Touch Starved: The Epidemic No One Talks About

Touch is where we first learn we are safe, loved, and alive.

In this episode, I open up a conversation about the kind of touch that goes beyond the surface. The touch that calms your nervous system, that says you belong here, that reminds you of your humanity.

We explore why so many of us are starved for it, how cultural conditioning has made touch feel unsafe or performative, and what happens to our bodies and hearts when connection is missing.

I share how touch can heal not just in intimacy but in the simple, intentional moments we offer ourselves and others. This is about reclaiming touch as your birthright, understanding your boundaries, and letting yourself receive what you have always needed.

✨ We explore

• How touch co-regulates and creates emotional safety
• The cultural and societal wounds that shape our comfort with affection
• What touch starvation does to the body and mind
• How to bring healing back through intentional and consensual touch

🎧 Come closer. Let us reclaim the power of touch together.

Connect with me:
Instagram
desiretheforbidden
justasuccugirl

Website
https://www.desiretheforbidden.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro

Transcript

Sage (00:01)
Hello sweet sexy vixens, welcome back to truth meets taboo I'm so excited to be here. It's a beautiful beautiful day. It's a Friday. It's Venus Day I celebrated in pleasure this morning by taking a bath. It was so lovely filled with rose petals I had a beautiful new moon ceremony that I hosted this week and ⁓

we included roses in our ritual and in our spells and in our magic for that event and I was grateful to have some roses that were still available to me and so I got to use those petals in my bath today and it was so lovely. I could feel the energy and the love and the support of all the women from this week and being held by them and being in the new moon space and

I just loved it. If you're in Austin or close to Austin or ever in Austin, I hope you'll join us sometime. We do it once a month. I host a beautiful ceremony for the Divine Feminine where we welcome in the new moon. It's a beautiful opportunity to talk about all of the energy that's active during that time to manifest together, to heal together, to grow and transform and alchemize together.

It's one of my very favorite things that I do, so I hope that you will join us sometime if you are in the area. I am sipping on some beautiful matcha.

And I actually love this because this matcha was gifted to me by my friend Lily. I went over there to co-work with her yesterday and she so graciously got me a matcha and I wasn't able to finish it there and so I got to save it for today. So I love that I get to sip on it while I talk to you all today. Today's episode's gonna be really interesting I think. It's about receiving and...

I don't know about you, even if just hearing the word receiving feels like it's sitting in your body in an intense way, I really feel that.

for me too. ⁓ So we're just going to get into a lot about receiving and what it is, how we surrender to it, how we allow it to regulate us, how we regulate it in our nervous system, how we practice it, and then I am going to tell you all a juicy, juicy story about how I used receiving and sensual and sexual energy as a way to alchemize the energy for this business.

So hope that you will join me for this episode and I hope that you're settling in. I hope that you're feeling cozy and comfy in whatever way feels good for you. I hope you're taking some good breaths. And if you haven't settled your mind at all today or taken a moment to just be with yourself, I'm going to invite you into that right now.

to just be present with yourself, to love yourself.

What is?

What is receiving? What is it really? Right? Because we, I think, can hear the word receiving and it can mean so many things or so many different things to each of us. And so I think receiving is often misunderstood as taking or acquiring, right? That we think that receiving is about getting from someone or pulling from someone or taking away or from something, someone, whatever it might be.

But I think true receiving is actually about an energetic opening. If you look more at it from an inward perspective, it's more of a willingness to let something enter or affect you or nourish you. It's an act of what I think is surrender, presence and capacity.

It's like really trying to move away from this idea of performance and really thinking about what does it mean for me to actually be open, to actually be receptive? What does the verb of receiving actually mean in my body? And how do I actually show up for that? How do I make that more about me versus about someone else or about if I'm taking something from someone?

And I think when I think about receiving, there are lots of different ways that receiving can show up, right? So emotional receiving.

This is being open enough to love and to affection and to compliments and adornment instead of deflecting it. So this is like allowing compliments to sit with you, allowing yourself to accept and receive compliments. It's not about are you burdening or creating an issue for someone else because they're complimenting you. It's like, you actually open and receptive to believe that you are worthy of receiving a compliment?

Like that you can be open enough to receiving love or open enough to receiving a compliment. Like in order to get that thing, you have to feel worthy of receiving it. And so how do you stay open, right? How do you stay in a place of willingness to allow things to affect you?

And then I think there's like energetic receiving, right? Which is the difference between like resonance or resistance. Like can you feel the frequency of being offered something? Can you actually allow yourself to resonate with it? Or do you feel tension with it? Do you resist it? Do you rush away from it or try to reciprocate very quickly because you don't want to sit in the frequency of what is being offered?

