Sacred Sexuality & the Journey of Healing Sexual Trauma, with Layla Martin
Many of us struggle with limiting beliefs about what sexuality should be. We need to approach our sexuality as a practice, just like meditation or yoga.
In this episode, tantra and intimacy coach Layla Martin offers tools and techniques to help us get in touch with our energy and connect with ourselves more deeply.
It all starts with a pleasure practice – dedicating time to connecting with our sexuality, using breathwork, meditation, and physical movements to release stuck emotions.
Sharing daily intentions and support, and scheduling weekly moments to connect emotionally and energetically with our partners helps us create the space to honour all expressions of sexuality, experiencing it as a rainbow of possibilities rather than a single colour.
The pressures and misconceptions we often face can make sex a source of stress rather than joy. But by focusing on presence with our body and exploring sensations without judgment. we can embrace the full spectrum of our sexuality and find liberation in our sacred experiences.
Connect with Layla
- Follow @thelaylamartin on Instagram
- This Tantric Life podcast
- The Tantric Mastermind for Couples
Mentioned in this episode:
The Deep Polarity Program
An 8-week immersive journey to unlock the deepest intimacy through masculine & feminine dynamics.
Healing Your Attachment Style
Create deeper relationships and more abundance
Healing Your Relationship with the Masculine
Everything you need to know about men in order to be the most embodied and conscious woman you can be.
Transcript
Our guest today is Layla Martin.
Speaker:In this episode, we explore sacred sexuality, what it means
Speaker:to heal sexual wounding, the differences between men and women
Speaker:in the bedroom, and how to truly understand each other's sexual needs.
Speaker:This is an episode you don't want to miss.
Speaker:There are so many golden insights.
Speaker:I invite you to listen until the very end.
Speaker:Welcome to the Masculine and Feminine Dynamics podcast.
Speaker:My name is Lorin Krenn and I'm a coach, author and hypnotherapist.
Speaker:I help you to understand masculine and feminine dynamics.
Speaker:Let's dive in.
Speaker:Layla Martin is a visionary and thought leader in sexuality,
Speaker:relationships, and self-love.
Speaker:Her 20 plus years of devoted study of Tantra combined with her academic
Speaker:background in neuroscience and human biology from Stanford University led
Speaker:to the creation of her Vita mythology, a transformative approach that blends
Speaker:mystical practices with scientifically backed methods for deep lasting change.
Speaker:Through her programs, Layla has guided over 12,500 people using
Speaker:breath, sound, movement, meditation, and energy awareness to awaken
Speaker:their sexuality, reclaim their worthiness, and experience radical
Speaker:liberation and profound pleasure.
Speaker:Whether you want to experience deeper sex, understand the differences
Speaker:between men and women in the bedroom, or heal past sexual wounds, this
Speaker:episode will challenge, inspire and awaken you to what's possible in love,
Speaker:intimacy, and personal transformation.
Speaker:Welcome to the podcast, Layla It's really great to have you here.
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker:It's an honor.
Speaker:And what I would like to start with here is immediately talking about.
Speaker:Sacred sexuality.
Speaker:There's so many definitions, so many ideas, and so many concepts
Speaker:of what sacred sexuality is.
Speaker:And unfortunately some of them can feel very limiting.
Speaker:Some can feel very dogmatic, and they have the opposite effect.
Speaker:It's like inducing more shame instead of creating liberation and healing.
Speaker:And I believe that's one of the reasons why your work is so important.
Speaker:And I want to ask you here, how do you define sacred sexuality?
Speaker:So sacred sexuality is when.
Speaker:Sexuality becomes a practice to touch the divine or to work
Speaker:with energy or to know yourself more deeply or even to heal.
Speaker:And if that sounds a little foreign in relationship to sexuality.
Speaker:You could think of it like meditating, right?
Speaker:When you sit down to meditate, you take something like just
Speaker:sitting in a chair, right?
Speaker:And people could sit their whole lives and never meditate.
Speaker:But when you apply an intention and a practice, all of a sudden
Speaker:inside of meditation, you can start to connect with the divine.
Speaker:You can start to have energetic experiences.
Speaker:And those of us who have meditated for any amount of time, it's like, whoa,
Speaker:there's all this energy in here, right?
Speaker:You start to become far more sensitive to experience.
Speaker:When you sit and meditate, it's like taste becomes more vibrant,
Speaker:like you can hear music more deeply.
Speaker:I'll never forget after my first 10 day Vipasana when I was 19, you know,
Speaker:you meditate, I think 10 hours a day.
Speaker:And I listened to music right when I got out and I was like, whoa.
Speaker:It was like I'd never heard music before.
Speaker:It was like I'd never heard life before.
Speaker:And meditation gave me that.
Speaker:So sacred sexuality is like doing that exact same thing to an ordinary
Speaker:everyday activity, which is sex, right?
Speaker:You could sit or you could meditate.
Speaker:You can have sex or you can experience sacred sexuality.
Speaker:So sacred sexuality is really applying tools and techniques and an
Speaker:understanding to what sex can be, that unlocks these like profound energy
Speaker:activations, this deep inner knowing.
Speaker:And it's an understanding that sex can be just as much of a sacred
Speaker:practice as yoga or as meditation.
Speaker:I love that you brought up that sacred sexuality can start to feel like a box.
Speaker:It can start to feel really limiting.
Speaker:I think the best way to understand this that I've come across is
Speaker:that I grew up Catholic, right?
Speaker:And so my root religion taught me that the divine is only sublime.
Speaker:It's only wearing white.
Speaker:It's only angelic choirs.
Speaker:It's only stillness.
Speaker:And so there still is for a lot of us who are westerners or who have
Speaker:been impacted by, um, these kinds of religious teachings, an association
Speaker:that if anything sacred, it has to be like, always peaceful and
Speaker:always like, you know, uh, oriented towards harmony and stillness.
Speaker:And this is where, you know, having studied and practiced RA for over
Speaker:20 years now and really having a deep reverence for the Indian
Speaker:traditions, I'm so grateful for one of their core religious teachings.
Speaker:And you can find it in the Bhagavad Gita, which is that true spirit,
Speaker:like true divinity is not just what the Indian tradition calls sattvic
Speaker:There's three main flavors of life, if you will, or frequencies of life.
