Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / The Re-Civilized Woman: Stephanie Welch on Sex, Society, and Self - Pt 2

Transcript

The Re-Civilized Woman: Stephanie Welch on Sex, Society, and Self - Pt 2 · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

• 0:00
  Many people can get fixated on that agenda around
• 0:03
  how can I push the right buttons on this person
• 0:06
  to give them pleasure?
• 0:08
  And that's very ineffective most of the time.
• 0:11
  Versus being connected to one's own pleasure
• 0:15
  and expressing the enjoyment of the partner
• 0:19
  through one's own pleasure can actually be one of the most
• 0:23
  connecting and effective ways to please another person.
• 0:27
  Welcome back to Every Dance Estral. I am your host, James Berry.
• 0:32
  Part two with our guest, Stephanie Welch. So last week, Stephanie Welch shared her
• 0:38
  journey of overcoming nail biting and building confidence through self-care
• 0:43
  as well as her insights on navigating aesthetics and modesty and massage therapy.
• 0:48
  We explored her late blooming experiences, redefining femininity
• 0:53
  and using ancestral health to address modern gender mismatches.
• 0:58
  This week, Stephanie dives deeper into her experience in the legal sex trade,
• 1:03
  shares fascinating insights on evolutionary psychology and relationship dynamics,
• 1:09
  and she challenges modern gender narratives with an ancestral perspective.
• 1:14
  Very excited for you to hear this episode.
• 1:16
  And if you like what you're hearing, remember, leave a review, subscribe, share it with a friend.
• 1:22
  We would appreciate your support and we look forward to hearing from you.
• 1:27
  Enjoy part two with Stephanie Welch.
• 1:31
  First of all, how are you doing? Because you don't normally talk about this part of your life,
• 1:36
  right? This is the first time that I'm actually publicly speaking about this.
• 1:40
  I talk about it privately to people because when people, friends, I know that that know me,
• 1:46
  and it's easy for them to understand how this all fits in.
• 1:50
  But the broader social environment still has a lot of stigma around it.
• 1:56
  You didn't just go and study it and write a book.
• 1:58
  Like, you're like, no, no, I'm going to actually go put myself in the legal sex trade,
• 2:04
  and I'm going to experience it. And you did it how many years? It was like three or three years,
• 2:09
  roughly. Yeah. What's the process in a nutshell of like, here's my first day of
• 2:16
  legal sex work versus, here's my last day. What was your first experience like where you're now
• 2:22
  getting paid for your sexual connection with a man? And was it even actual sex? Because I know
• 2:28
  sometimes it's simply like talking to people, right? Much like massage therapy is a profession
• 2:36
  where I saw hundreds of clients for hundreds of sessions and it all kind of blurs together.
• 2:43
  A lot of it's like that in sex work as well. It's honestly, it's so much more mundane than you
• 2:50
  would think when it comes to the profession in that regard. So did my first booking ever
• 2:56
  did that involve sex? I think it probably did, but it's pretty fuzzy. I remember the room
• 3:01
  that I had, because I only had that room for a short while and it was different from some of
• 3:06
  the other rooms where the rooms different for different things. Because you got to remember,
• 3:12
  no one has experienced what you have, right? So can you actually draw us the experience? So we
• 3:17
  have a better understanding. Yeah. So I mentioned in the legal establishments out there, there
• 3:22
  are maybe a dozen give or take brothels and it's basically a house. It's a little bit like a hotel.
• 3:29
  You have a bunch of bedrooms with they usually have an attached bathroom. So little suites and then
• 3:35
  some common areas and like a bar parlor area up front where customers come in. So whenever you
• 3:42
  are there, you have a room that you're assigned to. You essentially rent a room. That's kind of the
• 3:46
  mechanism for how you're there. You have an arrangement with the house. You have your work card
• 3:51
  that's given to you by the sheriff. So when you show up the first time, there are a bunch of
• 3:57
  things that you have to do. You have to fill out paperwork, sign a contract. They usually have
• 4:03
  a driver that will take you places because you're usually flying out there. Most people are coming from
• 4:09
  all over the country or all over the world for that matter. They take you to the sheriff's office.
• 4:13
  They get you your paperwork. Usually you get fingerprinted background check. You see the doctor
• 4:19
  every week. You get checked for a variety of things. That's what the health department requires is
• 4:25
  certain things that you get checked for. Some it's every week. Some it's every month.
• 4:29
  Do the people coming to the brothel have to be checked? All the health safety aspect is
• 4:34
  totally on the provider side. So the STD checks every week or month. You're legally required to
• 4:41
  use condoms. They also have this thing they call the DC. It stands for dick check. Before you actually
• 4:48
  take somebody's money and go back behind closed doors, you literally ask them to drop their
• 4:54
  pants and have a little inspection where you look to make sure that there is no obvious signs of
• 5:00
  things in this array like from crabs to open sores or open sores. It's extraordinarily rare
• 5:09
  for anyone to show up with any obvious signs of something wrong because they generally know that
• 5:14
  they're not going to get a pass. But I would say I've only had to fail two or three people in
• 5:20
  like an average of like one or two a year maybe. There's a lot of sensationalism around
• 5:25
  this topic, right? A lot of people just they only know what they see in the movies. To that point
• 5:31
  are the movies about the industry accurate or is it more like sterile than that or just not as
• 5:37
  glamorous? I don't really know what movies we might be talking about. There isn't a whole lot
• 5:41
  that I know of that references the way the legal industry is out there.
