Embodiment

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Are you one of the many people who finds it hard to quiet the mind enough to focus during sex? Does pleasure feel elusive because of how. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Detached you are from your body? [00:00:13] Speaker A: Then you need to listen to today's episode. Today I am joined by embodiment expert Mark Walsh. His work on embodiment was a huge inspiration for the material in my book, so it's an extra honor to sit. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Down with him today. Not only will you finish the episode. [00:00:29] Speaker A: With practical tools, I promise you'll be entertained too. I can't help it. I am such a sucker for British humor, and he had me cracking up at multiple points throughout our conversation. Let's get to know Mark. Mark Walsh is the author of the Body and Coaching and Training An Introduction to Embodied Facilitation as well as Embodied Meditation. Additionally, he hosts the Embodiment Podcast. He founded the Embodied Facilitator course and has trained over 2000 embodiment coaches in over 40 countries. He recently went to Ukraine TW during the recent conflict and set up Upset Ukraine.org, a charity now run solely by Ukrainian professionals to provide trauma and embodiment training to trainers, therapists, and coaches. He gained an honors in psychology despite being an alcoholic at the time and has taught widely in the corporate world, where he pretended to be a grownup for years, including with blue chip companies like Google. Without further ado, let's dive in. Mark Walsh, welcome to the show. [00:01:34] Speaker C: It is an absolute delight to see you again, Emily. I have a cold, though, so I have a very sexy voice, but I'm not feeling very sexy, so that's the only thing I'd say up front. [00:01:45] Speaker A: No worries. I think our listeners will be none the wiser and we'll just go with the sexy voice angle. So I was so excited when we connected because, you know, I've just written this book. I quote you extensively in the first chapter, and so much of your work inspired the content of the first chapter that when your team reached out to me, I was like, oh, my gosh. I don't know why. In my mind I was. I just felt like you were kind of one of those inaccessible people. And so I'm. I'm so excited to be. [00:02:12] Speaker C: Not at all. I'm a podcast whore. I'll go on anyone's podcast. And when I read the book, I was like, yeah, definitely. [00:02:18] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Well, I just love the British humor too. It's fun. So thank you. [00:02:23] Speaker C: Probably warn listeners about the British humor before we dive in pretty bad. We should probably come with a sort of British advisory Warning to say, you know, there's someone with blue hair in Portland listening to this, who's going to get offended already. So, yeah, let's. Let's roll. [00:02:37] Speaker A: No, they'll love it. So, Mark, you are an embodiment expert. Break that down for my listeners. What does that mean? [00:02:45] Speaker C: You're like my mom. [00:02:46] Speaker A: What. [00:02:47] Speaker C: What does that mean, Mark? What is, what is that you do exactly? Well, you know, my dad said that for years and I had a job doing trauma education in the House of Lords, and he was quite impressed. And after that, I didn't. He didn't ask me, so it was good. I help people get in their bodies, so I train a lot of coaches to help other people do that. Now, I've done it in the business world in sort of what we'd call embodied leadership. I've worked a lot in the NGO sector, you know, founded a charity in Ukraine looking at trauma, which is obviously a particular type of disembodiment. But mostly these days, I mentor people and I train coaches to help other people get in their bodies. [00:03:22] Speaker A: Why is that important? [00:03:24] Speaker C: Well, it's the root of so many of our issues and problems. So, you know, in terms of your podcast and your topic, I don't need to tell you this, but, you know, for listeners, perhaps. Let me just speak from my personal experience. If I'm not in my body, I don't feel very sexy. If I'm in my head, I'm, you know, like, doing. And I have days where I'm just sort of doing marketing and working on the business and responding to emails rather than doing more embodiment work. And by the end of the day, like, I'm a head on a stick and I'm not in my live, juicy, organic, sensual, animal body, and that's the body that makes love. Not, not like, you know, hello, my name's Norman. I've on your Internet date for this evening and I've looked on the Excel spreadsheet and we're compatible. Emily. Like. Like. I mean, everybody gets right, and if we were to look at what makes someone charismatic, you know, leadership, how someone manages their stress, stress management and terms of coaches is just what works. You can't. You can't think your way out of things. Like, people could read your fantastic book, but unless they did the exercises and applied it in embodied way, the information isn't. Al isn't going to help. It's not, you know, Wikipedia hasn't solved all the world's