We sometimes find ourselves disconnected from feelings of pleasure and desire. Robyn Spens, a leading wellness coach and therapist, joins us on today’s episode to talk about how she explores intimacy and teaches women how to increase feelings of pleasure. As a Sexual Freedom Practitioner and a Rapid Transformation Therapist, she provides more information on learning how to focus on your body’s wants and needs, how to incorporate breath work, finding ways to reconnect with yourself and reconnect with your sexual wellness.
If you have permission to explore again, what would you do? what do you want? what does your body need? Accepting support, and giving yourself permission to feel pleasure, are important steps to satisfying our individual wants and needs. At times, however, we may feel disconnected from these internal cues and forget how to reconnect with our feelings of lust and pleasure. Robyn Spens — Hypnotherapist, Coach, Functional Nutrition Practitioner, and Member National Council Psychotherapist — joins us on today’s episode to talk about how she explores feelings of intimacy and teaches women how to reconnect with their sexual selves.
Through both hypnotherapy and coaching, Robyn works with high-achieving women to teach them how to practice sexual self-care, including realigning with their sexual wellbeing. She highlights the need to understand how the power of the brain and the words we tell ourselves to have an immense impact on our behaviour. Moreover, how addictions can inhibit our ability to reconnect with our feelings of pleasure.
In her work, Robyn emphasizes the need to begin opening ourselves up to the potential for possibility and sexual desire, rather than shutting our bodies down. Listen in to learn more about how to focus on your body’s wants and needs, how to incorporate breath work, finding ways to reconnect with yourself and reconnect with your sexual wellness.
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[00:00:00] Dana Frost: Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host, Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach, and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect: conversations about vitality from the inside out with guests experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality. And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you.
[00:00:52] Robyn Spens: Robin.
[00:00:53] Dana Frost: I want to welcome you to the vitally you podcast. It's such truly a pleasure and an honor to have you here. Robin. And I have gotten to know one another over the past few years through our functional nutrition colleague community, and Robin is such a skilled practitioner. So I'm really excited to bring her expertise to the community today.
[00:01:15] Robyn Spens: Thanks so much, Dana. It's a pleasure to be here. So
[00:01:18] Dana Frost: Robin, tell us a little bit about your work around women and maybe it's also to men around this idea of.
[00:01:29] Robyn Spens: Yeah. So some of that work was born out of working with women who have gone through the menopause. I work a lot with women who want to reduce their drinking and a lot of the issues around drinking or to do with pleasure.
And, and then the ability to feel pleasure. So the use of alcohol was like the connector. The thing that sort of, if we take the analogy of a car. The thing that one was kind of putting the pedal down in order to dry their pleasure. So in doing that, the two became very, very connected to that in that person's brain.
So in order for them to feel aroused, so in order for them to feel pleasure, they needed the alcohol in order to do that. So that's kind of where it started that. Top, it kept coming up with several of my clients who were attempting to reduce the amount that they drank. So I started to really ask questions.
The group I work with are of a certain age. Did they feel disconnected from their ability to feel pleasure. And also did they think that they deserve to feel pleasure at a certain age? And some of the answers that I got back in my focus group were astonishing. Many women felt that, you know, they did not deserve it.
And that, you know, my body's sort of shut down after a certain age. And that's the way it is. And maybe I don't deserve pleasure. So I found that kind of astonishing.
[00:03:07] Dana Frost: There's a level of acceptance.
[00:03:10] Robyn Spens: Yeah.
[00:03:11] Dana Frost: That's really interesting as you were sharing about the use of alcohol as the gateway to pleasure. It made me think about my own experience as a young person in high school and using alcohol as a way to engage with others, whether it was on the dance floor or whatever.
And I think from that very young age where we're developing all of our connections around. As adults. That's really interesting because at least in the U S alcohol is a conduit from a very young age towards pleasure. So I think that's really interesting. It might go way back for many of them.
[00:03:53] Robyn Spens: Yeah, and I think that's right.
