Unlocking the Power of Responsive Desire: A Path to Intimacy

Kayla Moore: 00:00:00

What would it be like? What would it be like for me to be able to move towards the things that I desire?

Move toward sexual desire in a way that is empowering and full of safety and love and joy and play and pleasure? What would that look like? Welcome to her on Top.

I'm your host, Kayla Moore, a licensed sex therapist, and I'm here to create a space for you to feel normal, learn and reclaim your relationship to sex and intimacy. Each episode is going to be filled with us taking a deep dive into our bodies, our souls, and our oh, so yummy sensuality.

I am bringing my expert knowledge on sex and relationships to help you experience empathy, body pleasure, satisfaction and connection. Guess what? Sex is for you and you deserve to get what you want. This is her on Top.

As a disclaimer, these episodes are based off of my clinical knowledge, but as I am not your therapist, please take care with all that is discussed and talk to your own therapist or seek out a therapist if you are wanting to dive deeper into these topics for yourself. Hello, my lovelies. Welcome to the Heron Top podcast.

I'm your host, Kayla Moore, resident Sacred Feminine sex therapist, and I'm here today for another episode with you all. It is also my last episode of season two or the inaugural season of my updated or revamped podcast, and I'm really excited.

It's number 13, which in the Sacred Feminine is actually a very lucky number because there are 13 moon cycles in a year. And so it feels quite just in line with everything that I've been doing this year, too.

And on lucky number 13 with that, today we are going to be talking about desire. So we are entering into Sagittarius season in the month of December, and we just came out of Scorpio season.

There are a lot of different things happening this month. Mercury is again going to go into retrograde. There are just a lot of different astrological events happening in the next couple weeks.

And a lot of what is culminating, especially with the help of Saturn, is allowing us to really dig deep into the things that we desire for ourselves, that we are hoping and dreaming for and want to create in our lives.

Not only the energy shifts that we want to do internally and kind of the internal work, but trying to create it more into a physical manifestation in our life.

So when I am talking about desire, I am talking about sexual desire, but I do think that in all my work, you know, sexuality is part of all the aspects of our lives.

So I do often kind of broaden it to other aspects of your life because I think they kind of feed off of each other, that if we focus specifically on sexuality, it can permeate throughout the rest of the areas and realms of our life, and it can go vice versa, too, that we can focus on some of the other aspects of our life and they will impact how we feel about ourselves sexually and in our relationships. And so I just invite you to start wherever feels comfortable enough for you.

But today I will be specifically focusing on sexual desire and how we can continue to cultivate that in a time where we're really being asked to think about what are the things that we really want in our lives, the things that we are really being called to cultivate, and that really light us up and are going to help us feel like we are taking full advantage of the life that we have been given here on this planet Earth. So as we get started, as usual, I'd like to do some grounding. So if you are in a space to close your eyes, please do so.

Obviously, if you are not in a space to do that, please use safety as you know, your guiding principle here. And we will dive in a little bit and then we'll get into some of the aspects of desire that I want you to know.

So closing your eyes, finding your feet on the floor, I will also do the same.

Just taking a moment to appreciate yourself for being here, for taking the time to give to yourself in a way that is replenishing and to acknowledge that you are not alone. We always have something available to us to lean on.

Whether that is Mother Earth, whether that is this podcast, whether that is someone else in your life, whether it is just you knowing that your internal self can always lean on your body self. Your body is always carrying you through this world and is impacted, yes, but is also your companion just knowing you're not alone.

And as we settle in, feeling the earth underneath you, feeling the weight of your body on whatever surface you are sitting on or standing on, just dropping into this moment.

And I want you to think about, as we are entering into the season that is typically filled with stress, typically filled with chaos, what does it feel like to just come into your body? How does it feel to be in a space where all you have to, quote, unquote, do is just be that there is no need to do.

All we need or all we are asked to do in this moment is just be to be with yourself. Mind, body, soul, spirit. To be with your power.

You want to scan down into your belly and then into your pelvis and to know that there is a Sacredness in that space, to greet that sacredness with love, compassion, appreciation, and to feel what it feels like to give your body a moment to be and to rest.

