What is erotic wholeness?
Join us in honest conversation with somatic sex and intimacy expert, Darshana Avila, as we explore questions far beyond the surface of your typical sex talk.
Darshana Avila (she/her; they/them) is nurturing a culture of Erotic Wholeness. Many know her from her groundbreaking work on Netflix’s Sex, Love & goop where she shared her trauma-informed, nature-based, justice-oriented approach to somatic sex and intimacy education.
We know Darshana for all of those things and as a beloved friend, colleague, and someone whom we deeply respect for the earnest care she offers others to embrace their erotic nature and thrive in their life and relationships. We are proud to have partnered with Darshana to develop their brand over the last couple of years as they increased their visibility and expanded their industry impact.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Connect with Darshana
Connect with BWB
Be sure to subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and leave us a 5-star rating + review!
Podcast Song: Holding you by Prigida
Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/holding-you
License code: CELWR55ONTDIFRSS
What is erotic wholeness?
Join us in honest conversation with somatic sex and intimacy expert, Darshana Avila, as we explore questions far beyond the surface of your typical sex talk.
Darshana Avila (she/her; they/them) is nurturing a culture of Erotic Wholeness. Many know her from her groundbreaking work on Netflix’s Sex, Love & goop where she shared her trauma-informed, nature-based, justice-oriented approach to somatic sex and intimacy education.
We know Darshana for all of those things and as a beloved friend, colleague, and someone whom we deeply respect for the earnest care she offers others to embrace their erotic nature and thrive in their life and relationships. We are proud to have partnered with Darshana to develop their brand over the last couple of years as they increased their visibility and expanded their industry impact.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Connect with Darshana
Connect with BWB
Be sure to subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and leave us a 5-star rating + review!
Podcast Song: Holding you by Prigida
Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/holding-you
License code: CELWR55ONTDIFRSS
CASEY: Welcome to the Questions to Hold podcast. I'm your host and BWB founder, Casey Carroll. In a world that often praises answers over questions, the act of holding a question is an act of resistance, presence, and devotion. In this podcast, I hold space for discussion at the intersection of life's biggest questions and our personal and professional worlds.
These are honest conversations with progressive leaders dedicated to questioning our institutions, igniting change, and provoking new possibilities.
Join me for my next discussion.
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CASEY: Hello everyone, and welcome to Questions to Hold. I'm Casey Carroll and I am thrilled to be in conversation with a very dear friend, um, collaborator, colleague. I could call you so many things, but the one and only Darshana. I absolutely love and adore and respect to Darshana’s work. I've been lucky enough to work with her as she's developed her company and some of her programs, and it's great to kind of be back in a year or so after and touch into some of the big questions you're holding in your work, um, and in your life right now. So before we go into there, cuz we both know we'd love to talk and this is gonna be a good juicy convo, I'd love for you, Darshana, to just, uh, name yourself, introduce yourself in any way that feels good for the context of the listeners.
DARSHANA: Hi everybody. Darshana Avila here and I'm coming to you from my home, unseated land and so-called Oakland, California. And I get to live and love and work and play here, um, in the realm of erotic fullness, which is a kind of self-titled path that I've carved out for myself, both in my personal and professional life. My people hail from Eastern Europe. I'm a hundred percent Ashkenazi Jew. Grew up in New York. Uh, made my way to the East Coast and have lived more than like nine lives, like more than like a cat. I think a lot of different things that have happened, a lot of different chapters and I'm really passionate about embodiment, meaning people occupying their bodies and their hearts and, and living their fullest possible iteration of their human existence. And that's behind everything that I'm curious about. I don't know– so many intersections of identity I could speak to, and maybe I'll just leave a little mystery there. And give you space for questions.
CASEY: Yeah, it'll, and it'll come, I'm sure. And it's fluid, so it may change too. But me and you met just really discovering and being in support of your work in erotic wholeness, which is so unique and so special and, and is really centering some huge questions around pleasure and what it means to be erotic and all those things. So I'm just wondering if you can speak a little bit more to what is erotic wholeness and kind of what is your work in, in the field of pleasure, if you will?