• 5:48
  For example, when someone comes to the facility and they're wanting to be with somebody,
• 5:53
  a lot of times the movies show like all the women come in line up and then the person picks.
• 5:57
  Like, is that how it works? Sometimes, yes. And that varies depending on where you're at. There
• 6:02
  are places with sort of mandatory line up. So before the person even gets in the door,
• 6:08
  somebody will say, oh, there's someone coming and everybody will run to the front and get in the line.
• 6:12
  In those cases, the guys are confronted with the line up as soon as they walk in the door.
• 6:16
  I think that's a little bit intense for a lot of people. Some of them will try to decline it and
• 6:21
  then depending on who's the house manager, they may insist that the guy has to choose somebody
• 6:27
  to talk to you right away. But usually even if that's the case, you'll go sit at the bar for a while
• 6:31
  and you'll have a conversation. Depending on where you're at, some of the houses have rules on how
• 6:36
  long you can spend talking to somebody before somebody has to make a move either that you're going
• 6:41
  to go negotiate or you need to get up and make space for somebody else to have a chance to try to
• 6:47
  get them to book as a customer. Does ego and competition play into it? Is there an aspect of like
• 6:54
  you go line up and you're not chosen? Do you feel deflated? Is everyone dressing differently
• 6:59
  or doing little things to get chosen? Is there competition in that way? Because you only get paid
• 7:04
  if you get picked, right? Yeah, you only get paid if you book with somebody for sure. So getting
• 7:10
  picked is one step towards booking with somebody. Definitely people are trying to show up in a way
• 7:17
  that is likely to get them picked. And I would say there is a huge amount of variation in terms of
• 7:23
  that you know, you'll have some people who are especially physically attractive or who present
• 7:28
  themselves very successfully and maybe they get chosen more or maybe it's because they're blonde
• 7:34
  more than average or the preferences that people have when they come in is all over the board. So
• 7:40
  like no matter who you are, you'll always get picked at some point. But we certainly all would try
• 7:46
  to do everything we could to increase our chances. When you're out there, essentially the bottom line
• 7:52
  is you're trying to make money. That's the reason why people go. But how did that mix with your
• 7:58
  psychology? Because you're coming from a place of like, I've been monogamous most of my life. I've
• 8:03
  only had a handful of boyfriends. I previously felt rejected. So in that competitive environment,
• 8:10
  is this just playing out that whole process where every other day you're just like, oh man,
• 8:16
  like I'm just facing my struggles from my past or I'm facing my past or did you find like bliss
• 8:22
  and you were just like, oh no, it is what it is and whether I get chosen or not. Because you also
• 8:27
  are coming there to pay your school bills, right? You're a little triggered. I didn't work out as well
• 8:31
  as I'd hoped. I was on the path of continual improvement. I went in there with the growth mindset.
• 8:39
  I was like, okay, this is a chance to put money on the line for getting good at this.
• 8:43
  What's this? The getting chosen part. Once you've negotiated something and you know,
• 8:48
  you've exchanged money, that's the hard part. The easy part is going and completing the service.
• 8:55
  So the focus was on how could I make myself as attractive as possible? So that was the getting
• 9:01
  better at that every day. And I did. And a big part of the way that I did was with the help of
• 9:07
  many other women there. On the one hand, there's a certain amount of competition, but there's
• 9:11
  also camaraderie. And that was something that I enormously encouraged, particularly in the house
• 9:16
  where I first worked. Because actually when I first arrived, the first place I started had a
• 9:22
  fairly toxic environment when I arrived. And there was one woman in particular who was kind of the
• 9:27
  bully who was stomping around and stomping on everybody. A variety of things happened. She did
• 9:35
  some things that caused some issues and I alerted management to it. But also because the turnover is
• 9:42
  so high there, when you're new, it doesn't take very long before you're not the newest person
• 9:49
  there. And they have systems that they call of like having a big sister. More experienced women
• 9:55
  will help the ones who come in who are less experienced. And within a month, I immediately started
• 10:01
  taking on the mentorship role of being a big sister and welcoming in newer women to the space
• 10:09
  and creating a very much better culture of support and help. Everything that I had learned up to
• 10:15
  that point, I would tell them and teach them everything I knew. They would feel very appreciative
• 10:20
  and supported and welcomed. And then as soon as they started being more experienced, they would
• 10:27
  bring in newer girls with the same kind of attitude. So it only took about six months where we went
• 10:32
  from the most toxic house to the most collaborative supportive place. And the women that I met there
• 10:42
  helped me with so many things. I mean, I had to exert a little bit of influence to help in the
• 10:47
  place where I started because it's not all like that. But once I did, the support that I got from
• 10:52
  all these other women was just fantastic. My wife was just watching this Dallas cheerleaders documentary.
• 11:00
  And the actual football team, the Dallas cheerleaders, the criteria of getting into that program
• 11:06
  every year they have to renew. It's very, very competitive. But yet they're not paid well.
• 11:13
  It's one of those things where it's not compensated like football players at all. Like where the
• 11:19
  women who are running the program, they don't necessarily own it, but they're just running it.