problems. If somebody said, I've, I've read 500 books on kissing. I mean, that wouldn't tell you that much. Right. But if someone was like, hey, you know, I've had these wonderful partners and they've given me feedback and I've practiced and I've worked with the greatest kissing experts in Bali and I had these kind of wonderful love affairs in Paris. And, you know, maybe, maybe that would be more meaningful. [00:05:00] Speaker A: So that sounds like someone I want to kiss. [00:05:03] Speaker C: Sounds good, huh? Sounds good. I've just had a whole little Parisian Bali fantasy going on now, so. Yeah. Embodiment, embodied knowledge is deeper than simply cognitive knowledge. And many of the world's problems are being impacted by this. But certainly let's call it the fuck crisis, the reproductive crisis, the lack of mating that's going on. You know, one of the many reasons for this is that people are out of their bodies. [00:05:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So I was going to ask, is this a new problem? And if not, when do you think it. It started to become a bigger issue. [00:05:37] Speaker C: Yeah, a big topic. I don't want to idealize our sort of ancestral Pre history, but 99.99 of our ancestors lived in the Stone age effectively. And I don't due to the discomfort of that period. I imagine they were quite in their bodies, know, sitting on rocks and being chased by tigers equally, they weren't on mobile phones. Trauma, however, may still have been an issue. So I think, you know, trauma accumulates in societies if we're not careful. Industrialization, certainly we're, as Uncle Ted would say, we're over civilized. We're over. We've become like animals in a zoo who will no longer breed because we're, we're under too much control. So I think there's a number of disembodying forces, you know, whether it be cultural, you know, sex, shame in some cultures more than others, religious forces, sometimes tech, and certainly the speed and informational complexity of the world we're in today is very, very unsexy for everyone and very, very disembodying. [00:06:43] Speaker A: You said something a minute ago how our ancestors were sitting on rocks, and it made me wonder, is, is pain an important prerequisite to being embodied? Because when I was on your show, we were talking about like emotional pa. People who haven't grown up with any kind of trauma in their backgrounds are frankly boring individuals. But how does this relate to embodiment? [00:07:06] Speaker C: Okay, so I would say pleasure is a bigger friend of embodiment. So the embracing of pleasure. I spend a lot of time in Italy, in the Mediterranean, and cultures that are quite pleasure loving, pleasure seeking and certainly pleasure calls us back to the body. Pain will also call us back to the body, which is why some people, I think, love a good spank. Because, because, you know, certainly consensual, non injurious pain, that means that it forces them to pay attention. So mindfulness is very hard, but sort of enforced mindfulness. And obviously there's issues there potentially of people getting addicted to strong sensation as a way to feel the body. And I would encourage ways into sensation that are gentle and sustainable and non injurious, certainly. But yeah, you know, like, I've done a lot of martial arts, I do a lot of weightlifting and I enjoy the pain of that because once you separate out the pain from the suffering, to be a little bit Buddhist, it's simply sensation, it's simply intensity. And I, you know, put a good wrist lock on me or a good arm bar or something and I'll, I'll be like, oh, that hurts. Good. That's a good one, man. You know, there's even in a non sexual context that's still exhilarating, right? And enlivening. So, yeah, just to be clear to listeners, I'm definitely not a sex expert. I, I worry that my disappointed ex girlfriends will be writing in to complain that I'm on the show. Um, however, I accidentally teach this topic because I don't teach courses on sexuality. I did a little bit on attraction, but not so much. But what happens is I'll teach a course on say, actually I'll give you an example. I was Dutch telecoms company years ago. Very cerebral place, very smart young managers. I was being asked to train to be more impactful because just being clever isn't enough to give you kind of presence. And, you know, I was doing a course and did a few days and then one guy was very skeptical, but he said, you know, I'll try it, I'll try it. So that's all I ask, is give it a go. Two months later, second module, he comes back and he sort of takes me aside and says, my girlfriend likes your course. And I never understood exactly what he meant, but the gist of it was he was more in his body, he was showing up differently. And she had appreciated that in some way for him as a, as a boyfriend. And often people will say, doing embodiment courses, oh, I'm having the best sex in my life. I'm enjoying my sex life more. This problem, you know, and I'm not trying to do that, but just by getting people in their bodies regulating themselves better, that's another part of it. More empathic, more listening. You know, you talk about that in your book. And