Speaker:And sattvic is, you know, wearing all white, being peaceful, you
Speaker:preying at the altar, being in a a mountain in stillness, meditating.
Speaker:There's such a beauty to it.
Speaker:But rajasic, which is fiery and passionate and intense, we can think
Speaker:of, usually if we're doing business, if we're making love, if we're out
Speaker:dancing, that we're in our rajas, we're in our expression, and there's tamas,
Speaker:which is heaviness, it's when you're, you know, going through a hard time.
Speaker:It's when you're in a lot of fear, it's when you're lying on the
Speaker:couch watching Netflix, eating a whole bunch of snacks, right?
Speaker:And the amazing teaching of this tradition is that all of those
Speaker:flavors are equally divine.
Speaker:One of them is not more sacred than the other in the ultimate realization.
Speaker:And so for many of us, if we come from this association that sacred
Speaker:means only like nice and pretty and harmonious, then we're gonna have sex
Speaker:in only a nice, pretty harmonious way.
Speaker:And what's so beautiful to me about sacred sexuality is you can liberate
Speaker:yourself from that box and that conditioning and realize that like
Speaker:the deep, like, you know, trauma healing or sometimes, you know, when
Speaker:I'm in sacred sexuality it's like, you know, just like the heaviness
Speaker:of life moving through me, right?
Speaker:archetypes of the world, or many of us crave rajasic sex, like
Speaker:intense, fiery, like wild, right?
Speaker:And all of that can be sacred.
Speaker:So when you apply that to sacred sexuality, you.
Speaker:Open the full spectrum of what love making can really be, which
Speaker:actually is more of a rainbow than any one color or frequency.
Speaker:It's the consciousness behind it that matters.
Speaker:And you can also learn one of the fundamental initiatory teachings, which
Speaker:is that all of this actually is sacred.
Speaker:All of it.
Speaker:What I find so profound about your answer is that
Speaker:it takes away the pressure.
Speaker:It's this pressure that you mentioned about that people might
Speaker:have specifically when there, when there was certain conditioning,
Speaker:whatever conditioning it was, or this is sacred, this is sacred
Speaker:sex, and this is not sacred.
Speaker:But in that moment, we're putting into a box and in the end you said
Speaker:the full spectrum embodying or experiencing the full flavor, the
Speaker:full spectrum of it, and that is what creates a sacred experience.
Speaker:And also when it comes to sex, we're putting so much
Speaker:pressure on ourselves, right?
Speaker:It's like, am I gonna have an orgasm?
Speaker:Am I going fast enough?
Speaker:Does my partner like this?
Speaker:Am I gonna last long enough?
Speaker:How is my erection, right?
Speaker:Like so much pressure, and for those of us who are like, well,
Speaker:sex isn't that much pressure, I just go and I do it, there's also.
Speaker:Another state available that you can train yourself into with
Speaker:sacred sexuality, which is a pure state of beingness and flow.
Speaker:And I know that that's what our souls and our bodies crave.
Speaker:Like we were designed to feel that liberated surrender, right?
Speaker:That just like primal impulse.
Speaker:And when you have that in sexuality with presence.
Speaker:Like when you're conscious with a beloved, oh, there's like,
Speaker:there's nothing like it right?
Speaker:Now, when you're not conscious.
Speaker:If your beloved's like going really hard and fast and in their primal and
Speaker:they're like checked out, it's horrible.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Or even if your beloved's like trying to, like, give you divine
Speaker:worship, but it's all kind of an act.
Speaker:It's like also kind of repulsive.
Speaker:So the idea is that when you bring presence into this divine experience,
Speaker:when you bring presence into sex, all expressions of sexuality can
Speaker:start to become delicious and most of what we crave in sex, right?
Speaker:I want my mind blown, right?
Speaker:I wanna like orgasm into nothingness.
Speaker:I wanna lose my mind.
Speaker:It's like this hunger for this state of abandon.
Speaker:And so what's so beautiful about these sacred sexuality tools of.
Speaker:using breath work, using sounding, using meditation, working with
Speaker:energy, working with a liberation of the way that you move your body is
Speaker:we get to touch these states that I believe that our bodies are actually
Speaker:under so much pressure and stress that we're like starving for that.
Speaker:So when people are like, oh, I don't wanna learn sacred sexuality, 'cause
Speaker:that sounds like a lot of pressure, I'm like, yeah, but we're under so
Speaker:much pressure now in modern life, that if you take a little bit of time
Speaker:to learn these practices, you get to taste a state far more regularly
Speaker:where that pressure goes away.
Speaker:And what I'm also hearing in that is it's, it's not a checkbox or
Speaker:a a, a framework of a practice, this is exactly how it has to be.
Speaker:It's more that the practice allows us to liberate ourselves and
Speaker:drop into the deepest surrender.
Speaker:Yes, and I love that question because I can't tell you how
Speaker:many people have been like.
Speaker:So if I do this, are you gonna like, come into my bedroom, like, watch me
Speaker:and my wife have sex with like a, like a checklist or whatever, like, correct us?
Speaker:Like as we're making laugh and I'm like, no.
Speaker:Like my, you know, the, my orientation towards this is for people to be able
Speaker:to understand what it is that gives them those sexual experiences that
Speaker:they deeply crave, and to also be able to unlock the box, the same way
Speaker:that you could unlock sitting into meditation or stretching into yoga.
Speaker:I want people to know how to unlock the box of ordinary sex into
Speaker:extraordinary sacred sexuality.
Speaker:And just as you're saying, that isn't like, oh, it has to look like this.
Speaker:You have to do this.
Speaker:There's training involved, just like there would be in sports, right?
Speaker:You would train to be really excellent, but when you go to play the game,
Speaker:you're just playing the game.
Speaker:And that's also true with sacred sexuality.
Speaker:And this really ties into another question that I wanted to ask you.
Speaker:Um, in your work, you, you emphasize the differences between the masculine, the
Speaker:feminine, sexually, a different desires.
Speaker:You highlight the differences.
Speaker:Um, when it comes to creating a, um, truly safe and
Speaker:connected in sacred space.
Speaker:And what are the needs of the m and what are the needs of the feminine?
Speaker:What do both need to truly feel safe.
Speaker:And just, I will use heterosexual language here, but masculine feminine
Speaker:energies do not equate to gender.
Speaker:I will use heterosexual language for simplicity here.
Speaker:But what are the most important differences in needs between the
Speaker:masculine and the feminine sexually that people need to be aware of?
Speaker:it's interesting 'cause I actually do understand it like deeply
Speaker:through a lens of gender because sex is so conditioned based on the
Speaker:experience of your gender, right?
Speaker:So I will say that for women generally, right?
Speaker:And you can never say about any one specific individual,
Speaker:but for women generally, there is a deep hunger to feel safe.
Speaker:And it's interesting because we wanna feel safe in a kind of way, that
Speaker:one, you can feel your emotions.
Speaker:Like if you were to start to cry after an orgasm, I, as your
Speaker:partner, regardless of my gender, would be able to celebrate you.
Speaker:You're safe in your emotions that if you have like a contraction or
Speaker:something hurts, you feel so safe and celebrated to speak up about it and
Speaker:take a moment to be with yourself.
Speaker:You feel so safe that if you got so primally wild with me and lost
Speaker:your damn mind and like did like fully expressed things, like I as
Speaker:your partner would celebrate you.
Speaker:So that's one kind of safety.
Speaker:Another kind of safety is I am present with you.
Speaker:Like women really crave presence in terms of like, you're not
Speaker:fantasizing about anyone else.
Speaker:You're not, you know, just in some hypnotic state of like going
Speaker:as hard and fast as possible like you are here with me.
Speaker:That creates a feeling of safety and we also wanna feel.
Speaker:Power in our partners.
Speaker:Like, I wanna feel your primal power, because safety is,
Speaker:yes, I'm safe to cry with you.
Speaker:I'm safe to unleash with you, I'm safe to have an orgasm with you.
Speaker:But I also feel safe physiologically, right?
Speaker:Like we are biological creatures.
Speaker:And to make love, especially in a female body or any kind of receptive
Speaker:sexual experience is vulnerable.
Speaker:So the reason I articulate this is because when people hear this
Speaker:from women, you can overindex on emotional safety and forget that
Speaker:this kind of power in your sexuality and primal way of being in your
Speaker:body also helps make us feel safe.
Speaker:And safety is one of the greatest aphrodisiacs because when you feel
Speaker:safe, we actually shut down the part of our brain that's like hypervigilant
Speaker:and being like, do I look good?
Speaker:Is everything okay?
Speaker:What's going on with the kids?
Speaker:Did I shop right?
Speaker:Like all of that.
Speaker:And we just get to taste the magic of pleasure and our
Speaker:bodies and the flow of energy.
Speaker:And this to me is the great hunger of the feminine is the
Speaker:state of fullness and flow that happens when your mind shuts off.
Speaker:And we start to be able to do that when we feel safe, but
Speaker:it's also always an inside game.
Speaker:'Cause as a woman, my partner could be the safest partner in the world.
Speaker:And I had so much trauma that like I had an amazing boyfriend when I was young.
Speaker:Who was so incredibly safe, and all I could feel was, I'm not safe.
Speaker:I'm not safe, I'm not safe.
Speaker:So sometimes we look for our partners to be giving us everything we need
Speaker:without realizing that like, of course I deserve to be treated a certain way.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, safety is also my job, right?
Speaker:Like I need to learn what it is to feel safe to myself, and I need to
Speaker:learn how to feel safe with myself.
Speaker:For those of you who are like, yeah, but what about toxic
Speaker:or abusive relationships?
Speaker:When you feel safe to yourself?
Speaker:Then you don't tolerate anyone else breaking your safety, right?
Speaker:It's so powerful to own that.
Speaker:And when you feel safe to yourself, you can receive the gift of someone coming
Speaker:in and being a safe presence for you.
Speaker:And then that's when the magic and the alchemy happens.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I've really seen that desire for, for women and to feel
Speaker:celebrated and loved and adored.
Speaker:For men, surprisingly, a huge breakthrough for so many men that
Speaker:they get in sacred sexuality is you don't have to have an erection.
Speaker:Like if you have a soft penis, we can still be erotic.
Speaker:You can still be celebrated.
Speaker:You are still a man, right?
Speaker:It's amazing how much pressure men have around like, am I rock hard?
Speaker:Am I gonna last long enough?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:For men as well, I think to feel this.
Speaker:It's okay.
Speaker:To be in your full power.
Speaker:Like I respect your primal nature, like men were made to be warriors
Speaker:and to protect their tribes and their families and what's dear to
Speaker:them, and they have that expression of power through their sexuality.
Speaker:So to be honored and revered in that, and also to be honored and revered that
Speaker:no man is in that state all the time.
Speaker:So sometimes you're gonna feel soft or more vulnerable
Speaker:or like a little shut down.
Speaker:And so it's this feeling of being honored in the full
Speaker:spectrum of your sexuality.
Speaker:And most men I've seen have never really received gratitude for the
Speaker:gift of their fuck, the gift of their body, the gift of their presence.
Speaker:And most men I've seen don't even realize that they want
Speaker:that because they haven't even known that they could want that.
Speaker:And when they start to receive it from their partner of
Speaker:just like, wow, thank you.
Speaker:So many men are so hard on themselves and so perfectionistic in terms
Speaker:of like, am I showing up enough?
Speaker:Am I doing good enough?
Speaker:Am I making my partner happy?
Speaker:Am I good enough in bed, right?
Speaker:And to receive.
Speaker:Like a thank you.
Speaker:I find that that just means so, so, so much to men.
Speaker:It's almost like it gives a man permission to actually
Speaker:step more into his power.
Speaker:And I'm sure you would've observed that working with couples in this dynamic
Speaker:that when a man has that experience, there are no erection problems, quote
Speaker:unquote, I don't wanna call it problems, but suddenly there, the, the issue
Speaker:almost goes away because the root was to be seen for who he truly was.
Speaker:Yeah, like you don't have to prove yourself to me because I can see
Speaker:that you are a king, I can see the beauty and power of your soul.
Speaker:And like everybody, right?
Speaker:I want you to thrive.
Speaker:I want you to be in the best version of yourself.
Speaker:And I think sometimes, like early stage, when women first get polarity
Speaker:teachings, and I did this all throughout my twenties, it's like, you need to be
Speaker:a superior man and like you need to be like always in your power and always
Speaker:in your presence and always like this.
Speaker:And what I've seen is that's really a lot of the feminine, wanting to not
Speaker:own how much pain we're in, and to dream that if somehow a man could be
Speaker:perfect, all of our pain would go away.
Speaker:But it's a losing game.
Speaker:And this digestion of the pain body so that you can actually see yourself
Speaker:and other people clearly is one of the most important practices for relating
Speaker:and sacred sexuality, so that I actually can see the truth of my man.
Speaker:And every once in a while, of course, give some, you know,
Speaker:feedback or reflection if I feel like there's ways that he could
Speaker:step more fully into his power.
Speaker:But honestly, I've seen that feedback and reflection is much less meaningful
Speaker:than the way that you see someone.
Speaker:And like you said, when you see someone really for who and what
Speaker:they are, they do it themselves.
Speaker:And what I was hearing there from you is that the feminine, of course
Speaker:she desires the deep presence and the compassion in that presence and the
Speaker:love in that presence, but also his raw masculine and his primal power.
Speaker:And there is so much pain around that.
Speaker:And I believe that pain is twofold because of course women have
Speaker:experienced so much trauma and so much wounding from men, where
Speaker:men were harnessing their dark M energy in a really unconscious way.
Speaker:So now women might associate, oh, that's, that's bad, but yet I desire
Speaker:it and it creates this kind of internal conflict where there's so much shame.
Speaker:He feels like he can't embody it because it triggers her trauma.
Speaker:Totally.
Speaker:I have a couple of different practices that are really, really helpful.
Speaker:One of them is to have, you know, in a partnership and let's say in this
Speaker:case a heterosexual partnership.
Speaker:So a woman is sitting in front of her male partner and he actually expresses
Speaker:his primal fuck or his dark masculine, and she gets to breathe and feel
Speaker:if there's any conditioning, right?
Speaker:If there's any past imprint inside of her body that's saying
Speaker:this is unsafe, this isn't okay, this is, you know, scary.
Speaker:I'm afraid for whatever reason, and to actually process it.
Speaker:Because when we have these layers of conditioning, that's like, yeah, the
Speaker:primal masculine, when you grew up in a.
Speaker:Under patriarchy, it's like that is dangerous.
Speaker:Like that can be highly misused.
Speaker:And men got brainwashed to misuse their own power, right?
Speaker:To stop being warriors and protectors and heart-centered
Speaker:pillars of power and leadership.
Speaker:And so, rightfully so.
Speaker:Like we grew up being like, okay, that's scary, right?
Speaker:That's dangerous.
Speaker:Like a man's rage is scary and dangerous.
Speaker:And when you have the opportunity to release that and cry through that and
Speaker:rage out of that, it releases that hold of that imprint on your nervous system.
Speaker:And then what I have women do is actually breathe in as their partner,
Speaker:again, is expressing dark, masculine, or primal fuck or anything like that.
Speaker:Feel super safe and super present.
Speaker:And then finally, to do it where they're in devotion.
Speaker:They're literally in devotion, and so it re imprints, but allows for
Speaker:healing from the past and then allows our nervous systems to re imprint.
Speaker:Because yeah, you, you wanna know like he's going to, he, he could
Speaker:kill an intruder to saves the family.
Speaker:Like, that does make me feel safe, right?
Speaker:Like he actually is in touch with his rage in the right context.
Speaker:Like I want a man who knows how to stand up for me and
Speaker:himself and in the world, right?
Speaker:That feels good inside of my body, and I totally see what you see, which is
Speaker:the feminine terror of masculine power has made men kind of like tail between
Speaker:their legs, like slinking around, and then women get even more enraged,
Speaker:and then men get even more slinky.
Speaker:And then everyone's kind of bitter and mad at each other and nobody's
Speaker:having the sex that they crave.
Speaker:And toxic masculine isn't sexy and toxic feminine isn't sexy either.
Speaker:So we're not talking about that.
Speaker:But there is a space to me where women take responsibility for
Speaker:feeling safe and really own that in their nervous systems.
Speaker:Like that starts with me, and I'm not gonna project my pain onto
Speaker:my partner as much as possible.
Speaker:Like I still have to work on that to try and control my partner when
Speaker:really this is my own nervous system.
Speaker:It's my job to be a queen of my nervous system and to hold myself
Speaker:in this kind of sovereignty.
Speaker:And for men to work on themselves and their own shadow because the shadow
Speaker:of the masculine does run deep.
Speaker:And I've seen that men are even more brainwashed by patriarchy.
Speaker:Like at least women were like, you know, this whole situation where I
Speaker:got like, you know, no economic or social power and like religiously kind
Speaker:of shit on, and then, uh, completely sexually repressed, like, fuck this.
Speaker:Whereas men are like, um, I think this repression might be working for me.
Speaker:I'm not sure, but like, I sure was able to make a lot of money
Speaker:and like, hold down a job, right?
Speaker:Whereas like it's actually a toxic system for all of us that has more to
Speaker:do with releasing the pain out of our nervous systems so that we can be in
Speaker:right relationship with each other.
Speaker:And there is a gorgeous world in which men are integrated warriors who are
Speaker:in touch with their power and who know their worth, soft cock, hard
Speaker:cock failure, success, all of that.
Speaker:And there is a world in which.
Speaker:Women do actually feel safe and cherished and revered by the culture,
Speaker:celebrated in their sexuality, their beauty, their magic, their
Speaker:spirituality, their intuition, where everybody has a right to sit at the
Speaker:table and where, you know, all kinds of queer sexual expressions and gender
Speaker:expressions are celebrated as well.
Speaker:Like we all get to be safe and stop playing some sort of zero sum game.
Speaker:Like, this kind of empowerment is.
Speaker:The vision that I hold, and when people do practices in alignment
Speaker:with that vision, I find that they really wake up this essence
Speaker:inside of them that's so beautiful.
Speaker:You made a distinction before that I believe is really important to touch
Speaker:further and go deeper into, you said you had an experience where your partner
Speaker:was safe or had a safe presence, and yet inside you something said, I'm
Speaker:not safe, I'm not safe, I'm not safe.
Speaker:Then you also mentioned later, which I tie into that, women taking
Speaker:responsibility for their sense of safety, while also, of course
Speaker:honoring their desire for men to create a safe container for them.
Speaker:To go further into that distinction, how do you see that, that, that
Speaker:path of un unraveling that as a woman, okay, what's my part in this
Speaker:and, and what's his part in this?
Speaker:Because of course I've seen, and I'm sure you've seen it as well, how these
Speaker:teachings, like any teaching can become, maybe weaponized is a harsh word.
Speaker:But it can almost become a part of the trauma where then the woman says, oh,
Speaker:you are not making me feel safe enough.
Speaker:And yes, maybe half of that is absolutely his responsibility.
Speaker:And the other half is the responsibility you mentioned, you mentioned before.
Speaker:totally.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:It's very similar to the spiritual path in terms of at a certain point,
Speaker:if you meditate for long enough, there is this realization of like, oh shit, I
Speaker:have to take full responsibility for my res reactions, for my nervous system,
Speaker:for the way that I meet the world.
Speaker:Now that doesn't mean that I no longer have agency in the world.
Speaker:That doesn't mean that I can't follow the impulses of what's true.
Speaker:That doesn't mean I'm not gonna leave a shitty relationship
Speaker:where I'm being mistreated.
Speaker:It means that I'm in ownership of what I'm bringing to the
Speaker:table, like full ownership.
Speaker:And I can acknowledge the impact that people have on me or the impact of,
Speaker:let's say, like what a job has on me.
Speaker:But I no longer play victim.
Speaker:And that's a very subtle difference.
Speaker:It's not like you lose agency, but you stop playing victim.
Speaker:So here's a very subtle way that I played victim with my partners, right?
Speaker:I would get triggered very often.
Speaker:So let's, I was in a relationship with this glorious man called Ryan, right?
Speaker:We met when I was 21 years old.
Speaker:We were in a relationship until I was 25, and he, like, he
Speaker:gave me pussy massages to help me heal for my sexual trauma.
Speaker:He went to tantra school with me.
Speaker:He would like, if I wanted to do a 10 day water fast, he would carry jugs of
Speaker:water over mountains in Thailand for me.
Speaker:So like, I would have the water like he was, he was an incredible human.
Speaker:And I was consistently triggered by his behavior.
Speaker:I was consistently saying like, you know, you're not like this or
Speaker:you're not like that, or, you need to speak to me this way, or you need to
Speaker:meditate more, or all of this stuff.
Speaker:And I felt so justified in it, like I am making him a better man.
Speaker:Like I am, I am making him a better partner, right?
Speaker:And it took years and years and years to realize that instead of accepting
Speaker:that my nervous system was giving constant signals of unsafety and that
Speaker:my nervous system was feeling pain a lot as a result of his actions, I
Speaker:was trying to control his behavior or starting fights so that I could
Speaker:focus on him or changing him or being in rupture to distract myself so I
Speaker:never had to admit how terrified I was of being loved, how much being in
Speaker:relationship with the masculine was actually painful and scary for me, and
Speaker:how much my nervous system was saying, danger, danger, danger, danger, when
Speaker:actually everything really was safe.
Speaker:So in that, I really took it as a practice for a period of time to
Speaker:say, I am going to really focus on my own nervous system and
Speaker:focus on my own signaling, and I'm really not gonna focus on him.
Speaker:Now, this only works if you're with someone who is reasonably safe.
Speaker:No human is ever 100% safe all the time, or like does all
Speaker:the right things all the time.
Speaker:But someone who has a good heart, who cares about you, who is
Speaker:acting in good faith, then you can take full responsibility.
Speaker:Because even if he's angry at me sometimes, or even if he
Speaker:does something I don't really like, I'm actually still safe.
Speaker:Like, if I get angry at someone, but I'm not abusive, I'm not
Speaker:violent, anything like that, that person is still safe with me.
Speaker:So it's allowing ourselves to come home and rewrite the
Speaker:story of our nervous systems.
Speaker:Now, I was sexually abused by my biological father.
Speaker:I had a lot of complex PTSD growing up, so I had one hell of a nervous
Speaker:system story to rewrite and it was so much to own my own pain and to stop
Speaker:projecting it onto the masculine.
Speaker:But I will tell you what happened.
Speaker:I had two amazing male partners in my twenties and even my early
Speaker:thirties, and something was wrong with them every single damn day.
Speaker:Uh, something, some argument needed to be, have some
Speaker:feedback needed to be given.
Speaker:When I took ownership of my own nervous system and healed my pain
Speaker:with the masculine and chose to create safety in my body, and this
Speaker:is not like a small thing, right?
Speaker:Like I, I, I will train people for a whole year to be able to even
Speaker:start to be able to do this really masterfully in their own system.
Speaker:But once I did that.
Speaker:I could see the man in front of me as a king, right?
Speaker:And it's so easy sometimes for us as women to understand the reverse.
Speaker:Like if a man has so much of his own shadow, so much inter unintegrated stuff
Speaker:with his mother, like so much pain that he hasn't digested, is he gonna be able
Speaker:to see who as a queen and a goddess?
Speaker:No, of course not, right?
Speaker:He's gonna be having all kinds of issues and stories and projections
Speaker:and problems and all of that.
Speaker:So he has to do his work to be able to see he was a queen and a goddess.
Speaker:We all have our own version of that journey of like, what is the work
Speaker:that I need to do so I can actually see the person in front of me?
Speaker:That is one of the greatest partnership gifts.
Speaker:This ownership that you were describing right now, it takes
Speaker:such a level of radical honesty.
Speaker:I call it getting to the, going to the core, like everything else is kind of
Speaker:the fluff and the story and perceptions.
Speaker:When we go to the core, everyone goes, whoa, because it's this, it's
Speaker:this almost underlying, overarching truth that that's emanating
Speaker:through everything in our life.
Speaker:But allowing ourselves to go to this core level, like you said, that is
Speaker:true healing, and the practices are a, a portal to get to this place
Speaker:where we're so radically honest with what we're actually able to drop
Speaker:into this really uncomfortable truth.
Speaker:In what you're saying, what comes up for me, right, is like there's a version of
Speaker:healing that I feel like people really love, but it has this hidden self hatred
Speaker:in it, which is, I wanna be like this.
Speaker:And there's like some version of yourself that you wanna be like.
Speaker:I'm gonna try and change myself so I can be like that thing, and that's
Speaker:kind of my version of healing.
Speaker:Or I'm gonna, you know, release some of the things that happen
Speaker:from childhood and all of that.
Speaker:There's another version of healing that I find, which is, I'm gonna
Speaker:metabolize or digest, it's, it's tantric terminology to say this because you
Speaker:actually have an energetic digestive system the way, same way that you
Speaker:have a physical digestive system, and you can literally digest your
Speaker:pain body with the right practices.
Speaker:And I'm gonna digest my pain body so I can be the truest version of myself.
Speaker:Like I'm actually gonna let myself be revealed, rather than try and
Speaker:heal because I have an idea of myself that there's something wrong with me.
Speaker:It's a subtle difference, but it helps you go to what you just said,
Speaker:which is to the core, because I'm gonna work to actually process any
Speaker:of the layers that keep me from sitting down in the core of myself.
Speaker:And those are actual somatic layers of pain and memory and imprint inside
Speaker:of the body and inside of the nervous system and inside of the energy system.
Speaker:And in the west, we've really.
Speaker:Blocked ourselves from being able to do that kind of energetic digestion
Speaker:that helps us be fully alive, that helps us be fully empowered.
Speaker:So it's like, okay, I'm gonna digest my pain to the best of my ability and trust
Speaker:that that actually takes me to express like the God-given way that I was built.
Speaker:Rather than saying like, I should be like X, it's like I trust that I was
Speaker:actually made beautiful and powerful and wonderful and quirky and weird
Speaker:and all the things that humans are, and how do I allow that, rather than
Speaker:having this idea of how I should be so that people will love me or all belong.
Speaker:Given your personal history and how many people you have helped work
Speaker:through sexual trauma and sexual wounding, for someone who is starting
Speaker:this journey of working for unpacking sexual trauma or really challenging
Speaker:experiences that led to deep feelings of unsafety around intimacy and sex,
Speaker:what, what, what would you recommend for a person where to start here?
Speaker:Yeah, so I always recommend what I call a pleasure practice, which is you
Speaker:don't get fit without going to the gym.
Speaker:You don't get a yoga practice without going to your mat, with
Speaker:or without a teacher, right?
Speaker:You don't have a meditation practice without sitting
Speaker:down on a chair or a cushion.
Speaker:So you have to have a container of practice and space to work on anything.
Speaker:And we, it's such a foreign concept for us to have that for sexuality.
Speaker:It's like, what a, a practice for my sexuality.
Speaker:And it's like, yes.
Speaker:Like that's exactly what our bodies need in order to heal and activate
Speaker:and become the most sexually expressed versions of ourselves.
Speaker:So a pleasure practice can literally be 10 minutes.
Speaker:It can be up to two hours.
Speaker:But let's say for most people a pleasure practice is anywhere
Speaker:from 10 minutes to 30 minutes.
Speaker:And you can learn very basic healing practices for your sexuality.
Speaker:So I find that people get faster results if they work with an
Speaker:internal tool like a crystal wand or a crystal egg that's body safe.
Speaker:And in that, you actually can do breath work, some deep breath work,
Speaker:and some physical movements with your pelvic floor with the intention
Speaker:of anything that is stuck here.
Speaker:Anything that wants to be felt, like, let me release it gently.
Speaker:With a lot of safety, with a lot of love.
Speaker:And in that you start to also implement so many things that we just didn't
Speaker:get taught, like celebrating and loving my cock or my vulva, right?
Speaker:Speaking to my sexual center with kindness, starting to pay attention to
Speaker:the sensations rather than dissociate or disconnect, and be really present with
Speaker:my pleasure rather than always going into fantasy or always going into habit.
Speaker:So the simplest way to start to heal is with a simple practice,
Speaker:even just truly once a month.
Speaker:If you did a practice like that once a month, that will still
Speaker:alter your sexual destiny over the course of six months to a year.
Speaker:And if you wanna really accelerate it, you do it a couple times
Speaker:a week or every single day.
Speaker:I've never seen a human who can't become truly sexually masterful when
Speaker:they do these kinds of practices.
Speaker:And the way that it, the reason that I share that is I think really have
Speaker:this idea in our culture of like.
Speaker:Well, you must have been born that way, or like, you know, you, you
Speaker:have this like special ability.
Speaker:But just like anything, it's training, right?
Speaker:If you look at someone who's running a marathon, like, they trained for that.
Speaker:Or if you look at someone who's really good at their career, right,
Speaker:they clocked the hours for that.
Speaker:Sexuality is no different.
Speaker:Every single person can experience sexual mastery, can be multi-orgasmic,
Speaker:can have exquisite states of ecstasy, and can heal their sexual trauma.
Speaker:We just need the place to do it and some of the tools to be able to create that
Speaker:level of integration and trauma healing.
Speaker:And so using the basic tools of breath work and sounding and working with
Speaker:energy and meditation and movement, all of that combines together to produce
Speaker:healing at the deepest levels, even of some of the most profound traumas.
Speaker:Listening to your response, it now sounds obvious, but I don't believe
Speaker:it is obvious for many people, that the beginning of healing some form of
Speaker:sexual wounding or trauma is not to throw themselves necessarily into a
Speaker:sexual experience, even if they were, if the other person would be deeply
Speaker:safe, it's starting with self pleasure.
Speaker:It's starting in a, in a space where they feel somewhat more in control.
Speaker:And, and now that you say it, it's like, oh, of course that makes sense.
Speaker:And yet I don't believe that most people see it that way and
Speaker:actually understand where to start.
Speaker:Well, one of the reasons it's so important to start with yourself
Speaker:is that nobody else can heal you.
Speaker:I tried so hard, I was like, please, for the love of God, there must be a perfect
Speaker:enough human out there that I just don't have to feel all my pain from the 1980s.
Speaker:Like, I can just make it better, all better if I just find someone who can
Speaker:just do perfect healing on me, or be in the perfect relationship with me.
Speaker:And what I realized was nobody can teach me to be safe to myself.
Speaker:I have to make that choice.
Speaker:If I wanna restore my pleasure, that's up to me.
Speaker:And as you know, and you teach, right, certain things can
Speaker:only be healed relationally.
Speaker:But nobody can heal relationally if they're not in themselves, right?
Speaker:Like no relationship is going to heal me if I'm not actually
Speaker:doing the healing dynamically and in my power in that situation.
Speaker:And so coming home to yourself first is so essential so that then you actually
Speaker:can, that healing in partnership.
Speaker:I would've been lost at sea if I didn't cultivate a pleasure
Speaker:practice that was all my own.
Speaker:And then start to be in relationship where I could sexually heal.
Speaker:What might also be playing out here is that people put pressure
Speaker:on themselves that they need to feel a certain way in relationship.
Speaker:What I've often heard is, oh, I need to feel more open.
Speaker:Oh, I need to feel okay to be vulnerable.
Speaker:Oh, I need to feel these things which puts so much pressure and actually
Speaker:leads to more closure in that moment.
Speaker:So for someone who is in that place where they're somewhat getting
Speaker:ready to be in relationship, but it's also extremely challenging for
Speaker:them because of the trauma they've experienced, what would you advise
Speaker:for that person to, to kind of soften that and be kinder to themselves
Speaker:or, or what would you say to them?
Speaker:I would say that I have worked tirelessly for 20 years to make
Speaker:my life an expression of my soul's truth and not my trauma.
Speaker:And I am still humbled every day in my partnership by how challenging
Speaker:that can still be, that those deep relational wounds, those
Speaker:early terrors, they run so deep.
Speaker:And that really is the most powerful, most challenging spiritual work is
Speaker:learning to be with those parts of ourselves that are still so frozen in
Speaker:time, so traumatized, so afraid, and rather than being with that there's
Speaker:such an impulse to project, to pick, a fight to run away, to shut down.
Speaker:And to have compassion for all of those trauma responses and
Speaker:even our fawning, just staying comfortable trying to make everybody
Speaker:okay all the time, like, having compassion for that is so important.
Speaker:And understanding how deep so much of this runs and that you're
Speaker:actually not different from any other human I've ever met.
Speaker:Like, almost every human with like a tiny few exceptions of people who just
Speaker:had the most glorious childhoods, right?
Speaker:And they still have to reckon with being on this planet, which
Speaker:is not an easy planet to be on, they are terrified of love.
Speaker:They have a hard time letting love in.
Speaker:They are challenged by their own projections, they are contracted
Speaker:in love or they freeze up.
Speaker:I still freeze up in love, even in such an amazing partnership.
Speaker:I love my beloved so much, and I still feel my nervous system
Speaker:responding as though I'm two again, and so that softness and that love.
Speaker:I think we think that trauma healing is about some big grand gesture or some
Speaker:huge release, but trauma healing is really about how you treat yourself.
Speaker:And so for those of us who have been traumatized, it's so natural to
Speaker:shame ourselves, to scold ourselves, to be hard on ourselves, when the
Speaker:actual trauma healing is to be safe to ourselves, which is to mirror
Speaker:ourselves, like I can see, like right when I'm speaking to myself, it's like
Speaker:I get it that you're frozen right now.
Speaker:I get it that even after all this time, it can still be terrified
Speaker:to be loved by the masculine.
Speaker:I understand that sometimes it's hard to move through the sadness that you
Speaker:experienced when you were young and be fully in this moment, and I love you.
Speaker:I love you.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:That is actually the opposite of trauma.
Speaker:And over time, that unlocks our power and our ability to love.
Speaker:Because when you can be that intimate and understanding with yourself,
Speaker:even in your hardest moments, that also translates to being able to
Speaker:be intimate with someone else.
Speaker:Then I still carry a lot of my trauma.
Speaker:I, uh, the work does work.
Speaker:I have a totally different life.
Speaker:Like, I'm like happy.
Speaker:I, I didn't even know that was an option when I was young.
Speaker:Like I, I never dreamed that I would be happy in this lifetime, right?
Speaker:Um, to have the relationship I have.
Speaker:Wow, right?
Speaker:That's all a product of doing the work that I've done.
Speaker:And I wanna say that not to discourage people and thinking
Speaker:like, well, what's it all for?
Speaker:And there's such a humility that even in all of that work, the depth
Speaker:of my relating and the beauty of my relationship is not because it's without
Speaker:trauma, it's because I've learned to be loving to myself in my trauma.
Speaker:And there's something so tremendously beautiful about that.
Speaker:So we don't have to be perfect or perfectly healed.
Speaker:To be in relationship, but the invitation is to treat ourselves
Speaker:with such safety and kindness, and that took me a long, long, long
Speaker:time, and I'm still working at it.
Speaker:With the point you just made around.
Speaker:And I tie this back into when you shared about your
Speaker:definition of sacred sexuality.
Speaker:It's not the absence of trauma, it's the ability to, to embrace
Speaker:that and to understand one another and to tie that in a lo.
Speaker:That in itself I sense would allow many people to just release pressure because
Speaker:it's almost like perhaps there might be this stigma for people unconsciously,
Speaker:or I have experienced wounding and trauma around sex, so how can I get
Speaker:to this place of sacred sexuality.
Speaker:And I've never met a human without a pain body.
Speaker:Ever.
Speaker:So sometimes I think we make ourselves so special, like, oh, I have all
Speaker:this pain and all this trauma.
Speaker:I'm like, I've worked with so many people, like, everybody's
Speaker:got pain, like everybody's got trauma in some way, shape, or form.
Speaker:So we also don't have to be like, oh, no one can love me in this.
Speaker:It's like, no, if, if we're unlovable in our pain and our trauma, then
Speaker:nobody loves anybody, you know?
Speaker:And so it's actually really important to recognize like, no,
Speaker:we are lovable and our pain and our trauma and our shadow, right?
Speaker:That is how we forge potent partnerships that we're all seeking and the depth
Speaker:of sexual intimacy that we all crave.
Speaker:It's actually straight through those places that we've been afraid to go.
Speaker:'Cause when we can see each other in that and love each
Speaker:other in that, like that's
Speaker:almost, it's almost what I'm hearing when what you're saying is also that
Speaker:trauma gives, on the flip side, on the other side, or inside, gives a deep
Speaker:sense of depth to the sexual experience.
Speaker:It's not, oh, I can't go deep.
Speaker:I'm blocked.
Speaker:I don't like the word blockage.
Speaker:I, I might sometimes use it, but I'm blocked because of trauma.
Speaker:No, I can actually, it helps me to go deeper.
Speaker:And for couples, when life gets busy, whether from raising children,
Speaker:work-related stress or family challenges, intimacy often erodes,
Speaker:couples lose themselves in their every day, forget to slow down and to
Speaker:intentionally connect with one another.
Speaker:Um, for couples who are exceptionally busy.
Speaker:What do you recommend for them to integrate a, a healthy and fulfilling
Speaker:sex life into their routine?
Speaker:So for a busy couple, right?
Speaker:Me and my partner, I teach something called the Tantric Mastermind,
Speaker:and in it we teach couples to bring ritual into their lives.
Speaker:And these rituals can be so simple.
Speaker:So we have a morning ritual that's five steps.
Speaker:Even just two steps of a morning ritual can make a huge difference.
Speaker:So one would be telling your partner what is the most important
Speaker:aspect of your day, right?
Speaker:You can say, let's say three things, right?
Speaker:These are the three most important things to me about my day.
Speaker:That takes literally one minute, maybe a little bit more, right?
Speaker:And then you say to each other, how can I support you?
Speaker:Like, how can I support you in your day?
Speaker:That alone, right?
Speaker:And that takes literally two to five minutes, creates a kind of intimacy, a
Speaker:kind of support, a kind of connection.
Speaker:It seems so small, but that alone does so much for a couple, right?
Speaker:So that's just a little bit of a snippet.
Speaker:If you want, you can even add some gratitudes in their gratitudes
Speaker:for your partner or gratitudes for your partnership, right?
Speaker:For a couple, that's like raising a baby, to hear what your
Speaker:partner is grateful for about you or your partnership, really
Speaker:changes the tone of the day.
Speaker:The other thing that I really recommend is once a week, yeah, you could have,
Speaker:let's say dream is, you know, a two hour tantric sex date that involves
Speaker:like penis and pussy massage and chakra breathing and all of that.
Speaker:But when you're really overwhelmed and busy, even just a five minute
Speaker:practice of setting a timer, gazing into each other's eyes, breathing
Speaker:into your hearts, you would be shocked how many times if you sit
Speaker:and do that once a week, like.
Speaker:50% of the time, it turns into a makeout session, 50% of the
Speaker:time it turns into sexuality.
Speaker:And if one of you is so overwhelmed that having full penetration doesn't
Speaker:feel good to you, you're at least still cultivating this emotional intimacy.
Speaker:It really can be that simple if you don't have huge
Speaker:underlying problems, right?
Speaker:Like if you, if you're, if you're not speaking to each other anymore.
Speaker:If that's not gonna be enough.
Speaker:If you're not telling each other the truth, that's
Speaker:not gonna be enough, right?
Speaker:Then you need to do deeper work to really actually come back to true
Speaker:intimate connection with each other.
Speaker:But if you really are just busy and overwhelmed, and we all are, having
Speaker:a simple morning practice where you intimately connect with each other
Speaker:and once a week a time where you sit down and energetically and emotionally
Speaker:connect to each other, that actually creates this bedrock where sex wants to
Speaker:happen, because sex pretty much doesn't wanna happen if you're not sharing
Speaker:with each other and you're not feeling that emotional, energetic connection.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:There, there's so much, there's so much else to talk about.
Speaker:There's so much depth in, in this conversation.
Speaker:Layla, where can people access and learn more about your transformative work?
Speaker:Uh, thank you.
Speaker:So the best way to stay connected with me is to go to laylamartin.com,
Speaker:L-A-Y-L-A, and to pop in your email address anywhere on that website.
Speaker:Because some people, like, email's kind of like the last thing for me.
Speaker:Email has always been central to my teaching, to my communication.
Speaker:It's the way that you can hear about all of my programs.
Speaker:You can also listen to my podcast, This Tantric Life.
Speaker:Uh, you can follow me on Instagram.
Speaker:The Layla Martin.
Speaker:I still get shadow banned by Instagram, so if you just search
Speaker:Layla Martin, I don't come up.
Speaker:It has to be the Layla Martin.
Speaker:And my upcoming program, um, that I'd love to share about is
Speaker:called the Tantric Mastermind.
Speaker:So me and my partner, uh, teach it together.
Speaker:You get to go to a magical castle, do a retreat in Sedona.
Speaker:It's so, so, so beautiful.
Speaker:And I also have a certification called Vita Coaching.
Speaker:If you wanna become a sex, love and relationship coach in my Vita method.
Speaker:Layla, thank you so much for being a part of this podcast
Speaker:then, was truly an honor.
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to this episode of Masculine and Feminine Dynamics.
Speaker:I am deeply honored by your presence and your willingness to explore
Speaker:these profound topics with us.
Speaker:You can find links to Layla Martin's work in the show
Speaker:notes or episode description.
Speaker:If you are looking for more transformative content, I invite
Speaker:you to subscribe to my newsletter at lre.com/newsletter or download one
Speaker:of my free eBooks at lre.com/books.
Speaker:You can also find all of this information in the show
Speaker:notes or episode description.
Speaker:Your support means the world.
Speaker:If you found value in this episode, please rate the show five stars.
Speaker:It only takes a moment, but helps us reach more people
Speaker:on their personal journeys.
Speaker:And if you feel inspired, consider leaving a review or sharing
Speaker:this episode with someone who might need to hear its message.
Speaker:Thank you again for being here.
Speaker:I'm truly honored to be part of your journey.
