26)
Mm-hmm.

Makia (06:40)
being. I think that's, it really butters my biscuits.

Melissa D (06:44)
beautiful. And I love I

love hearing that you just know your limits as a practitioner because so often I see folks trying to be kind of everything for someone and not stating their limits. And maybe that's the Wild West of lot of modalities these days. I'm not really sure but I love

the thought of someone coming in and getting some support, you know, with the talk therapy piece and then maybe coming seeing you for another piece. And then, yeah, if they're experiencing some levels of trauma that maybe is out of your real house, they also get supported in that.

Makia (07:19)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's integral. mean, there's also, I'm sure you found this in your practice too, there's work that you can be doing with people and it can just unleash this, like, unearth a lot of things that they maybe weren't even cognizant of were, you know, present for them, whether that's like old traumas or resurfacing memories. So I think it's always really good to have folks on referral that you can share with just so people receive the amount of care intending that they'll really

They really deserve. Yeah.

Melissa D (07:49)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

What does a general arc of working with you kind of look and feel like?

Makia (07:55)
Yeah. Well, I think like most of us that work with bodies and humans, we do a significant intake process. So a lot of the work I do is like sitting down and just having a casual conversation with folks. And I would say first that a lot of my approach and how I work with people has changed drastically since moving from Northern California to Ireland. I thought that I could just like jump in here and kind of do things like we do in the West. ⁓

Melissa D (08:21)
The Wild West.

Makia (08:22)
And it did not fly, so I've had to really rejig a lot of my approach and ground things out and really slow it down. I've noticed that there's kind of...

Melissa D (08:31)
Mmm.

Makia (08:33)
This is a broad brushstroke, but more of like a predominant freeze state that happens here because there's a lot of conditioned shame from culture and religion that impacts folks here. And so the work I do is just like even slower than slow. So getting to really know each other, have casual conversations about their sexuality and the relationship to their body and Eros and pleasure. And even looking at like what they eat and how they feed themselves and their kind of general nervous system states.

Melissa D (08:42)
Hmm.

Makia (09:00)
And then doing kind of the first way I like to approach things is by doing co-regulatory work. So there's an incredible practitioner named Beth Dennison who does nervous system co-regulation practices and just getting to touch people in a non-eroticized therapeutic way or even just mirroring each other and finding a sense of resonance with each other that really just allows people to ease and settle in more.

Melissa D (09:01)
Mm-hmm.

Makia (09:25)
And then just doing regular hands-on body work before ever ever ever ever touching any kind of erotic or pleasure work.

Melissa D (09:34)
That's beautiful.

You know, Uma and I were just speaking about, she said excruciatingly slow. And I think we titled the whole podcast that. But yeah, this, cause we are in a world and a society and I imagine it's most continents of just this busyness and go, go, go. And so giving people a chance to really move at just a different pace and have a different experience. And you mentioned the shame.

Makia (09:59)
Yeah.

Melissa D (10:03)
How do you see specifically shame living in the bodies of your clients there? And how does it show up in their pelvis and their erotic lives?

Makia (10:11)
Mm-hmm.

Great question. I mean, it looks different for everyone, but I've noticed like similar little patterns kind of throughout. There's a lot of tension in the tissues, especially the tendons. The tendons are braced. The bones are just really stiff. I've noticed people really struggle to breathe. Obviously, there's like less capacity for breathing into the belly and letting the diaphragm really expand out, which of course just shuts down any capacity to really feel into our tissues and our genitals.

and all of that. So there's a lot of numbness that folks can come in with, both emotionally and sensorially as well. Yeah.

Melissa D (10:50)
Beautiful. Yeah, I mean, is there other themes that you're noticing in your practice?

Makia (10:56)
Well, I don't know about you, but I noticed like every month there's kind of a new theme of client that will show up. So like a one month it'll be folks struggling with pyronees. That's like a huge one that I had for a few months. And then I'll get... Yeah, go for it.

