What If Your Turn-Ons Are Trying To Heal You #136

Your sex life doesn’t need more performance, it needs more truth in the body. We sit down with Darshana Avila, a trauma-informed somatic educator and sexological bodyworker featured on Netflix’s Sex, Love and Goop, to talk about what changes when you stop chasing “being good” and start building real connection to sensation, desire, and choice.

We dig into erotic wholeness: Eros as sexuality and also as creativity, vitality, and life force. From shame to BDSM misconceptions to the idea behind Existential Kink, we explore how turn-ons can be complex, how aversion can shift in the right consensual container, and why “don’t yuck another person’s yum” is more than a cute phrase. Darshana also explains why so many people say “I don’t know what I like,” and why that beginner’s mind can be the most powerful place to start.

Then we get practical about embodiment and nervous system regulation. We also talk about where tension can hide in the body and simple ways to reconnect through your senses in daily life.

If this conversation opens something up for you share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find honest, body-based sex education.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth Podcast. Frank talk about sex and dating.

Tamara 0:05

Hello, Tamara here. Welcome to the show. Today's guest is Darshina Avila, a trauma-informed somatic educator, practitioner, and international speaker. Her work has been featured on Netflix's Sex, Love and Goop, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and numerous leading podcasts. Thanks for joining me, Darshina.

Darshana 0:23

Thanks for having me, Tamara.

Tamara 0:25

Yes, that was super cool that you were featured on Sex, Love, and Goop because I mentioned that in a previous episode. I thought it was like the best show ever, and I did get feedback from one listener who immediately watched it.

Darshana 0:36

So we love hearing that. Yeah, it was a very cool thing to be a part of that.

From Corporate Life To Sexual Healing

Tamara 0:41

Yeah. Do you want to talk about how you came to do this work? Talk about that show or get right into your main body.

Darshana 0:49

Any and all of these things are good. I mean, I they're they're related. You know, I came to this professional path through personal exploration. It was my own journey of exploring sexuality, spirituality, some big changes that were going on in my life in my late 20s and my early 30s that really set me on a course of a lot of focused um exploration and experimentation. And at a certain point, I had a corporate career back then. People are always a little like, wait, what? When they find that out now. But yeah, my life was marching in a direction that we could say looks a lot more like what the mainstream norm tells us success should be. You know, I had a solid career, I was married, I had a home, I had all these things going on, and yet it wasn't actually fulfilling me in the deepest ways that I wanted. And my sexuality and my spirituality were both areas of my life that were really lighting me up, but they felt very disconnected from one another. And something in me knew that that didn't have to be that way. And that's something more, you know, it's it's very like that thing we say, but a lot of my clients say it like, I know there's something more. It's like, and I just set myself on a path of figuring that out. And eventually it led me to the work that I do, which has been such an amazing evolution. I've been in private practice for 11 years now. Sex Love and Goop happened four years ago this month that we're recording this. Um, it was so cool to get to contribute to something that, you know, I hear it all the time. Like you said, therapists refer it, podcast hosts refer it, friends refer it to their friends, and to be part of showing people all across the world that there are far more ways to get to know themselves as erotic beings and to understand and explore their sexuality and their intimate relationships. Like we we have such a narrow sense of that that's handed to us, most of us in our like kind of mainstream cultural norm. And so it's really an honor to get to help people expand their perspectives.

Tamara 2:59

Yeah, definitely very cool.

Existential Kink And Shame Reframed

Tamara 3:01

And I'm listening to this book, Existential Kink. Are you familiar with it at all?

Darshana 3:06

Oh, yeah, very much so.

Tamara 3:07

Yeah, that was like a new concept, you know, similar to what you do too. I just it's like all new to me, like you said. And she was talking about like something's missing as well, and just kind of like helping people figure that out.