I, and I, and you know, in the UK, we, we love alcohol at two Olympic proportions. So, uh, we could talk about those connections being driven from a quite young age. And it's interesting that some of the links that we make in our brain continue throughout our life. And I think. Women in their fifties and the sixties are finding that that connection to alcohol is the sort of conduit, as you said, to being intimate and then exploring greater pleasure.
And we both know that alcohol. Does not do that for, you know, in terms of, from our functional nutrition brains, that alcohol and fat makes you feel good for a very short time. But in fact, it's not enhance the pleasure in the way that we have this ideal that it does. So if we think about giving ourselves permission for pressure and all of the things that go with it, why aren't we doing that?
Is it because of the anxiety and the shame that goes along with how we see our bodies at a certain age? Is that part of the dynamic that stops us from pleasure.
[00:05:11] Dana Frost: That's really interesting. And what did you find out as you spoke to your clients about. What are the conscious and unconscious understandings?
[00:05:21] Robyn Spens: Well, I think the very conscious understanding is there's a lot of shame and guilt around sex and sensuality. And then there becomes this kind of shame and guilt around. Am I able to be in this space and be essential woman at a certain age. What does that look like? What does that mean for me, even in a marriage, you know, a lot of women drink too, to be intimate with their husbands.
And so how have we gotten to the point that we need alcohol to for intimacy? And we're so disconnected from the pleasure in our bodies, that we hold the shame and guilt around. And then one of the things I hear, a lot of my clients who have are approaching menopause or peri menopausal is anxiety around sex.
And that sets has become a chore and that it's kind of boring. It's not pleasurable. And I think a lot of women are missing out on that nourishing part of their five because you know, having a healthy intimacy in your life is an amazing thing to have. And intimacy may look slightly different as we get older, but I think it's a really important aspect of our lives.
It's good for a lot of things.
[00:06:38] Dana Frost: Well, and it releases all of the fueling neuro-transmitters that we need and the neuro-transmitters that allow us to feel connected to others and to ourselves. And there's a physiologically, there's a calming effect on the nervous system. And when we know when we calm the nervous system, that's when we're able to be creative and to.
And that's part of it just is so interesting to think through what happens to us as women, as we age and, you know, thinking about, you know, what do we want to do with the next phase in our life? Because our bodies have changed. There's just no question the body has changed. And so the way that, like, for me, I'll be really honest with everybody.
I had really bad vaginal dryness. Well, if it's painful, It's hard to have pleasure. And so, you know, we need to look at like, what are just some of the physiological aspects that the women's body changes and how can we use different tools and modalities and whatever, if it's hormones, whatever it is, how can we use those things to, I don't want to say correct, but in essence, Eliminate the hurdles to the actual physical pleasure, right?
Because there are pleasure on different levels.
[00:08:05] Robyn Spens: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad that you tapped into this part of our conversation in the sense that for some women, there are physical things which are sort of stand in the way of enjoyment. And so things like anorgasmia, or, you know, baggiest MIS or vaginal dryness, these are all the things which a woman could see, you know, the doctor or.
If it's from an emotional perspective, you know, work with someone like me or psychologist to move that forward. And those are real things that are clued us from engaging in pleasure, but there are things that we can do about those things and we don't have a conversation. And so when something like that happens to us, we think we're the only ones we see shame in this rather than seeing.
Like any other problem that we'd go to a doctor where we go to a psychologist in order to get support, to move ourselves forward. And then we say, okay, well that part of my life is gone. I don't deserve pleasure. And we, we don't give ourself permission for pleasure. That's when we take the permission away from ourselves, when we decide that this is no longer a part of our.
[00:09:24] Dana Frost: Yeah, we re it's a resignation. And I think this is such an important conversation because I know I've struggled with it myself and I've had to pull from different modalities and I will definitely put in the show notes, a product that I have found incredibly beneficial. It's a company called Foria and it's, um, a vaginal CBD insert that has been super effective and I've recommended it to clients.
In the arena of vaginal dryness, but we do know right Robin, that it's never just one thing, right? I mean, as women, we are a matrix of the mind body system, and it's never just the physical, if it's physical, there's also a mental connection and emotional connection. And we arrive at this point in our lives.
Pre-menopausal post-menopausal and it really is the invitation. To look at everything that comes up, not resign ourselves, that this is how it's going to be, but to open ourselves in our heart, to what's coming up for us now at this stage in life. And I love framing it around. Pleasure.
[00:10:36] Robyn Spens: Yeah. What's coming up for us and, you know, intimacy can look like a lot of different things.
You know, it's the closeness, it's the intimacy of conversations. It's the self intimacy, all those things combined to give us pleasure. But when we sort of resign ourselves that this is no longer a part of our life, I think we're missing out on the magnificence of our own sexuality. And let's talk about the benefits of cultivating, you know, emotional intimacy for women, you know, it's strengthens your immune system.
It improves your cognitive function is great for cardiovascular health and sleep. And all of those things come from having a really healthy, good sex. At any age and maybe that looks slightly different as we get older and we age, but it's still possible.
[00:11:38] Dana Frost: It's still possible. And I believe it's essential.
[00:11:43] Robyn Spens: Yeah. Is central. And it may be the most pleasurable sex that you have.
[00:11:48] Dana Frost: Can you say more
[00:11:49] Robyn Spens: about that? Yeah. I think that exploring intimacy from the point of really tapping into your body and what you're feeling. And being able to express at that point is the person really, you know, pushing the pedal down and giving you what you need.
This can be the time where all those things that we used to worry about are kind of move to the side and just being in that inside our bodies and feeling the power of what pleasure really feels like for us. This is a good moment to tap into. And when I coach women and when they start just exploring, what does pleasure actually feel like for me?
What does it look like for me is up a whole new world of how one looks at it. You know, just being aware of feelings in your body, coming from practice, focusing on that sensation, how that sensation makes you feel movement can be so central. Whether you're dancing or just feeling your body getting back into actually feeling, you know, I had a friend tell me talking about pleasure.
And she says, well, I'm just dead. And I said, what do you mean curious, younger woman. She says, I haven't felt pleasure for so long. I don't know how to get back to it. I was saddened by that. And I thought I talked to my friends. I'm not the only one. And so this has been kind of, uh, generated me to talk more about this and to let women know that there are things that we can do to bring us closer to our own pleasure.
[00:13:44] Dana Frost: And what would you say to that friend? I mean, I am 100% certain that we have listeners. Um, this episode, who would say they would raise their hand and say, that's me, how do I get back to experiencing pleasure? Again, I love that you said, began to feel in your body. This is one of the hallmarks of the yoga.
I practice yoga. We feel everything and we don't feel. About what we're feeling. We actually track the sensations. They're not labeled as good or bad, but we just, we stay present with a moment of, with the sensations in the body. So what would you say to the woman who is feeling very lost in terms of experiencing.
[00:14:37] Robyn Spens: You know, I would say, find someone to work with, you know, that is experienced and helping you to reestablish that relationship with your body. And I love what you just said about feeling everything, being present and actually feeling what's going on with your body and feeling where the pleasure is coming from sometime it's in the way, perhaps.
Someone looks at us. Maybe you find pleasure in the conversation, the intimacy of the conversation. Maybe you find pleasure with your partner just being held, and then maybe you find pleasure and just being on your own. And self-pleasuring, there are all ways to reconnect to the pleasure and, you know, look at your body.
Our bodies are beautiful. And when we feel into that, we allow our bodies to become alive. Again. Dancing is a great way.
[00:15:45] Dana Frost: Yeah, I do movement just freestyle movement in the morning, and it's nothing that I used to do when I was younger. It's a fairly recent practice and it's amazing how moving that energy I'm really just present.
I'm just present with myself and noticing like, I just go with whatever it is. You could call it dancing, you can call it whatever you want to call it. It's just freestyle movement. And it's amazing how it just, I feel so enlivened afterwards.
[00:16:15] Robyn Spens: I dance. I said a lot, cause I'm a therapist and you know, I'm in front of the computer.
But I get up and I just go for it, you know, put my headphones on and I have a good old dance and I feel sexy. I feel alive. I feel in touch with my body. And that's what it's all about. Just getting in touch with your body. Also using breath work, you know, using various types of breath, work to really start feeling into your body and remembering what an orgasm feels.
The memory of that, the memory of what that feels like tapping into all of those things that make you feel alive.
[00:16:59] Dana Frost: Well, we know that the mind is a very powerful conduit towards shifting physiology. And so I really want to highlight that you said, remember, this is a practice. Remember. What orgasms felt like if you're not having orgasms or, you know, you have blocks go back and remember that that is such an excellent suggestion, Robin.
[00:17:26] Robyn Spens: Yeah. It's tapping into the power of that. And if you are experience and orgasm, Mia, and that's, you know, a persistent difficulty in achieving orgasm, then, you know, definitely work with someone and I don't care what age you are. Pleasure is available to you. And so just really kind of tapping into the memory of that, you know, thinking about what gave you pleasure and really breathing deeply into that.
I thinking, yeah, I can feel that again and again. And it makes such a difference to all of the things that I mentioned before in terms of having pleasurable and a healthy sex life, it makes for a healthy life, but it also does something in terms of our brain. The brain loves when we feel good, the brain just craves pleasure.
And of course this sort of pleasure is the best. Those dopamine hits are just flying everywhere. You know, we crave that type of pleasure and it has such an impact on our mental health.
[00:18:39] Dana Frost: it is the unique design of the human body. And why should we shut if we are designed for pleasure? And we can say, I mean, I love that you mentioned there are many different avenues for pleasure, and I think it's really important to explore all those avenues.
The woman who trained me in coaching, Dr. Martha Beck has a small book that I find brilliant. It's called the joy died. And she just walks you through. It's pleasure. Joy is pleasure. It's another way to say it could be the pleasure diet identifying. What are the things that you experience on a regular basis?
That bring you pleasure. And how can you pursue those things? So I love that you brought that up.
[00:19:23] Robyn Spens: Well, let's also, you know, if we think about how we can also talk about in relationships, what gives us pleasure and have that space, that language to talk about, perhaps what gives us pleasure? So I always liked to, you know, my mentor use the analogy of does my car have petrol or gas, as you say in it, when you do that, That puts Petro in my tank or, you know, I've got the brakes on because I've had a difficult day or I'm tired.
And then we kind of developed this language around what makes me feel good? What drives me and what I don't like. And being able to express that I think is really important because sometimes we don't express that and which is there. And I think with, they're not enjoying. Participating, because we don't know how to ask for the things that make us feel good.
Yeah. It's
[00:20:22] Dana Frost: really hard for women to ask for whatever they need and want. That's a hurdle in and of itself. Just to, as you said, this permission for pleasure, permission to ask for the things that bring you pleasure. The things that you want it's that can be very hard for women.
[00:20:44] Robyn Spens: Now there's a lot of shame and guilt around asking for pleasure because am I good girl, if I desire, pleasure.
And so it's kind of working through that to know absolutely. You deserve it.
[00:21:04] Dana Frost: Yeah. That's really beautiful. There's a really insightful podcast with Tony Robins and another person. I don't remember her name. I'll try to find it and put it in the show notes. But this woman, she has created sexual archetypes.
I listened to this podcast. It's probably been five years ago. It was really insightful in terms of helping one identify, how is it that you like to receive pleasure and she's attached RQ. One. I mean, I identified mine essential. I need a Roma. I need all my senses ignited. And I don't remember what she called that, but then there was one that was just it's physical.
I just need to do the physical. She had that one. One was, again, I'm not using her language of a sort of like risky, naughty. I need it to feel like it's a little bit risky and I don't remember all of them, but it was really insightful just to think through. Exactly. What, what is my archetype? Because that will inform the best way in essence to experience
[00:22:10] Robyn Spens: pleasure.
Yeah. That's beautiful. And I think that's right. So let's think about it from our libido requires self care and work. So thinking about how you want to receive pleasure and who you are and what makes you feel good is part of that self care work. It's understanding what you need. And it's being able to share that.