DARSHANA: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, my work began with a, with a focus specifically on sex, intimacy and relationships. And, and many people might hear me say those words and then think, well, how is that different than erotic? Because we, we tend to lump all those together. And that's not wrong. You know, it's, it's accurate. But what I found in my years being a somatic sex and intimacy coach and coming at my work through a lens that was bringing in curiosity around the whole person, around soul or around our relationship to the wider world that we're a part of, speaking about our eroticism felt just more accurate to me because it's more all encompassing. So that includes our sexuality, but then it also makes space for our creativity, our sensuality, our emotions, our activism, all the ways that we are dynamic and creating and sensing in the world is encompassed by a reference to our eroticism. And the wholeness piece is that, you know, we, we are walking around many of us pretty fragmented or, or living as a part of self because we have other parts of ourselves that we haven't gotten to know, that haven't been safe to connect with, that have been shamed, that have been disconnected or what have you, for any number of bajillion reasons that modern humans are struggling with. And so wholeness is a nod to what becomes possible when we actually get curious about and compassionate with those many parts of ourselves and do the deep healing and growing work of integration, of getting to know them and bringing them all together. And when we put that in the context of our eroticism and we bring that into the field of our intimate relationships, that's when things get really juicy and when we are most turned on and lit up and giving of ourselves in the best possible but also most equipped to take in the wonder that is life. And it's both a very individual and personal journey that we get to go on if we choose this, but it is my firm belief that those who walk the path of erotic wholeness are doing this to, you know, secure, if you will, their individual liberation. But that's in service to collective liberation. We, we do this together, we do this for each other. Um, and, and that's what I'm devoted to.
CASEY: Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's so many ways I could take that. But I just keep thinking about all the, the ways that eroticism has or has not been taught to us, how it's been modeled, what we've been internalized, how that depends on our identities, how there's so much kind of in the mix of this work. And again, this, this answer could never be as, you know, a short one line answer in this podcast or anything like that, but I'm just curious, like even in giving that more expansive foundation or, or kind of basis of what eroticism is of like all that sensing and all the creation and the intimacy and the soul pieces that you're naming, do you find folks have resistance to that or that there's like a curiosity of how to even get on board of like, oh, I, I didn't think about how all that may impact my sex life, for example?
DARSHANA: It's, it's usually that. It's usually the latter. Like I can't say that I have found people resistant to embracing eroticism if they are coming to me, you know, if they're interested in my work and my messages and stuff, like chances are that, that they've got a bias in my direction to begin with. Um, what's true for most though, is that it really is a, wow. I didn't think about that. I didn't connect those dots. Um, it, it never occurred to me. Um, I, I have a, I, I guess maybe it's like a superpower of mine because I can't tell you how often it's like I go on one of my tangents of articulating something and a client or a student is like, yes, that , I, I, that is exactly something that I've kind of been feeling inside and an inarticulate way, and then all of a sudden there are some words for it. So, so I think that as is true for so many things, in that what we hear and see what is represented, what is reflected back to us is, is shaping our reality. So if we're having a reality reflected back to us all the time, that's sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, then we are it. Whether it's shaming sex or using sex to sell or placing an absurd amount of pressure on what sex needs to be in her life, or avoiding sex, there's a ton of focus on sex and not eroticism per se. So I feel like I just bring some permission to people to consider and have reflected to them, uh, a different perspective, uh, both about themselves and the world that they live in. And most people are, are pretty, pretty open to taking that on once introduced to it.
