Genital De-armoring with Rahi Chun

In the first episode of our Healing from Sexual Trauma season, sexological bodyworker and healer Rahi Chun describes how genital de-armoring can help people move through held and often painful trauma patterns lodged in the pelvis. This fascinating conversation is a must-listen.

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In this episode:

Rahi Chun - dual-certified somatic sex educator and sexological bodyworker

Karen Yates - dual-certified somatic sex educator and sexological bodyworker and energy worker

Rahi’s course on genital de-armoring 

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See other trauma sessions from other W&S seasons:

Men, Trauma, and Sex with JoJo Bear 

Sexual Trauma, Somatic Healing 

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Prefer to read the convo? Full episode transcripts are available on our website.

Transcript

Rahi Chun  0:03  
The root of so many obstacles and challenges to our sexual intimacy can be threaded back to those very tender, gentle, confusing, influential experiences from our childhood. I'm very fascinated with how the somatic influences in our childhood form or shape our adult sexual behaviors, patterns, all of that.

Karen Yates  0:34  
Welcome to wild and sublime, a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation or relationship style, based on the popular live Chicago show, I chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity and comedy, you'll hear meaningful conversations, dialogs that go deeper, and information that can help you become more free In your sexual expression. I'm sex educator Karen Yates, our monthly patreon supporters pay for a large part of our operating expenses. Their contributions from $5 on up, help us big time. Plus members get discounts on show tickets and merch and receive wild and sublime news before anyone else and more interested in helping us spread the message of sex positivity. Go to patreon.com, forward slash wild and sublime. Hey folks, welcome. It's so nice to be back the beginning of Season Eight, right on the cusp of the fifth anniversary of this podcast. See you start something, and you never know where it's going to go. The podcast was started when the Chicago live show was shuttered that fateful summer of 2020 Now the show is back, and the podcast has remained. Season Eight is about healing sexual trauma. It's a subject I've wanted to do a series on for a long time, since our trauma episodes get the most downloads, and because there is a definite need we'll be covering in the next five, maybe six episodes, ways to heal sexual trauma, somatically, that is through body focused methods that allow the participant to connect with their physical selves from within, a way to link sense and feeling to one's body in order to release emotional and physical pain and to gain empowerment and a new anchoring in oneself. To kick off the season, I'll be interviewing Rahi chan about genital de armoring, a method of clearing held trauma in the pelvic area. Rahi is a dual certified somatic sex educator and sexological body worker. He is also a neuro effective touch practitioner. Chi ne sang and Karen sene sang facilitator and de armoring arts body worker, and uses all these skills in his facilitation of genital de armoring, which he teaches online and to practitioners worldwide. He is also the host of the podcast organic sexuality. I loved this conversation. In addition to de armoring, we discussed non sexual trauma and how it impacts the body, premature ejaculation and vaginismus, tantra, Taoism, one way touch and a lot more. Enjoy. Rahi, welcome.

Rahi Chun  3:33  
Thank you. 

Karen Yates  3:35  
I'm very excited to have you on today. 

Rahi Chun  3:37  
Oh, me too.

Karen Yates  3:39  
 Let me ask you, what tribal lands are you on currently? 

Rahi Chun  3:42  
Sure, sure. So I'm on a land that's been traditionally occupied by the Tonga people, who called this area tavangar, and nowadays we call it Santa Monica. And I'm in California,

Karen Yates  3:55  
Great. And I'm on the lands of the Council of three fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa and the Potawatomi nations, colonially known as Chicago. Wow. So Rahi, I read your bio, and it is so full and it's layered. But what struck me is that you began studying very early, in the early 90s, with Grand Master Montak Chia, a Taoist Grand Master in the field of sexuality, who has been hugely influential for many people in the sexual, energetic field. And so I was wondering, you know what prompted you to go in that direction? Because all of us, when we're starting to go into the field of sexuality, there's usually kind of key moments. So when did you why did you decide to go in that direction?

