What Is One-Way Touch? Intimacy That Starts With Yourself, with Rahi Chun & Ariel Szabo

Lightly edited for readability. Transcribed from the audio; the show’s opening and closing announcements are omitted.

[01:37] Claire: Welcome back to the Permission to Be Enchanting podcast. And if you’re listening to us for the first time, I’m so happy that you’ve joined us today. We have two guests, Ariel Szabo and Rahi Chun, who are business partners as well as intimate partners. In this podcast, we’re going to explore how couples can create more connection, sexual satisfaction, and pleasure-based healing. Ariel and Rahi have a lot to teach us, with a combined 17 years of experience in the fields of sexuality and intimacy. They have a particular interest in holding space for deepening authentic intimacy and extended lovemaking for couples via their signature online course, Divine Union For Lovers. They are known for getting to the root of what is preventing couples from experiencing and embodying their deepest connection and sexual fulfillment. They are both certified somatic sex educators and sexological bodyworkers. Ariel is a psychedelic medicine practitioner and draws upon her deep well of experiences in the plant medicine world with Indigenous teachers. And Rahi has developed an expertise in genital de-armoring, which he teaches via his signature online course, The Three Keys to Genital De-Armoring, plus his in-person trainings for somatic practitioners worldwide. Welcome, you sexual healing power couple. I’m so happy to have you today.

Rahi & Ariel: Oh, so happy to be here. Thank you. Great to be here with you, Claire.

Claire: I think you’re embodying what I am still drawing into my universe: finding a partner who loves this as much as I do, and who would love to go and teach other couples. I keep finding my way to different couples who do this, and as the universe keeps sending them to me, I think it’s telling me, “You’re on the right path. Just keep walking.” Five years ago, when I first started moving from working with men to working with women, I knew no one in this field. So where have I come in five years, and where will I be in another five?

Claire: There are so many things, but what we wanted to talk about specifically today is some help for couples to disrupt the routines they may be in. They may have been married for decades, or for five years, or just had kids, and maybe they’re even saying, “Is this all there is?” I would love for us to give them some ideas that yes, there is more out there. One thing I want to make sure we talk about is extended lovemaking. Anyone would enjoy hearing that it can last longer than minutes, that it can last a really long time. But the idea of taking penetrative sex off the table for a bit can be quite disruptive for a heterosexual couple who are like, “Wait, what are we talking about?” So I definitely want to bring that in. But do you feel called to start in any particular place?

[04:55] Rahi: I loved how you introduced the topic, because there are so many areas we can cover. I just wanted to underscore, Claire, that yes, couples who’ve been together for decades, or even five years, or even one year, bring their patterns. But the patterns don’t start when the couple starts. The pattern can go all the way back to childhood. We’re really bringing the history of our nervous systems and our initial touch and relational imprints to any relationship as an adult, and that’s the thing we really enjoy highlighting when we work with couples. It doesn’t start when you meet. It actually starts when we’re infants. What was the relationship with your genitals that was demonstrated, or that you somatically remember, from rough diaper changing or potty training, or if your parent had unresolved sexual trauma, the way they engaged with your genitals? All of that is brought to a relationship. So yes, we’re examining the patterns of couples during their time together, but we’re also going way back to the beginning of their relationship with their own body and genitals.

Ariel: In relationship to their needs and desires as well. And how much facility do they have in communicating what their needs and desires are, let alone even being able to feel into and attune to them.

Rahi: A lot of us grew up around dining tables where only certain emotions were welcome, or our voice was squelched, or soap in the mouth, whatever it is. That ability to access your voice also goes all the way back to childhood.

Claire: That is such a great point. I love that we started out with all of that, because it’s true. You know that book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are. You bring yourself wherever you go. You could leave a partner and think, “Oh, that partner wasn’t…” but you still bring that same person to the next thing. Sure, there’s different chemistry, but… So Rahi, you have a beautiful podcast, and we’ll put the link to it. I was listening to the latest episodes, and you talk a lot about voice and choice. I love the way it rolls off the tongue, and it relates to what we’re talking about: a lot of us just didn’t know about having a voice back when we first became sexually active.