CASEY: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think a lot of that comes down to, that's on purpose that we see that modeled back to us. And I mean, we could spend the whole rest of our life talking about that,, but you know, that is, that's a very intentional, there's many intentional reasons why that's how we're seeing things or why many of us don't connect those dots, um, naturally, unless there's permission and, and more ways to kind of like talk about it and even meet this kind of content. And so I know just from our work together, and you named it just a second ago really, about how your work is connecting into a larger conversation around liberation and essentially around how this erotic liberation that you're working with folks around is in service to the individual and ultimately to collective. So I'm just curious if you could share a little bit more about what your path has been in talking about those things in, in doing that kind of work and how you see those. playing out.
DARSHANA: Yeah. Well, if we operate, you know, from, from my working definition of eroticism as also being part of our, like, creative expression, it's part of our power. It, it is our power. I don't differentiate between erotic energy and what in different esoteric paths you might hear referred to as prana or shi or chi Like, it, it's, it is our life force. It is our vitality. And so when we are really like awake and aware to the flow of that energy in us, like, sure, you might have epic sex and great orgasms and more power to you, like, I want that. But what you also are more likely to do is question the status quo. You're, you're more likely to see the systemic oppression for what it is and the way all been harmed and implicated inside of that system. None of us are immune. It's like you and I are having this conversation as two white cis women with a tremendous amount of privilege because of those identities and also because we're women, a tremendous amount of suppression and marginalization that has happened, particularly around our sex. To keep us disempowered. And so when we not only take the power of our sex back, but also of our erotic nature, we become a force of nature. We, we, we become agents of change. And, and this is why I say it's like it's radical activism to choose this path of erotic liberation because when you are lit up, You're not going to settle for things being the way that they've always been, whether that's in your most intimate relationships, in your family, in your workplace, in your community circles, you know, and then those circles like wide and outward and outward and outward. And that's where it becomes collective liberation. Um, at a certain point. You know, like that, that idea of like critical mass tipping the scale, the more of us that that refuse the scripts that we've been given, the acculturation and conditioning we've been given, that tells us that particularly as women, we're sexual objects there to provide an experience for another person's pleasure, that is also cutting us off from our creativity and power. So if we refuse that, we are gonna tap into our creativity and power, and we're gonna use it for good in the world. So that's, that's what I'm about.
CASEY: Yeah. And it's a huge, I mean, again, it's a complicated, very nuanced, um, conversation here that we're talking just in, in the, in the spirit of planting seeds and of talking, um, kind of on that level with, and I am thinking, I'm just curious, I guess that rather than thinking if it's a natural, you know, once the erotic liberation is happening, if there's a natural spirit of like action towards the collective that starts to happen, or if that's also something you specifically talk about with folks that you might work with one on one or an immersions about, you know, now once you kind of come into this space with your yourself, there's an outward action that would come from it.
DARSHANA: I think I probably modulate that depending upon the individual, because we are all individuals and our unfolding is gonna happen at a different pace. And for some of us, you know, and I really wanna speak to that because my work, in addition to being oriented towards social justice and collective liberation, is at its foundation, trauma informed. And, and I take my role as trauma therapist just as seriously as my role as sexological body worker and coach, and like all the other trainings and hats and tools that I bring in. Yes. The trauma piece is, it’s important to acknowledge that for some people. The, the act of reclaiming even what might seem to the outward eye as, as a small, tiny bit of power in their personal relating might be where it's at. While other people might light up in such a way that they, like, go run for office or whatever, you know, like, just to, to put like a few, a couple of like examples out there at different ends of the spectrum and I don't want to belittle or like the what might look like less than, because for some of us, if we're coming in with significant inherited trauma, lived trauma, whatever it might be, that has really taken a lot for us to choose our healing in whatever measure we can come by it. Like, that's really valuable and being a little woohoo about it, it's like I do believe us doing that level of work impacts the collective, even if it doesn't turn around to us becoming community organizers or pushing through different legislation or, or getting on social media like I do and espousing all these like very progressive values. Like you could do that and that's wonderful and we need people doing all of that. And we also need people who are honoring their pace and the space that they're occupying and knowing that that is just as valuable and just as good.