Rahi Chun  4:48  
Sure, that's a really great question. At the time, I was really fascinated with sexuality, I think, as most of us are, but I would have to say, like the first time I fell in love. I was 19 years old, and I was a virgin, and it was my first sexual experience, which was so it's almost like, okay, you've only known this continent. Now there's a whole new continent. And my partner was very, very sexually experienced. When she was a teenager, she was dating men that were much older than her, very experienced, and I was a virgin, and so it put me on this path of really wanting to learn everything I could about it. And so when I saw that master Chia was teaching workshops, this is before he established Tao gardens in Thailand. I was fascinated, and I read his books, and I went and learning the microcosmic orbit, which is a embodied practice of redirecting your sexual energy to go up the spine and to nourish your organs and body, rather than to shoot out of your body through ejaculation. It was life changing. I mean, I was in my 20s at the time, and, you know, I think a lot of teenage, teenage guys and guys in their 20s, penis owners in their 20s, can attest to how they kind of think with their cocks, and that I was in that category, and recirculating this energy just allowed me to be very centered and to kind of witness how my energy was working within me, and so that that really put me on this track. And then from there, I was drawn to other sexuality modalities.

Karen Yates  6:33  
Yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it? How we begin in one area, and then we get inspired, and then that leads to other areas. I mean this, we were talking before we were recording, and the same thing happened to me. Can you give me a since we're going to be talking about genital de armoring today, since this season is on healing from sexual trauma, can you talk just a little bit, for folks who don't know what genital de armoring is, 

Rahi Chun  7:02  
Sure. So to put it succinctly, genital de-armoring, the way I frame it, it is re establishing an intimate relationship of consent with one's own body. Now there are many steps to facilitate or support that experience, but essentially, genital armor forms when there is a breach of consent with either one's own body or an outside source. And so what that causes is this phenomenon known as genital armor, which succinctly can be described as either conscious or unconscious, guarding patterns within the tissue and Fauci of the genitalia that can lead to a desensitization, a numbness, a pain, discomfort, or a dissociation from inhabiting this most intimate, sacred part of one's body.

Karen Yates  7:58  
You know what's interesting is, I was reading up that, you know, Wilhelm Reich talked about armoring. I think he was one of the main thinkers in the West that talked about armoring. I know there's Eastern-based thinkers that that that have come to the same conclusions, but I thought about how there is --we definitely--almost an everyday conversation--can see people's armor in different parts of their bodies. You know, people who are very constricted and hold their shoulders a certain way, or people who have a lot of chest armor. You can just see people walking around, but I don't think, at least at this point, we know as much in the general public about genital armoring and and so how does that you know, you talked a little bit just now, but like, when clients come to you, like, what are they presenting with?

Rahi Chun  8:49  
Sure, great question. It can be such a wide range of symptoms or issues that show up in the body, like the on the extreme side, there are some people who really don't feel much sensation in their pelvis or genitalia. And so when I lead them through a somatic contemplation, and you know, they can feel breeziness and their cheeks and maybe a warmth around their heart, and when they get to the pelvis, there's nothing, nothing that registered. So that's like one example of how it shows up. Another example of how it shows up can be they're experiencing pleasure and sensation with their partner, and then it builds and builds and builds and then it hits a plateau and it doesn't go any further, or it just drops. So that's a clear indication that there is some blockage or armor within the pelvis or genitalia that's preventing them from going further.

Karen Yates  9:46  
So you would say, like, you would become aroused, and then at a certain point, orgasm wouldn't, wouldn't be possible, like, there'd just be, like, a cessation,

Rahi Chun  9:53  
okay, yes, and a lot of, for a lot of people, it's way before orgasm, you know, maybe on a scale of zero. Of a 10, they reach like a four, and then it drops right. And then there are, there are certain medical terminology that's been used, like vaginismus or, or, you know, a lot of men or penis owners have premature ejaculation, because they will feel arousal. It's kind of, you know, analogous to what we mentioned before. They'll feel arousal, arousal, arousal, and then they hit a plateau, and in order to get rid of that vulnerable, intimate or remnants of a past trauma, they need to discharge the energy, because it's too scary to go further.

Karen Yates  10:33  
Wow, that I have not heard that concept that is very interesting to me. So it's like this almost threshold point of like I feel I'm feeling something deep inside, I must either I feel vulnerable, maybe open to attack, correct or open to feelings. But the feelings then may lead to other uncomfortable, very like negative uncomfortable feelings, yes, and so they shoot over this mark instead of holding with it. Oh, wow, wow.