more impactful. [00:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:40] Speaker C: You know, and being able to turn someone and Is an embodied skill, primarily. That's why you can. You know, I once saw someone read the back of a cornflake packet in Italian to a helpless American girl who was an absolute victim in this scenario. And. And she just couldn't help herself being, you know, turned on by this. He was literally reading a cornflake packet because of his manner and his tone of voice. And, you know, Italian doesn't hurt, but yeah. So that's an embodied skill, turning someone on and being turned on. [00:10:10] Speaker A: What. What gender differences do you see, if any, as it relates to being able to connect with the body and being present with the senses? [00:10:21] Speaker C: Huge. And as you know, there are only two sensible genders. So the. [00:10:25] Speaker A: You said it, Mark, not me. [00:10:27] Speaker C: Yeah, you said you set them up. I'll knock them down. Canceled. Yes. So I think gender polarity has always been a thing in traditional cultures. And as cultures become decadent and fall into sort of late stages of empire, we're effectively in the late stage of the Anglo American empire at this point. As they become decadent, that tends to collapse. There's various writers on this, you know, going back to the Greeks and various other cultures. And unfortunately, that's a problem because it's the sizzle between those polls, which is a big part of not all of attraction. I've heard you've. I'm sure you've had many other people on the show talking about this. So in terms of embodiment, though, traditionally the body has been a female domain. So, you know, it's like body, mind, you know, men, cerebral women, more embodied, for better and for worse. So sometimes women are seen as more embodied or more in their bodies or they find it less. Social barriers to dancing, for example, like, as a working class British man, I regarded dancing for women and gays. That's how I was raised. And then I got into martial arts, then I started getting into movement. And then gradually I realized I love to dance, but I had to overcome this whole cultural barrier to get past that. So sometimes I think it's a barrier to say that, you know, women and perhaps forced into their bodies through this cyclical nature of being female. I'm old school. The cyclical nature of being female, which I think forces women into their bodies in a way that's less men. Men are often encouraged to work to the point of dissociation. And, you know, any kind of feelings is a bad thing. And there's a certain beauty in the sort of stoic masculine ideal. I wouldn't want to discount that. You know, that has been celebrated throughout history, I think, for good reason. You know, you want a man who can walk through the cold and the rain. Like my girlfriend's period the other day, and she said, no, I need some chocolate. It's pretty classic. And it was a cold British day. She's Italian. She didn't want to go out in the rain. And I said, you know, I was the hero. You know, I said, I will suffer the cold British rain to go outside, to go to Tesco's. Yeah. And, you know, I. I loved that sort of stoic heroism in that very small way. And, you know, when I'm working in Ukraine, obviously, I see sort of more real, more intense versions of that. So, yeah, I mean, traditionally women are more in touch with their bodies and that's socialized that way. And, you know, it's sad to me that maybe 60, 70% of the people on my courses are women, because that is still an issue for many men. [00:13:01] Speaker B: I just launched tons, tons of awesome bonuses on my website. People who purchase just one copy of my new book, Anatomy of Desire, get things like the Intimacy Discussion Deck, a deck of 52 cards with questions designed to deepen connection, and the 30 Day Intimacy Challenge, a calendar with daily exercises designed to deepen connection and expand your erotic horizons. You get access to my masterclass and so much more. By purchasing Anatomy of Desire, you get access to nearly $300 worth of bonuses. I've got a Pleasure playlist. I've got a Desire summit. I've got an Unlocking Masculine and Feminine Desires webinar. I mean, the list goes on and on. Visit emilyjamia.com for all the details. [00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so true. And I think it's interesting what you bring up about dancing and breaking through the social barrier of men moving their bodies. I was at a conference a couple weeks ago and one of the speakers was talking about that. How inhibited men feel about pelvic movement in particular. And he starts, like, gyrating on stage, and I'm looking up at him being like, God, like, I wish more men felt comfortable with pelvic movement, but they're just not because for some reason associated. I mean, a female. [00:14:19] Speaker C: So, for example, you know, if anyone's Latin listening to this, like, I lived in Brazil for a while. You know, I lived. I lived above a nightclub in the favela slums of Brazil for six Months and I got back and my mother said, you know, where did you get those hips? Because I was kind of moving, I was moving