CASEY: Yeah. Yes. Uh, so well said. And so critical to name, you know, it's, it all matters. There's no hierarchy of scale there with what you know, what the action is, whether it's just saying yes to doing that work or you take it further. I mean, you spoke to, especially like you named as two white cis women having this conversation who have been heavily impacted in certain ways and differently from other, um, women of different identities as well. But I keep thinking about the male gaze and a lot of work that has kind of come on of like what sex should look like, what eroticism should look like, et cetera, all those things. And how much shame has been, or like hush tone conversations between ways in which this has been learned and lived and then talked about and repeated and modeled to others, et cetera. And I know you have this offer, which I, I think is so cool of, It’s Okay To Ask because I think one way to get through that around and it's a spirit of questions to hold as well, which is like questioning and exploring in a trauma informed and in a non shameful, as non shameful of an environment as possible to be in a place of just learning and exploration before we're even in that claiming space or anything that can kind of come out of it. So, I’m curious, can you share a little bit more about what, how did It’s Okay To Ask come to be? And like what, what's the experience been so far with it?
DARSHANA: Yeah. Well, for context, for those listening, It’s Okay To Ask is a monthlyish call that I offer a gathering for free. Any, you know, like you're welcome to come if you're part of the erotic wholeness community and you can become part of the erotic wholeness community because you wanna come to those calls. Um, it's a space where, you know, my work centers on women and vulva bearing non-binary folks. It's possible that I might offer, uh, a, a space for men at some point in time, cuz there's actually been a lot of men seeing IOTA, as I refer to the acronym, It’s Okay To Ask, They’re like, wait, can we come too? And I love that they want to come, I love the guys wanting to come. But you know, you mentioned like so much has been shaped by, for the male gaze and, and in accordance with the cultural narratives we've been given. And so It’s Okay To Ask is a space where I invite people to ask questions and inquiries and anecdotes from their own experiences in their life and their intimate life in particular. And then each month, um, there, there's a slightly different focus or theme for the call where I take those questions and I speak to them. And I might have time to also take some live questions and we come together on Zoom and I gotta say, it's like, you know, before the pandemic like Zoom, I was like, really? Do I want that to do my work during the pandemic? I was like, oh my God, if I never see a Zoom screen again. And now I'm so grateful actually that, that most of us have gotten really comfortable. I mean, you and I are on a Zoom screen right now. Like most of us have gotten comfortable with this format because it's a way to have in a, a land-based tribal, multi-generational culture, we might have had once upon a time or other places where their indigenous culture is still in intact do have this, and many of us in the West don't, where we get to sit around the hearth, sit around with the, the, the cup of tea or the doing the laundry or whatever it might have been, right. Like, it's a version of that where we get to have space to talk with a tremendous amount of permission and a totally no shame zone. Like it is a shame-free zone to, to ask about the things that it might not feel safe to ask elsewhere to, to bring forward those tender, delicate, vulnerable parts of your own experience to get sex education, to get relationship education, to get education on how to be a human in a body with a sensitive feeling, heart. All of those things interact with and intersect, um, inside of our intimate lives. And so anything that might touch into the realm of erotic coldness is, is free game really for talking about on these calls. and just about everything falls into the realm of erotic wholeness when you really get down to it. So, so it's really fun and I, I warmly welcome anybody listening to this, to, to weave into that space. Um, if you're curious and the calls are recorded, so even if people can't be live, like, it's cool. You know, my, my career trajectory has, has brought me a bit more visibility and I've got clients and students around the world and, and I love that that's an option that we can have available and time zones being what they are come live. You can come live and then listen in if you can.
CASEY: Yeah, and I'm, I mean to me like something that you're naming but maybe not explicitly naming that I would love to hear you talk about a little bit more is just, why, why do it in community? Right? Because people could anonymously write you and, and ask a question and you could get back to them anonymously too. I mean, there could be so many ways to go about It’s Okay To Ask and maybe you'll maybe more will come eventually. But I'm just curious what the, the intention around doing this communally and, and the impact that you're seeing that.