Rahi Chun  11:01  
Yeah, yeah. So if you just imagine, you know, to your point, Karen, you know, we're very familiar with other kinds of somatic recall, like the typical one is like an infant that puts their hand on the stove. Well after they get burned, when they approach the stove, they're going to be a little apprehensive, no different than a sexual trauma or a sexual abuse situation where, let's say, someone was raped or someone was forced into a non consensual situation, and they their body physiologically experienced a certain level of pleasure, since that pleasure has been now wired or paired with an abuse or maybe a heartbreak or maybe something traumatic with their current partner, who they're safe with, they'll reach that certain same level of arousal, kind of like walking into a kitchen and seeing the stove and they won't they can't go any further. So they'll articulate, or their their nervous system will overtake their state of embodiment, and their pleasure will just disappear.

Karen Yates  12:05  
Wow. So would you say that that the trauma that you are addressing, and we're going to get into all of it in a second, but I have a sense that it's not simply sexual trauma. It can be emotional, cultural trauma like talk to talk to me a little bit about all sorts of trauma and how they impact the body.

Rahi Chun  12:27  
Sure, so one of my colleagues, Susan Ruscard, who teaches in Europe, she shares that up to 80% of the genital armor that she engages with is not related to sexuality at all, and it occurs before the age of seven. So she explains it, and I concur, is that you know, as infants, whenever there is some sort of scare, and when I say scare, to be more specific, it is a threat, or a perceived threat of love being taken away. So it could be a five year old child who's, you know, getting getting close to something they shouldn't touch, and the parent admonishes them out of nowhere, don't touch that what's what's going to contract is the sense of safety and security in the pelvis, and that's going to translate, since our genitals are housed in the pelvis, that's going to show up in the pelvic bowl and the genital you know, to your point, it could be something that's simply associated with our sense of safety and security, not sexual related at all. Or it could be religious. Cultural upbringing around sexuality is sinful, it's shameful. You're going to hell. So like imagine as a child growing up in a household where every time they go pee, they touch their genitals, and it feels good, but this pleasure is deemed as sinful or shameful. You're going to develop a certain resistance and disconnect from your own genitalia, which you know is a resistance to your own natural kind of embodied felt sense being, right? Yeah,

Karen Yates  14:09  
You know, it's interesting. When I did do hands-on work, I did experience a few female clients who grew up in very repressive religious environments. There was no sexual trauma, but there was a lot of just cultural trauma around sexuality and the state of being female, and they had vaginismus, incredibly painful issues in their vulva, their vagina, and very painful to touch. So I thought to myself at that point. Okay, this is interesting. How the body has taken, taken in that message,

Rahi Chun  14:47  
absolutely. I mean, that's a great example. I had a client from a culture that reflects what you're speaking of, so much shame around sexuality, and you know, the way she when she came, she said, just even a Q tip. When her gynecologist uses a Q tip, it would be so painful, but you know, to your point, if you grow up in an environment where not only is your body shamed, but your sexuality and your the symbol of your womanhood, is being vilified, then there's going to be a certain fear around feeling any pleasure in the area. No, yeah. And so you know, the body is so wise. The body is wired to survive, and in order to protect itself, those tissues are going to start guarding itself and making it very, very difficult to open up.

Karen Yates  15:38  
So I would like to hear from you about how does and and I am aware that in the work you do, the work that I have done, the clothes don't come off immediately. It's a it's a process. Can you just walk me through, bearing in mind that no session is particularly typical, but like, what's the general way that sessions would look around genital de armoring?

