Transcript: KIMBERLY ANN JOHNSON on Pleasure as a Pathway /331
Ayana Young To listen to the extended version of this episode, support us on patreon.com/forthewild. Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with Kimberly Ann Johnson.
Kimberly Ann Johnson They don't really think that pleasure is the pathway to the healing. And it is in pleasure also, even the word pleasure, you and I will have way different meanings and associations, connotations, all of that to what it even means.
Francesca Glaspell Kimberly Ann Johnson is a sexological body worker, somatic experiencing practitioner, yoga teacher, postpartum advocate and single mom working hands on an integrative women's health and trauma recovery for more than a decade, she helps women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries, and sexual boundary violations. Kimberly is the author of The Call of the Wild: How we Heal Trauma, Awaken our own Power, and Use it for Good, as well as the early mothering classic, The Fourth Trimester, and is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast.
Ayana Young Well, Kimberly, thank you so much for joining us today and for your patience with my technical difficulties this morning, I am really looking forward to this conversation. And the more that I was researching for this interview and beginning to see and understand the intersections of your work, I became more and more intrigued. So I feel really excited for today.
Kimberly Ann Johnson Thank you so much. I'm excited too.
Ayana Young Awesome. So where do we begin? There's so much good stuff here. But in your essay, "Sex Work is Soul Work", where you write quote, "Most people are dissatisfied or mystified by sex, because they don't know how to get to these transformative zones. Instead, they are trapped in conversations about how many times a week they're doing it, or if they have multiple orgasms, or how they do it and pretend to love it, just so they don't have to do it anymore." End quote. Oh, my gosh, there's so much to unpack there. I don't even know where to really begin with a question. I mean, I we could almost unpack each of those little segments. But yeah, it's interesting why we try to even quantify our relationships, like this. And so I don't know if there's a point that you want to start with. But I'd love to just tease all this apart with you.
Kimberly Ann Johnson Yeah, I should start by giving you a little bit of context and giving the people who are listening a little bit of context like where I'm coming from and why I would even be talking about this. For three years, I worked with 800 women and I do internal pelvic floor work together with trauma tracking. So I'm a sexological bodyworker, and I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner. And I got into that work because my life was radically changed when I became a mother. Specifically, because I had a lot of tools. Before I became a mother, I worked at a yoga studio. Richard Freeman was my teacher, and he would teach that the foundation of every pose is the pelvic floor. So I was kind of a relative pelvic floor expert before I became a mom. And then I became a mom and my pelvic floor was completely rearranged. And then so were many of my organs. And I was in a lot of pain, and I wasn't able to get help easily. And in the putting together of my own, the pieces of my own pelvis and my own psyche and transitioning into motherhood, which I did not think was going to be hard for me at all because I love kids. I really wanted to be a mom. And I really trusted my body and trusted nature. So I just was completely blindsided by the fact that this was a huge transition.
And for me, it took about six and a half years to put myself back together and to feel like I had my lifeforce again and that I could use my body the way that I wanted to. And I was kind of lucky because now I've heard so many people's stories, so many women, you know, 10s of 1000s of women now I've heard their stories about their gynecological, reproductive and sexual health. And really up to the point of giving birth for me I had easy periods. I'd never had any unwanted pregnancies. I had had a few sexual boundary violations that were really pivotal and kind of my first underworlds journeys but as far as was like going to the gynecologist and that kind of thing. I hadn't had any negative experiences. So of course then when I started hearing other women, it was like, holy, I mean, whoa, like, what women what we go through gynecologically, reproductively, sexually. It's staggering. And, you know, women's health is really a bit like throwing darts at a dartboard because most of the diagnoses that people come to me with are so incomplete and so monolithic, and it's pretty appalling. So in the midst of putting myself back together, I already had bodywork skills. I already had movement skills.
A friend of mine said, you know, my tailbone has been hurting for three years. And I said, "What happened three years ago?" and she said, "I had a baby." And I said, "Well, has anybody worked on you?" And she said, "No." And then I said, "Okay, well, do you want me to try?" And she said, "Yeah," and so I didn't have any training other than my Rolfing training, where we work in mouths and noses, but I said, "Okay, let me see, let's just see." And in about 25 minutes, her tailbone unwound, and she never had any pain again, after that time, when I started to see that the pelvis was this forgotten land, and it was draped in massage, and it was talked about with no gender when it was a yoga class, and, you know, energetically in the practices that I knew, from my lineages of spiritual practice, it was gender neutral, and sex neutral. And I started to realize, like, wow, there's a really untended part of women, that is not getting nearly the attention that it needs. And it's kind of a hidden treasure, because the tissue in the pelvis in the vagina specifically… it changes very quickly. And most women have never been touched outside of a clinical situation, or a lovership situation, there hasn't been very much neutral touch just to actually map the area.
So in those 800 sessions that I did at that time, I really learned some common themes. And that work took me more deeply into sexuality, because shame is such a big piece of what women are working with, just based on sort of the very insufficient. I mean, it's not only women that are dealing with that, but that specifically the population that I work. The layer of shame of inadequate sex education, not really knowing our own anatomy, not really knowing how our arousal works differently than male arousal. And then the layers of that when we come to these other peak and heightened experiences, like birth, so it's often that we would come to this territory again. And the early, the earlier, imprints are there with us. So it's such an important territory that's usually considered so separate from our spirit, spiritual practice. And, I mean, increasingly, that's changing, and that that's changed.
In the 15 years since I really began this journey myself, I see a lot more education on menstrual health. I see a lot more education on the importance of the postpartum period, I see a lot more. I mean, just Instagram itself has popularized a lot more about anatomy, sacred anatomy, tantric practices. And yet, I still, you know, I just was taught an in-person workshop for two days, and a lot of what we're working with is sexual imprints and curiosities, and really peeling back to very elemental places of contact, and how we contact and who the contact is for. And very influenced by Betty Martin's work that we'll have consent. I wish that I'm not crazy about the word consent, but it's about getting more clear about what we want and how we want it and being able to communicate that without a layer of morality or shaming and blaming and then getting really to the very essence of it, which is touch itself. So I try to help people understand when they say sex, what it is that they mean. And what it is that we… what all goes into that tangled knot of yarn, the strands, what are those strands so those strands could be pleasure. Companionship presents feminine energy, masculine energy if those categories mean something to a person, attachments, commitments, and then for each person, those strands connect, some of them are knotted together. And maybe they're all just jumbled together. Some people really know what they're seeking out when they say the word sex. And then for a lot of people, it's just kind of a default place. So there's so much potential there. You know, I used to say that we could resolve a lot that we think we're taking to the therapy room, because a lot of people don't talk to their therapists about sex. Even if they're in relationship therapy, sex isn't really a part of it. It's another way that sex is considered something that's separate. And for most women that I've worked with, their sexual journeys and their spiritual journeys are very aligned, there tends to be a parallel track that's moving when we start to really listen to each other's sexual stories and sexual desires, sexual assumptions. And because I really am a devotee of the nervous system, I tend to bring the nervous system lens to how I work with sexuality.
Ayana Young Yeah, yeah, the nervous system, it seems to be really important with every, everything we do every type of relationship we have. And it makes so much sense how much it shapes the way we relate to our bodies, and our sexuality and our sexual experiences. And in your essay, “Sexual Authenticity,” you write, quote, "Bringing consciousness to your true sexual desires, and your patterns allow you to change the trajectory of your sexuality, and bring it into alignment with who you are. Instead of resigning to sex as you think it should be, create sex as though it were art or a meditation, because it is. At its best sex is a co-created, moment to moment experience that has the ability to transform you." End quote. Yeah, I want to hear more about this transformation. And also wondering how does finding alignment and meaning within sex translate into other areas of life?
Kimberly Ann Johnson Oh, there's so there's so much. And, you know, a couple of things I didn't mention in that ball is also, you know, creativity and play. And it's a space where there's a huge potential because our system becomes very malleable in sexual space. And that's why it can be really scary because the way that the system organizer can organize itself, hormonally specifically, is similar to any kind of trance state or psychedelic state. And so in that state, your system is a lot more impressionable, which is why if things don't go well, you're also those kind of deeper impressions. And you wonder, like, why is this taking up so much of my awareness? When there's a lot of other things that could be taking it up, as well, but the converse is also true. That, you know, in my, I teach a whole class specifically about sexuality, and I don't teach any classes that are overtly called like Healing Sexual Trauma, because positive reparative experience and education actually are a part of healing trauma. So a lot of times people think they have to go back over like all the bad things that happened, or even all the mediocre things that happened. But we can create in real time, experiences that because they put a positive imprint, they just sort of shimmy out whatever it is that's unsettled, or you know, the sort of boulders or rocks or pebbles that are in the sand. So I'm sort of divided right now, like part of me wants to kind of explain it from the I know, like the nervous system, even saying words the nervous system at this point is like the nervous system. I don't even know if those words mean anything anymore, because it's everywhere and everyone's talking about it. So maybe, it needs maybe that in and of itself needs to be more grounded in like a specific example or just the technicalities of it. But pleasure is a huge part. People think that pleasure is kind of anathema to healing trauma like pleasures, what you get after you heal your trauma. Pleasures, the cherry on the sundae after you have the hard conversation. The orgasms that you get after you, you know, earn it kind-of-thing. They don't really think that pleasure is the pathway to the healing. And it is, it is in pleasure.
Also, even the word pleasure, you and I will have way different meanings and associations, connotations, all of that to what it even means. Because we do in Anglo- North America, we have a puritanical inheritance that is essentially polarizes work and pleasure. And work is valuable. And pleasure is what you earn if you work hard enough. But basic pleasure, like the ability to allow something to feel good. So even right now, a listener could just tune in for a moment, and go to the inside experience. And just notice if there's anything that feels good. And usually when we're invited to notice the sensation, we immediately notice something that's painful, we go to like, Oh, my back hurts, my neck hurts. My heart's beating fast. So it's a bit of a training to be able to notice something like spaciousness, or Oh, my mouth, salivating. But actually, that feels good. And then you could look out into your environment. And see if there's anything that's pleasing to you in the space that you're in. Or if you have a window and something that you see outside. And as you look outside, even disorienting outside of yourself, you might notice that you take a deeper breath, or there's a sense of settling. Because a lot of times we're really oriented, especially, you know, people who are listening to this podcast, or people who really care about the planet, care about the health of other people, care about the future, and what we're leaving to the next generations.
And we can really get quite deep into the sense of grief and hopelessness and bad news and all of that. And it's important that we can be with grief. But it's also important just for our own health and well being and not that that's the, you know, the only thing that we're tracking, but we do also need to be able to touch into the present moment and the beauty that's around us. And when it comes to sexual boundary repair, and just sexual health and sexual satisfaction and connection, and we can put the word sensual in there, and we can put the word erotic in there, and we want to be in tune with the erotic, then we have to actually be able to see what we're looking at. And developing a relationship with pleasure. And so I think a lot of people hear that, and because there's so much out there now about self pleasure practices, it's like, all of a sudden, people are thinking about, like, you know, developing a relationship with pleasure, like now I'm gonna have to dance in the mirror every day, and I'm gonna have to like lather myself with oil. And that that could be true, that could be a pathway. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's really just way more elemental than that. It's like, when you're walking down the street and you feel the sun and you turn your face towards the sun, can you actually be there in that moment and let that move into every cell of your body. And allow yourself to have that moment. That's as real as any of the ideas that we might have any of the ideas about problems or ideas about solutions. But that's just what's happening right now.
So a lot of my work is helping people be able to not only turn towards that, but establish it and feel that that's fully seeped into the cells of their body. And essentially, over time, the more that we practice that, and I worked with a man called Steve Hoskinson, and he calls it, he has a, I guess, a method. He wasn't a somatic experiencing teacher. And now he teaches something called Organic Intelligence. He calls it a blue sandwich. So you look outside yourself into this into the environment and you see something and you land your attention on it. And then you come inside, and you find something that's blue, that's the the meat of the sandwich or the filling of the sandwich, something that feels good, and if nothing feels good, then you actually touch the surface of your skin so that you're in contact with your skin so you feel the contour of your own body and then then you go back out into the environment. And you just do little blue sandwiches every once in awhile, and it starts to train your attention that it's okay. And it's, it will create more platform of resilience. So that you can be with the waves. Because you know life, life is life and life will do what it does. But we can have more resilience in our own system by establishing that relationship with pleasure. And that relationship to pleasure also allows us to have a better litmus test for what we don't like or what we're just basically accepting, but it's not great. It's just kind of the the way the habits the way things are. And it can be really satisfying to have that if you're in a sexual relationship with someone else. Because you're, you know that you know, the difference between going along because it's easier to go along than to say stop or to say pause. And you know, that trust that is built when you're also open to someone else saying that they're ready to pause, or they're ready to stop, or they would like to change positions. And instead of hugging, laying down, they'd like to sit up, or they'd like to sit side by side or, you know, they'd like to come closer.
So really working with these very elemental, I call it building the buffet of sex or the alphabet of sex, because usually, when people think about sex, unfortunately, most of us still think about the bases. And so when people describe it, they go like, Oh, yeah, I go down on him, he goes down on me, I come, he comes. And that takes like 25 or 30 minutes. And that and that's considered good sex. I'm not trying to take that away from anyone, if that's what they're really satisfied with. But most of the people that come to me are really, they know that there's like, a treasure trove available to them, where, like, there's so much that they could be accessing sexually, that they're not, they just kind of know, there's magic there, but they don't know how to get there. And so my job is to kind of show them the full palette and the full alphabet of like all of the options that are available and connecting. And a lot of times that has to do with the difference between hot sex and warm sex. So what we see out there in the culture a lot is hot sex, which is power-oriented, you know, the Calvin Klein ad, it's very popular in polarity work now, like, you know, you want your man to throw you on the bed type of stuff. That can be fun. And again, I'm not shaming anyone's desires, or the way that they like to do things. But the people that I work with, usually have never seen an example of warm sex, which is less adrenaline- and cortisol-based and more oxytocin-based. And they would like to at least develop a range for that. So they have an experience of what warm sex might feel like and what a long protracted orgasm might feel like instead of sharp and steep climaxes. So I think there's space for it all.
But what I see is a lot of women who have been performing sex in a certain way for a while, and then there's like a huge life event, which could be motherhood, it could be a big life change, like a loss, it could be a change of phase of life, where they're wanting something different, and they don't know how to talk about it. Because the only conversations they've ever really had have been about quantity, or size or something that's exterior they haven't really had. They haven't really been invited to a conversation of what does what do I want sex to mean to me? What does it mean? Not like, Oh, I'm, I'm an emotional person. But you know, what are my curiosities? How could I meet those curiosities? If I were to separate out these functions of pleasure, and companionship and desire and access to play and improvisation? And then how might I like these to go together? And how could I communicate with someone? No matter what kind of relationship I'm in, no matter if it's a first date or a 20 year marriage, what could I arrive to that space with? So I think it's pretty radical. And for most people, when they're brave enough to turn to it, their whole life changes because it gives you a type of energy that makes life feel worth it. You know that on the days that are hard to get out of bed, or you're worried about the latest crisis, that's, you know, whether it's gun violence or environmental or, you know, the latest cancel takedown. There's something that's very primal that fills us. And when not tended to, it tends to be a bit of an Achilles heel. That's just sort of always there that that dissatisfaction is always kind of looming. And feels really scary to turn toward words, but also feels like it's, it doesn't go away.
Ayana Young Yeah. I want to go back to what you were saying about the adrenaline sex versus the cortisol, sex,
Kimberly Ann Johnson Oxytocin.
Ayana Young Oxytocin? You're right. Sorry. Yeah. It's really interesting to me, there's so many levels of why that's fascinating. Actually, we probably don't have time in the last parts of our conversation to get into all of the facets. But I think maybe where to start with, following this thread of my curiosity is how much sex in dominant culture is about power, which is something that you referred to as well, and, and how our conditioning around power and rape culture and patriarchy. And of course, pornography only, for the most part feeds these narratives, these very specific narratives. And, and I feel like with that conditioning, these narratives start living inside of us. And then that's what we become attracted to, whether that's what we're attracted to, in sexuality, or what we're attracted to, to buy things, or what kind of clothes we want to buy, like, it's incredibly potent, these conditioned narratives. And sometimes even in myself, I wonder, what is me? And what is outside of me? And how has my desire been co opted? What is it that I actually want versus what have I learned to want? And how do I even learn to separate that at this point? And then there's the bigger questions, which of course, I could almost answer, but maybe I can't either in terms of like, why is this power dynamic? So sexualized? Like I said, I could, I'm sure I could come up with my own responses for that. But I think it's really fascinating.. what does this conditioning do for the dominant culture? If we bought into these narratives of power and dominance, and we even got turned on by them? What is that feeding? How are we supporting systems with our sexuality even? So I know, I just asked a bunch of things, and it was a bit stream-of-consciousness. But I would love to explore this more with you.
Kimberly Ann Johnson Yeah, I mean, my mind is going in a lot of different directions. Because I think that one of the great things about sex is it's a really, it can be a really great way to explore power in ways that you might not be able to have outside of that dynamic. You can have it in the dynamic and so your system can get used to what it feels like to have it if you don't usually have it, and what it feels like to safely act out submission. But what I would say is that we haven't, I don't want to totally side, you know, dogleg our conversation but just as a bit of a frame because I think it's really important. So we've all crossed boundaries. And we've all had our boundaries crossed. And some of us have been in one of those positions much more than the other. But this is just part of being human. And my work is really about the predator prey dynamic. And the predator being, you know, we don't like that word in English. But the predator and the prey is just a relationship in the natural world, we need predators, and we need prey. And some animals are only in one of those roles, and some of them are prey to some animals and predators to others. But in a nervous system. We need that full spectrum in our nervous system. And if we have it, then we're not acting out of a default. So, for instance, a predator is in the fight side of the nervous system, a healthy fight, it's healthy aggression. Predators only kill what they need. In the wild. If they approximate domestication, and they're feral, then they kill more than they need. So that's like a wolf in the henhouse. But a wolf out in the wild that's not close to domestication, it just kills the food that it needs to eat. But we've we take that word, and we think we make it moral and ideological.
And one of the ways that I learned about this was watching a video of a wolf and a rabbit when I was in some Somatic Experiencing school, and I was freaking out about the rabbit the whole time. I was like, Oh, my God, rabbit, why don't you see that wolf coming? What are you doing? Why are you? Why aren't you running away?? Like it's coming closer, and then the rabbit collapsed, because it froze. And then the wolf came closer and picked it up and shook it around, to make sure that it was dead because wolves don't like dead prey. And then it cast it off and the wolf ran off, and then the rabbit that was collapsed, and you know, had gone completely hypotonic slowly started, come back to life and orient itself and then come into horizontal and then look around and then shake a lot and then hop off. And when the lights came up, and everybody in the room had been watching that they said, who identifies as the wolf. And immediately in my head, I was like, what freaking psychopath would identify with the wolf. And 30% of the people's hands in the room went up. And they were people that I liked. So I couldn't just say like, they're bad people. And that's why they identify with a wolf. And then I realized, oh, wow, this is how over identified with the prey that I am, like flight, and freeze mode. This is my default. This is where I've been conditioned to be. It's much more comfortable, you know... The emotional correlates to flight and freeze are anxiety, worry, panic, in the flights... and confusion, disorientation and helplessness in the freeze. And the emotional correlates in the fight are irritation, frustration, anger and rage. And for most people, it's acceptable for people socialized as women to be confused and to be helpless. But we don't really like that for people socialized as men. And the converse is true where we don't really generally and this isn't true, in all time in all cultures for all people, but generally, we don't really like to see women, very angry. And that's starting to change.
And there's now books with the word rage on female rage on the cover, things like that. But that's relatively recent. And so I realized in that moment, oh, we've decided that predators are bad. And men are usually predators. So men are bad. And prey is good. And women are usually prey. So prey is good. And then those are moral and ideological frameworks. But they don't tend at all to the nervous system, and to be able to have those corresponding patterns in your system. And so I started helping women physically occupy the wolf, and be able to occupy all of the gestures that come with predation, which are focused gaze, zigzagging, the grinding of the teeth, salivating, showing your teeth, right, you can dominate a dog by showing them one of your canine teeth, and ... Being able to look angry. So if you're angry, look angry, don't try to disarm yourself, and to restore the sel-protective gestures. Now, wolves and rabbits don't have our social nervous system. And the social nervous system is something that only human primates have not, of course, human, you know, animals have very complex social networks, but they don't have this specific vagal social nervous system and in that system that was developed for maternal bonding. So it's very estrogenous. It's estrogen and oxytocin based and it's where on the, when we're under threat in the social nervous system. That's where fawning happened. And that's where fitting in happens. So it's why women return to unsafe circumstances because being closer to the threat is safer than being farther away from it. And so they approximate it. And they don't know their needs, and they go with the needs of the person or the thing that has more power. And so it's a physiological choice. It's not, of course, women are manipulative, sometimes, but in this case, fawning is an organic, physiological way to not incur more danger or threat.
And the other thing that happens in the social nervous system is fitting in so camouflaging, not standing out, not being different, for fear of being ostracized and not belonging in the social nervous system really disproportionately impacts females because of that estrogen cycle. And it's why you can see also that women who are exiting their fertile years become much less concerned about family and group. togetherness and dynamics, they're much more willing to say, you know, I'm not cooking dinner, you all handle yourself. So when a lot of divorces happen, because there's not that hormonal compulsion to keep group together at any cost. And so when we're talking about power dynamics, in general, for most women, who defaults to be fleeing, or freezing, or to the fitting in, and fawning, the reparative direction, is coming into healthy aggression and Predator energy. And that's being able to hold activation. And so it shouldn't be mistaken for being an alpha female, or for being predatory in the sense that you're taking something that's not yours. Again, we're talking about the natural, natural meaning in nature, what happens between animal dynamics and that both are totally necessary. So when you know that you can protect yourself and defend yourself and you know that you can stand your ground, then it's rare that you actually have to activate that circuitry, because your nervous systems already communicating that you don't have to...you're coordinated between your facial expressions, your vocal tone, the content of what you're saying, and how you're organizing your body at the same time. So when we're talking about internalized power dynamics is what I kind of heard you say, or like, you've, you've seen ways of doing something, and that might impact your preference for lingerie, or partners, or all different kinds of things. There's a lot to say about that.
But what I, I really stand for instincts. And what I see happening because I do have the 15 year old daughter, like I said, and teens are coming into their sexuality much differently now than really at any other time in history. And because gender identity has become such an ubiquitous conversation, it's really enmeshed in their experience, the team's experience with their sexuality as well. And they have all these labels to choose from. What's not happening is a lot of experimentation, physically, what's happening is a lot of kind of intellectualizing and categorizing and wondering about but without actually putting those actions in action. And that's just statistically what's happening as well as that there are people delaying sexual engagement much later and longer, which originally I thought was maybe good, like maybe people are having less sex, they don't want. But now I'm seeing it's because we live in such a touch contentious culture, that everyone's afraid of making mistakes, and we become so hyper verbal about everything, that it's the verbal and the enthusiastic consent and the talking, that's the most trustworthy, that there's a big disconnect between talking and touching, and having some kind of mutual agreements, and trust. And you know, and there's people that are so afraid, you know, most men that I know are very confused and afraid of being labeled as perpetrators. So they're muting their own arousal because they don't want to be too much. And they either have a relationship with porn, and they're ashamed about it, or they're trying to get off it. But there's all these stereotypes and tropes about why it is that they're using it and what it's for. And so there's just a lot of confusion out there and I want to be a part of helping people have a framework for how to tease it out. And so that we can have more contact that we want and more connection that we want, and more positive relational experiences that are totally possible.
And I think I'll just tell you one story that I've, I've been all the kinds of ways in relationship at this point because I was married, and then I got divorced when my daughter was about two. And then I didn't have really time to date because I worked full time. And I wanted to be with her when I wasn't working. So I really had to figure out, okay, I'm not going to have like the family situation I thought I was going to have, and I've always coupled sex with attachment. So I've always wanted to be in a relationship to be sexual with someone. And maybe I need to look at that a little bit. So I started dating. And then I tried orgasmic meditation, which is a kind of meditation where you just find someone who will partner with you in the practice of clitoral stroking. And then I, I experimented with nude photography, that this was pre Instagram. So it was really a new thing for me. And also, I was a yoga teacher at the time. So I was really nervous about people who saw me as a spiritual teacher-ish, than seeing me naked on the internet. And it was really just trying to figure it out. I was trying to figure out what how do I do this? How do I, I knew a lot of people who said, well, now you're a single mom, and you might as well just wait until your daughter graduates from high school. So how do I be an erotic person and have an erotic identity that's outside of mothering? But with all of these other roles that I have?
And at one point, I kind of realized that I wasn't very good at picking people, picking partners, and one of my friends who I thought was pretty good at it. We were at an African drumming class, a dance class rather. And there were a bunch of drummers, and I said, you know, which one would you pick? And the one she picked? I was like, really? Like, are you serious? I thought she was joking. And then I was like, Okay, interesting. And then I saw who I picked. And I was like, oh, that tells me a lot.
And so the next time I was dating online, I tried to pick like my friend would pick. And so I ended up having a sort of dinner date with somebody, I was out of town. And I was staying at a motel. And so I invited this person to the motel. And I thought, Okay, this is a lot of people would think this is super dangerous, but I think it's okay, like, I'm getting an ok vibe, and I know how to speak up for myself. And so he came to my motel room, and we sat on the bed, and we talked for a while. And I think we talked for a couple of hours. And then he just said, you know, did you want this to end with talking? Or would you like something else to happen, which I thought was a really beautiful question. And so I said, I'd like something else to happen. And, and then I, we just kind of said, well, what would if you could have anything you want right now, what would you want? And he said, like, no one's ever asked me that question before and, and I said, Well, you know, just because you ask it doesn't mean we're actually going to do it. But you can still ask it. And so he said, I'd like a blow job. And, you know, in my mind, I was kind of like, wow, that's that's quite quite a distance from where we are right now. But fair enough. And so gave that a little space. And then I said, Is there anything else you want? And he said, Well, you know, actually, what I want is you to just put your hands on my back. And they said, Okay, well between those two, like, what do you want more, and he said, I just want that contact. And so that's where the evening started. But I or where the touch part of the evening started. But what I realized was, he didn't really know anything to ask for other than a blow job, because that's the stereotype of what men want from women, if women are willing to offer anything. And I wasn't saying I'm offering everything, I'm just saying everything's on the table, and then that's see what's on the table. And what feels interesting.
And that moment really taught me a lot, because the tenderness and the innocence of him really going a level deeper and reflecting on what it was that he wanted. Yeah, it just really showed me a lot. And I'm not saying that that's what everybody wants. And I'm not saying that. That's how it goes all the time. But I am saying that there's I in no way. Most of the women that I've worked with once they're clear on what they want, if they have a male partner, the male partners are kind of just waiting for them to roll out the red carpet and tell them what they want. Many women want to bring their partners to me. And occasionally that happens. But we have a lot of agency, when we just start to be able to communicate verbally and non verbally what we're open to and what we're not open to. And we're, you know, there's five or 10% of the people in the culture. And that's just like a BS statistic that I made up but something like that, where I think there's something really problematic and wrong. But most of the other interactions are happening in the 90%, a gray area of confusion about shifted social norms and shifted expectations and zero sex education, and then a whole lot of public socio-political ideas that don't always align with what our internal desires are. Sex isn't really very PC, most of the time, I think being respectful is politically correct. And, you know, humanizing the person that you're with. But the rest of it happens more in the more physiological biological, and then as you're saying, like parsing out what our real elemental desires are. And I would also say that after this time of isolation, that I would expect that people are wanting a lot more comfort, they would and they might not know that's what they're wanting. But I've been noticing in my teaching that it's very hard for people to take comfort when it's offered to them. And that on a road to a sexual engagement with someone that there would probably be it for a satisfying interaction, there would probably be a lot more comfort on the way to that interaction.
Ayana Young I really appreciate your personal experiences, I could honestly sit in this session for a long time with you. And just that's really helpful to hear. And thank you for being vulnerable with us. Because sometimes we need to be intimate with each other in our conversations to I don't know what's real for us and be able to relate to each other. So I really appreciate that. And, gosh, I feel like we need to have a secondary episode where we're just honing in on these topics, because there's so much here, and it's so impactful. And I think, again, like going back to the beginning of talking about what's taboo, and hard to talk about and feels uncomfortable to talk about are things we shouldn't talk about, but we need to talk about them. We really do. It's such a big part of our lives, and obviously such a huge part of dominant culture, it's almost like, shoved down our throats honestly, like sexuality and sex. And it's just, it's so it's, it's so much I mean, it's like, sex is sex is used to sell everything like vacuum cleaners. I'm just like, what, like, what is it not used for to get our attention? But what attention is it even getting really from us, when it is so sacred and transformative? And it also has led to so much grief and pain and trauma, too. So, yeah, so much here. But Kimberly, this has been a really wonderful, deeply moving conversation, and I appreciate your time and your care. And yeah, I feel very I don't know, I think I feel all sorts of stuff from this conversation. So thank you for a smorgasbord of feeling cornucopia.
Kimberly Ann Johnson Yeah, there's a lot, especially you know, I've been in this material for a long time. And because I do share my own personal experiences, which is part of deconstructing authority and how we view authority and, and you know, how we view some like, is under nontraditional for a woman to talk about her sexuality, especially a woman who's supposedly an expert about things, but I. So just briefly, I think it can be brief. Last week, so we're talking in April and last week, there was this whole Dalai Lama. I don't even know what to call it.
Ayana Young Yeah.
Kimberly Ann Johnson Shitstorm.
Ayana Young Yes, yes, it's a good word for it.
Kimberly Ann Johnson And if people had a handle on their own nervous systems and their nervous system patterning, we would not have seen what we saw, which was a projection. I mean, to the extent that I was flabbergasted by the extent of free associations, and the willingness to dismiss 70 years of a life over one moment, and the the same people who beat the drum of decolonization and culture work, that this predator-prey dynamic and language is so available that it just gets glossed over ever anything else that's supposedly valuable? So to me, I want people to have better sex 100%. I mean, there's not a cell of me that doesn't want that more more connected sex is in part how we do regulate our nervous systems. It is a regulator, it does give us a broader capacity, it shows us where to look. It allows us to heal one another without having to have special education. It's healing to be in a relationship where someone deeply cares about your experience and is willing to listen to you on many levels from moment to moment. And it's absolutely imperative. And I'm not just saying in the bedroom, because sexuality is much larger than a sex act. It's how we interact with nature around us as well, not what we're getting from it, but how we're in contact with it. But we will continue this, this whole thing that we're going to take someone out of their position and replace them with someone with a different identity without changing the fundamental structures. We're just seeing how that doesn't work all over the place. So to me, it's quite urgent, because this is not the world that I want to hand to my child and not just my child, but the next generation of children. And, you know, God willing, the generations to come. And we do have more information and more potential for embodying that information?
And so that is the second book that I wrote called The Wild because the last one was Reckoning that I co-wrote with Stephen Jenkinson, but called The Wild. My hope for that book was that it would give us animal language that would take away the shaming, of continually imagining that it's just someone's identity, that's the thing that puts them in a category. And unfortunately, I don't think that book has lived that out yet, because in some ways social media is escalating the polemic faster than information can actually be absorbed by a nervous system. But that's really my hope because I do believe that most people are trying to do the right thing 85-90% in sexual relationships and relating in general, but we have to have such a countercultural...We have to put so many things in place in order for us to support that we could even feel what an oxytocin system is, because most of the time we're just getting hit with dopamine and cortisol. So we have to have some relationship to what oxytocin even feels like for us to be able to move in the direction of having the kinds of relationships of all kinds that we want.
Ayana Young I really want to feel into what the overarching themes of your work well the years of your work and thought your thoughts are brand new and in "A Hand in the Dark," a letter discussing your work with Steven Jenkinson, you write quote: "There are so many one-offs these days. One hour podcast, one hour interview summits, one hour quote masterclasses... What happens if we dare to spend more time together? What happens if we dare to circle back? What happens if we sit next to someone and their body of work and give it time to develop so that the encounter works on us and in us?" End quote. Yes, I just want to ask what happens when we devote ourselves to something in this way? or what have you seen in yourself or in others?
Kimberly Ann Johnson There's so much there when you were just reading it. What struck me was sitting next to a body but I heard that body really loudly before I heard the body of work. And just for me, my life has become kind of increasingly isolated. I started working online about seven years ago. And then I was ready to really move away from being online. In fact, I moved to New York City to Brooklyn, in September 2019, because I was really wanting to be around more strangers and, and have exposure to just people and being next to people in different ways. And then my life got rerouted back to suburban San Diego, in June 2020, when I learned that my daughter was going to go to school online if I stayed in New York. And so as a consequence, I still feel that even though we're maybe, quote, post pandemic, that I spend a lot of time alone if I'm not really deliberate about creating ways of being with other people. So there's the being willing to engage longer than one meme or one hour, and then there's the willingness to gather, which is becoming it's going to become, it has become and it will become even more important for us to be very deliberate about gathering because there's less routinized ways for us to do that. And it's becoming less comfortable, even though mentally we might know that we need it. It's getting harder for us to actually do because we're getting out of practice. So on the bigger level, for me, it's looking at ways of living and structuring my life so that I just am around people more of the time. And also that the people that I work with are around more people, because Stephen Jenkinson has this phrase provisioning the loneliness. And in some ways, the work that I do with nervous systems is about being a translator of your, the signals that your body is sending you, but many of those signals that are being sent or because we don't have mammalian proximity. And so there's some ways that it feels like a half step for me to be educating people online and helping them kind of, in some ways, like feel better about something that's not optimal at all. So I'm constantly kind of running those two tracks about how effective is this? Am I provisioning the loneliness by offering this? and, you know, I'm teaching a course right now called Mother Circle, Mother Building, Mother Culture. And I have women joining from all over the world. And in some ways, it's really magical and really powerful. And in other ways. I'm really advocating for them to take whatever it is that they're learning and share it locally. So that's kind of a broad view.
Ayana Young Yeah, this feels so timely and needed, and such a huge part of our healing culturally, collectively, individually, bodily, spiritually. So yeah, thank you again, and I hope to connect soon.
Kimberly Ann Johnson Thank you so much.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild podcast. The music you heard today was by Lake Mary and Katie Gray. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, and Julia Jackson.