DARSHANA: Thank you. It's a great question. It's a great invitation to speak to it because it was very intentional. You know, I'm a private practitioner, so I have plenty of spaces where I get to talk one to one or one to couple. And it was really touching to me how many of my private clients are showing up on these calls, because even though they get to talk to me one-to-one, and have these conversations, I think the reason why this is so important to do communally is because we actually need each other. That is not just a cute saying. We actually need each other. We actually need to know that we're not alone, that we're not the only ones. We need to see and feel ourselves reflected and connected in wider circles of community. Also too. The, the work of erotic wholeness, both how I hold, you know, my mission in, in putting this into the world. But what I invite everyone to join me in is that this is culture building work. We are nurturing a culture of erotic wholeness, and that does not happen with one person. That happens with many of us. Beginning to decondition or deprogram our minds from, from that dominant cultural narrative that has suppressed erotic nature, that that has created, you know, power over hierarchies and so on and so forth, and actually come together as a community of equals who are nurturing culture that, that, that has a very different value at its foundation. So we can't do that alone. And it's great if you have, you know, a therapist or your best friend or your partner or someone who you get to have honest conversations like that with, that's wonderful. And bring them along, because we need more, like we, we need that exponential growth to really have this take a deep, deep root in our own selves, and also for the sake of how it will impact our collective.
CASEY: Yeah, and I'm, I imagine, just because I know your work, and you also named it so far, is from the lens of being trauma informed, which is so critical, critically important, especially when you're gonna start to talk about like confidentiality and having mixed identity groups and not, you know, especially if it's not broken out into affinities and all those kinds of places, just as like a, a starting place to kind of make sure we can start to re-pattern our nervous system a little bit to be in that kind of space, ask these questions, hear these things answered back, and then just see where the work can take you. But again, I think that the foundation of trauma being trauma informed and justice oriented as you are, is so, is essential.
DARSHANA: The work cannot, you know, it, to me, the work becomes more problematic without that because so many of us are coming from a place of being traumatized in one way or. And it's, you know, in, in holding a space that that centers, you know, trauma and also justice and how do we be good people together, good humans together. And that means we have to acknowledge the imperfections and all the systemic stuff that's there. And we have to know that we're not gonna always do it perfectly. But if we can't do it perfectly, it doesn't mean we don't try. I get to model something as a community leader. In accordance with those things, and that's another, that's another learning opportunity that It’s Okay To Ask calls and other spaces that I offer is providing people to see, again, particularly where my whiteness is concerned. And I'm not saying that I've got this on lock and I'm doing it perfectly and, you know, as a white person holding a, a mixed, a mixed identity space, like I get to model a way to do that with some humility and some grace and some deference to people who have been marginalized in our dominant culture. And I get a lot of feedback from other people of, of like, wow, I've never seen anybody do that before and that right there is so much of like it. Whether it's about how a white person holds a mixed group or about how a woman claims her sexual power, or how someone with trauma who is, you know, has rendered them a very like boundary, self boundary crossing, people pleaser starts to actually hold their own boundaries. Like all of this is being modeled and reflected in these conversations along with the questions that are getting asked and answered, and, and so that's part of the work. Putting ourselves in spaces and creating connections of communities that are actually modeling the values that we want to live into is, is essential for that to happen.
CASEY: Yeah, no, there's so many things to say about all of that , but for now I'll let that be enough and I will be showing up on It’s Okay To Ask for sure really soon now that I've heard about this. Is there anything– I like to kind of always say towards the end of a conversation, like what big questions are you sitting with, or would you invite listeners who are interested in your work or you know, even just interested in their own understanding of their eroticism. Like what kind of questions would you leave people with right now?