Rahi Chun  16:06  
Absolutely. So, you know, as I mentioned earlier, the way I frame genital de armoring is really re establishing a relationship of consent with one's own body. And for that reason, I never put a time cap on sessions, because it's not up to me. It's really up to the client's body, and the pace at which we move is fully determined by the sense of safety and readiness of the client's nervous system. I mean, in some ways, it's really prioritizing the client's body and more specifically, the client's nervous system sense of safety as to how a session will unfold. So having said that, there are really kind of three, three areas or three levels, so a client will come. The first thing we do is bring safety to the nervous system in regards to receiving touch. And every client is going to be different in how you know what that journey is, but I use a modality called "neuroaffective touch", which is which was developed by Somatic Experiencing trainers, and it's exactly what we're talking about, Karen, but it focuses on the unconscious guarding patterns that we develop as infants and children. So you mentioned, you know how a lot of people, their shoulders will concave, or they'll have armor around their chest, and that's the body, as when an infancy, especially protects its heart area from being hurt by bringing the shoulders in or or the muscles around the front of the chest or be on the backside will harden. So neuroaffective touch was really developed not to de armor sexuality, but to de armor, the unconscious guarding patterns from infancy and childhood. So I start with that so the client remains fully clothed, and it's on a massage table that I mean, some clients will receive that for several sessions before they feel ready to disrobe, and when they disrobe, the next phase is really empowering the body's voice to advocate for what they want and what they don't want. I find that this to be really essential, because I find that for a lot of time, the armor generally forms when we haven't advocated our voice for what our body wants, or it's been over, over over, overrun. And so that second phase of teaching the body that its voice not only matters, but nothing will happen unless the body's voice is asking for it or demanding it, that starts to rewire a somatic response of the body, knowing that nothing's going to happen unless the body is asking for it. And I find that to be a critical piece so that in answer your question sessions start with some sort of nervous system re regulation, and then it goes to empowering the body's voice. And then the third step is really providing a map of both the body and the genitalia, erogenous anatomy, so that the body owner can be very specific about what it's asking for. So it's not that I want touch at my penis, but you know, my frenulum wants soft contact. Or it's not that my vulva wants attention. It's the, you know, upper left hand quadrant of the clitoris that wants one second per stroke so you can really claim, reclaim the experience of the genitalia as your own, and nothing's going to happen unless you voice it.

Karen Yates  19:45  
Well, that's tremendous. I remember there was a point in my life when I had a new lover, and we were in bed and he said, How do you like to be touched? No clue. I didn't have a-- And I was, you know, I was fully. mature by that point, and it the question actually haunted me and led, you know, that was sort of one of those under underpinnings of my sexual education, you know, moving into professional education, because I thought about it, and I was like, Wow, that's crazy that I don't know, but most people don't. I came to find out most people don't. 

Rahi Chun  20:22  
Yeah so if you just looking at how we learn what we learn, I mean, essentially, there's an absence of accurate pleasure based sexual education in our culture, and what's replacing that are porn and media and people are, you know, we're fumbling around. I mean, I see this, especially with my clients who are empty nesters and who partnered with someone in their 20s or sometimes even their high school sweethearts. We don't know a lot about our bodies or our sexuality or asking for what we want or what our boundaries are, and then patterns form pretty quickly, and then the attention goes to raising a family. And when they go to off to college, they're like, left realizing they don't really know much about each other's sexual IQ,

Karen Yates  21:11  
yeah, and it's, I think for people, it comes as sort of a shock, or maybe it's not even interrogated these ideas, because, as you said, if you're if you're partnering with someone while you're still a teenager, and then moving through decades of decades of communication or lack of communication, it becomes normalized that you're not having these deep conversations. But it's all compounded by the fact that we, we do, live in a culture that does not prioritize communication period. I mean, not even sexual communication, no communication.

Rahi Chun  21:46  
right? And so no one's talking about these things. It's like, it's so, like it was talking to someone about, oh, my friend Eva clay is creating this course around menopause and how to be vibrant and sexual in menopause. And I'm like, why, as a society, are we not talking about something that every human citizen is going to go through? I mean, penis owners, we go through andropause that's even talked about, you know, like we--

Karen Yates  22:14  
do, oh my gosh, yeah, andropause is like, I don't think someone mentioned it on a on another episode, and like there is no information, none. Oh, information. Andropause, yeah,

Rahi Chun  22:26  
and so, just like the phenomenon of masturbation when we were teenagers, you know, so many people think they're the only ones self pleasuring, because no one's talking about it. People are going people are suffering through menopause and andropause. What you know, not understanding how to balance hormones and how to properly go to a naturopathic doctor and get a blood panel and balance what's being imbalanced properly and instead suffering for years, if not decades, or hanging up their sexual life as if you know the best days are over,

Karen Yates  22:58  
right? So explain to me in this process, what shifts Do you see with people, like, what's happening as you, as you move through this, and what are they experiencing? And, yeah, what, what is, how did, how does transcendence occur here?