[07:30] Rahi: Yeah, voice and choice is a cornerstone of our somatic sex education, of our wheelhouse as somatic sex educators. But I feel like voice and choice is one piece of a whole. We teach something from Ariel’s work called the 8 Pillars of Intimacy, and it actually starts with slowing down, pausing. There’s a whole eight-step sequence in order to access that voice, and voice and choice is actually the eighth in the sequence. Because it really calls upon us to develop self-intimacy and self-attunement within our own bodies before we have the opportunity, or the capacity, to voice what our body’s choices are.

Claire: That’s lovely. How did you come across that, Ariel?

Ariel: The eight pillars? It was through teaching clients Betty Martin’s work, the Wheel of Consent. As I was teaching it, I started to formulate what was even necessary for someone to be able to work with the Wheel of Consent and play the Three-Minute Game, which is part of that body of work. So it was in response to supporting my clients in accessing that work. There were these core things I found they needed to learn how to do within themselves. They’re really what’s required to be in an intimate relationship with yourself and with another being.

Rahi: Voice and choice assumes that we can identify what it is our body wants, because that’s what we’re voicing: our body’s choice. But before that step happens, there needs to be a real noticing and a self-attunement. Some of the other pillars involve really trusting what your body’s communicating to you, and valuing yourself enough to advocate for your body. So we’re slowing the whole process down before we even get to voice and choice and communicating what the body needs.

Claire: That totally makes sense.

Ariel: And I would say the eight pillars are like a blueprint for self-reclamation.

Claire: What you’re saying sounds exactly like my journey, and the journey of many of the women in my coaching program and my clients. What’s the self-intimacy? What’s the self-trust? Because we’ve been conditioned to look outside ourselves. Don’t trust yourself, because then you buy more things. You could be sold a whole bunch of things you don’t really want or need, and I don’t just mean things, but lifestyle, anything, when you don’t trust what you really want. So that’s definitely a reclamation process.

[10:35] Rahi: Just to add to that, going back to couples: when they get together, their history doesn’t start there. It goes all the way back. What we bring into each relationship is our history of sexual experiences, and there are so many assumptions we make. A lot of couples assume, “Because my past boyfriend or girlfriend liked this, and they had a penis or a vulva, my new partner must like this as well.” Unless there is that capacity to voice what your body truly desires, people are going to go on past patterns, and it’s going to lead to a lot of enduring and a lack of full satiation in the body.

Ariel: And enduring leads to resentment, and also armor.

Rahi: Yes.

Claire: I don’t know which direction to go. I do want to circle back to the armor, but you had a live three-day Divine Union For Lovers retreat that you just completed, which is so exciting. Live retreats, to me, and community, are just so amazing. So what were you seeing? Had some of these couples already been working on this? What can you tell us about where breakthroughs happen, or even what you just said: “I always thought my lover liked it this way because that’s how it was with a partner before”? I’ll let you pick some stories.

[12:21] Ariel: One couple, a male and female partner, really stepped into this realization. The woman had been enduring, and she realized, “Wow, my body and heart need to be tended to before I’m penetrated.” And he was able to see, “Wow, I have just been going straight for your genitals.” They went through a beautiful reparative process and had a fresh start, a rebirth in the way they engage with each other.

Rahi: And then there was the other extreme: one couple came on what was basically their third date. They had met about two months earlier, they were long distance, and they decided to take the plunge. What they both discovered was the degree to which their sexual experiences were goal- and performance-oriented. They took that whole thing off the table, decided to drop it and move moment to moment with pleasure, and it changed their whole experience of intimacy and connection.

Claire: If we could tweak a portion of the universe from goal-oriented to pleasure-oriented, that would be a game changer.

Rahi: Game changer. Claire, those of us in the field know that what people are really craving is deep connection and authentic intimacy, and sexual arousal and pleasure are a gateway to that. But a lot of people who want intimacy and connection go for the fast food: the fast food of sexual performance and orgasm, and they don’t feel nourished at the end of the experience.

[14:11] Claire: Both men and women. The women who don’t have the orgasm in a heterosexual relationship, and the men. A woman could say, “Well, he got his orgasm, so he’s satisfied.” But a man in a heterosexual relationship who can help his partner feel nourished and have amazing orgasms, that blows the top off of his experience. There are selfish men, but most men feel so much more empowered by that, and they’re more helpful mates because they’ve learned, “This is a relationship, and I can do things that make you feel really good.” So it’s not just the orgasm gap, poor women. Men are missing out too, on a really good, nourishing, complete, non-goal-oriented, pleasure-oriented experience.

Ariel: Totally. In our training as somatic sex educators, there’s a saying: what else is possible? Most of us, from societal conditioning, are so focused on having an orgasm. Don’t get me wrong, orgasms are amazing, and I wish for everyone to have lots of them. But there is so much else available in terms of sensation and connection. Because most of us are walking around not deeply attuned to what our needs actually are, when we desire connection with our beloved we go straight for sex, because that might be the only way we know how to reach for connection. But maybe what we want is to be held, a cuddle, a back tickle, even just a hand on the genitals with loving presence. Sometimes that can be way more satisfying than bumping genitals, penetration, and even orgasm.

[16:20] Rahi: What we’ve found is that sometimes orgasm actually gets in the way of real intimacy.

Claire: Let’s unpack that a little bit. That’s a nice tasty morsel. Orgasm can get in the way of…

Rahi: True intimacy. We work with all genders, but with a lot of our male clients we’ve noticed that if their capacity for vulnerability is stretched, if it’s too scary, the body eliciting an orgasm short-circuits their having to be vulnerable for a longer period of time and really be seen. A lot of men have premature ejaculation, and there’s a whole range of contributing factors, but one of them is avoidance of real vulnerability and intimacy.

Ariel: Yeah, the number of times I’ve been in a one-on-one session with a man, and things are starting to get really vulnerable, and all of a sudden their arousal peaks up really high.

Rahi: I think this is one of the things the spotlight isn’t on, but it’s quite common. And based on past patterns, it could be any gender going for the hot and heavy, as a distraction.

Claire: As a distraction from going deeper. With coaching, I tend to hear more of the men’s perspective, of having a partner who wants it quick and fast. And I laugh, because I say, “Do you know how many men wish they had the problem that their wife wants more sex?” And they say, “But I like the foreplay. I want to spend time with her, and she just wants to hurry up and get it done.” Now that’s ringing a bell for me, putting the lens on it as a way to put up a block to true intimacy.

[18:29] Ariel: Oh my gosh, I can see that in my own evolution. I think back to the way I was with sexual partners 15 years ago, and I was just like, “Just f*** me.” Now that I’ve developed a felt sense of safety and deep intimacy with myself, I want to slow things down more and more. And the more we slow things down, the more delicious and deeply intimate it is.

Claire: It is. I’m just going to throw it out there: I have a very small circle of friends, and we are in our 60s, and I laugh because I say, “Who knew that we’d be having the best sex of our lives at 62, 65?” One fellow is 71. My 30-year-old self would have said, “You’re decrepit at 62.” And it’s that slowing down, the not performing, the being vulnerable, the really feeling what your body wants. Your brain is lighting up in all sorts of ways: “This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is an amazing connection. This is so much pleasure.” Your body may not be at its physical peak, but I don’t think our sexual circuitry goes down over time. It has the potential to be there until the day we die, because we need our senses: smell, touch, taste. If we need those for survival, then we can keep nurturing and wiring them, and get better at sensing.

[20:19] Rahi: Absolutely. I feel like the depth of satisfaction and fulfillment in our sexual experiences correlates to the depth of intimacy and connection we have the capacity for. And the more we know ourselves, the more we learn how to advocate in consensual relational experiences, the more is possible. It’s infinite, the terrain of intimacy and connection that’s possible, and it only deepens with age, because we know ourselves better. And it’s really the intimacy and connection that leads to these expanded erotic states.

Claire: So let’s define that for a person listening who says, “What’s an expanded state of erotic pleasure?” How do you describe that to people who have never heard the concept?

[21:27] Ariel: Think about pleasure on a dial from zero to ten, zero being “I’m not aroused” and ten being “I’m having an orgasm.” If you can learn to hang out anywhere between a three and an eight, and stay in those places for long periods of time… In order to do that, your body needs to learn how to stay relaxed in arousal.

Claire: Stay relaxed in arousal. So you’re feeling the build-up, but instead of continuing to dial up, from a three to a six to an eight, and then you know it’s going to be done in another few minutes, you learn to dial it down.

Ariel: To just stay there. For most people, when they become aroused, the body learns to go as quickly as possible. Think about growing up masturbating: you don’t want to get caught by your parents, so you try to get it over with as quickly as possible. Then your body is on a train track: when I get aroused, we ramp up fast. Your body is amazing and can learn all sorts of different train tracks. There are specific practices we use to show the body that it can be relaxed when it’s aroused. Once the body experiences something, it knows it’s possible, so it can go there again. The more time you spend in these medium-low and medium-high states of arousal, the more your body grows a capacity to hold arousal, to hold erotic energy. Then it doesn’t feel like it has to get rid of it, or even do something with it. You can just be with it. And then you can actually start to walk through life kind of turned on.

Rahi: Turned on all the time.

Ariel: And it’s amazing. For most people, at the beginning, this can actually elicit a lot of anxiety, because so many people are used to needing to do something with it.

Rahi: Discharge that erotic energy. Instead, holding it and being with it, and letting all of your cells absorb it and be nourished by it.

Claire: I love that. Letting your cells be nourished and absorb it. You get all that healing energy.

[24:05] Rahi: Precisely. We’re really big on pleasure as healing and sex as medicine: greater states of oxytocin, greater oxygenation of the blood, which makes the organs healthier. And after a certain amount of time in extended erotic states, we find that consciousness opens. We get incredible downloads, and it’s an incredible space where our inner children come out and feel safe to be seen. So there’s a lot of healing that takes place as well. But a lot of it is separating the higher arousal states of the body, with a down-regulation of the nervous system, because usually they’re paired, as Ariel pointed out.

[24:52] Claire: I’ve really been trying to be on your team with this, Ariel and Rahi. I could already be with a partner for an hour and a half, with massages involved, and I’d think that’s extended. But where I’ve really changed is that a guest some episodes ago, Bonnie Bliss, talked about how some of her best sexual experiences were ones where she didn’t have an orgasm, and that blew my mind. I’m an experimenter, so I had to see what that was. My train track wasn’t fast, but it definitely went to that end point, that train depot. Without it, part of me knew this was supposed to be good for me, but there was discomfort. And then there’s trying to convince a partner: “I’m not multi-orgasmic today. I’m extended pleasure today.” I’m still in the process, six or seven months in. Another couple I love, in England, wrote a book called Cool Sex and teach workshops about this cooler end, which I’d guess is that three-to-five on the dial. There’s a whole universe of pleasure that isn’t about racing to orgasm, or even following my body when it wants to go to orgasm, but literally doing something different. Most people would say, “This is so much work. I just want to turn off. I’m tired.” But you could have this wonderful relationship that you’re building with your partner. It’s not easy to get off that normal train track. For me, that train track leads to a whole bunch of fun. But I think there could be even more fun.

Claire: And just like you said, Rahi, I walk around with so much energy. I’m not exhausted, the way I am after a dozen orgasms and need a long rest. Now I walk around with an energy field that is crazy. One quick story, because I thought it was the funniest thing. I was driving home from my partner’s house after trying this. I’d had energetic orgasms, but not what I’d consider a physical one. I’m at a light by a gas station, my car is dark, and a guy leaning over to put gas in a U-Haul truck stood up and looked right at me, like I had laser vision. I smiled, and he smiled back. I’m getting shivers. The reach I had was just huge, like he was asking, “What is that energy coming at me?” So for anyone who hasn’t traditionally felt powerful, especially women, this is a way to nurture an energy that makes you feel alive and gives you personal power.

[28:45] Ariel: Totally. And that energy you’re cultivating impacts every single area of your life. You can change your life with these practices. To really share our unique gifts with the world, which for me is to be in our purpose, we need to be rooted in our power. Our power is linked to our sexuality. They’re inseparable, because we are sexual beings. Mainstream culture teaches us to suppress our sexuality because it’s inappropriate, that it should only be shown in some places. But it’s totally appropriate for it to be here all the time, because it is here all the time. That doesn’t mean we act on it all the time. If we’re deeply rooted in our sexuality and allow it to be with us everywhere we move, we’re completely in our power. We’re shining so bright. We have so much energy, enthusiasm. We just feel good.

[29:57] Rahi: And this speaks to expanding our capacity to feel safe to receive. If we don’t discharge this life force through orgasm or ejaculation, it continues to cultivate and vibrate within us, and that expands our vessel’s capacity to receive goodness and pleasure. As clients really focus on what feels good, rather than riding the train track to orgasm, they expand their capacity to receive pleasure. And energy is energy: people start getting promotions in their professional lives, and developing really amazing relationships in their personal lives, because they have a greater capacity to receive goodness. You can call it sexual energy, but it’s really life-force energy. The more capacity we have to feel safe with that kind of vibrational reach, the more it affects everything in our lives and the people in our lives. Years ago I belonged to a tantra community where we practiced this, and we’d joke that people were crashing their carts into the cans at the grocery store because they couldn’t take their eyes off us. There is a vibrational energy, and we all experience it. At the grocery store or the gas station, he felt your energy. It was dark.

Claire: He couldn’t even see my face. It cracked me up.

Rahi: But he felt your energy. We experience this all the time. They call it magnetism, an indescribable attraction, and we relate to it because we’re all human beings, and we want that.

[31:44] Claire: One thing I’d love you to clarify more. If someone isn’t taking a spiritual and holistic look at this, they could say, “It’s sexual energy, the Marilyn Monroe effect.” But you don’t have to look like Marilyn Monroe. And there’s that thing where, as a woman, you’re supposed to be sexy, but not too sexy; loud enough, but not too loud; passionate enough, but not too passionate. Who can live up to that? What you’re describing is a healthier version, from a holistic being. This is what nourishes your cells. Someone I loved and admired, Betty White, made it almost to her 100th birthday, and throughout her whole life she was so comfortable with her sexuality, making jokes, and people loved it because it broke the rules. We as a culture are afraid of mixing sexuality with our power. I love what you said and want to hold on to it: when you take time to do this, you will be more powerful in all parts of your life. Who wouldn’t want to feel a little more powerful and a little more magnetic? I often hear from women that once they hit 50, 60, 70, they become invisible. Who wouldn’t want to feel that magnetism and know it’s possible? And you don’t have to have a partner to cultivate it, because it starts, like you said at the beginning, with: how do I even know what I want? Am I giving myself permission? Do I trust what’s coming through?

[33:51] Rahi: I’ll also point out that I’ve been doing this work for ten years, and the most orgasmic client I ever had was in her late sixties. Sexual trauma from when she was younger had kept her sexual life quiet for decades, and later in life she was having extended orgasms left and right. Sometimes she emails me with updates. She’s exploring her sexual energy, this life force we’re speaking of, and just loving life. It’s never too late. [Some details of this story have been generalized to protect the client’s privacy.]

Claire: Fabulous. So back to the couples who are saying, “Yes, please, I’d like more pleasure-based experiences.” What are some things they can do to get started? And we’ll give a link to your online course, which I think will be teed up perfectly when this comes out. Speak to the woman listening, and maybe have her partner listen too, and say, “This is an interesting topic. I’d like to explore this.” Other guests have said it’s delicate, because if you’ve been married for five or 35 years, saying “I’d like to explore something” can sound like, “Are you saying it’s always been bad and you’ve never spoken up?” Which, hands up, is probably the case more often than not. But you can frame it as, “I’m curious. I don’t want to do the same thing for the rest of my life and get to my deathbed and think, I could have tried something different.” So what are some ways couples just beginning this journey can start?

Claire: I love how you look at each other like, “You go. You go.”

Rahi: This is the attunement.

Claire: I see it, I feel it. You’re great.

[36:12] Rahi: We’re self-attuning and then attuning with each other. Foundationally, and this is how our online course starts and how our in-person retreats start, we begin with the 8 Pillars of Intimacy. Throughout the three-day retreat we kept returning to them again and again: slowing down, noticing, attuning, accepting what they were feeling, trusting that, valuing that, communicating that. Wherever you are in your relationship, that self-intimacy, and communicating where you’re at authentically, can really shift patterns and change the trajectory of your sexual relationship. Then, as we noted earlier, Claire, comes really understanding your partner’s nervous system, its history, its wounds and triggers, so you’re not taking anything personally. It’s heartbreaking to see couples who want the same thing caught in a ping-pong of triggering: one person gets triggered, that triggers the partner, and so on. They’re not seeing each other; they’re in their wounds. So it’s about understanding each other’s nervous systems and being allies in holding space together, because they all want the same thing. And once those foundations are in place, we have a whole series of non-penetrative lovemaking exercises, consent-based exercises that are fun, and one-way touch practices, where you learn so much about your partner’s body, which almost no one really does.

Claire: Define that a little bit, because I saw it on the website, for people who don’t know Betty Martin. What does one-way touch mean?

[38:09] Ariel: Betty Martin has a body of work called the Wheel of Consent; I highly recommend looking it up. We bring in one-way touch practices, which are really foundational in the teachings we learned as somatic sex educators and sexological bodyworkers. You create a container of one-way touch with your beloved, where one person’s role is to give and one person’s role is to receive. It creates a container where the receiver gets to relax into receiving, to focus solely on their inner experience: their sensations, what they’re wanting, what they’re not wanting. They have the space to practice noticing all those things, and then to practice voicing them to the giver: “Oh, could you pause? Oh, more of that. Yes, yes. Oh, no, not that. Slower. Faster.” You start to develop a muscle memory of voicing what you need, what you want, what you don’t want, and getting used to making requests. With enough practice you have those new train tracks, and then you can start to bring that into two-way exchanges. For me, it feels almost impossible to make those kinds of changes in a two-way exchange, because there’s way too much going on. So start with the one-way touch container. It’s so helpful for building new patterns, but also just lovely: to have a time to receive. Also lovely to just have a time to give.

Claire: Beautiful. How long do you recommend for couples who have never tried it? Should they set a timer for a set number of minutes?

[40:00] Ariel: I think it’s good to check in with each other about what feels doable to both of you, so that you actually do it. When we’re trying new things, we don’t want to set goals that turn us off. To really drop into these experiences, an hour is great. But if you just want to start somewhere, ten minutes. It can take time to even start tuning into what you need, which is why the longer container is really helpful.

Rahi: I find this with hour-long meditations as well: the first fifteen minutes there’s still mental chatter, laundry lists. Your mind is active, and it takes that long to really drop in and start to receive. Something we’re really big on is having the giver constantly ask, “What can make this feel even better?” Because there’s a lot of satiation scarcity, where people feel, “I’m getting this attention and touch. It should be good enough, because it’s more than I usually get.” Claire, once the body really starts to attune to getting not only what it wants, but only what it wants, and not enduring anything else, it creates a whole new touch map of expectations, where the body is no longer going to endure what it doesn’t want.

[41:25] Rahi: That one-way touch can be up-leveled with different additions. For example, when you’re mapping the genitals with one-way touch, the giver can simply ask the receiver, “Where are you on the pleasure scale?” Maybe they’re at a six, a seven, an eight. Then giver and receiver both get to understand, very intricately, the specific erogenous areas of the genitals. So it’s not just, “Honey, my vulva wants attention,” or “Sweetie, my penis wants some rubbing.” You can be very detailed: “Sweetie, the base of my clitoral shaft, one-second strokes,” or whatever your specific request is.

Claire: Or more on the left side than the right, because over time you’ve realized you get more pleasure there. You can get very specific.

Rahi: And that really starts to empower the specific erogenous areas of the genitals, in the same way the body’s erogenous areas get empowered, and it becomes more fluid to ask for what you want.

[42:34] Claire: Those train tracks will change so much if you can build this as a weekly practice: one week I do this for you, the next week you’re the receiver and we switch. In some of my workshops with women that had nothing to do with sexuality, just empowerment, I’d do the same thing. When I give a Thai massage, I tell my clients, “At least twice during this massage, maybe three times, you have to tell me what you want, and that you want more of it.” And they’re like, “What? I have a right?” Yes, you’re paying me for a massage. You have a right to tell me what you want, and to ask for more time there or to skip that part. The nervous system has to feel, “I’m not going to get punished for saying this.” Or, “I had enough pleasure, but you mean I’m allowed to feel even more?” This is part of the sexual and spiritual journey, intertwined: continually becoming your authentic self, finding your authentic voice, believing you have a right to say these things. That’s the journey of a lifetime. I’m never going to stop becoming more empowered, until my last breath.

Ariel: And if we can learn to do this in the most vulnerable place, with our bodies in the bedroom, where we’re baring ourselves, we can do it so much more easily everywhere in our lives.

Claire: Good point.

[44:19] Rahi: There’s something really magical about somatic reconditioning. When a reconditioning happens in the body, and it’s paired with something that feels as good as arousal and pleasure, it seems to have a much deeper impact on behavior outside of the bedroom.

Claire: We’re coming up on time. Let’s talk about your course and how people can find you. When is the next round?

Ariel: Our cohort is hybrid: there’s the online self-paced course, and then five Zoom calls where people have live access to us as they go through it. That begins on April 23rd, and people can check it out at divineunionforlovers.com.

Claire: We’ll have a link in the show notes.

Rahi: There’s an early bird until March 22nd.

Claire: This podcast comes out on March 20th, so if you’re listening, jump onto their website quickly and get that early bird.

[45:35] Rahi: We’re really excited for people to experience it. There are a lot of high-quality video demonstrations of the genital mapping, the one-way touch practices, and many non-penetrative exercises, shown in demo so people can really understand them.

Claire: Understand what that looks like, because we’re visual learners.

Rahi: Exactly. So it’s not just information. They’re somatic practices that people’s bodies will experience, so these new train tracks can develop and emerge.

[46:08] Claire: Is there anything that puts the icing on the cake, something about pleasure and extended pleasure states that we haven’t touched on? Ariel feels satisfied. What about you, Rahi? What’s missing?

Rahi: Nothing’s missing. But I do want to interweave some of the themes and recognize that, as Ariel shared, we’re all sexual beings. It’s what created us, what created our entire species, and it deserves to be celebrated. We all have a body for a reason, and we all need to take really beautiful, exquisite care of our bodies. Sexual energy is like an inner natural pharmacy of oxytocin, positive energy and blood flow to nourish ourselves, which nourishes our intuition, our creativity, our ability to connect and love each other. That’s really what this is all about. In mainstream society, sex is glorified as a certain thing, but it’s really a gateway to love. And that’s why we’re here: to learn how to love ourselves and each other better.

Claire: Those were the sprinkles on top of the frosting.

Ariel: Even more satisfied now.

Claire: Such a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time today. I learned a bunch of new ahas. I like to distill some of each episode into the Bloom newsletter that goes with the podcast, and there were a lot today. I knew I’d be enriched by your company. Thank you so much.

Rahi & Ariel: Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.