Melissa D (11:08)
I wanna double click on that actually. I'm curious how

you work with that because I've had a couple clients and there was this medical Qigong doctor that worked with a client, I think he was a corn star and he suffered from pronies and I was like, how did she do that? So do you wanna explain what it is for people that may not know what it is and then how do you work with it?

Makia (11:26)
I'm

Yeah,

yeah, definitely. I mean, it's far more common than I ever thought it would be when I got into this work. So pyrone's is just a calcification, calcified plaque that kind of begins to proliferate throughout the spongy erectile tissue of the cock.

So it'll start to create a bend in the tissues. It's like an internal scarring that happens in the sponges the rectile tissue. Yeah, it's very uncomfortable. And it can cause so much pulling that it becomes, you you get a pretty significant bend. often.

Melissa D (11:52)
Ouch.

And I've heard

people saying like, my God, she broke my dick. And it does that literally. does it happen from, you know, basically jackrabbit-ing or is there other ways that it kind of gets that way?

Makia (12:12)
I think it will, my teacher and mentor Ellen, Ellen Heade, I'm sure you're familiar with the scar tissue mitigation. She often talks about the influence of like, yeah, there's usually a trauma that happens. So it could be a micro trauma or a significant one while having sex or like, you you are riding and then all of a sudden you kind of fall off and just hit something, something doesn't quite land well.

And then systemic inflammation, whether that's due to stress or the way we live our lives and our lifestyle and the way we eat can influence the viscosity of our blood and then create additional scarring. And if that's not addressed, it can become a real issue over time. And it's one of those things that even with scar tissue mitigation and pelvic work, you can remediate some of the effects, but you can't really clear it. I think the only thing I've really seen successfully do that is these

injections where they kind of inject like an agent that breaks down the collagen or Yeah, it's pretty gnarly. I've already even heard of folks doing shockwave therapy, which I don't know if you've had but yeah I mean if you're a masochist like maybe that would really tickle you but

Melissa D (13:06)
Whoa.

I don't want to yuck anybody's

young, but dang that sounds painful. Okay.

Makia (13:21)
Yeah, it's pretty

painful. But yeah, it's like one of the most amazing things to be able to do with it when folks, men or penis owners start to see that the signs and symptoms of pyronies coming in is like even just self tending work with castor oil.

and just doing really gentle work around that. And I'm also beginning to work the belly, because there's so much scarring that can go up into the abdominal tissues and the viscera. And I know you've done work with like chinites on and things like that. But yeah, there's all sorts of ways. But you really want to include the whole of the pelvis and the belly and the genitals in kind of work.

Melissa D (13:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Wow. Okay, so I also want to go deeper into, you know, the scar tissue that can happen with circumcision. What else did you write? The vasectomies? What other things are happening for men that you're working with? I'm so curious.

Makia (14:12)
yeah.

Well, I had never heard of phimosis until a few years ago. And within a six month period, I got a handful of men here in Ireland that were suffering from phimosis, which is where the foreskin starts to contract around the glands of the penis, and it can't retract. So it actually gets.

Melissa D (14:34)
Wow, so it's

not that it's already stuck like that. It actually was at one point moving.

Makia (14:38)
Yeah, it gets

fixated, so it can't retract. And when you do try to retract it, in which a lot of folks will try to forcefully retract it, then it starts to tear, and then you create more and more scarring. So it becomes this kind of wormhole of healing and then scarring, and then just things get so bad that a lot of men end up feeling like their only option is to have an adult circumcision.

Melissa D (15:03)
Whoa! So what causes phimosis? Do we know?

Makia (15:07)
There's not really

any good things that I've been able to see as far as medical research goes, but I've noticed little patterns and things in the clients that I have that have come in with this. There's often been some kind of...