differently. That part of me, I actually felt my, my anus relax while I was in Brazil. It was, it may have been the tapeworms, but yeah, it was. It's certainly like for me, cross cultural embodiment is fascinating because that is a part of this if we're going to talk about gender or attraction or anything. So yeah, I think, that being said, beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder. Like I was in Ethiopia and I was with a friend of mine, Tessa Phi, who'd grown up in a tribal area and we could still say we went to the dance, you know, I say, who do you think's the most beautiful person here? And we'd both point at the same girl and, you know, the healthiest, most confident, bright eyed, you know, and he might have a kind of, you know, funny dance he would do with his neck. They do this ikatha dance in Ethiopia. So there's some cultural stuff, but then there's some other stuff which is just like, you know, health and shininess is attractive. [00:15:25] Speaker A: Sure. Which I think people who are living more embodied, probably present compared to people who don't. [00:15:33] Speaker C: Oh, for sure. I mean, I remember going to a yoga conference outside of London a few years ago and on day one I was like, yeah, some people from London, everyone looks kind of gray, overworked. I think particularly women don't respond well to kind of modern industrial work. It doesn't make them shine, you know, that kind of level of work. And then day two, everyone was kind of more attractive. And by day three I was like, where all these stunning attractive people come from? Because they just spent three days doing yoga and dancing and being in the countryside, Nature's a huge help. And I was like, oh, wow. You know, like the modern, urban, exhaustive work life is just not conducive to attractiveness, whereas nature, rest, embodiment, movement just is. [00:16:17] Speaker A: How do you see body image relating to this? Because so many of my female clients in particular complain of having poor body image which makes them feel disconnected from their body. Or they're so conscious of the way their body looks from the outside in that they can't connect to the body's internal experiences. And so I'm wondering what, if any, work you do around embodiment embody image? [00:16:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not my main area. Though it does come up certainly on workshops that people have body shame for various reasons, also work with I take young guys to the gym to do embody coaching because they won't sort of sit down and do therapy. It's not their kind of thing. So I take. We lift weights and we talk while we're lifting weights. And they. They like that. And a lot of the young guys also have it now, actually, if one's attention is on the performative body and Americans have this much more than Europeans. Whenever I go to the States, I feel like everyone is performing like they're on TV or something. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:16] Speaker C: And if someone, say a dancer or a salesperson or a politician who's very interested in how they look, then their attention is on the outside rather than the inside. And certainly, you know, there's definitely been. It's difficult for, I think, for boys and girls growing up in the immediate environment we're in. Like, was it Cindy Crawford said, you know, even I don't look like Cindy Crawford, Meaning she wasn't airbrushed and touched up by the computer kind of thing, Right? [00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:42] Speaker C: So I think that's a pretty strong environment to be in. And the kind of culture of filters and is making that more extreme. And I think if you. What people find attractive now has got more extreme. And certainly AI porn will take that to another level. Oh, yeah. Once AI is pornographied fully and mixed with social learning systems, I think it's probably why societies end. So there's something called the Fermi Paradox, which is that we don't. The world should be full of aliens, the universe should be full of aliens, but there aren't any. And people are trying to. Is it. One theory of the Fermi Paradox is there's a certain point of technology that just ends culture. And certainly in a pornographied AI with a social element that feeds you what you want to hear as well as what you want to see, that could just be the end of breeding. So we're not far from that. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's really scary stuff. You know, talking about body image and what you were saying, I'm reminded a couple years ago we were on one of the Greek islands, and it wasn't a very touristy island, so it was mostly other Europeans who were there. And I just remember walking on the beach, looking at these women who were wrinkled, no makeup, and just thinking how freaking beautiful they looked compared to, you know, women in the US on the beach who are so done up with plastic surgery and have these almost like filled caricature faces of whatever was there originally and how we think that's beautiful and it's contributing to so many body image issues. But the reason I think these women look so beautiful is because they just were in their body like we're talking about. [00:19:22] Speaker C: It's relaxed, healthy in your body, confident. That goes a long way. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about why this is important for. You know, obviously I focus on embodiment and sex and write about it in the book. And this is where you were such an inspiration to my work. But why is it important for coaches and people in leadership positions or really anyone take the sexual domain or not to be embodied? [00:19:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the sexual domain is great in a way because it makes this obvious. Like, we all understand that it's more than just being in our heads. And I think it's less obvious sometimes. The leaders who have sort of MBAs, and, you know, they're very clever and that's how they've got to where they are to some extent. Most coaches, I think, intuitively understand the body matters, but they might be nervous to work with it. And the reason is because of our disembodied culture and the body. You know, I still get giggles when I talk about the body. People think the body is just sex. Right. So it's like you say body, people think, oh, that's, you know, something naughty. So because of that disembodied culture, they might not have a practical way in. So I think helping coaches do that in a way which is really down to earth. You know, some simple centering exercise from martial, martial arts, for example, to help the coach regulate their client. I mean, mostly people turn up to a coaching session and they're just in a manic fight or flight response. They just, oh, you know, hi, I'm sorry I'm late. You know, this is the thing, and it's nine out of ten of my clients. The first thing I'm like, you know, John, put your feet on the ground, take a breath, relax your jaw, say, ah. Okay, tell me again what you want to get from this coaching. And you just save 10 minutes of nonsense, right, by just taking 30 seconds to take a breath like that. So, yeah, hugely important for coaches. And I think people are waking up to this now. People are waking up to embodiment. It's, you know, I've sort of helped make the word word work fashionable with our podcasts and books. We had a conference years back and now it's kind of catching on as a sort of more normal word in the same way mindfulness did. So that feels very positive to me. [00:21:30] Speaker A: I totally Agree. And I love how aligned we are in our approaches because I just did a post on my Instagram not too long ago about drinking before sex and how so many people say they need to have a couple drinks in order to relax enough to get in the mood for sex. And what I tell people is to take literally 30 seconds, okay? Less time than it would take to pour a glass of wine and take some really deep diaphragmatic breaths and see what that does to help regulate the nervous system to get you in touch with your body. I think these, these very mini embodiment exercises can pack such a major punch in, in making foreplay more enjoyable. [00:22:11] Speaker C: Just doing a few synchronizing breaths with a partner. It doesn't have to be some crazy tantra exercise, you know, leaning back to back and feeling each other's weight on each other or, you know, have partners that like me to sort of lie on them and feel the weight of that. But yes, certainly the self regulation stuff I think is if we're in that fight or fl. People are stressed. You know, One of my students in Ukraine did a study of sexuality in terms of war and found that, you know, most people get hyposexual, some get hyper. There's some interesting phenomena around that, but most people just shut down, particularly women. Actually, I think there's a difference in this, that they always say that, you know, men get horny when there's intensity and women get less horny when there's stressed. Is my experience that. Yeah, I mean, a lot of a seduction or a good romance is essentially up and down regulating within a window of tolerance. It's essentially making someone saying something naughty or doing something nice if someone goes, oh, and then relaxing them and then up and then down and then up and then down. Like that's the. What you're essentially doing is exciting someone and some people are better at that than others. And then, then relaxing someone and doing that repeatedly within a window that's not overwhelming. They call it window of tolerance and trauma work. And that's also play. So for example, if I'm playing with my niece, obviously with non sexual context, I might chase her and pretend to kill her with a lightsaber. That's a classic Uncle Mark will do. Or I attempt, I have an imaginary chainsaw. And she'll go, she'll run away, but she's actually feeling safe. And then if, if it's, then she'll come back to me or you know, maybe run to her mom if it's too much and then come back. So she's still trying to find that with my nephew. I'll dangle him upside down. It was scary. He's like, oh, don't do that. And I'll put him down and then he'll come back to do it again. [00:23:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:23:54] Speaker C: She's wanting that up and down regulation. That is