Darshana 3:18

So I'm yeah, I mean, and I can even riff on that. I've I've read the book, I'm familiar with the work, and you know, like the basic premise there being that we can actually really get off on things that we don't like, and we can sometimes perpetuate our suffering because there's a part of us that loves it. And and that shows up, you know, in the work that I do too, like helping people to recognize that even aversion can, when explored in a particular context, can be a source of arousal, of pleasure, of turn on. Um, when we're not looking at things in such like narrow black and white ways, like there's a whole like wide array of possibility that opens up for us and a lot of healing that's available.

Tamara 4:03

Yeah, I know one of my more popular episodes is on shame and like BDSM therapy as like read helping reduce the shame. So I'd imagine it's similar to the kind of stuff.

Darshana 4:15

Yeah, I mean, it it's interesting. I was at a I was at a party this past weekend with a bunch of other sex educators and practitioners of different sorts, and I was in a conversation with someone who's a pro-dom and and really loves to teach about um like humiliation and degradation and and how it's so often not what people think it is. You know, we we have, and this is true about so much, I think, of our sex, that we have these very kind of salacious ideas uh that that like these really over-dramatized, like maybe something we saw in a movie. And for instance, when we play with shame and when we play with the concept of humiliation, it could be something as playful as being like, oh, you get really, really turned on by this weird thing, don't you? And in that way, even though it could on the surface seem like maybe that's an embarrassing or humiliating thing to say, when it's actually done in a safe consensual container and and there are people who are clear in the roles that they're playing. If I'm the one who's saying what I just said, like, oh, you're you get, you know, like I'm just gonna riff. Like you, you're into feet. Like, ooh, you really love having feet like down your, you know, in your mouth or whatever. Now, if I said that in polite conversation, people would be like, oh, oh, weird, gross. But in that way, we're actually in the moment and the way that I said it, we're taking the shame out of it and we're making space to celebrate that what what whatever turns you on is great. Um, there's a saying that it gets floated around in a lot of the more like sex positive communities, which is don't yuck another person's yum. And and and that, the the spirit of that is like, yeah, you don't have to be into what somebody else is into, but we also don't have to shame it. We don't have to make it wrong or bad. We could respect and celebrate that all of us have different things that that really do it for us. And when we can find aligned partners, community, what have you, to be able to explore these things, to celebrate these things with, it's incredibly liberating. And we have a greater sense of our own wholeness, um, which is a big part of my work. It's erotic wholeness is my is my body of work for a reason. And it's kind of like two components Eros as sexuality, yes, but also life force energy, creativity, vitality, passion in whatever ways that you channel it. Wholeness being uh in recognition of the fact that we have inside of us everything we need to be whole, to feel like an integrated entire person. And yet many of us are moving through life feeling really fragmented, really disconnected because of shame, because of what our dominant culture tells us is good, bad, right, wrong. And so we get to do the work then of like decolonizing our minds and dismantling those limiting beliefs and really claiming for ourselves what's authentic. And that's one of the most powerful healers and transformational journeys that anybody can go on.

Tamara 7:25

Yeah, I I came to existential kink from the book from Poverty. She was a reality star on Survivor in a bunch of shows, and she she had fragmented, like um, she thought she had to be good, like she didn't think it was ever okay to not be good. So that was how her discovery. So I'm still have yet to discover what I'm hiding or trying to keep away. I don't I've I'm kind of an open book, so I wonder if there really is. I'm sure there is, but but yeah.

People Pleasing In Intimacy

Darshana 7:54

Well, it'll be an exciting exploration to find that out. Yeah, and the the thing about needing to be good, you know, uh it I'm I'm making an assumption that Parvati is a femme presenting person. Um, and particularly in in our dominant culture, girls and women, we have a lot of conditioning, whether it is overt and in our face or more subtle, we have a lot of conditioning to people please, to be good, to be seen as pleasing and accommodating and not rock the boat. And even I, you know, I work with a lot of women who are like powerhouses, high achievers in many aspects of their lives. And yet when it comes to intimate relationship, there's this collapse. There, there's this defaulting back to I need to follow my partner's lead, I need to go along with what they want, I'm really here to provide something for them, not to get something for myself. And it's a really problematic and deeply entrenched conditioning that that I myself am in recovery from. You know, I don't exempt myself from this. I'm a recovering people pleaser, I'm a recovering perfectionist, as many of us are. And when we do that work to really look at what where did these beliefs come from? Where did I get the notion that in a in an intimate relationship or in a sexual context that my role is to purely satisfy the other person as opposed to being in it for myself? Like when we can unwind that and then open up to the vast possibility of what does give me pleasure? What what lights me up? How do I want to play here? How how can this enhance my life? Again, it's like you're just opening up a Pandora's box in the most positive sense of possibility and and and latent potential that's inside of you waiting to be expressed.