Rahi Chun  23:16  
Sure, I think the best way is to share some examples. But I will say, you know, I described kind of the three layers that happen in sessions. Once people are on the table and we're involved with the genital de armoring process, it takes tremendous courage, because what we're inviting clients to do is really revisit the unexpressed and unmetabolized emotions from an event that warranted that armor to begin with, and for a lot of clients, that involves things that happened in their teenage years or in their childhood, right, that were so scary because it was done by someone who was supposed to protect them, you know, or Someone they trusted, and it's a betrayal of trust. For example, you know, I had a client who grew up in Egypt, and her clitoris was circumcised when she was nine years old, so she had no sensation in her genitalia. You know, much less, her her clitoris as we were moving through neuroaffective touch, it was her grandmother who was the one person she trusted in her family, who was the one who took her to this event without telling her so the deep sense of betrayal is what she never metabolized, and her body was asking for support behind her left shoulder blade, which is behind her heart. And once my hand landed there, she purged, I mean, as if she was in an Ayahuasca ceremony, like energetically and physiologically. And after that purge of the betrayal is when sensation returned to her genitalia. Wow,

Karen Yates  24:59  
oh my gosh. Right? So I'm getting shivers. 

Rahi Chun  25:03  
This is a great example of how it's really the unmetabolized and unexpressed emotional content of a past experience that is keeping the armor in place. Because was not doing anything with her pelvis. It was after that release from behind her heart center, the betrayal from her grandmother, that sensation felt safe to return, because then she she was no longer holding that in.

Karen Yates  25:29  
Wow, wow. How long does it take for this particular client? But then in general, this isn't, I know, a, you know, a single session, right? We, in our society like to have these, like, add water and mix experiences, yup. Can you explain how you know, not necessarily an average, but what? What is like, the least amount of sessions people experience, and then the the most in your experience, in in your own experience? Sure? Sure.

Rahi Chun  26:02  
So it's rare for someone to feel safe and ready to receive pelvic touch in a first session, particularly because I'm a penis owner, and most of my clients are vulva owners, having said that, there are some clients, excuse me, who either like Time is of the essence, or they've been to a lot of tantra related retreats, and they've received pelvic work in kind of, you know, a forum. So it's not new for them, and they're comfortable doing that. So I find that, I mean, in answer to your question, some people will will experience the breakthrough that they have been seeking in one session. Now that session is usually an extended session. So as I said earlier, I don't put time caps on my sessions. The average is somewhere between three to five hours. I usually don't I most clients receive fulfill their intentions somewhere between the six and eight session mark, because usually it takes time to for their nervous system to really feel like they can trust this practitioner to a degree where they can revisit events in their lives, where, you know, there may have been a lot of trauma involved, and I've worked with people who've been prostituted as children, post birth trauma, things of that sort, a lot of sexual violation as young people. And it takes a couple of sessions, but then once they it's almost like once the floodgates open and they realize, Wow, this I didn't know was possible, then it really motivates them to to de armor, and then it usually just kind of like, is like a a river that just flows open.

Karen Yates  27:48  
I remember when I was doing Tantra teacher training, I was in a session where I was the recipient, because, and I want to talk to you in a moment about one way touch, I was the recipient in a triad, and I got to this place very quickly with these two people. It was a cis female assist male, and where suddenly I went into this place where they were my parents and I was a very young child. I mean, maybe like one, and they were just bestowing love on me. They were bestowing like radiant regard, and it is exactly what I needed in that moment where there was a fair amount of emotional neglect, and because of many reasons, I'm not going to blame my parents, actually, and that ex, that energy that came from me. It was like you were saying with that one client. It was like a purge, and it was probably one of the most powerful experiences of my life, completely reorienting me to something that I didn't even know needed to be reoriented. Let's talk about one way touch and the importance of one way touch,

Rahi Chun  29:03  
okay, Karen, before, before we go to one way touch, can I just comment on what you share? 