• 11:24
  And they were previous cheerleaders. They're the ones getting paid. They treat the people that are
• 11:30
  training to be cheerleaders or are currently cheerleaders like, oh, well, they would do this for free.
• 11:36
  It's a environment that is kind of toxic. They probably wouldn't see it like that. But it's toxic
• 11:41
  in that you have women putting other women down, like not allowing for equal pay, not supporting
• 11:47
  them to get compensated for what they're doing. And they're justifying it. They're saying, oh,
• 11:51
  this is because they would do it for free anyway. And I did it for free. And I didn't get paid a lot.
• 11:56
  So of course they should do it too. That structure is kind of built into that system.
• 12:01
  And here you're sharing that in many ways, the brothel is set up to be very competitive. But yet
• 12:07
  that's not the culture that you experience because you supported the co-creation of it not being
• 12:14
  toxic like that. Do you think that is one of the things where I'm missing from female culture?
• 12:22
  Because it does seem like that is the characteristic I hear the most, which is women are so mean to
• 12:27
  other women. I have a daughter who's in junior high right now. And literally it comes up all the time
• 12:32
  like girls are so mean to each other. I gave a talk at the 2019 ancestral health symposium in
• 12:39
  San Diego. It has a very long title. It was called tribal living. How might a gender segregated
• 12:46
  housing model outperform the nuclear family as the basic domestic unit of society? And it was
• 12:53
  kind of based on my experience at the brothel where you had all these women living together
• 12:58
  under the same roof and sharing essentially sharing resources. The way that the money works there
• 13:05
  is it's basically 50-50 split with the house. Whatever your customers come in and pay, you keep
• 13:11
  half and the house keeps half. So we're all collectively contributing to the environment that we
• 13:18
  live in. Half of everything that I make goes to support the house that is providing us this
• 13:25
  environment that is generating traffic that is feeding us that we're living at. I felt very
• 13:32
  invested in the environment and the culture there. I wanted to get the most out of it that I could
• 13:39
  and so I wanted to contribute the most that I could and I experienced that that I came in with
• 13:45
  this very optimistic abundance mindset like I'm going to help everybody. I'm not going to be
• 13:52
  stingy or competitive in the way that I work. I'm going to 100% support and encourage everybody else.
• 13:58
  Again, because I was able to do that in the environment of bringing in new people so that they
• 14:03
  felt that from day one and because the turnover is so high, the culture got replaced really fast.
• 14:10
  And I felt like that was one of the coolest things that I ever experienced was this awesome
• 14:15
  network of all these women who were just behind each other and who were completely wanting to
• 14:22
  be supportive and generous and giving and it's like, yeah, this is much more like what our nature
• 14:28
  is oriented to be that high costs and energetic investment of bearing and raising children
• 14:37
  leads women to have a very socialist kind of tendency that we want to support and help each other
• 14:44
  because we know we have so much more to gain by cooperating than by competing against one another.
• 14:50
  Because if we're trying to tear each other down and we're making the environment miserable
• 14:55
  in there, what guys are we're going to want to come in and hang out and spend time with us.
• 14:59
  But if we're all having a great time, we're all so friendly, we're so happy and laughing and
• 15:05
  supportive and all that. That creates an environment where people want to hang out.
• 15:11
  We even become more attractive in just our exuberance and the pleasure and things.
• 15:18
  This could even tie back to the aspect of what men are wanting to experience there and the
• 15:24
  pleasure of women is a big part of it that we're having a good time that they're showing up in
• 15:30
  an environment where we're getting a lot out of it. I really wanted to actually complete a
• 15:35
  thought about that from earlier that one of the things I found is that when guys are coming in and
• 15:40
  they have this drive to please women, but the incentives are there around making money.
• 15:47
  What most women learn very quickly is that the way to make the most money is to appear to be
• 15:53
  very, very pleased by the customer that you have, even if that's not really the case, right?
• 16:00
  And inevitably, the sole marker that anybody assumes is the indicator of pleasure is how many
• 16:06
  orgasms you have. What ends up happening is in that environment. It largely becomes a theatrical
• 16:14
  performance. And so when a customer comes in and sees a woman, he's basically paying to
• 16:22
  have her appear to be enjoying herself to the maximum, which basically most women
• 16:28
  fake a lot of orgasms there to create this experience. What I learned from this, the actual
• 16:36
  detrimental effect to society in the broader scale is that this gives men who seek these
• 16:43
  kind of services false positive feedback for things that are terrible. And it never actually
• 16:50
  teaches them how to improve their sex lives and those of their partners because they just get this
• 16:58
  like all you're amazing, all that was wonderful. And if anything, that reinforces that original idea
• 17:04
  that they may have had that most women just don't like sex because clearly here's the evidence
• 17:10
  of this woman that he's paid who is having a wonderful time and he's having all of these
• 17:16
  orgasms. And so he's not actually bad at sex in his mind. He just hasn't found the right woman.