Now, I want you to imagine that you put on your jacket, you put on your hat, you put on your gloves, and you are now going outside of your house to take a walk. Take a walk in your neighborhood, and you see all the houses as you pass by. You see the neighbor that has been outside gardening.

You see the decorations that people are starting to put out for the season. You hear a dog barking in the background. But you are committed to being present in this moment.

And as you walk, you remember that there is a trail by your house, a wooded trail that feels like this could be a sacred space of peace for you. So you meander your way through the neighborhood and get to the entrance of that trail.

There's a big arch at the beginning of that trail that marks the beginning of the sacred space.

And as you enter this trail and start to become consumed by trees, enveloped in their warmth and their immensity and their beauty and their stillness, you start to really feel a sense of calm, a sense of love, a sense of connection to the earth around you. And as you continue to walk, you come across a space where all these maple leaves have fallen onto the ground, and they aren't quite brown yet.

They are still yellow and red and have created a beautiful blanket upon the earth of these gorgeous leaves that have just fallen from the tree. It looks like it is a magical clearing where the leaves are giving something extra.

It's almost like a blanket of snow, but of leaves that have gone through this growth cycle and now are at the precipice of death and compost and giving nourishment to the soil for something new to grow. And you take a moment to just stand and take it all in. You close your eyes and take some deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth.

In through your nose, out through your mouth. And you actually decide to go up and touch one of the trees with your hand and just feel the power of what that tree can bring to you.

All the intricate parts of that tree working together to store what it needs to store for winter. You see a blanket of moss upon the tree and think how cozy the tree must feel with the moss protecting it and keeping it warm.

You really take in the beauty around you and think to yourself, how lucky I am to be part of this magnificent world that we live in. And it sparks an idea for you of what is calling to you. It Sparks the idea that I want beauty in my life.

Not only in the spaces that I'm in, such as this sacred space that I have just engulfed myself in, but also in the intimate parts of my life that I want to feel alive. I want to feel like I am able to harness this power that I feel culminating in my body. What would it be like?

What would it be like for me to be able to move towards the things that I desire, Move toward sexual desire in a way that is empowering and full of safety and love and joy and play and pleasure? What would that look like?

And I invite you to file those desires into your heart, into your belly, and into your pelvic area and know that those are sacred to you.

And I invite you to continue along that path and know that the things that the natural world enables you to find within yourself is some of the most sacred, sacred work that we can do.

And knowing that those ideas and those thoughts and those dreams are potent, they're not frivolous, they're not something that we should just toss away and not give any more thought to. Hold on to them and know that they are yours and they are important. And so I'm going to invite us to walk along the path.

We come to the exit, and we thank the time that we have had, the sacredness that we have had, the love and the connectedness that we've shared with the earth and the trees, and just really feeling gratitude for that experience that you had. And then we come out of the sacred space, the sacred woods, and you find yourself back in your neighborhood again. You see all the houses in a row.

You see the cars parked on the street. You hear some kids playing in the distance, laughing. You see some people walk by and you smile at them and wish them a good day.

You walk back to your house, open the door, close the door behind you, take a deep breath, and know that you have had a very fulfilling walk. You take your jacket off, you take your hat off and your gloves, and you come back to this present moment.

Okay, so when we are talking about desire, I want to bring us into a little bit of some education around the different types of desire to help you along this journey. Again, you can desire anything and everything in your life, but specifically when it comes to sexual desire, I want to give you a few things to know.

So how we typically talk about desire in our culture currently, and I will also say, so, desire is often synonymous with low sex drive, or I guess just sex drive in general. Desire and sex drive tend to be synonymous and so if you have low desire, that means you have low sex drive.

Um, and so how we typically talk about desire or sex drive in our culture is around what we call spontaneous desire. So spontaneous desire is when we kind of get hit out of the blue with desire that we just all of a sudden are like, yep, I want to have sex.

And then we go for it. And it is a common form of desire. It is not something that is uncommon, but it is not the whole story.

Um, and it often is a more masculine way of looking at desire that because men have their genitals on the outside, they typically are aroused by something.

They usually take in some type of sexual input or maybe have something that they have pulled from a fantasy or something in their head that then leads to them feeling aroused. And they see that they are aroused on the outside.

And then it sends, you know, kind of a signal to their brain of like, oh, well, I must have desire for sex, and therefore want to have sex. Now, it does not mean that women do not also experience spontaneous desire. All people can experience spontaneous desire at any point in time.

But again, that's not the whole story. So there is actually another way of experiencing desire, and that is what we call responsive desire.

I will also note that all of this information comes from the lovely Emily Nagowski, who wrote the book come as you are, and she is a sex educator and researched all this information on how we experience sex and desire. So go check out that book if you are interested. So responsive desire is a different type of desire, or it's a different route to desire?

I should say it's not a different type. It's just a different route to desire.

And it's kind of the opposite, where we are responding to specific sexual stimuli within a specific context that is then creating basically an environment where we are setting ourselves up to then respond physically to desire.

So instead of it being kind of how I described, like a body first and then mind experience, it goes the opposite, where it's first a mind experience and then a body experience. And so we are. It's basically like setting the scene where we are giving ourselves time to respond to things that we find are going to turn us on.

But it has to be within a specific context. And usually that context, if we got to the very core of that context, is around safety and connection.

That most people that need responsive desire to get to a place of arousal, they need safety and connection. And that can look a lot of different ways.

It could look like, you know, the safety and connection I need from My partner could come from them kind of catering to the fact that, like, I don't want to have sex when our kids are, you know, just out and about and could happen upon us at any time.

So maybe my partner, like, locking the door and turning on music and maybe lighting a candle and creating this safe space that you need to fully relax into that, into your body and into a place where you can get aroused with your partner. Um, it could look like, you know, my partner made me dinner so I didn't have to do that tonight.

Um, it could look like an intimate conversation between you and your partner. It could even not necessarily have to do with your partner.

It could be something that you do for yourself, like maybe reading a romance novel and sitting in the bathtub to get yourself back into your body and allow yourself some time and space to get out of a caregiver mode or out of work mode and into a place where you know that you could receive your partner in a positive and erotic way. So again, it's not a different type of desire, it's just a different route to desire.

And many people, specifically women that come to me or that are in this journey of trying to figure out, you know, they've been told or they feel like, whether it's from their partner, from a doctor, whether they themselves feel this way of, like, I just have low desire and I don't know how to get it back.

Oftentimes we're operating on this sense of spontaneous desire that I don't have this, like, out of the blue feeling all the time that I want to have sex, and therefore I have low desire. And oftentimes it's not necessarily a desire problem.

It's like our way to getting to desire is the problem, and the barriers between us and desire are the problem.

So if you think about for yourself what stimuli help turn you on and what the contexts are that you need to be able to receive that stimuli and it to turn you on versus turn you off.

Because that's another piece of this is that Emily Nagowski uses the kind of analogy of you can get the same stimuli from the same person, but depending on the context, it could feel differently. So she talks about tickling, like, in a very playful, safe, and just kind of like space without any expectations.

Tickling could feel really fun and maybe something that leads to, you know, a more like erotic experience between you and your partner.

If you are in a conflict situation with your partner and you are very angry and upset with your partner, them tickling you is probably going to feel a lot different, you're probably going to be even more irritated and more upset with them. So we can get the same type of stimuli, but the context of that stimuli really matters.

And again, it could come from the same person, it could come from your partner, but the context matters.

So figuring out what type of stimuli is actually something that you want to experience, but then what is the context around it that also helps you experience it in a way that is pleasurable to you, instead of something that is going to take you out of that space as well?

So if we keep those things in mind and come back to your original thought when you were in the woods of what would it look like for you to move towards your desire? How can that understanding help you move towards your desire?

How can it fuel you to think about desire in a way that is not either I have it or I don't, but in a way that is kind of like finding the breadcrumbs that lead you to desire?

What are the things that are a barrier to me at this point in time, that if I removed those barriers and I set the stage for myself, that maybe desire could grow and flourish? I have talked about this a little bit on previous episodes, and there is a lot that goes into this. This is just one small piece of desire.

It's kind of like the overarching framework, and then we can really get into the nitty gritty of all the different barriers that could be there in you getting to the place of Des that you want to get, or just feeling desire in general that you want to feel.