Tamara 9:45

Yeah.

Darshana 9:45

And like you said, not a lot of women know even what they like here till they It's the most common thing when I I literally was just on a call before hopping on with you with a new client who's about to sign on. And I was sharing with her that, like, yeah, most people reach out to me saying some version of, I don't know what I like. I don't know what I want, I don't know how to communicate about it. And and that's a beautiful place to begin because I don't know is is one of the it's humbling, but it's like a beginner's mind kind of moment where it's like, okay, I don't know. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot for me to learn, to know, to explore. So as long as you're willing to lean in, then there is tremendous potential that

Somatic Practice And Embodied Consent

Darshana 10:29

awaits. Yeah.

Tamara 10:29

So how would you work with someone to get them to like is it like the show where you try the different things out and see what works?

Darshana 10:37

Or I mean the the show is both a very honest and accurate representation, and it's a highly edited um down to, you know, over over the course of three episodes in the series, you see me on the screen for maybe a grand total of 30, 40 minutes, and that's a fraction of the time that I actually spend with my clients in real life. Um, we start, you know, the journey that I like to take people on is one of relaxed arousal. So we start with the relaxation part, which encompasses trauma healing, if it that is a focused area that someone needs. For all of us, it's nervous system regulation, which is to say helping us to be more present, more responsive, more available. And so I the work that I do, in case anyone listening is not clear, somatic simply means of the body, body-based healing. And so, even though, of course, I talk to my clients, much of what we're doing is experiential. It's it's body-based practices. And so we go through lots of different exercises, experience, iterations of body work, hands-on healing that are more about relaxation, rejuvenation, getting you to feel really safe and at ease and comfortable in the space that I hold. We explore consent in very structured ways, embodied consent, different dynamics of who's giving, who's receiving, what are the roles that we're in, which can lend themselves to terms that we hear spoken of, like in a BDSM context of DOM sub, or even terms like top bottom, which are not intrinsically kink-related, but they can be. Who is the doer? Who is the one being done to? And so we explore all these different dynamics so that whoever I'm working with has a chance to really feel what it's like to be in them and recognize where they have growth edges and where they're most comfortable and what it's like to inhabit these different roles. I give my clients a lot of vocabulary, vocabulary about their bodies, vocabulary about touch, vocabulary about sexual positions and acts that it's it's kind of wild how many of us have a really poor vocabulary when it comes to sex and intimacy. Even people who are super eloquent in a million other contexts might might clam up or just use very vague general terms to talk about, yeah, touch me here, or I want a little more. And it's like, what do we really mean? Right, like so, creating a context where you've got more nuanced vocabulary, helping people feel empowered in directing their experiences. So, again, we do a lot of practices where where my client becomes the boss and they have to, they only get what they want, or rather, they only get what they ask for. So if they want it, they have to learn how to ask for it. For some people, that is the most terrifying part of the journey. For others, it's incredibly liberating and exciting. And so I meet my clients where they're at with that.

