Wellness and Wealth
Wellness and Wealth
From Shame to Signal: Reclaiming Pleasure as Medicine with Stacie Steinbock
Stress doesn’t just live in your head—it shapes your breath, your hormones, and the choices you make when you’re tired and tense. We sit down with intimacy coach and educator Stacie Steinbock of The Golden Thread to explore how pleasure can be a reliable, ethical, and practical medicine for bodies carrying burnout, shame, and even post-cancer changes. Stacie brings a rare blend of expertise: two decades in sexuality education, including medical curriculum work with the UofL School of Medicine, and a rigorous Tibetan Five Element Tantra certification that roots her methods in lineage-based somatic practice.
We trace the real gaps in sex education—silence around desire, relationships, and body image—and how that silence becomes a generational pattern. Stacy shares her ovarian cancer story, surgical menopause, and the intimate process of relearning pleasure when familiar pathways no longer work. From there, we get specific: what somatic healing means, how cellular memory keeps trauma in the tissues, and why talk therapy alone can’t always resolve what the nervous system still flags as threat. You’ll hear how the chemistry of pleasure—dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins—protects against chronic cortisol, restoring focus, motivation, and calm. We also explore an Eastern perspective that frames orgasm as a momentary taste of freedom from suffering, while reminding us that everyday joys—like a quiet walk or a warm bath—can return the body to safety.
Stacie offers a grounded framework: movement, meditation, connection practices, and pleasure practices clients take home—no touch, clear ethics, collaborative care with medical providers when needed. We include a short guided exercise to feel the difference between recalling pain and invoking a nourishing sensory memory, illustrating how quickly the body can shift states. The takeaway is simple and powerful: pleasure isn’t an indulgence that steals from productivity; it’s the fuel that sustains creativity, resilience, and a clear connection to your why.
If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs relief, and leave a review to help more listeners find this conversation. To explore Stacie’s work, reach out for her free 30-minute consultation and ask for the complimentary ebook on pleasure as medicine.
Offer: 1:1 private intimacy coaching with Stacie for individuals, couples, and partnership systems
Offer Link: https://www.goldenthreadtantra.com/services
Connect with Wendy Manganaro:
Hi everyone, it's Wendy Manganero from Wellness and Wealth, and we're back for another episode with Stacy Steinbach. Stacy is the owner of Golden Thread and an intimacy coach based out of Strong Roots Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work wins a master's degree in human sexuality education with over 20 years of teaching experience and higher education, alongside certification as a Tibetan five element tantra practitioner trained through the only government-accredited Tantra program in the world. This unique and powerful combination of academic expertise, somatic practice, and lineage-based spiritual traditions allows Stacey to offer a fully embodied, empowering approach to sexual healing and growth. Welcome, Stacy. Thank you, Wendy. Dude, it's wonderful to be here. I'm really happy you're here. Stacy and I have known each other pre-COVID. I lived in Kentucky, and I've worked with her and her husband, and we stayed in contact, and she started this endeavor. And I went, This will be a great show because we haven't had anything like this on the show before. So I'm really excited you're here.
SPEAKER_02:No, thank you. It's awesome to be here connecting with you and your listeners.
SPEAKER_01:Today's topic is the healing power of pleasure. Life has become very different since COVID for you and transformation. I'd love to know your why and what drew you to the field of human sexuality and eventually creating golden thread.
SPEAKER_02:I love to start with the why because that really connects me into my passion. So thank you for starting there. My sex ed as a young person was completely insufficient. It did not prepare me for real life. And as I have worked with people for about 20 years as a sexuality educator, that is the story I hear from most people I work with. You're not alone if you're out there listening saying, yeah, that was me too. That unfortunately is a very common experience. I would describe my sex ed as bare bones with an emphasis on abstinence until marriage, and not even so much was left out. Things like body image, changes you'll go through in puberty, how to figure out what a healthy relationship looks like, and then how to create a healthy relationship. There was a lot of messages around shame if you did experience sexual desire as a female, at the same time living in a culture inundating us with imagery of women as sexual objects that is something you are supposed to be, but not to actually experience desire yourself. I think the culmination of all of this is that as a young person, I was trying to make my way through a landmine where there are so many conflicting messages around sexuality with very few reliable, relatable guys. I really came to this work because I realized that it was the work that I desired to do for myself. And then I realized this is the work that I really want to do for other people is to be that trusted guide through this territory.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. So funny. I don't remember what grade was the first one where they were showing the video where they show a baby being born. I fell asleep during it and woke up just as the baby was crowning. Remember going, I think go back to sleep. But I also remember that we were not allowed to have sex ed until 12th grade. Which even then in the late 80s, early 90s, this is a little backwards. My changes were going through way before 12th grade.