DARSHANA: Oh goodness. So very many questions. I'm a question asker. I love it. I think like many of us, I'm asking myself and, and this is integral to our intimate lives like, What, what is possible if we are both living inside of capitalism and patriarchy and, and all of the, the names that we put on the, the, the cultural systemic oppression that we exist inside of? It's like we're in that right now. We're not out of it yet. I know many of us aspire to be, but we are inside of it. So what does it look like to both play the game, so to speak? But change the rules, you know, change the rules such that it is not rooted in that top down power over patriarchal, you know, grind culture way of doing things? And this includes the hustle and the grind of our healing journeys of, of, of our sexual awakening. You know, like I see so many people kind of attack that, like, and even using the word attack there feels so strange to me. Like, we actually have an opportunity here as we are liberating ourselves, supporting collective liberation, creating culture, we have an opportunity and I would say a responsibility to, to say like, how do I really wanna do that? So maybe that's the question to ask. Like in genuine earnestness, like what do I want? Now that is a big question, and knowing how to trust your answer is a huge piece of work, and that's very much the work I do with people because that's like a perfect little circle. Back to what I said at the beginning, I'm devoted to embodiment and I am. When we are in our bodies fully and well, and we are attuned to the incredible amount of wisdom that comes through our body, that comes through our heart, that that is deeper and, and certainly more trustworthy than our conditioning. That's when we can genuinely answer the question of what do I want or how do I want to, in any given situation and really trust that it's coming from, from a place that is honest and authentic within us instead of what we've been told to think or do. Yeah. Um, and, and that's really, I guess, what I want people to be inquiring into. It's certainly a big inquiry for me.
CASEY: Yeah. I love that. Thank you. And I agree. When, when I developed the Questions to Hold deck, one of the questions that I put in there is, are you listening to your body? and understanding that there's different levels of safety and comfort and availability of that for people, but also it's all, that also makes me think of the spirit that it's also designed in the deck was, which is like your question today. Trusting that answer and knowing that that answer can and likely will change over time. You know, it's like, it's the act of continuing to ask, the asking that question, your naming or being in that inquiry of. Do I want, how do we exist in this system? And, um, be changing the roles as you're naming, and that there's no like one answer of like, oh, well I got that figured out, but it's asking it again and asking it again, and continuing to listen to the answer and then living into that for the change. You know? And you're just so perfectly talking about that with what you're leaving the listeners with.
DARSHANA: Yeah. Thank you.
CASEY: So Darshana, how can folks find you?
DARSHANA: Well, you can come to the It’s Okay To Ask calls. Um, the places you find me most are through my website, which is my name, darshanaavila.com. And to confuse you just a little bit, my Instagram handle is eroticwholeness.
CASEY: Keep us on our toes.
DARSHANA: You know, keep, keep, you know, I want you to, I want you to associate me with erotic wholeness. That's good. Both of those places are gonna point you to, It’s Okay To Ask, it's gonna give you Pathways to Pleasure, which is the series of group like, like ongoing series of workshops that I offer. You can work with me privately. There's gonna be some retreat activity coming in the future. So there's lots of ways, there's self-guided journeys that you can purchase and have forever and do it your own pace. So I am endeavoring to continually make many different on-ramps available to, to people who want to access this work. So just find me on Instagram, pop onto my website and get on my mail list and the goodness will come to you. And I promise to do my best to both inform and entertain to the best of my ability
CASEY: I have no doubt you do it always. I'm an avid subscriber of all of, of your work and things, and I'm always happy when I get these little gems in my inbox around my feed. Um, Darshana, thank you so much. I appreciate you and this conversation, and I know it's just the beginning of many more questions we're gonna keep asking.
DARSHANA: Absolutely a pleasure, Casey, thank you so much for having me here.
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CASEY: Thank you for listening to the Questions to Hold podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and are leaving the conversation with way more questions than answers.
I invite you to build a more meaningful relationship with yourself and the world around you through the simple yet profound act of holding questions. Visit questionstohold.com and wearebwb.com to learn more about this practice, our Questions to Hold card deck, and explore more conversations. See you there.