Like a lack of safety in their relationship is a real significant one of like not feeling safe with their partner or having a significant sexual abuse or sexual trauma. And to me, it feels like, and obviously this is just my professional opinion, I'm not a medical provider, is that it feels like a protective response, right? It's like the foreskin. ⁓

Melissa D (15:42)
Absolutely.

Makia (15:43)
protective layer where it's like it's literally just kind of hiding in its little hole going like don't touch me I don't want this kind of touch. So I feel like it's almost like a free state in the tissues themselves. Yeah.

Melissa D (15:55)
Whoa, that's incredible

because I hadn't heard of that yet. I I've heard about, you know, younger boys where, you know, if they're not circumcised, it'll just kind of be that way until more testosterone comes online. But I haven't seen anyone or heard of anything. So this is really fascinating. And yeah, I love that you mentioned a pattern that you're seeing in your own practice of like the underlying thread could possibly be.

This thing with a lot of the medical field doesn't get to the emotional bits that might be occurring to cause that to happen.

Makia (16:32)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, if you think about it, our, the emotional states that we're in affect our nervous system, which tells our brain to produce neurochemicals, which affect our tissues. So absolutely possible that the, viscosity of our tissues and the health of our tissues can be heavily impacted by the emotional experiences that we are having in our lives or relational experiences, especially. Yeah.

Melissa D (16:42)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, what's

what's your experience with working with adult men that have some circumcision scarring?

Makia (17:06)
Yeah, well, that was how I got into pelvic work in the first place, like 12, 13 years ago, was I had had a partner that had significant scarring from a circumcision that he'd had in infancy that made it so that every time he had an erection, was horribly painful because the skin was too much skin was removed and he was not able to get a full erection. And when he did, it would cause a lot of discomfort and pain. And that's actually pretty common. I thought it was kind of a once-off.

Melissa D (17:32)
Wow.

Makia (17:35)
thing with just this one partner and I've come to find that it's actually far more prevalent than I ever knew. But that's what I initially got really into like learning how to work with scars and scar tissue

So a lot of the work I do is with getting folks first into a safe state with me. So that often takes a number of weeks and sessions usually to build a sense of rapport and trust in me as a practitioner with them, doing a lot of like the Wheel of Consent work before ever, ever, ever doing any kind of touch with them. And then I am usually giving them lots of home practice and virtual sessions where, you know, they can be off screen and their safety of their own home and guiding them into actually working with their own tissues and their own

so that they can begin to know and track and kind of map their own clock and their own tissues and scars.

And then they can also begin to kind of find what their baseline is and then over time track like the sensitivity as it grows back and what changes in their own tissues. And not having it rely on me so much as like the sole person touching them that they can get to know their own body and their own touch more intimately. I think that's my favorite thing about this work is like just giving people the tools so that they don't have to rely on me fully.

Melissa D (18:39)
Hmm.

I love that. How beautiful. Yeah, because I find that in some industries, like sell, sell, sell, rack up the clients, rack up the thing. And I get it. Like, you know, we want to be supported. We want to, you know, be working. And how beautiful it is to give our clients, you know, some support and then letting them kind of take care of themselves and not rely on us as much. Yeah, that's beautiful.

Makia (18:57)
Really.

Yeah, I

mean, I don't know very many practitioners, maybe if like folks are living in the same area, I like a lot of my clients travel into the city here in Dublin. You know, but it's not feasible to like come see me every single day for a session. And so you're going to be able to work on your own tissue so much more at home in the comfort of your own home, even just five, 10 minutes a day does so much for the I mean, especially with any kind of mucus membrane and tissue like that with the glands with the foreskin or the penis, like you can just

you so much. You can change so much so quickly with your own hands.

Melissa D (19:41)
Mm-hmm.

Beautiful.

Have you found anybody that's re kind of grown or restretched their foreskin like went from being circumcised as a baby and then growing it back as an adult male?

