Embark on a transformative exploration of sexual well-being and self-discovery with our esteemed guest, Erica Leroy, an expert in sexual health and education. This episode promises to shed light on the empowering practice of masturbation, a subject often shrouded in secrecy but integral to our personal health journeys.
Contact Erica Leroye: erica@creativebodyrelease.com
Erica's website: https://www.flowcode.com/page/creativebodyrelease.com
Instagram: @Erica_Leroye
Here's your first step in spicing up your sex life--get Lee's free erotic massage technique: rockthebedroom.com/
For new erotic massage techniques every month: rockthebedroom.com/membership
Embark on a transformative exploration of sexual well-being and self-discovery with our esteemed guest, Erica Leroy, an expert in sexual health and education. This episode promises to shed light on the empowering practice of masturbation, a subject often shrouded in secrecy but integral to our personal health journeys.
Contact Erica Leroye: erica@creativebodyrelease.com
Erica's website: https://www.flowcode.com/page/creativebodyrelease.com
Instagram: @Erica_Leroye
Here's your first step in spicing up your sex life--get Lee's free erotic massage technique: rockthebedroom.com/
For new erotic massage techniques every month: rockthebedroom.com/membership
I am super excited for this episode because we are talking about a very juicy subject today masturbation and it can be a very taboo topic, right but I also think that it can be a very liberating topic. So I think it's a very important topic to talk about and I'm really eager to talk about it today with my guest, Erica Leroy. I met her when I was a guest panelist on Soft Cock Week podcast. It was so fun, and she was one of the speakers and she has a wealth of knowledge that I can't even I just can't wait to share with all of you listeners. I'm pretty sure this is not going to be the only episode that I have Erica on for. I just have a feeling already. So thank you so much, Erica, for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank, you, lee, for inviting me, and I've been so excited to have this conversation with you.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, you seem to be the perfect person to have this conversation with, just based on you and I talking together. After that podcast, I'm like, wow, this woman is like a volcano of magma pouring forth of great sex ed that we need More sex ed, please, thank you. So please tell our listeners what you do and who you help.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, so well. Again, my name is Erica Leroy and I am a sexual health and well-being educator for adult experiential learners. So, before coming into the world of sex ed, I was in the world of education in general for a very long time, with a focus on adult learning as well as everything in between early childhood through high school, college all of that and some people really need to learn through experience and unfortunately, our sex education tends to be. You know, we read advice columns or we read a book, or we watch a movie or we watch some erotic media, but there aren't a lot of spaces that are available for people who need to learn by doing and have a guide.
Speaker 2:And so, in 2012, I switched gears from what I was doing as a social activist, reformer, and I trained as a sexological body worker. And for your listeners, who probably are like sexological, what?
Speaker 1:Right, right. Please define that.
Speaker 2:Yes absolutely.
Speaker 2:So sexological body work. In 2012, I trained at an Institute in San Francisco that is the only state board of education, career tech ed approved training specifically for body work focused on genital touch and really looking at how the arousal system works or, if there are issues with it, how to help people repair that. And I had been a massage therapist a licensed massage therapist since 1991. And it always been like it's kind of weird that here we are in health, promoting health education, but we can't address the whole self. Holistic health was really bothering me all along, which is actually why I pivoted from doing holistic healthcare to education Cause I was like, well, if I can't, you know, if we can't really do it this way, maybe I can help the whole being learn how to be comfortable in this vessel that we're in you know, this way.
Speaker 2:So, starting in 2012, that became my professional journey and since then I have been focused primarily on working with men, because there's a real disparity in our healthcare system, like, we talk all the time about the disparity that we know as women, but when it comes to sexual health, the disparity for men is even greater. There are a lot more people doing sexological body work somatic work, pelvic physical therapy that are really focused on women, because a lot of that comes from prenatal, postnatal, um and now now perimenopause and menopause, right, right, but for men there's very little right, there's the pill or a pump or an injection, but very little in the world of, you know, people really trying to problem solve what's really going on. So that's the primary focus of my work. However, I love I love to talk with women about masturbation. Masturbation coaching is sort of the fundamental skill in sexological body work really helping people change their attitude, change their understanding of what masturbation is, and so that's professionally.