And so it's like in your nervous system, you're having this issue staying open. Your nervous system is like run away or fight or deflect because you're like, I can't handle receiving this energy. I'm not open to it. I don't want it or I don't resonate with it or I can't allow myself to feel the frequency of it. And not letting yourself feel the energetic receiving of something.

Sensual receiving I think is more about this like pleasure feeling right like am I open to pleasure? Sensuality and pleasure are so directly linked I cannot tell you how much my pleasure my capacity for pleasure Has evolved and grown just by my willingness to be more sensual with myself to take more time with myself to be more Sensual in the way that I do things even in this podcast I was thinking about the last episode and I was fired up, baby

I was fired up and I was so excited and I was that that that that that going at things and that was lovely and it was such a beautiful expression and I was so grateful for that episode But I was feeling into my body and I was like, know what? It's not feeling sensual enough. It's feeling too rushed. It's feeling too Energetic in a way that doesn't feel right in my body

and I'm not getting the pleasure that I want out of it. I'm just getting the anxiety out of it. I'm just getting the rush out of it. I'm just getting the adrenaline out of it. And so was like, I want to take my time with this episode. I want to be more sensual with this episode. I want to be more open to receiving pleasure while I record this episode. And so sensual receiving is about being in a space of being open without guilt or a plan to give back.

and really thinking about how can I just take things in? How can I just notice what's going on with my breath? What I'm touching? What I'm feeling? Food. Food is one of the ways that I am reclaiming sensual receiving.

Do how many times I eat and just eat and eat and I like don't even taste my food? Like I'm in the middle of a conversation or I am just shoveling food in my mouth because I'm excited or I'm watching TV and so I'm not paying attention, just mindless eating.

I cannot tell you how much changing my relationship with how I eat and eating slower and actually taking in my food and having a presence with my food has made my life so much more sensual, but has also made me so much more open to receiving pleasure and being present with my pleasure. Because now I'm actually eating and taking in the sensations.

And it's also helped me with overeating and it's also helped me with my relationship with food. So extra plus ones for that too. And then last but not least, I think about spiritual receiving. Spiritual receiving is one that has been very, very difficult for me. I think that I was closed off to spiritual receiving for a very long time because I grew up with a lot of narratives around...

receiving spiritual messages as being crazy, right? ⁓ I grew up with a mother, my birth mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia. And so the core of her mental health diagnosis episodes, or excuse me, the core of her mental health diagnosis included episodes where she would think that things were happening or...

imagine certain things, right? And I even hate to use the word imagine because they were so real for her and her mind. But the way that people oriented around her visions, around her seeing things, around her mentality, it really made me believe that it was unsafe to see, believe, think, or feel anything that wasn't aligned with what everyone else.

was seeing and hearing and thinking and believing. It was really that tribe mentality that you had to align with the tribe's thinking and opinions and beliefs and desires and values in order to stay alive, to survive, to be loved, to be cared for. And so I was pelted with a lot of messaging that...

it is unsafe to believe anything other than what you're being told to believe. And that veering away into your visions or spiritual downloads or any type of messages or synchronicities was evil or demonic or satanic or problematic. And it really kept me away from a lot of things, witchy things, horror as a genre, exploring my own spirituality.

And it really makes me sad for the ways that I wasn't open before to all of the guidance and messages and synchronicities that were coming at me. And it really pulled me away from my intuition because spiritual receiving is ultimately about are you attuned and open to your intuition? Are you attuned and open to the channel in you that knows what your yes or no is? Your form of divine reception.

Are you willing to surrender to something that is greater than you? Are you able to surrender and not need control over things or to earn things? And can you actually just let yourself be open to receive divine guidance?

I think for me receiving also is a huge act of embodiment.

It's really moving away from being passive in my life and realizing that it's not what's done to me, but what I do with my whole body when I receive. It is a choice to be receptive. It is a choice to receive. It is a choice to be open. And I allow myself to do so. I allow myself to be embodied in my receptivity, in the ways that I receive things, in the ways that I allow myself to be open, to be affected by things.

So I'd be curious for you, just thinking about reframing your own orientation to receiving as we get into today's conversation. What if receiving isn't something you earn, but something you remember how to do? Because remember when you were kids, like especially when you were little, and especially like right when we were babies, we would just ask for things. We would cry because we, you know, were hungry or use the bathroom or whatever, or wanted something or needed cuddles or held or whatever, we would cry. We would act on that immediately.

because we would say, am open to receiving, I need, I will take, I will have, right? And it's about being open and receptive to receiving that, the openness of asking and being receptive to surrendering to having that. And so what would it mean to go back to that, to remember how to do that, to just cry and ask for something, right?

and letting yourself really be held, adored, complimented, touched or seen without having to shrink or without tension or without pulling away. What would it mean to be able to do that? And how might you orient around receiving differently if you did that?