Makia (19:54)
Yeah, I've definitely known folks that have been able to do restoration practices. think Kauffman actually has written a good bit about that. they have some audio books actually, I think, on foreskin restoration that are for free. But yeah, there's a technique I've seen used from one client who was using Gorilla Tape, which I maybe don't recommend. That's pretty abrasive. Yeah, it was, yep, yeah.

Melissa D (20:14)
No! No! Gorilla tape on

your tissues? Okay. Okay.

Makia (20:19)
they've curled tape on the tissues, but it

stayed on for longer periods of time. they were, you know, I think they're a little kinky as well. So there's a bit of an erotic element to

But yeah, so they would actually stretch the tissues forward and then tape it. You could use medical tape. That would be my recommendation or some kind of latex-free silicone tape. And then leaving it in that position for longer periods of time and stretching the tissues every day. it has to be like a diligent thing that they're working

Melissa D (20:37)
Yeah.

Right.

Makia (20:47)
their tissues like that every single day for months and months and months. But yes, I've absolutely seen folks be able to elongate the tissue enough that it mimics a foreskin. And then the glands has been able to decalcify and get that soft, smooth, silky texture.

Melissa D (21:05)
Wow that's beautiful. I met somebody years ago probably at Bontak Chia's place in Thailand and this gentleman was very proud of his work and I was like that's great man like way to go.

Makia (21:21)
Hey, if I had a penis and did all that work, I'd be pretty proud too. Yeah. ⁓

Melissa D (21:24)
Yes, yes. So tell

me a little bit about the prostate work that you've done, know, when someone, it sounds like you help with people that get it have to have it removed. Is that correct?

Makia (21:37)
Yeah.

Occasionally prostatectomies or even just radiation to the prostate has been one that I've seen more frequent. Yeah. So that can create a lot of scarring obviously, and also a lot of sensitivity. And most folks that have had either of those procedures have found that they're not able to get, you know, erections anymore, or at least not, you know, really like vigorous varial erections that they had before. So a lot of the work I do with folks is scar remediation work with like castor oil and suppositories and self-tending.

and lymphatic work on their own tissues and I'm doing that as well. And then there's a whole other piece of like just learning to appreciate having a soft cock. I think.

Melissa D (22:16)
Right. Right.

Makia (22:17)
That's a huge piece. It's just like learning to own.

This is unfortunately like the way that their body is adapting to this experience and that there's, it's not the end of the world. There's so many different ways that you can explore soft cock. I know you've talked about that a good bit before on other podcasts, but yeah.

Melissa D (22:35)
For sure,

yeah, I have a number of clients and also have had lovers just having a difficult time every time their cock would be soft and this message of like, you know, I'm useful and most erotic and most important when my cock is hard. And so there's this whole repatterning process. I'm curious, you said about...

know the prostate when you do have surgery there it does impact erections and I'm curious like how is it just because it's a whole pelvic trauma or

Makia (23:05)
Yeah, I'm not really sure about the like exact medical science of why it's impacting that. think part of it is endocrine. Obviously you're moving an endocrine organ in the body. I think a lot of it is also just you're affecting the tissues. There's all sorts of ligaments and tendons there that help force and pump blood into the penis. And so anytime you're impacting that you're, and especially if you're slicing directly through those, those tendons in those veins and vessels, you're going to impact the body's ability to flush.

all sorts of juicy blood into those tissues.

Melissa D (23:37)
Right. I wonder if there's a better

way that the procedures can be done. I mean, this isn't even on my radar, so I'm just super curious.

Makia (23:46)
Yeah, that would be amazing. know with even like the phimosis that I was mentioning earlier, there's been a number of doctors here in the EU that have started doing a laser incision instead of a whole circumcision. there's, I think, doctors that are starting to see the value of having our genitals intact and then also how much all of these procedures that we think of as entirely normal and sometimes completely necessary.

how much they can really impact us in the long run. But yeah, so there's now, they just do a small little laser incision on the front of the limb and that allows for there to still be retraction, but you're not removing any of the skin. Nice if they could find a way around having to do a really deep incision through the scrotum and all of the perineal tissue and the muscles there as well. Yeah.