Speaker 2:Now, personally, I think, like many women, or a handful of women, but at 38, 39, I got out of my second marriage and my hormones were just like I'm going to date everybody. I'm going to fuck everybody. I'm going to just like, what is going on? What can I do? It was like a resurgence. It was a hormonal resurgence of adolescence where I just wanted to rub up on everybody, right, and lo and behold, as part of that unleashing of my libido, I fell into a very passionate love affair with somebody who ended up leaving the country. And there I was like super hooked. And it was the very beginning of like. I had to go to the Apple store to learn how to set up iChat, but because of you know, this is 2008, I had like to have a long distance relationship. I had to learn how to masturbate. I'd been in a marriage, I'd been in two marriages where I hardly ever masturbated, okay, right. So I didn't really masturbation, just wasn't really a thing. And I'd been in monogamous relationships since I was 19, you know, just consecutively. But now, you know, I had this partner who was I want to see you. I want to see you. Send me film, send me picture, let's make a eye date. Send me film, send me picture, let's make a eye date, right, right. And that opened up this incredible journey, right, for me, of getting to know my body, especially at that time where I was surging, right. So that was one part of the journey.
Speaker 2:Then, in 2011, I had I. I at that point I had a different partner. Well, I had both, cause I was poly at that time, but still am and my partner I had. I was in love, we were engaged and then my partner died suddenly and my you know my my hormones tanked and I got very, very, very sick and I actually had a. I had a complete nervous breakdown because it was the death of my partner.
Speaker 2:It was, you know, disasters business-wise, family crises, everything all happened at once. I lost 30 pounds in six weeks, you know, not in a healthy way, right Like my organs were starting to shut down. It was just really like I became incapacitated. And then in 2012 was when I took the sexological body work training and I realized at that point that I could masturbate and re-regulate my positive hormones and endorphins and not be stuck on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds for the rest of my life. So I've had both elements of like masturbation for fun and sexiness and distance pleasure and all of that. And I've also had it for recovering from extreme grief and devastation and pain and all of the depression and anxiety that you know is part of the human journey. So that's like the whole, the whole gamut of the way that I personally have been exploring now, you know, since 2008.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, there's so much there to unpack. Oh my gosh, when I think of masturbation, I think of it as self-pleasure. It's sexual in nature, but you just brought up a really good point that it helped you get out of depression and go through grief and stuff. So that's new to me and, I'm assuming, new to a lot of listeners. To use it therapeutically and to use it in order to get the endorphins pumping through your body and actually feeling your body and feeling through your body and actually feeling your body and feeling it's a bit of a relief valve, I guess. Absolutely. We think of it as a relief valve sexually speaking, but a relief valve emotionally speaking and physiologically, I'm assuming, like rewiring your body, a little bit like hitting the reset button on a few systems.
Speaker 2:Exactly, that's exactly what it is. So let's, let's, let's build on that. So I'm going to look a little bit at some things I wrote down, just so. If you see me going there, that's my. So first of all, let's redefine what sex is.
Speaker 2:Okay so let's redefine what sex is. So, in my definition, sex is the opportunity that we give ourselves whether we're playing by ourself or we're playing with others for the entirety of our bodily systems. Right, because the human organism has a lot of different systems. Right, sex is really the only opportunity that we, as human mammals give ourselves for all of our bodily systems to be invited and allowed to be fully present. Right, most of the time we're walking around. Right, this is the challenge. Right, most of the time we're walking around in the world and we shut our you know, our genital arousal system down. Right, so that's not a hundred percent whole. That's walking around at 90% or 80% or 40%, depending on your relationship with your sexuality. Right, then we have this thing called sex, where the majority of people make that only about genitals and don't include all of these other elements. So that isn't whole whole either. But if we change what we think about sex, as this is an opportunity to let the whole of my organism come together, literally, Right, right.
Speaker 1:There could be a lot of going on today.
Speaker 2:Right, but by reframing. And so you know when I'm having a play date with somebody else, if I go in with the attitude of like, oh my gosh, isn't it wonderful, We've carved two hours to be together and you are the person that I feel comfortable being naked and vulnerable and exposed with. But really, what it's all about, it's not about the orgasm or the ejaculation or whatever it's going to be. It's about feeling good. If we redefine sex as this is where I know how to feel. I know how to feel good, how to reset, how to rejuvenate, how to have this be respite, care, how to have it be recreational, fun, a play date, and the more I practice that with myself right, I like to think of masturbation as the opportunity to get the shiny gold star and plays well with self and others.