• 17:22
  Oh my gosh, this is so fascinating. It carries over to porn, right? Now we very much live in a society
• 17:29
  where young men on up are just getting exposed to sex through porn. And so they have this kind
• 17:37
  of misconception of what sex is because so many of these porn sites are just extremists and they're
• 17:43
  not at all accurate towards how intimacy is between two loving people, like their violence,
• 17:50
  their destructive sometimes. You mentioned to me previously that obviously there's things like
• 17:58
  porn induced erectile dysfunction, but clearly this theatrics, as you call it, which I think is
• 18:05
  a fantastic way of looking at. So this is happening within nutrition as well. I call it the illusion
• 18:10
  of health. There's this illusion of this is healthy versus that. And it's like usually not
• 18:15
  accurate at all. So we're also experienced there's an illusion of healthy sex or there's an illusion
• 18:22
  of sexuality or sex experiences however you want to describe it. So how do we move away from this?
• 18:29
  How do we get more honest about physical connection? Because clearly the illusion is
• 18:35
  continuous, whether it's someone who goes to a brothel, whether it's someone who goes to a
• 18:41
  prostitute somewhere else, whether it's looking at porn and only getting exposed to sex through that.
• 18:48
  And then of course we're not even talking about the women that are contributing to it like where
• 18:53
  they are there to please the man, you know, these young women who are just connecting with men
• 18:59
  physically. So then they continue the illusion. They fake whatever they're doing. They let the
• 19:04
  guy do what he wants. We're continuing this narrative. We're continuing the cycle. So how do we
• 19:10
  break it? We're clearly far off from what is well aligned with our nature as sexual beings. You
• 19:19
  know, this is why I made my fifth pillar of recivilization basically sexuality. It's very important.
• 19:26
  We spend more time having sex than any other animal. It's a big part of our lives.
• 19:32
  Porn is not helping the case as you mentioned. That does all kinds of problematic things.
• 19:39
  It's giving this type of stimulation that in no way corresponds to what somebody has actually
• 19:44
  done to develop themselves or to pursue partnership or anything like that. It trains your brain
• 19:51
  on stimuli that have nothing to do with reality. And it doesn't provide a realistic type of guidance
• 19:59
  to help people improve their lives. Another thing just was the amount of evidence going into the
• 20:06
  industry. How enormous it is and pervasive like people are suffering. This was another thing that
• 20:13
  I got to see firsthand. Of course, I had a very biased sample of people who were coming to me.
• 20:20
  But there is a great deal of dissatisfaction. There are very few people percentage wise out there
• 20:27
  in the world who have as fulfilling and regular sex lives and experiences as they would like to have
• 20:35
  in their life. So I think that it should be something that we consider more important in society
• 20:42
  in general. And if anything, I would love to normalize the idea of supporting and helping and
• 20:49
  mentoring and training people in that sexuality is a skill that you can learn that you can improve.
• 20:56
  The problem that I saw is people coming in for services in Nevada don't come in with a growth
• 21:03
  mindset. They're already stuck on the idea that they're not bad at sex. They just need to find
• 21:09
  somebody who likes it. But if you have somebody who's looking at it like, no, I want to know what I
• 21:15
  can do to bring the best of myself to the table as an attractive partner as an interesting person
• 21:23
  to interact with and to become a more experienced and better lover, then that's a path where we could
• 21:31
  really help people. So that's actually what I've been doing more recently. And the term for it
• 21:38
  really is surrogate partner is being somebody who instead of creating that sort of theatrical
• 21:46
  performance and false positive feedback that comes in the kind of prostitution or escort realm,
• 21:52
  it's about coming into an experience in a very authentic way and providing guidance and a safe
• 21:58
  space and genuine feedback that can help somebody to recognize how things are working for them and
• 22:05
  what could they learn and what could they do better. There's a panel at Paleo FX and somebody
• 22:12
  was talking about masturbating in order to learn what we like. But that's a limited way of looking
• 22:19
  at how we could learn. If you want to learn how to get better at working out, you could just walk
• 22:25
  into a gym and start picking up equipment and tossing it around and trying to figure out what to do
• 22:30
  or you could hire a personal trainer and have somebody show you the ropes and like give you a tour
• 22:37
  and say here's what this equipment does and here's what that equipment does. And here's my guess
• 22:42
  at how much weight you might want to use and here's some advice on your form so that you don't hurt
• 22:48
  yourself. And I think that that type of support could be extremely helpful because again porn is
• 22:55
  not a very helpful educational source for this and I actually heard a great quote at a
• 23:02
  Kink conference once that said, you don't save yourself for the one. You practice for the one.
• 23:10
  It's an interesting point because in many ways, if your goal is to be really good at self-love,
• 23:16
  meaning like obviously I'm talking physically, so like if your goal is to be really good at
• 23:21
  masturbation, then practicing on yourself is legit, right? Because in a sense, it's no different
• 23:28
  than, hey, instead of hiring that personal trainer, I'm going to read books and watch videos and learn
• 23:34
  to do it on my own. So it's kind of taking it into your own hands. But in both of those scenarios,
• 23:39
  you're the only person in the scenario. It's not like you need to learn training so that you can
• 23:44
  train someone else. You're learning it to train for you. But in a sense, what I hear you saying is like,
• 23:50
  if you're talking about sex with another person, it involves someone else. And so this is not
• 23:55
  something that you're necessarily going to gain tons of knowledge from just in your own room all
• 24:00
  alone. Let me say one thing on masturbation. There is a very important difference in the intention
• 24:09
  behind how masturbation is used. And this is one thing that I have talked about with clients.