One Way Erotic Therapy Explained

Darshana 13:37

And then we progress from there into the kind of upper edge of what I offer, which is what makes my work so unique. As a sexological body worker, I actually do hands-on, hands-in erotic therapeutic work with my clients. So the tongue-in-cheek way that I introduce myself is I say I'm a professional pussy stroker because I am. Um, I mostly work with cis women and then non-binary AFAB folks. Um, sometimes I work with their male partners, but most of my clients are vulva havers, and we get to go on these journeys where they are the center of attention, they are the sole focus of an erotic experience. And most of us have never had that. Never. You know, like we everything we learn about our sex and all of the experiences that we have usually are partnered, and we very understandably care about our partner in that dynamic as well, but sometimes too much, sometimes far more than we focus on or care about ourselves. And so the space that I'm offering is for my clients to get to have a sexual encounter that is not reciprocal. So the touch that I offer my clients is one-directional from me to them. They do not reciprocate in kind. They get to lay there, move there, dance there, be there, and really feel their erotic energy, their sexual expression come online for themselves, for nobody but themselves. And it's it's such a beautiful space because grief gets to move when it's there, ecstasy gets to move when it's there. Time and time again, clients have the most powerful orgasms that they've ever experienced, because everything has been orchestrated to move at their pace, as opposed to them adapting their pace to the other person or people involved. And, you know, if all of us in our formative years had gotten to learn about our sex this way, if we all were initiated in ways that really put us at the center of our experience and where we learned about our desires, our preferences, our boundaries first, we learned about our anatomy of arousal first, and then we started messing around and having fun with other people. What a different world we'd be living in. But, you know, that's not how most of us learn. So it's, you know, anybody who get who chooses this for themselves at whatever age and stage of life, I would say, you know, the vast majority of my clients are in their like 40s and 50s, some in their 30s, some in their 60s, even 70s. You know, occasionally I'll get somebody in their 20s who's just super precocious and dedicated to themselves. So whatever age and stage you're at, it's the right time for you. If you're a yes to exploring in that way, that's what you know. I always like to encourage people to just be where they are in the journey, and and you're gonna gain a tremendous amount.

Tamara 16:34

Since you talked about uh working with you, do you want to share how they can reach you?

Darshana 16:40

And like oh, yeah. I mean my my website is my name, darshanaavila.com, and I am on Instagram and I am on YouTube. I have a free online community called Galgasm that has a ton of resources in it. Um, so that you know, there's different ways to get started. And for as far as my private practice goes, I'm based in Oakland, California, so the San Francisco Bay Area. Yet a lot of my clients travel to work with me from different parts of the country, even different parts of the world. So there are a lot of options if what I'm offering excites you as you're listening. I really love hearing from folks who have heard me on a podcast and connected with some piece of it. So reach out.

Tamara 17:20

Awesome. Thank

Where Trauma Lives In The Body

Tamara 17:21

you. I know you talk about bridging embodiment. Is that do you want to share more about that?