Speaker 2:Then, when we are with a partner, that we're acknowledging our relationship, our friendship, our connection is where we, we are the people where, when we're together, we get to be whole. Right, we get to be whole, and so that's a different, that's a really different way of being in your human body and relieve a lot of the pressure, the performance pressure, because it's just about okay, my pussy's invited, your cock is invited, you know, my boobs are invited, my neck is invited, my fingertips are here, my toes are here. Oh, my knees, oh my, you know, ah, this whole self. Right, this is us, this is our time, this is my full time. It's not just, you know, let me rub my clit and you know why isn't this happening. Or, okay, there's my go-to Sometimes that's okay.
Speaker 2:Right, but that's a different. You know, it's really the ultimate opportunity for holistic well-being if you practice.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that. But when a lot of people hear the word sex, immediately they think penis in a vagina, like that's what sex is. And that's part of the training that I do as well is just like opening up your mind, like no, it's about pleasure, right, it's not a finish line. Sex is usually P and a V so that you can reach an O. Yeah, you know, the big O is is that orgasmic release is the only thing that's on the table. That's why we're do all roads lead to the big O and I'm like, yeah, why don't we just like stop with the orgasm for just a second, just table it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And let's just pursue pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, because if you're in total pleasure you're going to have an orgasm.
Speaker 2:So so that just takes care of itself and and and even that I mean, I think I mean, for we could even redefine. I've been really thinking about how necessary and helpful it is to even redefine what an orgasm is. So my business, which I've been running since you know doing since 1991, is called creative body release. Right, that we just need to be able to let go of things right, and sometimes that's through talking and sometimes it's through talking, and sometimes it's through tears and sometimes it's through laughter and sometimes it's through. You know, there's certain things. It's just the pelvic bucket. It's just easier to release out of this bucket that has a bigger hole than like trying to make it come out of our cranium Right, sweat it out through our skin right, like the system is actually designed again, wetted out through our skin right, like the system is actually designed Again. That's why it's a whole system. Right, there's the nervous system, there's the sensory system that gets stimulated, that then sends signals, right, and then there's like the fascia system and the movement system. Right, there's all the fluid system. So if we can just say an orgasm is building up and letting go, right, it's like those exercises that you do where it's like tense, tense, tense, tense, tense release, right.
Speaker 2:And if we're not, you know, and that every or so I masturbate a lot, you know I've been doing it for a long, you know, focused on it for a long time, and I think one of the things that's so key is I approach it with curiosity. I never expect it to be the same. You know, dopamine likes novelty, right. So dopamine likes pleasure, like pleasure and reward, and so sometimes we can get into a masturbation focus where it's like I got to get the orgasm, because that's one version of a dopamine drive, right, but another version of a dopamine drive is, huh, how can I make this different today, right, what's? How can I make this fresh and a new? So, you know, finding that place for me, it's like my relationship with my pussy Well, that's kind of the word I use.
Speaker 2:It's like when I was a little girl, I liked to play with Barbies. I was a Barbie girl and I was a dollhouse girl and I was an imaginative play with things and like, and I like to do that alone, right, play with myself, and I like to do that with friends, and when I masturbate, what I've really learned is like, it's like inviting my pussy to be my best girlfriend, right, like, what do you want to play with? Do you want to play with a toy? Do you want to play dress up? You know, let's play, let's put on some lingerie, let's put on, like, what are we going to like? Let's make this a play date. And if I invite my body, if my mind invites my body to, let's have a play date. That's really different, energetically, than I'm so tired. I don't want to do it. I'm too stressed, I don't want to do it. If I'm not doing it with a partner, I don't want to do it. You know, like we have to find ways to trick the mind to say no, no, no, this is good for me, yes, and so that goes back. Let me just circle back to what you were saying, which is it is really really.
Speaker 2:I find it really helpful to understand just the basic, some of the most basic elements of what happens with sexual arousal, sensory arousal and orgasm, which is that that is the time in adult life where we have the biggest opportunity to release oxytocin. And oxytocin is the love, trust, bond, cuddle hormone, right. As women, we have big surges of it in childbirth right and when we're nursing, we nursed, and then it kind of plummets after that. You know, and how we get that again really is through sensual sexual play, if we create opportunity to really build up the oxytocin reservoir in the pituitary gland, and we do. Oxytocin likes warm voice, eye contact, but also, you know, soft, soothing touch. You know different fabrics. That's why, you know, I like lingerie, because it's, oh, there's something a little velvety, and then there's something a little satin and there's something you know, and just also creates a different reality, sensory reality, as I'm touching myself. But so we're building, building, building this oxytocin and maybe also, if we're imagining a lover, or imagining a time we've had, or visioning a time in the future, we're building, building, building, building and then it gets released.