• 24:15
  If it's something that is being used as kind of a quick escape and stress relief and a quick fix,
• 24:23
  it kind of is contributing to the same sort of thing like an escapism or like a release valve
• 24:29
  that isn't necessarily bringing somebody closer to the fulfilling sexual experiences that they
• 24:34
  want to have. However, if you think of it more as self pleasure and the intention around the
• 24:40
  activity is to connect with your body to just become more aware of it, even on your own,
• 24:48
  and to take a more mindful approach to your own pleasure and to focus on the idea of your own
• 24:56
  self worth and that giving yourself permission for enjoyment and giving yourself time and
• 25:04
  basically focusing your intention and attention on your own pleasure and enjoyment,
• 25:10
  then that actually can be a pretty positive contributor to a partnered experience because
• 25:16
  going back to the same thing where so many people would always tell me, I really care about
• 25:21
  pleasing a woman. One other thing that I find is that many people can get fixated on that agenda
• 25:28
  how can I push the right buttons on this person to give them pleasure and that's very ineffective
• 25:35
  most of the time versus connecting to one's own pleasure and enjoyment and being very embodied
• 25:42
  and mindful and present and many times actually being connected to one's own pleasure and
• 25:50
  expressing the enjoyment of the partner through one's own pleasure can actually be one of the
• 25:57
  most connecting and effective ways to please another person. How does that look like how does that
• 26:04
  feel for the person who's never experienced it so that they have a better understanding of what
• 26:08
  to go for or to strive for? If I take on a surrogate partner client who doesn't have any experience
• 26:16
  or what they find to be a useful amount of experience in their life, we start with things that are
• 26:22
  very basic and I actually call it single ingredient sex. A lot of people when they think about
• 26:29
  improving their sex lives they talk about spicing things up. Instead of thinking about spicing it up,
• 26:36
  I encourage people like how about let's just think about the most basic recipe or just like one
• 26:40
  ingredient and actually getting that sorted out before you try to complicate things and the
• 26:46
  ingredient is really the quality of presence and connection so I actually start out any new session
• 26:54
  with a person with cuddling fully clothed cuddling just laying down together. Now we'll also have
• 27:01
  spoken ahead of time like maybe on a Zoom call or something you know we'll be acquainted
• 27:06
  but when I have somebody in person for the first time that very first thing I do is basically say
• 27:11
  all right make yourself comfortable lay down and I scooch up next to them put my head on their shoulder
• 27:17
  and we just breathe for a minute and we start to talk and relax a little bit and I say you know
• 27:23
  it okay here we are you know there's all this hormones there's adrenaline there's cortisol you know
• 27:28
  your nervous things are worked up you're meeting a new person you don't know what to expect
• 27:33
  there's no pressure here there's nothing that we need to accomplish all you have to do right now
• 27:39
  is just relax chill out lay down breathe and be here the oxytocin and the presence of touch and
• 27:47
  connection is actually going to help calm down the nervous system get you back in a parasympathetic
• 27:53
  state we just start by talking being present connecting and I'll share observations that I have
• 28:02
  what I notice like your body is stiff in this way I'll share my observations the talk is
• 28:10
  around supporting them and being as present as possible you have to be physically touching the
• 28:15
  person because you're characterizing what you're saying based on what you're physically experiencing
• 28:20
  yes so we're having a kinesthetic experience I will generally verbalize a lot of it initially
• 28:27
  to draw back the curtain on what's happening for me and what I notice is happening for them
• 28:33
  at the same time as helping them tune into what the non-verbal communication is saying
• 28:39
  it starts off this way but then depending on whatever the person's intention of the session is
• 28:45
  it can progress from there to whatever it is that they want to explore and experience in an
• 28:51
  organic way so unlike back in Nevada when we would go into negotiation you're literally talking
• 28:56
  about okay the guy would say something like I just want a straight lay meaning just like sex
• 29:02
  or half and half which is like a below job with sex you know you're like talking about specific
• 29:07
  activities and you're identifying exactly how much money they're going to pay for it and all this
• 29:12
  is decided upfront essentially when I work with a target partner client we don't have an agenda
• 29:18
  upfront we're going to create a space the boundaries are open here but we're only going to get there
• 29:25
  through an organic process and it's going to start by creating a sense of presence and connection
• 29:32
  there's going to be a lot of communication and there's going to be touch right off the bat and we
• 29:37
  are going to be talking through like how does this touch feel what do you notice what do I notice
• 29:43
  what do I like I'll specifically tell them I really like the way that you're touching me here or
• 29:49
  I would much prefer if you would touch me in this other way instead or I'll ask them did you notice
• 29:56
  how I stiffened up in that moment a little bit you're looking for the non-verbal communication from
• 30:03
  the person you're interacting with to give you kind of like traffic signals of like is this a green
• 30:08
  light a yellow light a red light the me too movement really put this huge emphasis on the whole idea
• 30:15
  of verbal consent like affirmative consent for everything that you have to ask permission for
• 30:21
  everything that you do there is certainly a place for verbal consent but what I try to encourage
• 30:28
  people to do is be very attentive to all the the non-verbal signals that you're getting from somebody
• 30:35
  and this starts from the point that you make eye contact with a person if the person is making eye
• 30:40
  contact back with you that's more of a green light to every step of the connection that you're having