And I think that's a big thing for. And if we can just start in that space of understanding what gives us pleasure and being able to communicate that, I think that's a really lovely place to start and a powerful place to start because then we get to tap into ourselves to be really opened and aware of what pleasure is for each and every one of us and the style of it or the archetype.
And then we get to ask. If we desire to do so, I think
[00:23:11] Dana Frost: we can back this conversation if we think about roots because in our functional mindset, we think about roots. There is that root of connection to self, and we have to start with that permission for self-care permission to spend time in a day. Being present with the body's sensations permission to take a quiet time, to think through in terms of what gives me pleasure, permission as we're moving about our day.
And we're engaging with our partners in life. Okay. What about this moment? Is pleasurable or is it not pleasurable? And do I, what I give myself their permission to walk away from this or to reframe or create a different scenario where I don't have to be involved in this because it actually is providing me nothing.
Yeah. But would you agree? It really starts at that very basic place of I'm going to give myself time for myself, time to explore time, to learn, time to connect.
[00:24:18] Robyn Spens: Absolutely. What you've just expressed is exactly where it stars and that's permission to even do that, you know, give yourself permission to be in the place of even doing that.
That's the first permission you want to give?
[00:24:36] Dana Frost: Yes, because I love my mother, but I always said she was in essence, a slave. That sounds like a really harsh word. So I want a different word to the tyranny of the. And I think that's a trap that we easily fall into. You know, it's just, whatever comes my way.
That's going to get the priority. Instead of taking the time to prioritize what really is important
[00:25:04] Robyn Spens: and that busy mind is what leads to buffering it's whatever is the priority. I'm going to let that take me away from. What I'm feeling. So, you know, I'm feeling something, but the busy mind is like, Nope, you're not allowed to feel that you need to do this, this and this and this and this.
And we give very little priority to how we're feeling, because we want to get away from feeling and we give priority to the action. And then we find it's all action. And we don't know how to. And giving ourselves that permission, that anchor, you talked about, you have permission to start feeling again, you have permission to start exploring again.
Hmm.
[00:25:54] Dana Frost: Well, that's just such a beautiful note to wrap up this conversation. You have permission to start exploring again, and that really is the invitation I believe of the next phase in the life of. There are so many different phases, but it's giving yourself the permission to explore. What's true for today.
What do I want for the future? What's going to bring me pleasure in the future. It's just really this way that you're this conversation you're bringing forward, I think is so essential and so beautiful and an invitation for us to just really open ourselves up to possibility instead of shutting ourselves down, you know, we've all met women who are.
Post-menopausal, you know, maybe even several decades into it, we've met those who are just alive and then we've met those who really closed down and you can feel energetically that they're not experiencing. And we're not, as we said the conversation, it's not only about orgasmic intimacy, it's all sorts of pleasure.
So I think this is any central conversation. I'm really thankful that you're bringing it forth to the community. Robyn, thank you so much. And I do have one question. I ask all of my guests and that is what does feeling younger while growing older mean to you?
[00:27:20] Robyn Spens: It means just being able to image, just move, move my.
Movement makes me feel essential and I love to move. And that's one of the important parts for me movement makes me feel alive.
[00:27:37] Dana Frost: Well, I love that. You're the first one who said that, and it's such an important part of feeling younger while growing older, because when we stop moving, our joints get stiff when there's no.
The whole system begins to shut down. And so moving is one of the more important aspects of feeling younger while growing older. And thank you for bringing that forth. You're the first one who
[00:28:00] Robyn Spens: said that. Yeah, because I want to get out of my head and get into my body. And so for me, you know, movement is a really important part of that.
[00:28:11] Dana Frost: Well, Robin, thank you so much for being our guest today on the vital you podcast.
[00:28:17] Robyn Spens: Ah, you're very welcome. It's just thank you for having me and I love talking about this subject and, um, in our that for, to us diving deeper.
[00:28:28] Dana Frost: Yeah, I do too Robyn and I will put in the show notes where our listeners can find you, because I know they're going to want to find you and learn more about your work.
So until next time everybody, I am streaming love from my heart to yours. Thank you for joining us this.
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