Karen Yates  29:07  
Absolutely, 

Rahi Chun  29:08  
Karen, I feel like the root of so many obstacles and challenges to our sexual intimacy can be threaded back to those very tender, gentle, confusing, influential experiences from our childhood. Well, I'm very fascinated with how the somatic influences in our childhood form or shape our adult sexual behaviors, patterns, all of that. Yeah, can I share a case study with you now? Absolutely, absolutely, you know this, this applies. I mean, it's a great example to illustrate this. I had a client who's he was a psychiatrist in his 50s, and he had this shadow, kind of secretive sex life where he could only. Only become erotically excited when he was being humiliated by strangers, and that involved leather. And you know, as we did the intake, it turns out that he grew up as a gay boy in the Midwest, and his father used to, in his own words, kick the shit out of him with his boots, which were leather. You know, if you imagine a little boy who's craving and yearning for attention and acceptance, and the only contact he was getting was with leather boots being humiliated. This is a great example of how the childhood influence affects our adult sexuality and intimacy patterns. And so for him, it was a matter of rewiring his arousal and erotic pleasure with a new association, not with humiliation and leather, but with presence and safety and with someone, a repeated person involved. You know, in this case, myself as a practitioner, and after that, he was able to develop a relationship with someone who was not a stranger, and enjoy pleasure in a way that was safer for him.

Karen Yates  31:09  
Did it change his relationship to leather in general, to kink? 

Rahi Chun  31:14  
No, he I would say no, in that, it was still an erotic charge. However, instead of the neural pathway of his somatic eroticism being limited to that one charge and now more avenues of choice,

Karen Yates  31:31  
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Karen Yates  31:55  
Oh my gosh. I could go in so many directions right now. But I want to come back before we go into one way Dutch. I want to go back to earlier in the session, when you were talking about choice and voice. And what really struck me at that point was this, you know, the how the voice and the jaw are connected to the pelvis and these vibrational, you know, this whole matrix that really speaking as someone myself who's had issues with communication in general in my life, you wouldn't figure that be. No, you wouldn't guess that at all. But isn't that? Are the way we make up

Rahi Chun  32:35  
exactly right, exactly

Karen Yates  32:39  
so. But the mirror, well, it's not mirror, but this action of actually saying out loud and vibrating the vocal cords to say what we need and want our truest selves connects immediately to the pelvic bowl, the pelvis. I mean, it's extraordinary, the way our bodies, they're perfect, and they, they always do move toward healing. It always, we always move toward pleasure. And the work you're describing, really, it proves that correct.

Rahi Chun  33:17  
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I feel like the work that we do as somatic sex educators and sexologists are reminding the body of its own innate, organic state, which is of pleasure. It's of aliveness. It's that life force that you know, that we're all, that turns us on. Yeah And yes, the correlation between the throat, jaw and the pelvis with you. You know, if you've seen images of the larynx and the the vocal cords and the vulva and the cervix, it's uncanny. 

Karen Yates  33:55  
It is. It really is. It really is. 

Rahi Chun  33:58  
It's like a it's like a mini vagina in our throat, yeah. And I read that in utero, the tissue that becomes, I think it's the uterus or the I mean, there's some like, it's the same tissue that develops into the throat. And so there is that direct correlation. But then, you know, when you look at it, just physiologically, these are the the two kind of orifices of the body. You have the mouth up here, and then the pelvis down here, and it's, you know, connected by one, you know, esophageal tube through the intestines and all that. So it makes sense that when there's a contraction in one, it's going to result in a contraction in the other.

Karen Yates  34:39  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let's go back to one way touch. I'd love to hear your, your you talk about this, because I, I think when people think about, like, say, a Tantra session or a sexological body work session, if you don't know a lot about you're thinking, Oh, two way touch. Yeah. Sexy. It's one way touch. And I I want to hear your thoughts on one way touch.