• 30:47
  are you getting signals that this person is with you is engaged is enjoying and is fully present
• 30:54
  for what is happening or are you getting a signal from them that there might be a question or
• 30:58
  a reservation are they getting closer to you or at least maintaining distance or are they pulling
• 31:04
  back a little bit is there attention elsewhere or is it on you like things that you can notice
• 31:10
  if you reach a point where there's a little confusion then you can check in it's actually a very
• 31:16
  generous masculine attribute to be willing to take some risks and initiate interactions
• 31:24
  guys initiate a lot of things it's sort of been incumbent on them but it really is a generous
• 31:29
  masculine trait to be willing to take the risk to talk to somebody or to test the waters and see if
• 31:36
  they're interested to escalate an interaction with you and if as the male partner you're able to
• 31:44
  take small little steps and notice the person's reaction and either proceed or back off or check
• 31:52
  in with them as needed on green yellow red light concepts then it's very attractive for somebody
• 31:58
  to be successful at that and to be able to communicate in a way that is skillful and attentive
• 32:05
  and aware and responsive to the other person's signals this comes up with kissing somebody will
• 32:11
  have the question like can I kiss you the reaction to that is almost always like if you have to
• 32:16
  ask me the question then the answer is probably no if you don't have enough signs from my body
• 32:23
  and if I'm not gravitating toward you in a way that my lips just seem like they're becoming more
• 32:29
  and more accessible to yours then you're probably not noticing what signs I'm putting out there
• 32:35
  and how I'm responding but isn't that part of the confusion that's coming with not just the me
• 32:40
  too but I feel like a lot of our modern sex is so uber consensual and or hyper-awareness around it
• 32:48
  that a lot of people are doing that now because they feel they have to what's the balance there of
• 32:54
  like staying present with the person but not getting your head around these kind of newer societal
• 33:00
  kind of expectations first off we just need to view this as a win-win situation that we're trying
• 33:06
  to create it's not like the pickup artists idea that men are trying to win by getting women to
• 33:12
  sleep with them it's like this is something that actually contrary to some of that perception
• 33:18
  maybe most women actually do like sex and get a lot out of it and want to have experiences with
• 33:24
  men who are attractive and impressive and turn them on and I'm speaking because I mostly help
• 33:31
  male clients if as a guy you can show up with the knowledge and the capacity and the belief in
• 33:37
  yourself that you have a lot to offer in this interaction and that you're trying to create a
• 33:43
  positive experience for the woman in your life or that you hope could be in your life
• 33:48
  you have the right mindset in the first place that you want this to be a mutually beneficial
• 33:53
  win-win outcome one thing to work on is your sense of realistic assessment of what you are
• 34:00
  bringing to the table or if you need to work on that back to the difference between if femininity
• 34:05
  has to do with being and masculinity has to do with doing then the taking action on the masculine
• 34:10
  part is a very attractive element and if you have the right mindset you're not going in with the
• 34:18
  purpose of getting something out of somebody without their consent and it's a matter of the
• 34:23
  finesse with which you approach it if you are being aware and attentive to like okay is this
• 34:29
  person really responding positively to me is this person in full control of their faculties in doing
• 34:36
  so so it's taking a lot of personal responsibility in being able to have the right motivations going
• 34:42
  into it to notice what's going on for the other person and to instead of preemptively thinking
• 34:48
  that you have to get permission verbally in advance just check in whenever the signals aren't
• 34:56
  clear if the signals are just so unclear to you that you have no idea then you probably need some
• 35:01
  help a couple of questions then because we talked about the theatricality of kind of the sex
• 35:08
  industry and just sex in general these days and between men and women so in this role that you're
• 35:14
  playing technically you're in a teacher role how do you balance that from like hey I'm being present
• 35:21
  with you but I'm also teaching versus actually feeling something so how are you balancing that
• 35:29
  how do you teach them a non theatrical aspect of it when you're clearly in a role even when
• 35:36
  I was working in Nevada that was less my MO than most people so I had come already from a background
• 35:44
  of lots of experience where I knew and know my body really well I know what works for it and what
• 35:51
  doesn't and I also know all the things that turn me on genuinely and in contrast to the theatrical
• 36:00
  performance part where you are pretending to enjoy things I communicate about what I really do
• 36:08
  like and what I really do enjoy and I'm giving them the feedback to know how to turn me on
• 36:15
  there's another analogy that I like to use that because people fixate on the idea of the orgasm as
• 36:21
  the sole marker of enjoyment I like to say again if we're talking about food which this probably
• 36:28
  resonates with you with all the food stuff it's like the icing on the cake we need to bake a cake
• 36:35
  first like getting turned on and bringing up the feelings of a rouse all for me that actually starts
• 36:43
  with the body contact and the cuddling I get much more turned on by the presence of somebody like
• 36:50
  feeling them physically their body and how it's connecting with me I often say cuddling is actually
• 36:56
  my favorite type of forward play I don't need anything that involves being naked to get completely
• 37:02
  turned on I love that there's still a couple questions so I want to see if we can answer these one
• 37:09
  if you don't mind so one is the cuddling thing I actually struggle with that one I'll be
• 37:17
  personal on this so I love to cuddle so it's not that I can't cuddle but what happens is that
• 37:22
  for me cuddling then leads towards feeling sexual because physical contact does turn me on like
• 37:29
  I'm a very tactile person sometimes the other person just wants the cuddle for some women out
• 37:36
  there the cuddle moving towards sexuality is actually pressure for them and sometimes it's also
• 37:43
  a form of trauma of like I can never just be in the cuddle I can never just be in that kind of
• 37:48
  loving embrace that it's always sexual how do you advise someone particularly man towards
• 37:56
  just staying present with the cuddle and not going to that other place this may be something that's
• 38:03
  a little bit case by case between the couple and how their lives are generally I know in my
• 38:11
  relationships I have made a big point of maximizing the amount of connection both in physical touch
• 38:19
  that's just general affection throughout the day and every environment that I can as well as
• 38:26
  expressing myself sexually with my partners as much as possible so I personally just chosen and
• 38:33
  have a natural inclination as well but do actively choose to prioritize it but if you can develop
• 38:41
  kind of an atmosphere both with communication and creating an environment in your relationship
• 38:47
  that normalizes touch and affection and sexuality as much as possible we could possibly have less
• 38:57
  of a necessary agenda on any given encounter so I think one of the things that a lot of people
• 39:03
  ran into is like well we have sex so rarely that anytime I even get physical with somebody like I
• 39:10
  immediately start going there particularly male female parents right it's like oh we only have
• 39:16
  so much connection time like let's get to it and it becomes almost like a business deal when I
• 39:22
  have a partner like I am constantly touching them like if we're going anywhere I'm holding hands
• 39:27
  if we're driving in the car I'm holding hands if we're in the kitchen cooking I'm like bumping
• 39:32
  up against them on purpose just to like flirt and touch if we're sitting next to each other I have
• 39:38
  my hand on their knee or their shoulder like I create an environment where touch and connection
• 39:45
  is present as much as possible it's not like every single touch is going to be leading towards
• 39:52
  something sexual of course I also like that to happen on a regular basis but if we both have a
• 40:00
  feeling that there's a general abundance of touch and connection then when we get into you know
• 40:05
  a moment of cuddling or something like that it doesn't have to feel like oh this is my only chance
• 40:11
  like that needs to be top of my priority list again this is a sensing what's going on with your
• 40:16
  partner if you are feeling a little bit of arousal and maybe like maybe you start to make a little
• 40:23
  bit of a sound or your hip starts to move a little bit that's indicating that and they don't respond
• 40:28
  then you can either check in or if you aren't feeling a huge amount of scarcity then maybe it's
• 40:36
  no big deal maybe like okay well you know what they don't seem to be responding right now so
• 40:40
  hey I'm just going to hang with this cuddle because this is great and I love cuddling and it's
• 40:44
  not a big deal it just has to do with the balance that you have in your relationship overall if you
• 40:50
  have a sense of abundance or scarcity with connection and touch I try to make sure that it's
• 40:55
  abundance all the way consciously so that it never feels like like oh well this is the only chance
• 41:02
  so I'm so hung up on it we might do that now we might do it later if somebody hasn't orgasm
• 41:07
  this time somebody doesn't know big deal whatever there's going to be plenty of chances
• 41:12
  Dave Asprey talks about this a lot he talks about how men if they're orgasm
• 41:19
  daily they're actually lowering their testosterone that it's biologically affecting them in a
• 41:25
  negative way and that really they should only be having an orgasm I think he says monthly
• 41:32
  that doesn't mean they shouldn't be having sexual pleasure but that when they have this sexual
• 41:38
  pleasure they shouldn't climax that women can climax multiple times throughout the months of course
• 41:44
  the week whatever but that men should limit their climax do you have any opinion or thought about
• 41:51
  that I don't know for certain about the science on this one because I've heard the opposite I've
• 41:56
  heard that testosterone could go up after orgasm so I honestly can't say that I'm sure about
• 42:03
  that scientifically I would say that ejaculation is a signal to the body physiologically of sexual
• 42:11
  success so thinking about whether you want your body to be getting a signal of okay I was successful
• 42:19
  I can chill out and relax and not put a lot more energy into things right now or
• 42:25
  I want to have myself in a more motivated pursuit phase hormonally right now I think that would
• 42:33
  be a question to ask is like what state is your body going to be in based on whether it feels like
• 42:38
  it just succeeded or whether it's in a pursuit state you know I don't know the exact answer
• 42:44
  but I would say if you're thinking about how to utilize your sexuality to your greatest advantage
• 42:50
  in your life it would be to experiment with those things so like you could actually get
• 42:56
  testing and find out what your testosterone levels are but then you're extrapolating
• 43:01
  what is the actual effect of that or you could observe what happens to you when you try it
• 43:06
  I would self-experiment in that way see what happens to your levels of energy and motivation
• 43:12
  if you masturbate every day for a week and then see what happens if you wait a month do you feel
• 43:17
  happier do you feel more depressed do you feel more energetic do you feel more tired do you
• 43:22
  feel more motivated do you feel less motivated experiment with that rather than trying to figure out
• 43:27
  what the testing and testosterone levels means do you find that how someone practices whether
• 43:35
  it's masturbation or sex do you find that that practice contributes to their performance and what
• 43:43
  I mean by that is so let's just say if someone's struggling with quickly ejaculating versus
• 43:50
  not ejaculating what do you think that when they're masturbating if they're just masturbating to get
• 43:54
  it out so for speed do you think they're training themselves so then when they're with a person to
• 44:00
  ejaculate prematurely and vice versa for a woman you know do you think that a woman's kind of
• 44:06
  mindset over like well I'm so hard to please that that mindset's contributing to them to being hard
• 44:12
  to please or something like that sure I mean this isn't the sort of thing that I can verify
• 44:18
  either but you know rehearsal is a good word for what you're saying if you're training your
• 44:23
  neural circuitry to expect a specific way that something goes especially going back to that idea
• 44:30
  of like how are you using masturbation if it is just like I'm just going to get this out as quick
• 44:36
  and fast and hard as I can then you are acclimating your body you are running the neural circuits
• 44:43
  that are accustomed to that and there's a chance that that's going to have an impact on you so
• 44:48
  I would certainly encourage whatever practices that somebody is using if they want to enhance their
• 44:56
  sex life with their partner that they be as intentional about it as possible and that they
• 45:01
  focus on the mindfulness the presence the connection to pleasure or the embodiment that they have
• 45:07
  I mean it's almost certain that that is going to have some kind of positive impact on the ability
• 45:13
  to have a really good experience with a partner and similarly with in terms of women that if you
• 45:20
  have an idea that you're hard to please I mean if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy it's very unlikely
• 45:27
  that you're going to experience more pleasure or move yourself in the right direction if that's
• 45:33
  the way that you're thinking about it so curiosity and mindfulness presence like just exploring
• 45:42
  having a mindset that sexuality is normal is healthy is something that everybody should get to
• 45:48
  benefit from to whatever extent they're physically capable of and to seeing it as part of our
• 45:56
  human nature that we should connect with and that we can all incrementally improve that just like
• 46:03
  with every other aspect of life that we can better connect with ourselves our bodies and our
• 46:08
  pleasure and we can better connect with our partners it's another very important part of human
• 46:13
  flourishing and ancestral health I love it what a perfect ending to this fascinating conversation
• 46:19
  Stephanie thank you really thank you for trusting me to have this conversation with you and
• 46:26
  being willing to share this very personal experience you have a perspective that not everyone has
• 46:33
  particularly your lens is very specific it's very different from the person that comes from a
• 46:39
  troubled home who then enters you know prostitution and is struggling through their paths to kind
• 46:46
  of find themselves you win in very willingly and you win in kind of like very deliberately but with
• 46:52
  a bigger agenda and I think the fact that how it's playing out now and what you're bringing the
• 46:57
  table I feel like you've connected so many of the dots from your lifetime from health you know we
• 47:04
  didn't even get into all the pillars but you did share a few of them from the nutrition to
• 47:09
  sex to the physicality you're connecting all those dots and you're bringing those towards supporting
• 47:15
  people and I know this is what you call it in a sense like bringing the ancestral qualities you
• 47:22
  call it the uncivilized one is that what you call it re re re civilized it's kind of uncivilized
• 47:28
  because you're redefining civilization we approached civilization with a certain approach we've
• 47:34
  done it this one way and we haven't gotten all the outcomes that we would like so how could we
• 47:39
  rethink how we do it and kind of restructure civilization around reducing the evolutionary mismatches
• 47:47
  and creating ancestral based health paradigms I love that you have taken it to that level and really
• 47:54
  it's a culmination of everything you've experienced so thank you for sharing that there's so many more
• 48:00
  questions we could delve into but of course I don't want to take your entire day and is there a
• 48:05
  place that people can go if they're like hey I want to get to use your services to get your support
• 48:12
  where can they go to find you and is that something you offer and what does that look like if someone
• 48:17
  doesn't live near you do they fly in my kind of general ancestral health stuff is on re civilized
• 48:24
  woman.com and you know I've got an ex account that's at recive women so those are kind of more
• 48:30
  general but if somebody is looking for support in terms of the surrogate partnership options or
• 48:37
  other aspects of coaching in general I have another website for that which is evolve sessions.com
• 48:45
  obviously if somebody's local and wants to have an in-person session that certainly makes things
• 48:49
  easier but if somebody is traveling from a distance then you know there's plenty we can do in terms
• 48:55
  of meeting in advance virtually to get acquainted and discuss what that would entail everyone that I
• 49:03
  see starts with some kind of an ice breaker session whether that is virtually or in person to kind
• 49:08
  of establish some safety and trust and connection before we try to go into whatever it is whatever
• 49:15
  obstacles and challenges and things that they may be trying to overcome will go into their history
• 49:21
  their background whatever it is that they're looking to accomplish and what challenges that they
• 49:26
  may be facing and how it can help that one's again evolve sessions.com. Excellent and just to be
• 49:32
  clear local is Texas Austin so just everyone knows well thank you again and I hope this wasn't too
• 49:40
  painful for you you know just no no going into this wasn't right no thank you James it's been great
• 49:46
  well much love to you and I look forward to seeing you soon thank you again thanks so much
• 49:52
  thank you so much for joining me on everyday ancestral if you enjoyed this episode hit
• 49:58
  subscribe so you don't miss the next one you could find the show notes links and resources
• 50:04
  mentioned at eatpluck.com that's e-a-t-p-l-u-c-k dot com and hey if you know someone who'd get something out
• 50:15
  of this share it with them too stay curious live well and keep it ancestral