Melissa D (24:14)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Right, right,

I hope so. Ouch, that all sounds a little painful. So from your lens, if someone's listening to us and feeling like a little disconnected from their body, from their pelvis, from their arousal, or assumes it's just something's wrong with them or broken, what do you think is the first step in beginning to restore

pleasure, sensation, and their own erotic aliveness.

Makia (25:02)
love that question. Yeah, I would say, I think the first part is just becoming literate in your own sensation. Like literally just becoming aware of what it is that you feel in your body. think we're, you know, as you and I probably know, and so many somatic sexologists know, it's like, it's literally teaching people to learn to speak the language of their body and learn to listen to what their body is saying through sensations. That's how the body speaks.

And so many of us learn that language. ⁓ And so I think that's always a really good place to start. And then also learning to lean into like just even small amounts of pleasure. Like what's it like to just even choose to like drink and eat things that feel really good for your body and your tissues and making small like micro doses of pleasure throughout your day that just bring that sense of aliveness and juiciness and deliciousness into your body. Like I don't think it

Melissa D (25:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Makia (26:00)
always has to be so erotic. Like, especially I noticed in a lot of my clients is like that can be really threatening for some folks to just dive into the deep end and go to like a weekend tantric workshop and, you know, be in the throes of like passion and yoni massages and all of this stuff. So it's great.

Melissa D (26:17)
rosebud mapping and everything else.

Makia (26:21)
It might be a bit much for some folks, but I feel like just even adding like really small bits of pleasure throughout every day. Yeah, just those are my favorite things. Like for me, that looks like drinking herbal like elixirs and things like that. It's just one of the small ways that I treat my body and my hormones and and bring a sense of pleasure and joy into my life.

Melissa D (26:39)
I like doing that too for myself but also teaching clients like even just as they're sitting next to me in the chair and they're holding like a water bottle or their purse I'll just kind of you know register where their points of contact are and be like can you know can you kind of move in a way of pleasure can you feel the leather bag can you feel the water bottle you know what would taste really good right now ⁓ yeah so neat teaching people how to like be

Makia (26:55)
that. ⁓

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Melissa D (27:07)
in their bodies again. Imagine that.

Makia (27:09)
Yeah,

it's like being a human animal again. think the more, just like we look at our little bodies as these sweet little creatures that just want to be, just want to be animals and just want to feel good and taste yummy things and enjoy breathing deeply and feeling yummy. like, I just, yeah, I feel like that, little reframe really helps me to look at this little loving meat suit as an animal.

Melissa D (27:32)
Mm-hmm, meat suit. know Kasha calls, she says that term a lot. I wonder where that came from. Is that a Kaffe and Jessie thing? I'm trying to find what teachers are the crossover and anyway.

Makia (27:41)
I don't know.

⁓

Yeah, I think I heard that term years ago and I just, it stuck. I don't know.

Melissa D (27:50)
I love it. I'm

curious about your, because you got kind of interested in all this work at a young age, like 15, from Joseph Kramer, who that's the gentleman genius behind Body Electric and really supporting the AIDS crisis, like men trying to be erotic and present in their bodies, but also not putting themselves at risk or others at risk.

Makia (27:58)
Yeah.

Melissa D (28:16)
And so, yeah, Joseph Kramer, go ahead and Google him and look on Wikipedia, anybody that's curious. I'm curious, how did you find that material? And what were you even looking for and looking at?

Makia (28:27)
Yeah, that's a good question. I was probably up to no good at that time, but I...

Melissa D (28:32)
Great. You were looking at,

were you looking at gay corn by chance? I bet. Okay.

Makia (28:36)
⁓ most definitely.

Yeah, most definitely. But that's not how I got there. there's a website called TribeNet back in the old days of like early 2000s.