Speaker 2:And I think where people of all genders the big mistake they make is not harnessing the oxytocin when it's released into the bloodstream. Because when oxytocin is released and we know this is science so when oxytocin is released at high levels above baseline, after orgasm, right, right, and what happens is this molecule goes out into the bloodstream and somehow the magic of it is, it tells, does a couple of things. One, it looks for cortisol in the body. So if you're stressed, releasing oxytocin and then taking time after you're done, after you've peaked let's even call it that right that you've had a peak experience of tight and release that breathing, that oxytocin rich blood through your body, using that time to just do some breathing and some stretching and feeling like, okay, now I've done all the soothing touch and now I'm going to go in there, cause now all my muscle fibers in my fascia are like, yeah, bring it, I'm relaxed, bring me this thing. That will I know this isn't truly, but my image is is like a Ms Pac-Man, right Like oxytocin, is like where's the cortisol?
Speaker 1:That's my imagination. So it, it kind of counters cortisol, it counters cortisol. Yeah, I love, I love that that visual of Ms Pac-Man.
Speaker 2:Right, that's perfect, right, so it counters cortisol, right, so it counters cortisol. It also right If you're depressed, if you're anxious, it's again. So somehow this molecule tells the brain to make the mind think life is good. I got this this. Humans are amusing, not irritating, right? This is good, I got this. And so if we don't like, oh, I just masturbated or I just had sex with a partner and now I'm going to like clean up and right, and I think with a partner especially for women we're more used to like, oh, and now we cuddle, right, but it's not so often in solo sex that we do that for ourselves. So if we know, and oxytocin peaks for like the first 10 minutes and then starts moving down to baseline, so during that 10 minute time we can do that moving, stretching, breathing Also, just if we have affirmations, if we have things, gratitude, practice, even if we just lay there and think I got this right, I'm good, I'm good, like it's maximizing, right, it's maximizing the potential for our own neurochemical restoration.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's that piece and that say something, and then I want to talk a little bit about pain.
Speaker 1:Okay, something just occurred to me when you said that, like I've heard in the past, you know, when you're in an orgasm, think of something that you want, or think something big, because it's a high manifestation, peak moment kind of thing. And it makes me wonder if that's really like physiologically. What they're talking about is the oxytocin, I would imagine. Maybe that's it, I don't know, but you have a legitimacy to that idea of okay, we're in this peak state, let's milk it and set some intentions. And intentions are are very powerful, and you know the affirmations gratitude, whatever. That's so good.
Speaker 2:And and that's you know, I really, I, I so appreciate, I really appreciate how those of us you and I, and you know, all of your listeners, you know are what I like to call erotic explorers, erotic adventurers. You know, we're willing, we're curious, we're eager and we step in a lineage. We're not the first. You know they're dildos made of stone from the Paleolithic age, right, really, oh yeah, you know that's. There's a whole thing in Greece about, you know, ancient Greece, they would make dildos out of bread. There's like a whole thing about, like, you know, so we're, you know this, this is a long, this is a long line of people who are seeking pleasure. So in that we have Tantra, we have, I mean, so many different. There are so many traditions around the world where there are people who laid out recipes and sacred texts around sex magic.
Speaker 2:I happen to be the daughter of a neurologist right who also my family was very Buddhist, hindu, seeking West coast seventies people.
Speaker 2:So I have, you know, I have the appreciation for the sex magic woo side, but I also really am curious about how the body works and and because I am a mother and a grandmother and I used to teach parenting courses, I just know, like oxytocin is how we all begin. Yes, in order to get through birth. I mean, I used to joke, before I knew more about oxytocin, how, like all babies look like for the first three days, like they've all, they're all in an opium den, they're all just like, and then they kind of come to and they are. It's actually that the oxytocin level is super, super, super high, which you can understand as a naturally occurring morphine, as a naturally occurring pain medicine. To get through the experience of being squeezed and pushed or pulled out or all of that, that we would need something that wasn't going to just mess us up forever from the pain and then to go from birth to walking, which takes a lot of fortitude.
Speaker 2:We're getting an oxytocin loop through, all of those things that happen in infancy of eye gazing and smiling and holding and cuddling. We know how to soothe a fussy baby and all of those things are how we can self-soothe, which really that's a piece of masturbation too. I'm anxious, I'm fussy, I'm stressed, and the adult mind is like let me go there, let me do that, or I'm to this, as opposed to hey, let me let myself have a tantrum, but let it be a sexual orgasmic tantrum but let it be a sexual orgasmic tantrum, right?