Rahi Chun  35:08  
Sure, sure. I really love one way touch. I mean, in the work that that I've done, in the client sessions that I've witnessed over the last decade, plus, I feel like one way touch is super powerful. Now, you know, I can't speak to two way touch. I mean, I'm sure two way touch practitioners witness experience breakthroughs and all of that as well, but I think the power of one way touch is that the client can really it's really about the client and their intimate relationship with their own body. It's I, they don't they. It's not, they don't. There's not the susceptibility of being distracted by another human being or a relational dynamic with somebody

Karen Yates  35:53  
else, right? There's no obligation, yes,

Rahi Chun  35:57  
there's no obligation. It's not about the other person, and so it really kind of goes to the core of their own intimate relationship with themselves and their awareness and attunement with their own body sensations and desires. And I think that's necessary before we engage with somebody else. And I think, I think when we're young once again. I mean, I think our parents, most parents, you know, are very well meaning, wanting to train their children. But rather than inquiring, what is your body want as a child, you know, we're being there's an outer agenda being opposed to our body when we're very young.

Karen Yates  36:36  
Oh my gosh, yeah. Like, "go give Give Grandma a kiss."

Rahi Chun  36:40  
Oh my gosh, yeah, you know, yeah, "give Uncle Johnny a hug," and maybe this is the person you detest the most in your life. Yeah, you know, like, I had a client USC sorority, and she was just having this unconscious sex every weekend, because it's a very party culture. And you know, when we did the intake, sure enough, it was exactly that her parent, like when she was asked, How are you feeling? Her father would answer for her, Oh, my God. And so she had no sense of autonomy of her body at all. So of course, when she's at these college parties, when alcohol is involved, she's going to do whatever anybody else wants, and that's going to create a lot of armor in the body. But yes, that that sense of one way touch, is really about the client and the relation re establishing, and for some, establishing, a foundational sense of consent with their own body's agency for the first time. And that's where I think the value of one way touches, yeah,

Karen Yates  37:40  
you know, especially with men. And I bring this up because when I was in tantra school, doing doing a practicum back home, I was with a partner, and I gave him a one way touch session, and in the middle of it, he goes, God, I'm so sad. And part of you know, I see, especially with penis owners, there is this playbook. I call it the playbook in the head, about when, when there's sexuality, another partner, there's a there's an unconscious playbook of, like, I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this, and there's a chatter, there's chatter, and it's Oh, it overrides natural sexual impulses in the body, and it's taught, I mean, it's there from the beginning. And what I noticed in the one way touch sessions with partners is there was simply an allowance of, like, I'm with myself, and I'm not allowed to give back or I'm not allowed to override with the stuff, yeah, and some really profound things happened at that point,

Rahi Chun  38:48  
yeah. I mean, Karen, I can share with you, personally I was participating in, I think it was a Margo Anand retreat. This was like 20 years ago, and I was the recipient of touch, just like you practice with this person. And it wasn't I was not, it was not totally comfortable. And it wasn't until I reached out and started touching her thigh that my body was responding with erotic energy. And so it was an indication of how much my sexual energy was based on pleasing or performing or, you know, that kind of thing. And to your point, so many, you know, like, you know, it like people talk about how masculine and how masculinity is all about being directional and goal oriented and results focused and and so that playbook is very ingrained in a lot of in a lot of men's psyche. Yeah,

Karen Yates  39:44  
I'd love to talk for a moment just about this idea of sexual energy. And I don't know where I want to go with this, but you talked about the micro cosmic orbit the beginning. And I. What do you see, I suppose, around, I want to ask about around when blockages are freed up in the body, whether it be anatomical, or you talked about your Egyptian client, yes, with the the heart purge. Yeah, delve into that a little bit, if you will. If you don't