So if you are wanting to do more work on this, I am officially open to not only taking individual women clients, which I have been the entirety of this podcast, but I am also officially opening my doors to new couple clients as well. And so as again, we are in this season of moving towards the things that we need to work on and want in our lives.

Working on our intimate relationships, I think is a high priority for a lot of people. And this is a great time to do that.

We are in a time where we need each other more than ever, and that is as a collective community, but also in our intimate spaces as well. And if there's conflict or tension or division in our homes, I mean, that's the best place to start first, right?

It's hard to find community when our most basic community in our homes is not something that we feel safe and supported by.

So if you are somebody that is wanting to work on this further and feel like finding your way to desire is Very tricky for you if you're somebody that has like, diagnosed yourself in one way or another with low desire or low sex drive. I am available and very much wanting to help you work on that and find your availability to desire. It is within you.

You have the power to really cultivate the desire that you are searching for. And we just need to kind of figure out what are the barriers to you being able to do that. So with that, I'm going to end for today.

Thank you so much to everyone that has listened to this podcast. I am still, you know, I'm not like out in the big leagues yet, but I know that there are consistent people that have been listening to this podcast.

If you are one of those people, I just. I so appreciate you. I really, really do. And you know, those people could be my friends, they could be my family, but they also could not.

And I just really appreciate everyone who has taken the time to listen to my words, to listen to my heart. I really try to put my whole heart and soul into these episodes. And this podcast has been a big labor of love for me.

So I really hope that that comes through and that you feel that. And I just really appreciate everyone that has been here to support me in this journey. It is not over yet. I am just taking a break for the holidays.

I'm really trying to prioritize rest in my life right now and taking December and probably the first little bit of January off I think is very needed for me. So the next season will probably be coming out sometime in mid to late January. January, depending on when I get the ball rolling on recording again.

So yes, I just really appreciate everyone that has been here. A few things to note. I am going to be on a couple other people's podcasts coming up, so I will keep you up to date with that.

I will be on somebody's podcast in December. I'm not sure exactly when that will be released, but I'll be recording it at the beginning of December.

So please follow me on Instagram @reclaimingstoriestherapy and herontop pod to get updates on that and to be able to listen to me on somebody else's podcast. And I will also be on somebody else's podcast in January as well.

new things in the horizon for: 2025

If you want to find me in order to start therapeutic work with me, you can go to my website, reclaimingstoriestherape.com Click on one of the various buttons that I have to go schedule your free 30 minute consult and we will chat over video on what is going on for you, how I can be of service to you, how we would fit together well or you know, what you are needing in your journey and then we can get started from there. Again, please follow me on Instagram.

I will say that my Reclaiming Stories Therapy Instagram is the one that I'm focusing more on and is where I'm going to be posting more just like live things that I'm thinking or more stories. So that's going to be my primary Instagram moving forward.

I do tag a lot of my stuff onto the her on Top podcast one, but just know that the Reclaiming Stories Therapy Instagram is my main one that I am using at this moment. If you would love to leave me a review and a rating, I would be so ever grateful on whatever platform you are listening.

That really does help and it's just good to get some feedback but also, you know, helps the algorithms. Everybody knows this. So if you would be so kind to do that, I would so appreciate that.

I would also love if you could go over and give me a review on Google.

You can look me up on Google, just Reclaiming Stories Therapy and if you can give me a Google review that would actually be probably even more helpful than the podcast. So if you are willing to do that, I would also be grateful for that. And with that I will see you all in January.

So I hope you all have a lovely holiday season. I know it's kind of hard in this space to stay in a place of hope and joy when we know kind of what's coming down the pike in January.

But I do think that this is a time not to just sit around and feel the doom and gloom of what's to come, but to really rejoice to be with the people that we love, to connect, to prioritize, rest, because we are going to need our rest and to just really love on each other as much as we can. There is always room for love and hope and joy, even in the darkest of times.

So, and that's, I think a really good way to protest is to not let the powers that be create more disheartened people to make us feel like we're stuck and can't do anything. So go be merry as much as you can, go take care of yourself as much as you can and I will see you all next year.