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I love that because, like for me, I, I'm going to come clean. Here is when I get stressed and I'm overwhelmed. Um, I'll, I'll Netflix it out Like I'll. Just that's how I turn off. The stress is I escape my life through someone else's story and entertain myself and relax. I'm usually horizontal when I'm doing it too, so it feels like, oh, this is, this is therapeutic for me, but it's a detachment from my body. And so if I, instead of doing that but spend some time nurturing my body and up leveling the oxytocin, that would be a way more productive and less avoidant way to deal with the stress.
Speaker 2:And I'm right there with you. I mean, I think that you know as much as I can say this is great, I do the same thing. You know, I'm totally the same. You know, I just need to, like, just give me a good story, right, let me just go, or even a mediocre story, but let me just check out and I think what I think one. So. So what I haven't said yet is that you know, another way that I think about sex is I just think of it as a movement activity, as physical fitness and sport. You know that when I want to shape my butt, I I'm lazy, I don't want to go to the gym, but if I I, one of my favorite things is I put a dildo in a thigh high strap on harness and put it over either a foam roller or a yoga bolster or a pillow and ride.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:And you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes of actually like getting on top and practicing. So not only am I, I'm, there are a couple of things that are happening there and I think a lot of women don't do this right. A lot of women masturbation is predominantly clitoral focused. Yeah, often with a vibrator and not with the hands. And you know, I just my experience talking with women is that very few are dildo focused, right, that's not, that's the internal part, isn't really part of the self-practice, right.
Speaker 2:But if you're going to have partnered sex, we have muscle memory, right, just like with men, like they experience this all the time. You know, is that does your masturbation match? So, if we think of it from a sports performance point of view, I always like to say, like you can't get mad at your body on Saturday at the basketball court when you're playing one-on-one with a teammate and you're not making the basket, if what you've been doing all week is doing butterfly stroke in the pool, right, right, right, and that makes your pussy, friend, just be like, why are you mad at me? Right, like we weren't training for basketball, right, right, you, you've been doing all this swimming and now you want me to be high performance. So there is an element in masturbation coaching and masturbation practice where we want to just mix it all up, right, that sometimes it's slow and soothing, and it is this what we're talking about respite care, oxytocin care, and other times it's like I need a 15 minute workout respite care, oxytocin care and other times it's like I need a 15 minute workout. I want to work my quads, want to work my glutes, I want to work my abdomen, and actually, you know, getting on a dildo, we'll do all those things. Or using one on, even on your back, we'll do all those things that will activate all of those pelvic structural muscles.
Speaker 2:And then if you're imagining either sex that you've had, that you enjoyed, or sex that you want to be having, so you're adding in some fantasy, but it's also fantasy that it's just like sports conditioning and sports psychology. You don't imagine, you know, you don't imagine missing the shot, right, right, while you're practicing, you imagine making it. And so if you're imagining, if I'm, if I'm a little uncomfortable a lot of women are not comfortable being on top right. So if I want to get comfortable being on top, figuring it out on my own is going to make it a lot better when I then go to be with a partner and try to be on top Cause, I'm going to understand oh, there's a spot.
Speaker 2:If I move this way, like that spot doesn't give me any pleasure. But I've discovered that you know, when I put my knee here up like this, or I move my pelvis like this, or I lay back like this, I've discovered that you know, when I put my knee up like this, or I move my pelvis like this, or I lay back like this, I've discovered there's not a G spot, there's a whole alphabet in there. Right, right.
Speaker 1:I never thought of that that way the whole, because, yeah, when I masturbate it's very rarely, if ever, with a dildo, it's usually clitoral. Yeah, it makes me think, you know, like if I do want to have intercourse with someone down the road, why am I not practicing that? Right Makes total sense.
Speaker 2:And I think I wrote this as one of my notes because I think I think one of the things that I think trips people up about masturbation, and especially for women, right, I think women we use, you know, we we tend to not be very good with our hands, right, maybe the way we first learned was by like rubbing up against something or feeling, you know, kind of feeling that so there's a lot of do it for me, not I do it to myself, right, that's that there's sort of and I think also there's this idea, just in general, of like, if something isn't working, I want something that will fix it, not I need to go deeper and explore this by myself and understand it. So masturbation is like playing a drum set, right, you have to be able. It's tricky, right, like full-bodied masturbation is like playing. I should say that I should caveat that, right, like full-bodied masturbation is like playing a drum set because you have to have, like one hand is doing this and the other hand is doing this, and you know my limbs, you know maybe my legs are splayed or doing something different, and my brain has to be both controlling my motor activity and relaxed enough to receive the signals that that motor activity is doing.