So I think as we're thinking about receiving and how do we get to a place of being open to receiving, how do I actually do this? We have to start with what is blocking you because in order to truly understand why you're not open, you have to first understand why you're closed. Like why are you closed off to begin with? Why are you not open and receptive already? What is going on with you? And I think that there are lots of ways that barriers can come up in order to

properly function in the world, right, in your own way, in order to survive, in order to be able to move through life. So it's not necessarily bad if you have barriers to receiving or if you have self-coping mechanisms or defense mechanisms as a way to protect yourself from receiving because you've had traumatic or negative experiences with receiving. But I do think it is important

to recognize where are those barriers, where are those blockages, where are those walls, so I can start to see if I want to start adjusting them at all, if I want to maybe start taking some things down, if I maybe want to reorient. I think for me, one of the biggest burials, bury...

I think one of the biggest barriers, wow, and I was saying burials, which is crazy because I'm like, ⁓ okay, I'm just like Freudian slipping, like all the transformation and rebirth and all of this, right? Anyways. So one of the biggest barriers that I feel like I really experienced was this idea that ⁓ receiving was really rooted in survival. So this idea of like, if I don't do it myself, I won't get it.

Right? Like it's this idea that risking asking or risking receiving is a weakness and that we...

aren't safe when we ask for things and we aren't safe when we say, I need help or hey, I am open to receiving something that we won't get what we want or that we'll get some version of what we want but in some sort of distorted way or people will misunderstand us or people will think something about us, right? And it's this idea that I'll get kicked out of the tribe or worse, I'll ask for something and I won't get it at all or people will say no and then I'll have to face that.

Right? And so this idea of keeping ourselves safe, this idea that if we don't ask for anything, if we don't rock the boat, if we don't need too much or want too much, we won't be burdensome and we won't call too much attention to ourselves and get kicked out. And I think that, you know, that then leads to this feeling that...

you're not enough, right? You're not enough to receive anything. You're not enough to be open to receiving anything. So then getting anything feels immediately fraudulent, right? Like, no, like I have now ⁓ imposter syndrome, like having imposter syndrome because I have now convinced people to give me something and they're gonna catch me. They're gonna find out, they're gonna understand or know that I wasn't actually deserving of that.

Right? Because I wasn't good enough to begin with. Because I understand fundamentally, or I think fundamentally, that I am not worthy of this, and that I'm not gonna get what I want, and that I shouldn't get what I want, and it's bad to get what I want. And I'm not enough for it. So now getting it feels so scary because it feels so fraudulent. Like, I am an imposter. I have convinced people to give me something, and they really shouldn't be. And so then, when you start to receive things, it starts to feel confusing.

and it starts to feel uncomfortable.

And then it starts to feel like you can't trust it. And I think something that really shows up for me is that when I started to not feel like I could trust receiving, intimacy in particular felt unsafe. And it felt so scary to be intimate with people. And it felt like such a minefield and battle zone and war ground where I was like, nothing feels safe here. People are loving me. People are supporting me. People are showing up for me. People are forgiving me. People are giving me compliments.

people are adoring me and all of that feels so uncomfortable and hard in my body and I feel so unsafe and I'm so confused because it is what I want. It is what I need. It is what I desire, but it's making me feel so bad and it feels so unsafe. And so it really starts to reinforce this idea that reinforcing feels dangerous. ⁓

because I'm taught that my existence is a burden.

So I start to begin to feel like I am this burden and I'm continuing to be this burden. And so receiving anything is too dangerous. It's too dangerous to receive.

And so it keeps us in this cycle where we feel like I need to be in control. And in order to stay in control, I have to be the giver because then I am needed. Whereas if I'm the receiver, I'm vulnerable.

And so we start to make this cycle in our brains where we're like, okay, how do I keep control, maintain control and reinforce control? I continue to be the giver. I continue to be needed. I continue to prove to myself and validate to myself externally by people's need for me, by people's need for my care, need for whatever I'm offering as a way to validate and prove that I am in control versus ever allowing myself to feel vulnerable.

and ask for anything. Especially because I think for many of us when we ask for something it can create this fear that we create some sort of social or emotional debt that we owe things and that we are required to give back in some way because we have received and it becomes this really transactional situation.

and it makes your body start to feel really unsafe and unfamiliar with slowness and pleasure or care. And when our body feels unfamiliar with something, it starts to reject it.

and it starts to move away from it and it starts to feel activated by it, it starts to feel triggered by it. And so that's when the trauma starts to build up and that's when our responses start to enact with our trauma and our triggering. Because our trauma doesn't always say no, it doesn't always say, no, I don't want to do this thing. Sometimes it's a yes and we are frozen in a smile about it because we don't know how to regulate our body into what we are feeling at that point.

that we have been activated to be so traumatized and so triggered by receiving that we don't even know how to say no to it, that it feels so scary to say no to it. And then we say yes to things that we don't even want.