just. You mean that's a good conversation. That's a good, it's good play. It's so many things, you know, and this is very basic embodied capacity. [00:24:07] Speaker B: The Anatomy of Desire audiobook is finally here and I am so excited to offer you a sneak peek. Listen up for a 40 second preview. If you like what you hear, be sure to order it on Audible or wherever you listen to Audiobook. And don't forget, audiobook purchases are also eligible for all the free bonuses on my website. Visit anatomyofdesire.com after completing your purchase for all the details. Enjoy the sample. [00:24:34] Speaker D: I started paying closer attention to the language my clients were using to describe the sex they wanted. Words like effortless, absorbed and electric stood out. They wanted to feel lost in the moment, forgetting their woes and insecurities. I spent hours poring over client notes, going back through sessions in my head and listening to people with the larger questions in mind. What were we all searching for in the erotic realm and was it realistically possible to attain? And then it clicked. They wanted to experience a state of flow. [00:25:17] Speaker A: I love that analogy and it's so true as it relates to sex, because it's a direct translation or the skills, rather, I think, translate directly into the bedroom. I looked at a lot of research on CO regulation, which you mentioned. And when I was talking to Bridget Freinhardt, who has done a lot of research in the past couple of years looking at CO regulation and the effect of that on sexual satisfaction. And one interesting finding I thought was that the nervous systems in women tended to follow the nervous systems in men. So if men start getting a little bit sexually excited, kind of building this arousal that you're talking about, women's bodies were more likely to follow. Which I think is just another reason why it would behoove men to get more in touch with their body, understand how their nervous system, how they can kind of take control of nervous system regulation because it can have a direct effect on female sexual arousal. Yeah. [00:26:16] Speaker C: And can I be okay with that in my body? You know, how much sensation can I handle without finding that overwhelming? [00:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:23] Speaker C: And you'll see that every, you know, even in the gym, you'll see that if I'm doing coaching in the gym. Like, how much intensity can people handle? It varies quite widely between people. But, yeah, you know, like, we, we. We're empathic. And my experience, you know, dating women exclusively is that they will pick up on the mood I'm in. They're sponges for that kind of mood. So, you know, like, that's a key, key thing for men to learn is being able to be. It's interesting because there's two things that make someone sexy, right? Like, one would be expressiveness, but the other one, be control. So if I'm just boring, if I'm just like, you know, hello, my name's Mark, and I don't express. That's not very erotic. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:03] Speaker C: But equally, if I'm panicky, that's not attractive. Even like James Bond is always, you know, hi, it's James Bond. He's in, you know, it's like the British Airways voice, you know, welcome to British Airways. We're in control and quite attractive. You know, it's a mixture of those two factors, I think, which is the ability to handle sensation and be expressive. [00:27:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:23] Speaker C: And also someone who's a calm port in a storm, you know, like, like, certainly, I think that's, that's, that embodied capacity to be able to calm people. I mean, that's what trust is, you know, I'm. I think back to my first time in, in this part of the war. I taught in Ukraine, and it's day one of the workshop. We're in Lviv, 100 people there learning about trauma. And people have come from all different places. And the alarm goes off, which means there's a bomb or a rocket incoming. It's called an air alarm. And everybody immediately panics. And then they all look to me because I'm up the front, right? And I'm scared. But, you know, I feel my feet relax my belly. I say, okay, guys, we've got three minutes. Let's walk to the bottom shelter so no one gets hurt because people panic and get hurt on the way. I said, you know, and I said, let's, you know, I'm a little bit scared too, but, you know, we've got plenty of time because the alarm system's pretty good. So let's walk to the bomb shelter. And after that, the whole room trusted me. Now, I was scared and I was happy to say that, but I was not. I was able to regulate myself a little bit better than that room full of people. [00:28:27] Speaker A: Yeah, you didn't let that panic take over, that fight or flight totally decly. [00:28:31] Speaker C: And I think that's still part of attractiveness is that someone's come and there's, you know, there's almost taboos here. Like, we. Of course it's attractive if a woman's motherly, you know, of course that is. It's like, I'm gonna breed with someone. I want to see that they have that nurturing, you know, feminine goddess qualities that have been around since the pagan era, you know, of course it's attractive if a man's strong. And I think of that on all the sort of chakras. Like, physically strong, but also emotionally strong. Mentally strong, spiritually strong. Of course that's attractive. Like, why are we fucking denying this? It's ridiculous. [00:29:06] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:29:07] Speaker C: We all know, of course, health is attractive. These are basic things. Sometimes I wonder why people spend so much money on, like, their car or their makeup or these external things when, you know, like, in terms of being embodied and being kind of confident but still expressive and caring, like these basic embodied capacities, that is what really makes someone sexy. I remember once I had a Colombian girlfriend years ago, and I used to was doing cage fighting. I was doing mma, and she didn't understand why I would go, because it was a bit dangerous and get black eyes and stuff. And then once every time I would come home from that, we would have just the best sex. And she said to me, mark, I do not know why you like this cage fighting, but I like what it does to you. And she'd just be like, let me feed you. Let me make love to you, like, as soon as I got home from it, because I was in that embodiment, right. So she had that. And that would bring her from her professional mode, which wasn't very sexy to her. You know, she was a badass journalist, but, you know, like, she needed to. To go into that nurturing mode, to feel herself that way. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Well, and I think, you know, for men in particular, doing anything competitive kind of is a natural testosterone boost and probably something that you're bringing home that feels very attractive to her. [00:30:17] Speaker C: For sure. For sure. And also authority. I noticed that when I'm teaching and I'm in that teaching mode with groups of people, I'll be on the train on the way home, and, you know, women will be looking at me and I'll be like, why are they looking at me? Because I'm not tall, dark and handsome or anything. But what they're picking up on is that confidence and authority, and that's an embodied capacity. [00:30:34] Speaker A: Totally, totally. I love that you do so many embody. You have so many Embodiment exercises at your disposal. Thinking of the tools in your toolbox. What would you say is most likely to be the most effective? To help people get into their body in order to feel embodied sexually? [00:30:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, our courses, we have sort of whole plans for this that involve all these different things. And here's, here's what my answer would be, though, would be the one you enjoy particularly. I'm imagining more women than men. Listen to this. Do the thing you love. Do the thing that you're going to enjoy. If you can do it with other people, great. If you can do it in nature, even better. You know, nature connection, I'd say, is one of the most important ones. All my students meditate. That's mandatory for my students if they're serious about embodiment. But the key one is the one you love. So for me, when I started out, it was aikido. It's something else. It's weightlifting. Now if you do the thing you love, you will do it. You fall in love with it. Get into your body. Like, make that a playful, joyful adventure. Not another chore on the to do list. [00:31:38] Speaker A: Totally, totally. And, and I love what you said about so many of your clients coming back saying that their sex lives have improved as a result of all of them. [00:31:48] Speaker C: I always say that's the, the second course you get for free on accidentally. [00:31:54] Speaker A: I love it. Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining me today. It was such a pleasure. Where can people learn more about you and your courses and your coaching because you have so much. [00:32:04] Speaker C: Sure. The main One is embodiment unlimited.com we have a coach training. There's a resource there of 12 coaching tools, a free book for any coaches out there. And I'm on all the socials on YouTube. The stuff with young guys is feral philosophy. That's the weightlifting stuff. With young guys, you've got, you know, boys and sons and, you know, young, young guys. Send them my way. All the socials podcast, the Embodiment podcast, Tinder Grinder. No, not Tinder. [00:32:30] Speaker A: All right, we're gonna cut, cut. [00:32:33] Speaker C: Embodiment unlimited dot com. [00:32:35] Speaker A: Awesome, Mark, thank you so much and I will be sure to stay in touch. [00:32:39] Speaker C: Total pleasure. Thank you, Emily. [00:32:41] Speaker B: Thanks again for listening to Love in Libido with me, your host, Dr. Emily Jamia. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and drop me a five star review. Positive ratings help keep the show going. Don't Forget to visit mlajamia.com to see how you can access dozens of free bonuses when you purchase my new book, Anatomy of Desire, currently available everywhere books are sold. Additionally, you can follow me across all the social media channels at Dr. Emily Jamia, thank you for listening.