Melissa D (28:43)
Okay.

I remember this.

Makia (28:49)
Yeah, it was a Burning Man community and I faked my age and got onto this site and was just kind of perusing all the different forums that they had. And I came across Miss Jaya or Jaya ⁓ at that point. I think she went by like Dakini Jaya back then. Yeah.

Melissa D (29:04)
⁓ my goodness. And for those listening,

Jaya created the erotic blueprints, right? Yeah. Okay. And was also in the training, sexological body workers and just in that whole field. Okay.

Makia (29:11)
Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, so she was, I saw a video or it was like a literal VHS at that point of her and Kenneth Ray Stubbs, who I think passed away a year or two ago. But yeah, he was teaching about shamanic sexuality and erotic bodywork. And I just remember being like, whatever the fuck this is, I want this. I want this. And I was home at that point. So I remember showing it to my mom and being like, I want to train in this, whatever this is.

Melissa D (29:39)
Yes.

Makia (29:44)
this is what I want to do and she's like, whoa, I don't know how your grandparents would feel about this, but maybe someday. Yeah, that was how I got.

Melissa D (29:51)
That's so cool

that you can share it with your mother.

Makia (29:54)
yeah, my parents are both super sex positive and really open and they love what I do and it's really nice to have their support. But yeah.

Melissa D (30:02)
my

goodness. Okay, so you found Joseph Kramer's work through the tribe.net. I remember Tribe. I was like on there and I didn't have any Burning Man pictures and I just felt like an outsider. I was too not leather and feather enough. I don't know.

Makia (30:15)
you

It was very much the vibe back then, yeah. it was such a cool space. I felt like it was such a nexus for people, especially in forums, to be able to share about like raw food. That was how I learned about raw veganism at that point and went down that whole rabbit hole. I think you were going by mango at that point or Melissa mango. Yeah. And in the food thing. But yeah, so very much.

Melissa D (30:20)
Totally.

Wow, okay.

huh. Yeah. Yeah. huh.

That's great. So I'm curious. So Makiya now fast forward just in Ireland doing your thing. what are some you know share whatever you're comfortable with but what are some things that you're personally exploring dabbling with learning about yourself and your sexuality that you'd like to share?

Makia (30:48)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Well, yeah, it's been quite an odd experience. Like I went from being, you know, pretty sexually open, polyamorous, and going to all sorts of like Shabari events and play parties in California to being monogamous and married, living here in Ireland with my partner. I feel like...

Melissa D (31:22)
Amazing.

Makia (31:23)
Yeah, it's been great. I did not expect it at all. But it's been a whole journey of just kind of having this existential experience of learning to exist as an erotic human in different ways.

But yeah, my love and current obsession has been, yeah, group spaces for pleasure practices. I've been really loving and nerding out on just the magic that happens when people come together and come together. But really like experience a whole range of pleasure. it can, there's been a few folks in my, like the pleasure spaces that I hold where they just take a nap. Like that pleasure to them that day looks like letting their body rest and just like being on camera.

Melissa D (31:51)
Yes.

I love

it.

Makia (32:04)
It's been really sweet or like, you know, doing art and like doing painting on their body and just I feel like it's been so fun to watch all the different flavors of human and how people express themselves in their own pleasure body and letting people have the freedom to express themselves. I feel like I think Cosmo said in one of the podcasts you did a while back, that's like the work that I feel like so many of us do in this field is like just encouraging people to

to express themselves more fully.

Melissa D (32:34)
Mm-hmm. I love

that. I love that you mentioned the pleasure practice. So for those that are listening the pleasure practice I mean in sexological bodywork terms and also dating back to Joseph Kramer, you know creating this space We've got your little mat much like a yoga class and you've sitting there with you know You could have some ropes and sensory tools some toys a blanket to take a nap Paints like whatever and then everyone kind of goes into the experience

and with soft eyes, so there's a little bit of witnessing, but also not interrupting someone's energy, but just kind of being in the permission field of it all. ⁓ There's a lot to be felt and learned there. Yeah, amazing.