And so we have to remember that with receiving and especially barriers to receiving, the safety isn't about just creating safety mentally. It's also about creating safety physically. Because it can be one thing to understand, oh, it's safe to receive, I'm open to receiving, I want to be open to receiving, right? That deep desire, that mental knowing, that thought process of, I really want to receive, I really want to be open. We can be 10 toes down for that and still not be able to do it.

And that is because the safety is not felt in our body. The safety is not activated in our nervous system. And so then our body does not feel safe enough to actually open up, to actually be receptive, to actually feel the feelings or feel the thing. Your body is a barometer. And how the rejection of receiving shows up for you is somatic.

I know many of you have probably read The Body Keeps Score. If you haven't, it's a really wonderful book. It talks a lot about how trauma is stored in the body, how our nervous system interacts with trauma, and how things can be activated, and the physical experiences you can have from emotional remembering and emotional trauma that's stored in the body. And so I want to be clear that, yes, the trauma is stored in the body and it keeps score in that way, but the body is also a threshold.

It tells you when something becomes too much, too soon, or too unfamiliar, right? It lets you know, have hit a threshold. I have come to a place where this is feeling like something is activating in me, too much, too soon, too unfamiliar, too uncomfortable, whatever it may be. Some examples of this might be, right, you might be tense when someone starts to get close to you.

even emotionally, right? It starts to open up vulnerably or even gets physically close to you. You can feel that tension in your body. Your muscles kind of contract. You can kind of suck in your breath a little bit and hold it. It's that tension. The laughing off of compliments or changing the subject. That feeling of like, oh, let me get out of this. Oh, let me let, let me, oh my gosh. Ah, ooh, ah, right?

Or maybe you shrink your posture. You cross your arms immediately. You hunch your shoulders over. You turn away, right? You look away. You're like, My boyfriend says this thing that ⁓ I really love, which is I want to be able to stand in my authentic truth ⁓ and say it to your face without looking away from you, without turning away from you. And I think that's so beautiful because I think that speaks to the truth of when you can be receptive to someone's

⁓ perception of you, interpretation of you, especially of your authentic authenticity. And so this idea, right, that your body rejects by looking away because it doesn't feel safe. It doesn't feel good showing itself authentically. It's like, I don't feel good showing my underbelly. So I look away. Right. And I think one that is really, really common for a lot of us as, something that shows up as a somatic way of rejecting, ⁓

being receptive, which is over explaining. I don't need help. ⁓ no, no, no. Like I don't, this isn't that great. Like I didn't work that hard on it. It's okay. this little thing. Like just this idea that we like reduce or minimize the impact of what is it that we're receiving as a way to deflect from the fact that we don't want to feel the full breadth of what we're receiving or the full depth of what we're receiving. Because oftentimes when we're receiving things, it feels good.

Like, let's just be honest about that. Like, it feels good. Like, it feels good. And we are so taught in Western culture, I think, and society, that feeling good is bad. That, like, you can only feel good in certain ways, or that you can only be happy and joyful and receive in certain ways.

And the reality is, is when we start getting picky and choosy and weird about what we're allowed to receive and what we're not allowed to receive, we create all of these barriers. We create all of these walls that are not necessary and don't need to be there for any reason. Like we can let them go. We can move those walls. We can create different pathways. We can tear those things down because receiving is allowed to feel good.

Let's talk about receiving feeling good because your girly pop here is a words of affirmation girly. I love words of affirmation like please, please, please tell me how much you adore me. So much so that I am like actively like when I introduce myself. Okay here so I am in a kink discord group and as part of the kink discord group they have an intro section and you can

Basically write your little intro put your little photo, you know, like a little personal ad and you know Your girl loves to do that. I love to market myself. I love to put myself out there especially for getting dates or lovers or relationships I am I love that process anyways, I was putting my little intro out there and I was thinking about what I was gonna write and I literally made a whole paragraph about this idea of like

I need you to make an effort and initiate with me. I basically said, please do not ever expect me to initiate on you. I will never approach you. It is very rare that I will approach you, especially in social settings. That's just not how my energy works. I am a projector in human design, and so my energy is meant to be invited into. If you want me to talk a little bit more about human design, let me know, because I'm happy to talk a little bit about this and how you can think about your energy in this way as well, especially with receiving.