Speaker 2:Right, it's not easy, right, and I think that is part of why, you know, people either give up or they have a high expectation of toys. You know, sometimes, with women who come and see me, you know I'll say bring me all the toys that you bought and then didn't do it for you, right. And then, and let's see, because it's about being creative, sort of like, if you have a toy truck, then all that toy truck can do is be a truck, right. But if you have a rock and you can make it a truck, you can make it a person, you can make it, you know, an airplane, you could make it a ferry. So it's how we bring our imaginative vision to these toys right the toys are limited in what they do.
Speaker 2:They rumble, they vibrate, they insert, they suction, insert, they suction. But it's how we use it. That can then make it something that doesn't just sit in the drawer to right. Bring that imagination in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and speaking of toys, I've heard that vibrating toys, if used exclusively and too much, can actually desensitize the area so that they can't. I have a girlfriend. She can not have an orgasm even during intercourse with someone. She needs to have a toy at play at some point because she cannot orgasm without it now, because that's the only thing she's used.
Speaker 2:Yep, and I think that's really common. I think that's really common and, again, I think that comes from this initial place of it. Does it so much for me? Yeah, I don't have to engage my, I don't even have to turn myself on, right, because it's electric. I mean, we're talking about electro stim, right, and there's a big difference. That's why I always encourage women to put the vibrators away at least a few times a month. You know like we start.
Speaker 2:We change our masturbation habit, just like any other habit, slowly and incrementally, right, right, you know, if there are things that feel good, I'm not saying, don't do what feels good, but just how do we start to add a couple other ideas into the mix? So the thing about manual masturbation is that the hands are just so full of nerves, they're so full of nerve endings right, it's so. You know, they're like, they're literally sensors, and all of our skin, including our genital skin, they're they're called afferent nerves, which their whole job is either to be yes, no or neutral, right, and, like I said, most of the time, you know, know, they're on off, right, unless you have, you know, persistent arousal disorder, which you know is a not pleasant thing, where you can't turn them off right they're off and then we want to be like, and now they're on, right.
Speaker 2:So learning how to activate. So when I'm teaching masturbation I'm always saying what I call activating. The lover hand that we have, like one hand, is your very, very, very best lover, best lover you've ever had, will ever have. The image you know, sometimes for me it's like I'm fucking Zeus today, like you had to just pick this hand. Is who right? Anybody, anytime, male, female, unicorn, you know, whatever is your fantasy, right, that's one of your hands.
Speaker 2:And that hand, if you activate it first, if you actually give it a little bit of and even paint, like you can do this right now, like you know, you can hold your hand up and it's just a hand. But if you start to feel how all around you is matter, it's not empty space, there's molecules, there's matter. You know I can all like shape my lover. You know I can all like shape my lover. You know, before even I'll be like, okay, here's his back and I want to stroke down his spine and feel his butt or I want to right, like I create in space this image of somebody. So then if I'm laying back I can even feel a sense of weight on me, if I want or if I'm feeling on top, I can imagine the shape of a body there.
Speaker 2:And then this lover hand, you know, can touch me all over the way and get really activated, cause, again, that brings up the oxytocin, that brings up the serotonin and the dopamine, right. So we're activating all that. And then, when it comes down to touching into the genital, perineal, anal areas, then you're having a very different experience than an electric stimulation. It's still. It's still electric, it's still energetic, right, but it's nerve, it's direct nerve to nerve, it's direct nerve to nerve, right, it's allowing this to come. And then that changes the way that pleasure signals go back up through the nervous system and speak to the brain, right, which is why, again, pain can really be modulated through our masturbation practice.
Speaker 1:All righty, we're going to take a time out because my conversation with Erica went pretty long. It was super interesting, but it went long, so I've decided to split it into two parts. Go listen to the next episode, where we talk about how to use masturbation to reduce chronic pain, how masturbation can make you look younger, how to navigate changes in libido after menopause and I get real vulnerable with some very personal chairs. So go listen to episode nine to dive even deeper into this juicy topic. See you over there.