SPEAKER_02:So many opportunities for confusion and missteps.
SPEAKER_01:We were going through that during the AIDS epidemic, and they still hadn't changed anything to talk about anything earlier. Like, even I know there's something wrong with this. And parents, because many of us were raised by the boomers generation, they didn't talk about it either.
SPEAKER_02:They didn't get good sex in this like lineage of generational misinformation. Well, can you passing that down to our children unless we do something about it?
SPEAKER_01:So I'd love to know because you've had roles in higher education and entrepreneurship and advocacy. How did those experiences shape the lens you brought to your current work in Tantra and intimacy coaching?
SPEAKER_02:My 20 years in higher end helped me gain depth in the academic field of human sexuality. I attended lots of conferences, I trained thousands of people around sexuality topics. And for five years, I collaborated with colleagues to research and write scholarly articles as well as a book that we published. My work has an advocacy lens, I feel like I'm an advocate in my heart. The work I feel perhaps the proudest of is that I was with the U of L School of Medicine for five years, and I got to lead a group of educators there to fully inclusive medical school curriculum, teaching medical students about the unique healthcare needs of LGBTQ patients and DSD patients. So differences in sex differentiation. And it was awesome work. I got to work with so many smart, powerful women. And now I really get to bring that into the work that I do as an intimacy coach and also weave it with Eastern philosophy and spirituality. I'm comfortable with Western science, looking up scholarly articles for my clients and better understanding the challenges that they're coming in with or having conversations with their doctors and pelvic floor physical therapists. I'm also very comfortable now in the space of Eastern philosophy, specifically Tibetan five-element tantra, which is a somatic modality. The four pillars of healing that I use in as a coach now is that I do movement practices with clients, meditation, connection practices, and pleasure practices. Whenever I say that, I also want to clarify that my work with clients never involves touch. That is a clear part of my ethics. I am teaching them how to do these things to go home and do these practices, which is an experiential learning modality. And then they come back and tell me about their experiences and what they're learning and also what they're learning that maybe they want to undo and have new thoughts and feelings around. It's really beautiful, transformational. We're in that way. What I think is interesting about sexuality is that it permeates all areas of our life, mental health, spiritual health, physical health. It permeates how we show up in the world as parents. It permeates how we show up in the world as entrepreneurs. And I see that with when clients are empowered in their sexuality, it is the tide that lifts all boats. Their life feels more integrated and empowered. That's really what I want for my clients.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome. I think back to my childhood as a Jet X, it was an interesting time. I had a wonderful uncle who was gay, and it was the 80s and 90s, and things were different. What I learned about sex was we didn't talk about it. I didn't even figure out that he was gay until I was 12. And that was by accent it was upset I knew. I never thought it was a big deal. I've raised my children to never think any of this is a big deal. But for different generations, it really is. I also see it from generation to generation that we're getting better.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I would absolutely agree. It just getting better. And that is so exciting. I think that having that advocacy lens and experience, one of the things I find to be such a gift around that is that I feel so comfortable working with people from marginalized communities. So maybe LGBTQ people, people in open relationships, people from the kink community. And then that gives me the ability to not just work with them, but then when I work with people for more kind of traditional roles in society, and I work with a lot of women who identify as white and straight and in monogamous relationships, that allows me to be with them in the way they know that I can be safe and non-judgmental, because that's the core of what we need around human sexuality, the place where we can feel safe, where we feel like we're not being judged. And you know, that story you told about accidentally learning about your uncle's identity and then the judgment he had for himself around that identity, and he didn't want you to know. That's the pain we feel around sexuality so often is feeling broken or alone, feeling like the only one.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. It was the family secret, it was definitely the family secret, and I very clearly chose to not raise my son with that family secret because I was like, we're not doing this another generation. He was upset with me for a bit. I still don't care what I'm saying. I'm all about breaking family trauma, but I want to talk about another type of trauma. As a cancer survivor, I know you have struggled in the last few years, you have gone through ovarian cancer. How has that journey helped you get to this approach with sexuality and how that experience reframed your understanding and healing?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. I speak very openly about this because being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, as you can imagine, is pivotal and it really kind of blessing that it helped me redefine my career, such as becoming an entrepreneur. My cancer journey included a full hysterectomy and chemo treatments and completely reframed my understanding of pleasure and healing. The most immediate challenge I faced was sexual dysfunction. And as a sexuality educator, with all of this information, information alone was not very helpful in helping me work through sexual dysfunction, especially when it had to do with the trauma of a cancer diagnosis and a major change to my body because full hysterectomy means I went into immediate surgical menopause. And so there was pain where there hadn't been pain before. Those tried and true pathways to pleasure were not there anymore. It required lots of new conversations with my partner, but I was also just trying to figure things out. And my friend my body again. There's new scars, new feelings, lack of feeling, and trying to walk through that with grace required something completely new to me. And I didn't know where to find that. I had my doctors providing good medical care for my physical body, and I had a great therapist, healthcare through talk therapy. Both were really important, but then there was this middle ground of how do I get back into my body, befriend my body again, and start releasing this trauma that I could feel was held in the tissues. That's when I went on this journey of looking for somatic modalities and found this program out of Canada that's the only government-accredited program in the world in Tantra. And I was like, this is gonna be awesome. I'm happy to say it was. I went through the first part of the program where I took all of the practices and applied them to myself for my own healing, found them to be incredibly powerful, particularly around this concept of pleasure as medicine. Went on to do the second part of the program. So two years total to become a practitioner. It was a whole career for that that came out of my own healing journey. I think it might be helpful to unpack that term somatic healing a little bit, if that's new for people. They're treatments focusing on the body and how emotions and experiences are held within the body. There's a book called The Body Keep Sloor that really explains the science behind this. This part is not woo-woo. This part is well documented and scientifically that the body actually holds trauma within it. That's not just something that happens in our brain. We can't just talk therapy ourselves out of it when the trauma is literally in our tissues. I think the one thing that I really learned from that entire journey that stands out the most to me was that I needed practices, and pleasure can be that kind of practice that grounds me and helps me get quiet enough to really deeply listen to my body in my own interior guidance system and intuition. As a female entrepreneur in a busy life, we need practices that bring us back to that quiet place, our own intuition, our own guidance system, so that we can continue showing up and doing these awesome things that we're passionate about.
SPEAKER_01:You have this idea of pleasure as medicine, which is not where most people hint go. Medicine is like something you don't want to take. That means you're sick or that means you're not. Well, there's so many connotations to what that actually means. And based on somebody's own experiences, medicine to me, all my life, because I was born with cancer was a terrible thing. I'd love to hear about what that means, pleasurize medicine.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. The first time I heard that term, I knew in my bone, yes, that is true. But I don't know what it means exactly. It's a very mushy concept. So if it's okay, I'm gonna give a little description first and then do a short exercise to help us understand inner bodies what that means. There's a book that I'm gonna recommend. It's called Shake Your Soul Song by Davy Ward Erickson, my teacher in Tantra work and the founder of the Institute for Authentic Tantra Education. A lot of what I'm gonna talk about here is pleasure is medicine. These concepts come from her, and I really want to make sure I'm giving her credit for that. She lists four types of pleasure, and then emotional pleasure could be sitting down and having a great conversation with a friend, physical pleasure. I love to walk, spiritual pleasure, which is connecting with anything that feels bigger than us. There's so many different languages that we could use to express that, and then sexual pleasure, which is our erotic sense of pleasure that we can experience. And then I would add intellectual, because a client of mine said, like when you listen to a great podcast and you have aha moments, and that feels so good. So I'm including it too. Any of these five types of pleasure to be ethically and skillfully cultivated to help us recognize where we're blocked, and then to recognize those blocks and be able to heal them. From a Western scientific perspective, we see that pleasure is uniquely suited for deep emotional healing. And this was a new concept to me, and I find it so powerful that our bodies are actually wired for healing through the pleasure process. When we are female entrepreneurs juggling a million things, that often keeps us in a state of vigilance or distraction in high cortisol levels, and it's stressful. Oftentimes we're experiencing chronic stress because we're juggling so many different things. So chronic stress literally kills us. They're being flooded by hormones like cortisol, and it is hurting our bodies in a multitude of ways. It's weakening the immune system, it's increasing the risk of heart disease, it's causing mental health problems and accelerating cellular aging leading to an early death. So, what decreases cortisol in our bodies? Pleasure. Pleasure in all of these five forms is decreasing cortisol. It's a built-in system to antidote stress. And it's a beautiful wisdom already there in our bodies. If we can slow it down and hear intuition and allow it to work for us. So all types of pleasure, but particularly sexual pleasure, releases a complex cocktail of chemicals and hormones into our livestream that are actually life enhancing. So some of these would be like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins. And these are life-enhancing chemicals that we female entrepreneurs need more of. Here are some of the things that they do. They induce a state of bliss, they give us more confidence, they provide more motivation, they enhance our cognitive ability. As someone who went through menopause and had so much brain, I really appreciate anything that gives me more focus and cognitive ability. It also brings relaxation, peacefulness, and emotional connection to our lives. This is how pleasure is medicine for us. It literally produces in our bodies these life-enhancing chemicals and experiences that we typically want more of in our lives. And then it's protective against the things that are causing harm to us. This lineage teaches that our human body is designed such that every orgasm is a glimpse or taste of enlightenment. Enlightenment means freedom from suffering. In that moment of orgasm, that sense of bliss and detachment from the ego self, we experience what enlightenment or freedom from suffering would be like. It's a reminder. We are able to experience that. That is within the human possibility to experience freedom from our suffering. And the way that you get there is you remind yourself through pleasure that's possible. And all forms of pleasure help us to remember that the emotional pleasure of gazing into a newborn's eyes. We can lean into that as a pleasure. We can develop habits and skills that calm that anxious mind, remove us from that toxic drama, and experience ourselves more in those meta-states that would be living in an orgasmic life. So those meta-states would be wholeness, justice, beauty, goodness, playfulness, and meaning. So I think it's fun to look at that from our Western and an Eastern perspective, just puts a flesh on the bones of that concept of pleasure as medicine. Wendy, do you think we have time for a little experiential exercise? I think we can do that. Okay, let's do it. So, what I'd like to do for this demonstration is allow it to really help us show body and mind are not separate, but deeply intertwined. This is adapted from the book Shake Your Souls on. So, first I'd like to take a moment to think to invite listeners and you as well, Wendy, to think of a painful life experience. To go someplace that still has an emotional charge for you. So you're focusing on something that's emotionally painful, like heartbreak, or maybe a loss of someone you really love, or a moment of perceived injustice, and let yourself go there recalling that memory, whether that's visual for you, or more kinesthetically feeling that emotional intensity as if it's happening right. Now I'd like to ask you to notice what's happening in your body. Where has tension crept in? For me, I start to feel it first in my throat, and then I'll notice my hands are feeling tense. Just take a moment to notice how contracted everything becomes. You might feel your heartbeat a little faster. This is not an event happening right now. But you're thinking about something, and your body is having a very real emotional and chemical response. And now we're gonna shift gears and I get to invite you into a pleasurable experience. So I want you to think about something that feels truly nourishing, pleasurable, and joyful to you. For many people, that's the sensation of sinking into a warm bath and being enveloped by that warm water. For me personally, it's walk in the woods. Like I love stepping into that cool shadiness of the trees. I like noticing the dappled lights and breathing in that scent of being in the woods. It's like earthy, it's leaves. I'm hearing that gentle rustling of birds and insects and moving slowly. Take a moment to immerse yourself in that visualization and that body sensation of pleasure. Whatever your version of pleasure in, now tune into how your body is responding to pleasure. You might feel your heart soften, you might feel how tension begins to melt away, you might feel your breath deepen, and you may even feel that subtle internal contraction that we tend to carry around with us all the time, of maybe anxiety, fear, sadness. It might start to dissolve. It's almost as if our cells open up to release what they've been holding on to. And we ease into a sense of bliss. Let's take a moment to contrast those two experiences. And they just happened within the last four minutes. And that's the essence of somatic healing, which is that our life experiences, whether they are painful or pleasurable, they're leaving imprints on us. And these emotional imprints are literally living in the tissues of our bodies, and it's known as cellular memory. It's existing beyond the conscious mind. It's part of that deep intelligence built into the human body. And that's the foundation of pleasure's medicine is knowing how to tap into that again and again. Whenever we need to come home to this precious body.
SPEAKER_01:That was awesome. I went one place and then another. Really great. Yes. It's so funny. I was telling you before the show I have ducks and chickens now. And that, like every morning I come out and water my ducks. My husband was saying to me this morning, 20-something years ago, did you think that you're talking about ducks and chickens? No.
SPEAKER_02:So boring, Wendy. I love this vision of you as this duck and chicken mother.
SPEAKER_01:But as you were talking, that's really my thing in the morning. It's quiet. It's my peace. Just watching these scoof balls where they're it immediately makes me happy. I think that's really a key thing is learning. We're all gonna have those situations, especially as entrepreneurs. It can be so stressful. And all these little life things that happen when you're an entrepreneur and being able to be like go into this happy place that's more serene in your head, as opposed to carrying it all day long.
SPEAKER_02:Instead of carrying it all day long.
SPEAKER_01:Beautiful.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's really key. I'd love to know, because I think that's an important question. What do you wish more women understood about reconnecting with their bodies, especially those who feel disconnected or burned out? Because I've gone through periods of that. I'm like, don't anybody come near me because I am too tense, too stressed. It feels like heavier times, whether I'm traveling or work. So how do you come back, especially when you lived in it for a bit?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01:Such a good quit.
SPEAKER_02:I think we all need that. I think I would first let her know she isn't alone. So much of the stress comes from holding it and feeling like we're alone. And when we think about female entrepreneurs and our pain point, these are our challenges around juggling lots of responsibilities, managing societal expectations, and higher rates of burnout because oftentimes there's not a lot of social support for us. It's harder to get bank loans, things like that. The one thing I would really want to say is that pleasure is not a distraction from our productivity and what we're hoping to bring forth in the world. It really fuels it. It can really be the fuel that gets us back in touch with our passion and our why. And so those cultural messages that tell us that it's self-indulgent to lean into pleasure. I'd love to reframe that and encourage us to be the wild women we are to challenge those cultural messages. And that pleasure, rest, joy, and ease instead are really vital to our long-term creativity, resilience. And ultimately, that our purpose, this woman we're thinking of, is best served by allowing pleasure to come back into her life to be her guidance system that brings her back to what matters to her most. And so that one single thing, if I could wrap it up, would be pleasure is not an indulgence or a distraction from productivity, really fuels it.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. This has been fantastic. I know you have an offer, so I'm gonna let you tell everybody what that is, and I'll have it in the show notes for everyone.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. My offer would be that I would love to have anyone who is touched by this conversation reach out to me on my website, go to my contact page, send me a message through that form to let me know that you heard me on Wendy's show. I would be happy to do a free 30-minute consultation with you to see if this is the right fit. If my form of intimacy coaching is the thing that you're looking for to help you tap back into what fuels you please reach out. And uh, if you would like another piece of the offer is that people can ask for a free ebook about pleasure as medicine and easy practices to access pleasure ideally.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. This has been enlightening to all our listeners. If you love the show, please subscribe and visit Stacy. She is a wealth of information. I hope all of you have a blessed and abundant day. Thank you, Stacy.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, Wendy. It was a joy.