Darshana 17:27

Yeah, I mean, maybe we could start by saying, like, what does that mean? I I am absolutely guilty of using a lot of like very trendy words that that it's like energy, embodiment. Like, what are we actually talking about here? And you're in a body. So we could argue that everybody is embodied, but what I think many of us also know to be true is just because we're in a body doesn't mean we feel connected to our bodies. Does not mean that we are readily paying attention to the wisdom and the guidance of our bodies. Most of us will respond to pain. You know, if if some part of our body is talking loudly to us, saying, my neck hurts, you know, maybe we'll go to the chiropractor or get the massage, my my stomach hurts. I'm gonna take the tums or whatever I'm gonna do, right? But far fewer of us are really tuned in at the level that would let us discern this is a yes, this is a no. This is what I truly want right now. This is what would give me the most pleasure. So to be embodied, to be in a more present, intimate relationship with your body means that you're able to discern and follow your body's wisdom. And that's something that, you know, again, I spoke earlier about like our culture, our dominant culture is one of disembodiment. We are actively taught to be disconnected from our bodies in every way, shape, or form. It's in our our school norms, it's in the way most of us work, um, because we become more pliable, we're we're we're we're better at following the rules and we don't actually feel our bodies saying to us, I don't know about that, this isn't quite right for me. So when you do the work of becoming more connected to your body, and that could look like for somebody who has a more active trauma response that takes hold a lot, learning how to slow it down so that instead of feeling beholden to your freeze or your anger or whatever comes up, you actually learn how to resource yourself in real time so that you can be present and centered and respond instead of react. The difference between a response and a reaction, reaction happens from the most primitive part of our brain. It is lightning quick, and we're not at choice about it. It happens to us. A response comes from our prefrontal cortex. It is a conscious choice. I can be thoughtful, I can discern what I want to say, what I want to do. So when I talk about slowing down, what that means is that it's not that we don't have reactions. Our reactions are there for a reason, but it means that we can slow down enough to actually choose do I want to continue in this way or do I want to make a different choice for myself? When it comes to intimate relationship, it's super important because a lot of us, our reactions are masking our desire for connection, right? Like the thing we actually want is to be able to lean in and feel feel I'm here with you, you're here with me. Like we care about each other, we're having a shared experience. But and I'm my my default, I'm a fighter. So so I go toward anger and and I'm I'm more explosive. And then a lot of the people closest to me have more like freeze or fawn responses where they might get really quiet or just like go along, play their part. Those two things like are just like a firestorm together because I get angry, they they get passive, we're not actually connecting. When I can slow myself down and notice, oh, you know what? There's a part of me that's just like super worked up right now and wants to bite, but I'm gonna go take a walk for a few minutes and I'm gonna shake my body out and I'm gonna do some deep breaths and I'm gonna remind myself consciously that I am safe and that I am relating with someone who loves me and who I love and what I really, really want is connection. So I'm gonna do everything I can to come back to that. Intimacy is possible. Intimacy does not mean we're perfect. It doesn't mean that we don't ever have these reactions. It means that we're vulnerable. It means that we can be humble when we need to, and that we'll lean into the discomfort in service to actually being in connection with one another. And so that has everything to do with our embodiment journey, with our trauma healing, with somatics, with these wider themes that we're speaking of here, because it's what actually lets us have the capacity to really stay. Present in an intimate connection.

Tamara 22:02

Yeah. And if and I've heard there's like trap trauma, and that's part of what your work, I guess. Is there like certain places in the body where it's like certain things are trapped or stored? Like you like your arm is this thing, or you're kind of like that.

Darshana 22:16

Yeah, I mean it depends upon what what school of wisdom you're following. You know, like my my early formative spirituality that led me to this path is yoga. And I remember hearing in this very like generalized way, like, you store anger and grief in your hips and you store this in your belly. And I'm not disagreeing or poo-pooing any of that. I don't necessarily like subscribe to that in like a very, very like close, fierce way. But what I do know is that when I put my hands on someone's body and I'm a very intuitive and healer of, so you know, whether or not we're talking about like an overt sexual context, like when I'm doing hands-on work with clients, it often is abdomen, it often is hips, it often is pelvis, where a lot of this pent-up energy is stored in the body. And that's why my work, we could, from a certain lens, put it under the heading of like pelvic care. It's an area of the body that we almost never get to have met with therapeutic touch. You know, like you go for a massage and every other part of your body but your chest and your genitals is going to be included. That's not necessarily the case in some other cultures, um, because they understand the importance of working with whole body. And particularly our pelvis is our pelvis is a network, like a basket weave, if you will, of soft tissue. It's got so many places where pockets of tension and tightness, where the patterns of bracing and locking down in our body can really take root. And because we're not often moving our bodies and receiving touch in those parts of our bodies in ways that help it release, never mind all the emotional and energetic components that keep it trapped in there. That often is the place where when I really start doing the deeper work with people, the releases can be quite profound.

Tamara 24:20

Okay. Yeah, I've heard something like that. So but not the pelvic, but just having releases that are really like profound. But I have yet to experience that myself, but I've heard of these things.

Darshana 24:33

And it's not the only part of the body, you know, that it it can happen from other places. Yeah.

Tamara 24:38

I just I go to the chiropractor because you mentioned her having a hurt neck before. So I was like, that was funny when you mentioned that because that's exactly how I went because my neck was hurting. And then I have like this tension in my upper back where they just she's like putting her entire elbow and like body on it. It was just and I never knew it was like I didn't feel anything until she was doing it. You know, like I it's like hidden until she touches it.

Darshana 25:01

Totally. I I mean, and that's so real. I I happened to have a massage yesterday, and it's the same where it's like, yeah, I mean, I do this for a living. I have so much knowledge about it, and I am no different than anybody else. I can walk around with so much tension held in my body that is effectively invisibilized, right? Like, so so I spoke earlier about the fact that we often will register and respond to pain in our body. But what's also true is that a lot of our pain, a lot of our discomfort is effectively invisible to us because we're so used to it. We're so used to the tension in the shoulders, we're so used to the that slight little ache in the knee or whatever it is, and we stop registering it as a problem. And then all of a sudden, like you described with the chiropractor, like I had happen yesterday with the massage, they start putting those elbows in there and digging into the pressure points and whatnot. It's like, holy moly, like I can't believe all of that is pent up in here. And it is. So, you know, the thing to know is that it's there. And the choice that we each have is what are we gonna do with that? You know, like, do we actually want to lean in? We talked earlier about connection between us and another, an intimate, a beloved, but it's also intimacy with self. Like, do you want to make the choice to lean into what your body is telling you to become more embodied, to uncover those pockets of tension, of pain, of trauma that might be held and release them so that you have more capacity for pleasure. Because that's the way that this works. Like, it's we don't get to just pick and choose, I want more of this, less than that. It's kind of like you want more of anything, you're gonna get more of everything. So when you lean into the pain or the discomfort, you gotta go through it. But what's on the other side is also more aliveness, more joy, more pleasure, more vitality. Um, so that's you know, that that's what for me certainly makes this journey worthwhile.

Tamara 27:02

Yeah. Sounds like it'd be beneficial for probably most people, you say. I would agree. Not everybody. Yeah. Well, I think this is a good time unless you feel like there's something we missed, um, to just have final comments or like kind of a takeaways. If you think there's something there and you're not sure what, where, where should someone start,

Start With Your Senses And Get Support

Tamara 27:22

or like what would be a good one?

Darshana 27:23

I mean, the the place that I love to invite people to start is cultivating a connection to your senses. And that might sound incredibly simplistic because it is, but it doesn't mean it's not profound. So specifically, when I say cultivate a connection to your senses, start paying more attention to what you see, what you smell, what you taste, what you hear, what you are sensing in your body. You could do this as a very structured practice where take a walk in your neighborhood, even take a walk around your house with an eye on what am I perceiving? What am I noticing? Because the senses are how our body speaks to us. Sometimes it's that sixth sense, an intuition, that can show up like a thought form or a visual or what have you. But very often our body is communicating through our senses that we have an active relationship with, or just not necessarily paying a ton of attention to them. So learning to pay more attention to your senses brings you into the present moment more. And the present moment is where your body is going to talk to you and reveal to you what you need, what you want, what's a yes, what's a no. So even small doses of just being more intentionally dialed into what you're perceiving through your senses is a starting point. And if you're wanting to go deeper into your own embodiment journey, into your own trauma healing journey, into more like expansive exploration of your eroticism, the real thing that I want you to know is whether or not it's me, get guidance. There is no reason to go it alone. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. All of us deserve to have some support. And that can take many forms. You're listening to this podcast, good on you. That's one of them. Books, workshops, YouTube channels. Like my YouTube channel has a ton of videos on it that you could dive into. You could work with a practitioner directly. I see a lot of people resist being helped. And then there's an accumulation of the frustration and the lack and going without. You don't have to put yourself through that. You know, get help that can meet you where you're at. There, there's no nothing shameful about that. There's no weakness. It's actually a really beautiful thing to have a guide uh along your journey, you know, wherever you are in that path. So that would be my encouragement. Okay.

Tamara 29:45

Awesome. All right. Well, thank you very much for being on.

Darshana 29:49

You're welcome.

Tamara 29:50

And if you love this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. Thank you again, Darshanna. Alrighty. Bye, everyone. Frank talk! Frank Talk! Sex and dating edge kids.