Makia (33:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I feel like the word

that always comes up is like we're like permissionaries, like we're giving each other permission through how we're showing up with each other to explore different facets of pleasure. Like I've often noticed, and I'm not intently watching people, but obviously you're seeing people out of the periphery of your vision or we're on a call, like you might just glance and there's people on the screen. It's just like all the different flavors that can show up. And there's things that I've seen people do where I'm like, I never would have thought to explore my body in that way.

would have thought to like that that's what pleasure could look like. So I feel like it just we can open up all these new worlds for each other and how we we want to explore our bodies and arrows.

Melissa D (33:55)
I

love it. I just had this this vision as you were saying that like, yeah, witnessing other people and going, ⁓ I didn't think of that. There was this exercise we did in the training where we got to be witnessed by our, you know, team or our colleagues and to show them just clothes, you know, show them how we pleasure ourselves and what positions we get locked into or where we feel free or like whatever. And it was just

Makia (34:11)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa D (34:21)
It was almost a comedy skit, but it was also just super sweet to just show like, this is how I do it. Okay, how do you do it? Okay, then how do you do it? You know, it's just so fun to see. And then we could also, I think, take it a step further. Then the colleagues all made suggestions to the person that was showing, okay, great. So you're holding the vibrator like this. What happens if you like totally let go and stand up, you know? And so it's just.

Makia (34:32)
What?

Melissa D (34:48)
Again, like inviting each other to think and do and feel differently, to create the neuroplasticity and to maybe just try something else on.

Makia (34:57)
Yeah, I love that, that's brilliant. I felt like second show and tell. mean, that's like, yeah. That's awesome.

Melissa D (35:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, which speaking

of showing and telling, like being in a space with community and revealing your genitals, not for anything to happen, but just the art of it. I mean, that's some edgy stuff. And I also find it to be deeply healing for people is to just non sexually gaze at people's genitals and just feel into what's it like to view it. What's it like to be seen, witness all the varieties.

Yeah, wow.

Makia (35:35)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think there's a lot of magic in just being able to uncouple genitals being exclusively erotic and just looking at them as like you'd look at any other body part and as this beautiful part of a human. Yeah, it's really...

Melissa D (35:48)
Yeah.

Wonderful. Well, Makaya, tell us a little bit about Spain in June before we close down for our evening.

Makia (35:56)
Yeah, so a dear friend and colleague, she was my supervisor when I was in school for sexological bodywork. Her name's Lutzi, Lutzi Pods is an amazing woman. She created this incredible program called JUICE. It's a self-pleasure retreat for women and vulva owners. So that we do have like folks across the gender, the spectrum as long as they have vulvas. And so it's five days and over the five days we're exploring erotic body.

and movement and pleasure and self-pleasure practices every day. And there's a group of incredible, I think there's six of us facilitators or co-facilitators. And yeah, it'll be mid-June over the summer solstice in this beautiful retreat setting in the mountains, the Sierra Nevada mountains in Spain.

Melissa D (36:42)
Wow, the Sierra, Sierra, there's Sierra Nevadas in Spain.

Makia (36:46)
Yeah, and they look almost identical to Nevada City. That's, was, yeah, when I went there, I was like, I can see why the Spanish came to California. And we're like, we'll just call this the Sierra Nevadas because it looks exactly the same. Yeah. And there's many hippies in this area as well. So.

Melissa D (36:49)
No kidding.

That's so cool. ⁓

checks out, okay. Makaya, thank you so much for joining us late night and the work that you do. Everyone, go follow this person. I know that there's so many other topics that we didn't even touch down on that you are just brilliant in. So yeah, again, thank you for being here and we'll chat soon.

Makia (37:23)
Great, thanks so much, Melissa. It's been a