So my projector energy is meant to receive invitations. It is an energy aura that is meant to penetrate. And so I am trying to be penetrated into your energy. I'm trying to be very deep with you. I am trying to go very deep with you. I'm trying to be in the energy with you, which means I need your consent and permission before I actually penetrate into your energy and engage with you. And the way that I get your consent and permission is by putting myself out there and letting you invite me into your space and into your energy and into your...

universe. And so I basically put on this intro, please do not expect me to approach you. If you are interested in me, please approach me. Please approach me. Please approach me. Here are some ways that you can approach me. Here's how I like being approached. And I was unapologetically unapologetically like your girl loves compliments. She loves to feel desired. I love that. Please tell me how much you desire. I would love to alchemize your desire energy for me, please. Please tell me how much you think I'm beautiful.

whatever it may be, how interesting you think I am, fascinating, how interested you are in the things that I'm doing, whatever, I don't care. I love feeling desired. Please praise me, please give me compliments.

And do you know how easy it has been to navigate that group and community space because I have just allowed myself to be open and allowed myself to just fully receive that type of energy? So like, don't be afraid of this. Being open to receptive energy and being open to receiving is how you activate your highest form of pleasure. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about how you can receive more pleasure, how you can receive more praise.

I think there are a lot of ways that receiving energetic attention or compliments can really feel uncomfortable, especially for those of us who are socialized as feminine. Erotic attention can sometimes feel invasive if the body hasn't learned that being wanted doesn't mean the same as being used. I think that there is a lot of connotation, especially for people who are socialized as women, that being desired or having this feeling of being wanted means that you're also being...

objectified in a way where you're being used without your consent. It's kind of almost like that you are the object of other people's desires, but you are not allowed to have desires, right? We talked about that last in the last episode.

So I think in order to feel safe in receiving erotic energy, you have to have good boundaries about how you go about not feeling used in that. How can you receive erotic energy and attention without feeling used? And so for me, how I do that is I hold strong boundaries about like when I receive erotic attention, there's only certain ways that I will choose to engage with it. And there are only certain ways that I will choose to show up to it. And I have strong boundaries around that. You know who's really good at this? OnlyFans girls. OnlyFans girls are so good at this because

because

what they do is they basically say, this is what it means to access my erotic attention or give me your erotic attention. And that is a really great way of making sure that you feel wanted without feeling used. And so what is it the price of access rate for you or what is the barometer of like, what is the threshold of access for you?

so you don't feel used when you receive erotic attention? And how can you start to integrate that into alchemizing it and using it for your benefit instead of using it for your downfall and using it for you to glow up and manifest things versus feeling bad about yourself?

To be desired is to be seen, not just for what you give, but who you are. And so it's really important to remember that when we're choosing to be seen,

You want to think about how you want to be seen so that it doesn't feel like you're only being seen for what you give but for who you are. So I present myself on social media as like a succubus like this like pleasure priestess energy because that is how I want to be seen because that is more than what I give. It's it's really who I am. It's how I operate in my life. Like my business is wrapped around this. Like if you are following any of my personal stuff, the fact that I am a sex coach and an intimacy guide and like run parties and stuff like that would not be a surprise to you because that is

my authentic expression. So of course my social media is about pleasure and about sexuality and I'm thirst trapping and being cutie and hot on my social media. It's all on brand, babe. It's all part of the theme. I'm trying to receive the energy to alchemize the things that I am doing. And so, ⁓ it's important to remember that, that there's ways that you can alchemize this. Because I know for many of us, it's always felt like erotic energy wasn't a gift, but more of...

a threat, right? That like receiving adoration without explanation or justification feels like it's scary. It goes against everything that we've been taught, like that we have to earn things or that it's scary to receive that or it's unsafe or that you will be in danger for receiving it.

And so your nervous system isn't comfortable with it. It's still feeling nervous about it and unsafe. And the reality is pleasure, admiration, and erotic attention are all currencies of connection.

And if you are ultimately feeling unsafe receiving connection, you will more likely reject it, even when you long for it, even when you want it. So this is the time to be thinking about how do I show up to connection? How do I think about currencies of connection? How do I show up for the different currencies of connections in my life? Do I give admiration to people? Am I pleasure focused with other people?

Do I want to provide pleasure for other people? Am I prioritizing pleasure in my connection with other people? I think one of the other major things that really keeps us from being able to experience pleasure is that we have this kind of dissonance between performative pleasure and actual pleasure. So what is performative pleasure versus actual surrender? sorry. Let me back up. Let me start over.

So I think another barrier that comes up with being able to receive pleasure is this idea that oftentimes we are performing pleasure versus actually surrendering. And performing pleasure is about this idea that we think people want to see us a certain way. We think that pleasure has to look a certain way, happiness, joy, eroticism, orgasms, climaxing, all of that has to look a certain way because we're told

it has to look a certain way. And so we perform that over and over and over again versus actually surrendering into what pleasure is. Performative pleasure is pleasure on display. It's about what can I show you that you can consume that feels aligned with what you know? Whereas actually surrendering, that is about surrendering to honoring your pleasure.

being there with your pleasure, being felt in your pleasure, not being consumed. Performative pleasure shows up as faking orgasms because you want to end the encounter. Smiling or moaning because you think you should, not because it's real at all. Have you ever done that in sex before where you're just like, I think I'm supposed to moan? No, what if you just, like genuine, this is like an exercise I want you to try, genuinely.

Go into your next sexual encounter, and I only want you to make the noise that feel natural in your body. Just breathe.

Just breathe naturally and I promise you sounds will naturally come out. Just allow yourself to just sit quietly in your pleasure and natural sounds will just come out and you will start to feel that vibration in your voice and then you will start to feel your pleasure versus performing it because the vibrations in your body, the vibrations in your vocal cords, the energetic vibration in your body as it begins to build from your sacral and then come into your throat and then expel out of your body as expression, you will feel that.

fundamentally feel that in your body. Allow yourself to by sitting in that stillness and allowing that to come up. Surrender is not receptive, it is reactive. So it is about being open to allowing yourself to react to what is happening.

It is opening up for them because you understand you want to learn the truth of your desire. Surrendering is a slowness. It is a deepness. And sometimes it is also even messy because performing is about perfection and surrender is about being messy.

Surrender is about allowing your authentic expression to just be there, which means sometimes it is messy and unstable and unpredictable. And sometimes it shows parts of you that you haven't seen or you don't want to see or that you have been avoiding. And so surrender is about allowing authentic expression to come up without controlling it and honoring it.

And I know it can be really hard when you're hearing all these things to be like, okay, I do have all these barriers. I do have all these blockages. Like, what am I supposed to do now though? Like, what do I do? And I think the best bet, I'm sorry. I'm just so excited. I love the idea that hopefully somebody will take.

something away from what I'm about to say in this episode and be able to receive more because I cannot tell you how beautiful it is to be open to receiving and when you are open to that how good it feels in your nervous system. so receiving is a regulation practice, okay? If you want to be in a better place with your nervous system, you have to learn how to regulate it. And so this is a practice because before it's emotional,

It's physiological. You can only receive what your nervous system believes. It is safe to let in.

And so it's important to remember that the nervous system is always scanning for safety. This is called neuroception. And so your body is always looking for where are things safe? How can I find safety? That's why it's looking for repetition. That's why your biases, bias, why you're always looking for that confirmation that things are safe. And if your body begins to perceive a gift or a touch or a compliment as a threat to your autonomy, your dignity or your safety,

it will reject it, whether that is conscious or unconscious. And so it is going to say, I don't want this. I don't want to do this. It's going to probably put you into that fight, flight, freeze, fawn response. And so when your nervous system is in that type of dysregulation, it enters a state where it's basically called the ventral vagal connection, where a place of

openness and social engage.

Okay, sorry, let me back up a little bit.

So when your nervous system is regulated, when you're not in that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response, it enters this state called the ventral vagal connection.

This ventral vagal connection is a place of openness. This is where we start to want social engagement, where we can engage in social relationships and start to build that trust. This is from the place where your body can receive touch, it can receive love, praise, and it can start to move away from places of fear or shame or collapse. And so this is really, really critical. I need you to hear what I'm saying, that you are fundamentally not even in a place to physically

be open to receiving until your nervous system has gotten into this ventral vagal connection.

which means you have to be out of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. So if you are in any situation and a fight, flies, freeze, or fawn is happening, just know there is no way you can receive at that time. There is no way that you can be open to receiving or be open to a place of softness. You have to get to a place of regulating yourself out of that space.

before you can even be open to receiving. And so the priority when you are triggered or activated is to regulate your nervous system so that you can then be open. One has to happen before the other. And that is where I think people get lost. They try to stay open and try to remain open or try to be open when they're in a active state of flight, fight, fawn, or freeze.

I'm sorry, when you're in that state you cannot be open. the priority has to be moving out of that state.

And so when you can start to move out of that state and get into a regulated nervous system, small acts of receiving are going to help you build capacity over time. This is a muscle. Being open to receiving is something that you build over time. Your nervous system has to get regulated to it. It has to get comfortable with it. So over time, you're going to be building capacity. Some small things you can do. Letting someone hold the door open for you without apology. I do this all the time.

slowly up to doors so that I can have people open the doors without apology. I think when I've been with my partners I've never opened a single door in the last like year and a half. So you have to just like let yourself have these little moments. Say thank you for a compliment without deflecting it. Let it just sit in your body. Another one, when you are making love, when you are in a physical act of receiving love,

Taking a full ass breath, taking a breath, allowing yourself to receive, take it in. Take it in. Okay? Because once you allow yourself to take all of those things in, it's going to start to feel better and more regulated in your body.

I also want to talk a little bit about polyvagal theory. How feeling safe enough to receive can really activate connection. So polyvagal theory was developed by Dr. Steven Porges. I'm sorry, I'm not saying, I don't know if I'm saying that right. And it helps us understand how the nervous system influences safety, connection, and openness. So like I was saying before, there are some basic states that your nervous system moves through. There are three of them.

The first is that ventral vagal that we talked about. This is when you're feeling safe and connected. This is where you're feeling like open and where true receptivity happens. You're feeling grounded, you're feeling open, it's okay to soften, you're not in danger, you might make a lot of eye contact, you might be open to intimate play. That's your ventral vagal. That's where we're trying to be for opening connection.

If you are entering fight or flight, you are in your sympathetic nervous system, which means you're activated, you're anxious, you're restless, you're reactive. Your body thinks it needs to do something. Receiving feels impossible because the body's preparing to protect. It's not open, right? So when you're fighting or you're flighting, you're not open because you're trying to protect yourself from what you think is going to come. And so if you're trying to get yourself back into that vagal system, if you're trying to get back into a ventral vagal

We're trying to be more open you need to figure out how do you soothe whatever you feel like needs to be protected or Whatever you feel like you're feeling anxious that you need to be reactive to you So how can you feel less flighty feel less like you need to fight back?

The dorsal vagal is going to be where your shutdown or freeze responses are happening. This is where you're feeling numb, you're checked out, you're dissociating or distant. Your body has decided that connection is unsafe and so now it's going to disconnect from whatever's happening to protect you. And even if love is offered to you, you might feel so far away from it that you can't even reach for it. And so you don't feel safe enough to receive because you feel so disconnected.

and it feels like you cannot receive. And so getting back into that ⁓ ventral vagal is going to be about preparing your body to feel safe again. So co-regulation practices, eye contact, presence, touch, breath work, words of affirmation, checking in, whatever that's gonna make you feel good. So moving back out of flight, fight, freeze, response is going to get you...

into a place of feeling more safe and connected because that ventral vagal is going to be where you want to get that nervous system. So I cannot say this enough, if you don't take anything away from this particular section, there is no way for you to be open and receptive if you are in an activated nervous system response. And so if you are feeling activated in any way, flight, fight, freeze, fawn, you need to deal with that first before you can get to a place of being open.

One of the most important things that you need to remember as you are getting into this place of being open again is how you stay grounded in your boundaries. Remember, because at the beginning, what we were talking about is that one of the reasons it can feel so safe to receive is that because you don't know how to feel it in your body and you don't know how to receive in a way that actually feels good to you. And so it's not about you, it becomes less about you and more about what you are receiving in this external thing.

And so boundaries don't block receiving, they make it possible. When your body knows it has permission to say no, it can finally relax. It doesn't have to go or brace into this kind of survival mode. It feels safe enough to open because it knows it always has an out. It has the ability to pull away. It has the ability to stop whatever's happening. And so your boundaries are gonna give you that safety net. They're gonna give you that sandbox to really, really play in, to really receive in.

You can't really, really fully receive if you feel like someone's going to take too much or they're gonna cross the line or they're gonna expect something in return. So boundaries make a clear, here's what's okay and here's what's not. So that when you do take something, when you do receive something, you're not holding onto this guilt or shame or coercion energy and feeling like you have to do something for someone.

And it's important to remember that when you're constantly saying yes to avoid conflict or to keep the peace, your yes becomes incredibly diluted. People start to begin to not believe your yes.

But when you have the power to say no, your yes becomes more meaningful. It becomes more intentional and you become more embodied with it, right? And this is always all about, what do we always say? Getting back to your discernment, getting back to your truth, getting back to what is right for you, what you know is for you. So being embodied in that, it's about participating. You are here to participate. You are not here to perform.

You are here to be participatory in the process, not to perform receiving. And so saying no is what makes our yes really real. Receiving does not mean accepting everything. Ways that you can think about this to ask yourself, can I, right, when you're thinking about your boundaries, can I let this in versus do I match this energy, right?

Do I match what I'm trying to receive? Do I match what's going to be coming into me? Do I match what is happening that I'm saying I am receptive to?

And if you're like, okay, girl, like I hear you, this is exciting, what the heck? Like, my gosh, okay, I wanna receive. Or maybe you're like, I'm curious about receiving more. I wanna be more open, but like, why is this important? Like, why would I wanna do this? Like, what does this actually do? And you know, girly pops, you know I'm always here to tell you, this is about liberation.

This is always about liberation. I am 10 toes down for anything, it is my liberation and it is your liberation. It is our liberation. Receiving is a spiritual and liberatory practice because receiving connects us to our worthiness, to our enoughness, our energy, our feminine magnetic energy. I'm using feminine as a non-gender neutral term right now, magnetic energy. Receiving is not something you do. It is something you allow. When you are receptive, you are allowed.

You are saying I am worthy of this. Because we have learned that our worth is conditional. So when someone offers us love freely, our nervous system doesn't know what to do with it. And so receiving love, being open to love, being receptive to love is a liberatory practice. And it liberates us from this idea that we are unworthy of love. It liberates us from this idea that we have to earn love. It liberates us from this idea that we have to earn pleasure.

that we can't just be open, receptive beings that is unsafe to be receptive and opening. Because receiving becomes a spiritual act when you recognize you are inherently worthy of love and pleasure. You don't have to exhaust yourself to deserve care. Your softness is actually not a freaking weakness at all. It is your f*cking superpower. It is how you attune and align and show empathy and compassion to the world and it is brilliant and it is beautiful.

And it is how you begin to reclaim ancestral power, reclaim ancestral truth, how you heal ancestral trauma and lineage because there were so many before us that were taught to give without limit. Some of us come from lineages where survival meant service, service, service, service, service and sacrifice. Where love was shown through labor, where our grandmothers gave without resting and our mothers carried burdens with no hands free to receive.

So this is about awakening to your truth in your ancestral lineage as well and saying, you know what, it is time to receive. It is time to be here to receive what I know was my birthright, what I know is meant for me. I am allowed to be adored. And let me just say that again, you are allowed to be adored, baby girl. I was talking about that intro I made on that Discord. Do you know how much I knew without a shadow of a doubt with my full ass chest when I was writing that? I deserved every message I get.

I deserve every compliment. I deserve every reaction to every photo I post. Everything, everything I get, I deserve. I am worthy of that because I am allowed to be adored. I am allowed to feel desired. I am allowed for people to want me. I am allowed to feel beautiful. I am allowed to feel like a goddess because that is spiritual permission to be attuned with my authenticity. It is spiritual permission to be so in my pleasure.

that I can make anything happen. And that is what being open to receptivity or being open to receiving has done for me. Because let me just tell you this, how I built this business, how I built DTF was through a sexual practice of being open and receptive. I literally...

My partner Raven is so amazing and he is such a spiritually attuned being. He's so incredible. He is so energetically open, energetically attuned, and I am so deeply, deeply grateful for his spiritual guidance and his spiritual work with me. And one of the very wonderful things that he does for me is that he eats me out as a way to help me commune with God, the universe, the divine, whatever you want to call it. I use that as a

spiritual practice to receive downloads. We talked about spiritual energy, right? At the very beginning, we talked about spiritual receiving, which is that attunement to receiving messages or guidance or synchronicities, right? And for the longest time, you hear about this in more religious practices, Like especially like, God told me this, or I had a dream and God told me this, right? Women lead a lot of their husbands in Christian marriages through the...

divination that they have with God through prayer, right? Prayer, right? Well, getting eaten out is my prayer time. That is how I basically commune with the divine and say, hey, I am open and receptive to your guidance, to your messages, to your synchronicities, to your wisdom. And I had Raven eat me out for an hour. I was in pleasure for an hour just downloading all of the insights and attunements to this business.

the branding, the tagline, the purpose, the intention, the audience, who I was gonna be serving, what I was gonna be saying, what I wanted to do, the podcast, all of it. I downloaded everything in that hour session of being just pleasured by my partner because I was so open and so receptive. And I now have the opportunity to continue to do that.

for as long as I want. And I have that access to myself for as long as I want. I get to attune to that for as long as I want, as many times as I want, because I am an open vessel for the divine through my sacred sensuality and my sacred sexuality. And that...

That is the type of shit that gets you to a place of attuning to your most authentic form, your most authentic life, and moving things and alchemizing things and shifting things in your life so that your life looks drastically different than it does right now, so that you move into exactly who you are meant to be. That is the type of power receiving and being open to receiving has for you, for me, for all of us. It is such a liberatory practice.

Okay, that was a beautiful episode. I feel so good about that. I hope that you are all also feeling good about that. What a just yummy, yummy time together. I am so grateful to have you here. I hope that you are feeling activated. I hope you're feeling alive and I hope that you are feeling just.

engaged and in your truth and maybe curious and open to what would it look like to be more receptive? How can I receive more? How can I be more open? Because I want you to have it all. I want you to have everything you want, babe. Everything you want. It wants you. You deserve it. So try these practices. Try these rituals. Get in there. Start working on your nervous system regulation and remember what I said.

that in order to receive, your nervous system has to be regulated. So you have to prioritize that first. I love you so much. I hope that you are having the most beautiful, wonderful day wherever you are and that this episode was helpful for wherever you are in your journey. And wherever your longing leads you, stay turned on by your truth.