Rahi Chun  40:26  
Sure, yeah, you know, it's really fascinating, because I've studied the armoring techniques or approaches from the Taoist perspective, which is more energetic. So there's a Taoist art called karsina sang, which translates to inner genital massage. And it's if you think about Taoism, Taoism is you know how acupuncture and understanding the meridians and energy flow that all comes from Taoism. And so the Taoist approach is very much increasing blood flow. Because when you increase blood flow, you increase the energy flow, because the energy of the body is carried through the blood, and so it's all about maximizing energy flow through these meridians, which is very legitimate and can be very effective. However, I found that it doesn't take into into consideration what stays in armor as a result of the unmetabolized emotions. They're not really that informed around how you know, the somatic memories and emotions that are held in the body, right? I also found that they're all about increasing energy flow, but not a focus on pleasure and how pleasure increases energy flow, right? Yeah. So to your point, there's the Taoist approach, which is really increasing blood flow and energy flow and clearing the channels. And they're really good at something called breaking up sedimentation, which is essentially blockages to that blood and energy flow. You know, tantra is so brilliant. As far as applying breath, movement, sound and presence, in order to bring anything that's unmetabolized to the surface, to to discharge, right? And then, you know, and then I, because I have a background in psychology, I really appreciate the psychosomatic approach so, and all it is is, you know, I shared with the client who had clitoral circumcision, it was really getting in touch with her feelings around what happened to her as a child. Or, for example, I had a client who was like, six or seven months post birth. She had a birth trauma. She was numb from the waist down, and as we were de armoring, and she was, you know, releasing all of her anger and grief about the conscious birth that she had given up because she had to be rushed to the hospital, we touched upon this area, and all I had to do was ask her what image or memory is coming to you. And she connected with a DNC she had when she was 22 years old that she had blocked out of her memory because she was raised Catholic and so forth. And once that came to the surface, her sensation returned. So there are all these different approaches, like psychosomatic, emotional, energetic, and I also incorporate pleasure. Because pleasure, you know, I always tell my clients, the best way to really de armor the genitalia is to engage in conscious love making with someone you feel safe and trust, because that's going to get everything kind of back to its organic kind of way of being. Yeah, and so, so, yeah, there are many, many different approaches, and there's probably tons more that I'm not aware of, but those are the ones that I tend to interweave into, into sessions that I've found to be effective.

Karen Yates  43:51  
Fantastic. You know, you just reminded me pleasure such a dirty word in our culture. It's amazing how

Rahi Chun  44:00  
Yeah, yeah, it is. But if you think about what motivates everyone, whether it's delicious food, groovy music, feeling good with your people, you love, it's all pleasure. They're all it's all pleasure, all pleasure, and it's all life force, like expanding, and that's what pleasure is. Yeah,

Karen Yates  44:22  
tell me a little bit about your offerings. You do a couple of courses. I think there's one coming up

Rahi Chun  44:28  
Sure. You know, as you shared, my realm of expertise is in the field of genital de armoring. So I have kind of a signature course called the three keys to genital de armoring. I offer that yearly, sometimes twice a year. And then my partner, who's also a somatic sex educator and sexological body worker with an expertise in plant medicines, she and I offer a course for couples called divine union for lovers, and we have two live couples retreats coming up in August and September. Here. That will take place here in Santa Monica,

Karen Yates  45:02  
wonderful. Anything else, anything else that's in your mind or you want to say,

Rahi Chun  45:08  
I just want to encourage all of your listeners. I want to honor your listeners for really, you know, taking the step to educate themselves about the very, very kind of primal and instinctive. And you know, like this energy is what created all of us. It's what created humanity. Is sexual energy and to to what we were sharing, this life force is what is what like makes everything go you know, it's what brings makes, you know, it brings aliveness to us. And so the more alive that you feel, and the more like you cultivate and really honor the aliveness in your body, which I mean sex and sexual energy is such, you know, it's an inherent, an innate, pharmacological system in our body where we can feel good, change our mood, open our intuition, our creativity, heal so many childhood wounds all through this incredible life force. So just really honoring all of your listeners for leaning in and learning more.

Karen Yates  46:14  
Rahi, this has been a delicious conversation. Really have enjoyed this so much. Thank you.

Rahi Chun  46:20  
Oh, you're so welcome. I've enjoyed it too. Thank you. Karen

Karen Yates  46:24  
Rahi can be found at somaticsexualwholeness.com and we will link to that in the show notes. Well, that's it. Folks. Have a very pleasurable week. Thank you for listening. Wild & sublime is supported in part by our sublime supporter, Full Color Life Therapy, therapy for all of you at full color life therapy.com know someone who'd like this episode, send it to them and we'd love a review or a rating on your podcast app. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram. At wild and sublime got feedback or an inquiry, contact us at info, at wildland sublime.com, I'd like to thank our design guru Jean Fran Gervais and editor Christine Ferrera. Our music is by David Ben Porat. This episode is part of the Lincoln lodge Podcast Network. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai