#111 Microdosing and Somatics: Release Shame And Restore Pleasure

We explore how the body stores shame and trauma, and how cycle awareness, somatics, and microdosing create a kinder path to healing. Leslie Draffin shares personal stories on PCOS, PMS, herpes stigma, and practical tools that restore safety, desire, and self-trust.

• defining womb mysticism as science plus the sacred
• PMS as feedback and pain relief through small changes
• working with grief and shame after hysterectomy or menopause
• microdosing to soften the default mode network
• somatic practices that start with sensation, not thoughts
• cervical dearmoring as advanced fascia release
• recommended reads for accessible somatic healing
• the SHIFT method: journal, breathe, move
• moving through sexual shame and herpes stigma
• speaking truth when safe and ready

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https://lesliedraffin.myflodesk.com/microguide

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet The Womb Mystic
• 2:40 Breaking Up With Birth Control
• 5:00 Cycle Literacy And Energy Mapping
• 8:55 PCOS Patterns And Personal Tracking
• 12:20 Rethinking PMS And Pain Signals
• 16:40 Beyond Bleeding: Trauma After Hysterectomy
• 21:27 Microdosing As A Gentle Catalyst
• 25:52 Somatics: When Sensations Lead
• 30:42 Cervical Dearmoring And Stored Memory
• 36:22 Books That Make Healing Click

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight From the Source's Mouth podcast where Frank talk about sex and dating. Hello, Tamara here. Welcome to the show. Today's guest is Leslie Drafin. She's a womb mystic and women's somatic microdosing guide, and we'll be talking about her focus on helping people heal trauma stuck in the body. Thanks for joining me, Leslie.

SPEAKER_01: 0:21

Of course. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

Yes, we haven't had a topic on this exactly. And I guess the first question, which I would imagine a lot of people ask, is what exactly is a womb mystic?

SPEAKER_01: 0:33

You know, I define the term womb mystic as someone who helps people heal their womb trauma in both scientific and mystical ways. I see myself doing that for me and for the people that I work with. Also, I think what a womb mystic is, is anyone who understands that the womb is not just an organ for reproduction. It's a space within the body that really holds on to your creative life force energy. And when we can live in alignment with that space and let that be the guru of our life, everything works better. Everything. And so I learned that myself through my own healing journey. And I'm really happy and privileged to be able to share that with others too.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16

Yeah, I was actually just gonna ask you about your own journey since you mentioned it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20

Yeah. So my own journey really started when I came off of birth control and I was in my mid-30s. So backing up slightly, you know, my my story is that I'm adopted and my mom, my mom who adopted me, didn't have a period anymore. She had had several miscarriages that resulted in her having a hysterectomy. And so I wasn't raised around anyone who was bleeding. My father is a preacher, so I was also raised in the church, and so it was even more taboo to talk about this type of thing. And so when I finally decided to come off of hormonal birth control, which I was on from the age of 18 through 33, 34, in the middle of the pandemic, I had to learn everything about the cycle, things I should have been taught in school, but I'm from South Carolina. The reproductive health education is trash. And so I had to do a lot of self-study to figure out what does this mean for me? What is my cycle doing? What does it even mean to live in tune with the cycle? And so I started very much what I call in the masculine way, trying to do everything right, eat the right foods, work out in the right way. I tried hundreds of dollars in supplements and did every cuckoo thing that folks see on the internet. And I say cuckoo because I don't think it's all necessary. Truly, I don't. Um, and what that got me was more stress and more burnout. I was trying to heal by checking off things on a to-do list. And when in reality, I needed to just slow down and understand how to really listen to my body and listen to the voice of my womb, which is what I would call that. And so fortunately, I found some amazing teachers and understood finally that my womb didn't really need me to change what I ate every week and change my workout every week and change my supplements every week, and all of this wild stuff I was trying to do to get my period back because it didn't come back for about nine months after I quit the pill. And in that process, I really also uncovered a lot of shame. Some stories I had like completely forgotten about my first period and about what it felt like to be a woman as a young teenage girl came flooding back to me and really started to show me how much the body does hold on to trauma through stored memories, stored emotions, stored sensations. And so as I walked the path of really connecting to my cycle and changing my life to fit and align with that part of myself, um I noticed a lot of really important changes. I felt like I was able to connect with myself more deeply, connect with my partner more deeply, um, who's now my husband. And yeah, it really just changed a lot of things that I was never taught and allowed me to really, I think, um, bridge the gap that I saw within my feminine energy. I lived very much in the masculine perfectionist, overachiever, hustle culture, climbing the corporate ladder. And this is one of the reasons why I've been able to balance that energy and understand when it's time to push and when it's time to rest.

SPEAKER_00: 4:28

Is that what you meant when you said discovering how your body works, like the feminine and masculine side of it, or and was part of it the actual body of like the cycle were you different and different times of your cycle? Both.

SPEAKER_01: 4:40

For sure, both. You know, I think understanding that second part, the body's cycles, understanding the different phases of the menstrual cycle, understanding what my cycle patterns were, where I was having more challenges, um, where I was having more ease and flow, then sort of mirrored to me, okay, this might be when I can do things that feel more outward, aka more masculine energy-based topics, like being on a podcast or pitching to podcasts, um, marketing for work, creating content, um, and then vice versa, in the spaces that I was having more cyclical problems, how can I back off and really make sure I'm nourishing all parts of me?

SPEAKER_00: 5:22

And is it standard generally for women to have certain parts of the cycle that are definitely good and bad?

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

Such a good question. So, no, actually. And that's one of the things that I really learned is because I have PCOS. And so with PCOS, it's polycystic ovarian syndrome, and that's generally first um identified as irregular cycles. And so I think mine was mostly triggered by being on the pill for so long, and so there is something called post-pill PCOS. But what I know about my own birth mother, she also had PCOS, so it's probably also a hereditary thing in my line. Um, but with PCOS, it's generally typical to have a very long follicular phase. That's the phase right after your period. When most people feel really, really good, that's when energy is rising, when you're seeing estrogen slowly rise up until the ovulation phase where progesterone kicks in. What I noticed is that I was staying in follicular for a long time. And that's masculine outward energy. And I would be so exhausted by the time my ovulation would roll around. I would be irritable, I would be cranky, and it was really interesting to start seeing how that affected my luteal phase. When I got into the luteal phase, which is when most folks get PMS, I was like thriving. I felt so happy. I'm like, okay, now I can do the things that feel really like nesting organization. And it was just an interesting thing to start to track my cycle and watch my unique patterns. Now, so with that all said, yes, there are times in the cycle that folks typically do experience some cyclical issues. And that, again, is where PMS comes from. It's like um usually five to ten days before your bleed. And the more I talk about this on the internet, the more I see how many women really do struggle in that phase. And so for me, it's been really interesting to note the differences in my cycle and the differences in the people that I work with, knowing that the thing here is everyone's unique. And when you know what you're gonna be facing month after month, that's where the power is.

SPEAKER_00: 7:26

Yeah, I was definitely one of those people, PMS, like I would just have the worst cramps ever. Like I would have to take medication early to get prepared for pain.

SPEAKER_01: 7:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:36

Yeah. So tricky. Yeah, for sure. And is there more to say about that, or did we kind of cover that?

SPEAKER_01: 7:43

Sure, we can talk a little bit more about that. I think what's interesting is you know, something I uncovered when I was work with doing this work is that a lot of folks think that PMS is just a given, like just gonna happen for sure, a predetermined, predestined place we're gonna get to once a month. And what I found working with people is when you start to pay attention to the cycle and start to be aware of it and honor it, um, and maybe start to change a few subtle things. Maybe it's eating something slightly different the week before your period. Or one of the most common things I tell folks is not to have cold items after you ovulate. Pain can really be helped pretty naturally in a few cycles. I've seen people's cramps go down at as much as 60% in one month. Um, because I think, and this is more of the mystical side that's where the mystic comes in, I think that PMS is a sign. It's a signal that's showing us where we are not in alignment, both physically with possibly our lifestyle, what we're eating, what we're drinking, what we're doing, but also how we're judging ourselves. And so when things like cramps come up, a few little changes can all uh in the diet can help that. When mood swings come up, when irritability comes up, that is always a sign to me that there isn't enough space in other areas of your life and you're not fully allowing yourself to feel all of those emotions. And that's why right before your period, you're you're so sensitive on the nervous system level. That's why you freak out. That's why you flip off your the the flip off the driver next to you, that's why you're flipping out on your power or your partner. I have done it this week. So it's like, yeah, that to me was so interesting. It's not a pre-gone for uh conclusion that um, a foregone conclusion that you're gonna have PMS, but I think it's a really lovely sign to watch what happens for you in PMS and when you can be aware of that and sort of back off from the triggered reaction and let it be more of a pause and think, what could this show me? That's I think when you can turn the corner and really have a much better period.

SPEAKER_00: 9:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

And do you work with people that have already stopped, like paramonopausal and menopausal? And what that's a huge chunk of people that I work with, actually. So the way that my business has evolved is I began as a menstrual cycle coach. And as I did the work with women, um, oh, so much trauma was coming out. So much stored trauma that maybe they didn't even remember. Um, and even in little the girls I was working with, the young girls, 10, 11, 12 years old, I would see them have these stories of what it meant to be a woman, these stories of whether it was okay to talk about periods or if it was okay to, you know, buy tampons in public. Like even at that tiny young age when the society is, you know, barely had enough time to imprint on them, they were having these negative, more shame-filled thoughts and experiences. And so when that started to happen for me, I knew I needed to expand my own certifications and my own training to really look broadly at trauma and look at somatic-based trauma. So, why and how the body holds on to the stored trauma, and my specific focus being the womb, the pelvic region, the genitals. And so when I started to expand into that type of work, a lot of women came to me who no longer were bleeding, whether it was because they were um post-hysterectomy, whether it was because they had cyclical issues like PCOS or endometriosis or fibroids. And so what I've found with those women is there's still a lot of shame. There's a lot of shame in folks who had hysterectomies, there's a lot of grief, especially if they were not aware of how important and powerful the cycle could be pre-hysterectomy. Also, if they had really problematic periods, um, if they've had intense pain, that's why I work with a lot of endometriosis people, um, if they've had intense issues with fertility, which is a PCOS symptoms often, there's a lot of, yeah, just stored grief and sadness that maybe they've never been able to express and release. And so even without a cycle, even without a womb, you can still begin to let the body speak to you and notice those sensations and let the story stored in the body have its day and have its time to be fully expressed and felt. And so I actually, I would say half the people I work with are those who no longer bleed, and that's the that's just kind of the juice. It's like once you get to this phase of life, you think it's over. You can't access that feminine part of yourself anymore, and absolutely not. That's not at all what I'm seeing. And in fact, I would really say that those folks who are no longer in their bleeding years have the additional, not responsibility per se, but like the additional benefit of now having this wisdom that they've lived for so long that can they can share with the younger generation, especially when they do the work to heal what they have been storing within them.

SPEAKER_00: 12:53

Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. And is this where healing the body and healing the trauma, is that where the psychedelics come in, or is that just a small part of it, or is that a main part of it?

SPEAKER_01: 13:05

You know, I used to say it was a main part of it, and now I'm sort of in this place where psychedelics are an amazing tool, an amazing catalyst to help unravel things within you that have felt stuck. And so I use them alongside somatics, but I don't think they're um, I don't think they're like a hundred percent necessary, but everyone that I work with does choose to microdose, right? That's that's what we do here. But if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oof, drugs bad. Um, what I would just say is that psychedelic medicine in the way that I work with it is at such a tiny dose. You're not hallucinating, tripping high. You're not at risk of having some bad journey, right? Because you're taking such a small amount into your body. But what that's doing when it comes to healing the body is it really allows the mind to quiet the hamster wheel of thoughts that you might be living in, your default mode, where your habits and your negative self-talk and maybe your anxiety and all of the programmed ways that you have gone about your life live. And it's a very rigid place that's hard to access. Psilocybin, which is magic mushrooms, helps that space to quiet down and allows other parts of the brain to light up so that you can create new neural pathways. And I also see it as creating new pathways between the brain and body. The other thing, another reason I think it's so impactful, is because as you find more safety in the present moment, which can be really hard if you've lived in fight-flight freeze, but as you find more safety, as you are allowed to slow down and become interested and excited about every present moment, when you're finding joy and bliss in the teeniest things, which microdosing is phenomenal for, you're able to do work that feels scary and uncomfortable in a more gentle way. And so that's why I think psychedelics are such a phenomenal ally in the healing journey. But again, I don't necessarily think that they're for everybody and those who are have a deep fear or are deeply resistant to doing something that is still highly taboo in our place where where we live. Um, there are other aspects that you can work with too that I think can achieve just as much amazing healing.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

Yeah, and I'm guessing that's where your the somatic part comes in. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to talk more about that?

SPEAKER_01: 15:30

Yeah. So somatics is the way that I define it, um, mind-body healing focused on the sensations that live in the body and understanding that, you know, we walk around thinking that every thought comes from our head. But in reality, at least 80% of the thoughts we finally articulate and think started as sensations in the body. And you can note that anxiety is a really, I think, simple way to um think about that. If you've ever felt anxiety, and I say felt anxiety because anxiety is a deeply somatic experience for a lot of us, racing heart, tight throat, fluttering chest, feeling like you're faint, feeling really hot, just like going back through all my anxiety attacks, you know. So it's a felt sense that then it's like, oh my gosh, I'm also thinking worst-case scenario thoughts, ruminating into catastrophe, that type of thing. And so when we work with the sensations first, for instance, with anxiety, what we can do is start to pinpoint why we're thinking these thoughts, where they started from, and then tend to the sensation and allow it to move out of the body so that some of those underlying reasons for anxiety dissipate. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that we're gonna heal anxiety and you're never gonna feel anxious again. But what I tend to work with, especially with those folks who are anxious, especially with myself, is building up a toolkit to immediately respond to sensations that come up around anxiety and then know what's working for you to help you mitigate that and to express it. So, for example, one thing that for me has really been a key marker of my anxiety is this feeling of like hot flush. Um, just oh, I'll get like red. And so for me, a key somatic practice that helps with my anxiety is immediately getting into a cold shower because I'm cooling the temperature off in the body and allowing the body to come back into stasis. So then I can say, all right, where is this thought? Where's this feeling living in the body? It's in the chest. What that might be showing me is X, Y, and Z. So it kind of just helps to calm and um helps you to come up with what I call the somatic self-care toolbox that will allow you to navigate the feelings coming up.

SPEAKER_00: 18:10

And then how I mean, I I've I've done a little bit of this where you like get meditations, yeah, and is that kind of what you do with it?

SPEAKER_01: 18:19

Or yeah, so it's meditations, but usually, so and I'm a trained meditation teacher, what I look at meditation-wise somatically is more body scan type meditations or um movement style meditation, or instead of thinking of meditation as this clearing the thoughts, clearing the mind, um, allowing your meditation to be more based in what you're feeling in the body, and then bring it up into the mind. Okay, what might this pinch in the back left shoulder might, what that might be showing me, and what that might be sensing to me? Now, when I work with people with psychedelics, one of the key things we do is they ingest their tiny dose and then come to our virtual session, and I do guide them through a visual meditation, a guided imagery meditation, where I'm prompting them for a few moments, and then they are sh they are telling me what it is that they're seeing and sensing. And then we let those sensations and those um images guide us through a very weaving journey into what it is that they might be needing to see or feel or experience. So it's a little bit more than I think what most folks categorize as meditation. Um, I actually don't really call what I do meditating, I I call it um somatic embodiment, but it is a very meditative practice.

SPEAKER_00: 19:47

Yeah, and definitely more active, like you're saying. Yeah, just looking through the or feeling the I in high school I was a diver and we had to like tense certain parts like throughout our body, like take turns tensing in certain areas.

SPEAKER_01: 20:00

Yes, which is another amazing tool for anxiety, muscle relaxing, muscle tensing, and also if you have problems sleeping, it's a great somatic practice for that.

SPEAKER_00: 20:09

Okay, good to know. Is there more to say on this part of it, or I was gonna bring up the go ahead.

SPEAKER_01: 20:17

On the somatic practice part, I think I could share a story about how I knew for certain that I was holding on to somatic memory, if you'd like. Okay. So when I came off of hormonal birth control, the big symptom that I said was really deeply impacting most areas of my life was a complete lack of libido. I was just numb, completely numb down there. And I found it so strange that I I could feel very little in the clitoris or vulva area. And so I began studying with a woman named Rosie Reese, who's out of Australia, and one of the things that she really talked a lot about was something known as cervical dearmoring. Now, this is also really just a trigger point massage that it's both on the outside of the vulva, which if you're unfamiliar with what the vulva is, it's pretty much everything you see on the outside of your genitals, and an internal vaginal massage, which is in the vaginal canal. Now, what this does is it helps to release any stored emotions, any stored memories. And just like if you've ever had a massage and you've left crying, or you have felt, you know, some flood of emotion or anxiety come up while you're getting that body work done, similar things can happen when you're working with cervical dearmoring. Now, I will also caution this store this tale with this was an elite level skill that I probably wasn't ready for, to be completely honest. And I don't teach this to people unless they're in my one-on-one and we're far along in the one-on-one. This is a this is an advanced practice. But, you know, I had set up my room, I had let like turned off all the lights, I had some really lovely candles, I was very much making it a sensual practice, not necessarily a sexual practice with a goal of orgasm whatsoever, but I wanted it to be sensual and soft and safe and quiet. And so with a certain type of glass wand, glass dildo, you basically begin by mapping out the vulva or the yoni region, thinking of it like a clock. So 12, 6, 3, 9. And starting on the outside, you press the ball of the glass dildo onto the space, hold it with a little bit of pressure and breathe, waiting for about a minute or two. And then you move it to three o'clock, wait for a minute or two, move it to six, move it to nine. Then maybe you enter into the vaginal canal just a little bit, half an inch, again, 12, 3, 6, 9, working in that clock light factor to really just bring pressure, breath, and awareness to the space. That was the practice. I get about two inches into my vaginal canal, and I feel a pinch, like pins and needles, in the upper right quadrant of my vagin vaginal canal. And I immediately hear a voice say, You fat bitch. I'm like, what is this? It was an ex-boyfriend that I had had after I got divorced who was a classic narcissist. And I'm like, oh my God, I have not consciously thought of this man in five years. Yet there it was. There was that stored memory. It came with the pinch, it came with that negative, that negative talk. And oh, I just cried, I released it, I continued to put pressure there. And again, I think it was probably at like right at the 12 o'clock time the 12 o'clock part on the clock. As I moved around and then stayed there and moved back around again, I could feel nothing. And so I'm like, okay, that might have been released and processed. But that was the first time I really connected the dots between stored memory and the fascia of the body and how I was living my life. I did feel like a fat bitch sometimes. I have had a long history of eating disorders. This man knew the things to tell me. I was like 120 pounds when I met this man. I was not fat, probably a bitch, but who cares? And so he knew that. And that was speaking to my deepest insecurity. And so that story lived there, stuck in the place that's the most sensitive part of the body, right? When we let a lover in, so much of their energy gets exchanged. And I just found that so fascinating. And so for me, that was such an interesting cue early in this process. It was probably in 2020 when I when I had that experience. Not probably, it's definitely 2020, about this time 2020. And it just solidified to me that so much of what we've been told to do, like talk therapy, take these medications, is just band-aiding over root cause issues that are never dealt with. And so, how can I expect to feel better if I'm not looking at things like what's stored there?

SPEAKER_00: 24:59

Yeah. I assume you're aware of the book, The Body Keeps the Score.

SPEAKER_01: 25:03

Yes, I'm aware of it. I don't recommend it. Um, I don't recommend it for a couple of reasons. He's a little, he's a little problematic, but the book itself is incredibly difficult to read. It's like a textbook for the for the lay person. So I recommend Dr. Peter Levine's Waking the Tiger. That book is so easy to read. And Peter Levine's work is the basis. He was one of the creators of somatic experiencing, which is really what we're talking about here. And his work was a predecessor to The Body Keeps the Score. So Bessel's work, you know, has gained major notoriety. The Body Keeps the Score is such a great catchphrase as well. The book itself, very tricky to go through. The other book that I'm obsessed with is called Body First Healing by Britt Piper. It came out about a month ago, and her oh, her way of describing things is so fascinating. She is a student of Peter Levine's.

unknown: 25:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 25:54

Yeah, I've heard of I've read a different book by Peter Levine. I can't remember now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Awesome. All right. And then I was gonna, we could either go into something else or you can talk about how to reach you and how to work with you first, and then we can see if there's more topics to cover after.

SPEAKER_01: 26:09

Yeah, sure. You can talk, we can do that. So um, the easy way to get in touch with me is through Instagram or TikTok. On Instagram, it's at Leslie Draffin, TikTok, I'm the womb mystic. I have a bunch of free guides that I'd love to give you for show notes. One on the shift method, which is a nine-minute somatic practice I created when my dog died. Um, because he was a big co-regulator for me. This dog is like my soulmate dog. And when he passed away, I was in such a deep state of grief. I knew microdosing was absolutely out of the question because it can make acute sensations like grief, sadness, anxiety, depression a little bit worse. And so I created this practice that's two minutes of journaling, three minutes of breath work, and four minutes of movement to be a really tiny daily anchor for myself to process the emotions I was experiencing through the loss of him. And I've shared it with my clients and with thousands of people on the internet. Um, and it's really surprisingly, although maybe not surprisingly, it is really impactful for those of us with ADHD. Because if you're someone who tries to sit down for a 10-minute guided meditation and your mind wanders immediately, using two minutes to bullet journal, just brain dump that stuff onto the page as you seek out sensations in the body and just notice what's coming up for you. Three minutes of breath work that's super simple. In through the nose, out through the mouth, that's it. And then let your body move in whatever way it wants to once you have come up with those sensations. It just flows really well. And so for me, I've been able to process grief, of course, anger. Anger's a big one, but also it's really nice for just every day when you need a little energy boost because it's simple. Just with the free guide, there's countless playlists that I have curated. That's three songs. The first song you journal, the second song you breathe, the third song you move. And I've had people doing that for like weeks and weeks on end, and just that can be such a lovely way to get out of the head and into the body.

SPEAKER_00: 28:11

Yeah, sounds like it. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Sure. Anything any other things to share about how to reach you, or that's that's I have a podcast called The Light Within.

SPEAKER_01: 28:21

Um, and then I have a website, LeslieDraffin.com.

unknown: 28:25

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:25

Awesome. And then I did want to bring up the I know you talked about sexual shame, and then you also mentioned about the herpes. Do you want to just share about that? Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 28:34

Yeah, so one of the big things that I uncovered in the leaving of birth control was how much my herpes diagnosis had really deeply impacted the way that I was moving in the world. So I got herpes four weeks after losing my virginity. And as a preacher's daughter from the deep south of the United States, that was deeply shameful. I felt so dirty, so unworthy, so disgusting. And I was a freshman in college. This is 2005. We were not talking about that shit back then. And so I just immediately detached from the body. When I was in therapy decades later, I used to, I remember this one time my therapist had me like outline the body like a crime scene and like color in, shade in the different parts of the body. And I was like, Well, my head was bright yellow, everything else was shaded gray, and there was a big red X that I put over the genitals. And she's like, This is incredibly telling. This this proves to me that you completely are disconnected from the body. It was not safe. So instead, what I did in my early 20s is abuse alcohol, abuse Adderall, fall even deeper into my eating disorder, and that was all private, right? Publicly, I am a classic overachiever, a classic perfectionist, and I climb the corporate ladder in the television news industry to eventually become a main anchor, making six figures. And yet, what's so interesting to me is how every move I was making was to prove to people that I was lovable, to prove to people that I was worthy of their of their love, of their respect. And in terms Internally, I felt disgusting. I hated myself. And so after I came off of birth control and I started to do the work with Rosie with the cervical dearmoring, a lot of things came up around how much I was unable to receive pleasure because I felt so disgusting and unworthy of it. And so for me, that's why I asked mushrooms to come into my life. I had heard a woman on a podcast whose name is Bijou Fenny talk about the healing power of mushrooms for sexual shame. And I immediately had her on my show. And then the second we hung up the call, I hired her. I'm like, we've got to do this work. And the first thing that I'll say though is you can ask mushrooms to give you anything, but they're gonna give you what you need, not what you want or what you ask for. And so I asked to please let me be open to receiving pleasure. And they were like, Well, you're not really open to receiving anything. You're so closed off you can't receive anything. So it can't give you pleasure until you learn to just simply receive. And so in 2022, when I began this journey, it was an absolute shit show. Um, it was very tumultuous, uh, deep anxiety, deep PTSD, deep burnout. I left my TV job of 15 career, uh, 15 years. I went through an experience of losing two dogs back to back, deep grief, and still the mushroom sat with me and showed me how much I'd been wearing success as a badge of honor. But really, what it was was this body armor I'd put on to protect me from my brokenness. And they needed to break that apart in order for me to actually understand that it was safe to be vulnerable, that it was safe to ask for help, that it was safe to show up fully as my authentic self, because those who were gonna love me were gonna love me regardless. And those who weren't weren't for me. And I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna lie, it was hard. It was hard. It was lots of snot-filled, teary nights. And that's really how I started to uncover sort of how potent this like trifecta is of the body-based work plus the psychedelic work plus the work with the womb and the cycle.

SPEAKER_00: 32:26

Yeah. Yeah, it does sound very impactful and enlightening. Yeah. Yes. And um, is there anything more to say about it, or do you want to do like kind of a closing comments just to takeaway kind of thing or not for that yet?

SPEAKER_01: 32:41

Well, what I'll say is that, you know, one of the reasons why psychedelics are helpful for shame is because of what we talked about before in the way they work in the brain. So if your default mode network, which is that high-level processing center in the brain where your deeply ingrained beliefs live, if shame lives there and it's lived there for a long time, chances are it's deeply impacting lots of areas of your life, like it was impacting mine. And chances are that the affirmations and talk therapy you're trying to do to get rid of that shame, aren't really working that well. And so why psychedelics help is because it softens that part of the body, part of the brain, and allows the other parts of the brain to come online so that you can start to do work like affirmations or like sensual pleasure work. That's for me what really helped is sensual pleasure work paired with psychedelic medicine to create safety in the body so that my brain started to remember okay, it's safe to feel pleasure. You deserve to feel pleasure, you're worthy of feeling pleasure. As I began those those types of rituals paired with psychedelics, that's for me when it started to, you know, bridge the gap and when when the shame began to go away. The other thing that helped me with my shame was starting to talk about it openly. When I came out of the herpes closet and told everyone on the internet that I have herpes, um, which is a deeply wild way to go about it, and I wouldn't recommend it for everybody, especially if you're not ready. That was deeply healing because for me, that was no longer a wound. I'd been working for two years to make this no longer a wound, but to turn it into a scar. And when it became a scar, I could, I could share it because it wasn't gonna hurt me anymore. And I also was so privileged to have a fabulous support system. I knew my husband wasn't gonna love me any less if I told the whole world I had herpes. Not a lot of people can say that, maybe. And so I wouldn't necessarily say a healing uh you have to talk about this openly to heal it. But for me, that was a part of the story that I that I needed to share. And it's paid off not only my own life, but it's paid off because I needed me when I was 18. I was deeply depressed. I was as I don't want to say I was suicidal, but I had these fantasies of completely just disappearing from my life. I I really tried to plot out. I was like, if I drain my bank account slowly and they won't be able to like know. And if I take my car and just like check out of college and never have to see a single person who knows me ever again, wow, that would be so freeing. Like I had those fantasies. And so I needed me at 18. And that's really the main reason why I felt like it was so necessary to talk about this. And you know how many girls have come into the DMs saying, oh my gosh, this this has happened to me? Countless. Like, damn, that's all it took. And so for me, if you are someone who's also experiencing shame in whatever way shame looks, right, I understand that silence is a survival technique. And so if you're not in a place that feels safe to share about the shame, you should definitely find other ways to cope with it. But if you're in a space where you're finally safe enough to let that shame out of the closet, who knows who're gonna be helping if you speak your truth? And that was for me deeply healing.

SPEAKER_00: 35:54

Yeah. And I mean, it's like 40%, 40 to 50% of the population have it. Oh, yeah, are born with it, especially on their lips. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 36:03

Yeah. I mean, so cold sore, HSV1 is actually what I test positive for. So I likely got it from oral sex, which is a thing that can happen. But in 2005, no one was talking about that. The number of people who have HSV1 is likely three and four. And HSV2, which is genital herpes, um, which is a slightly different strain of the virus, yeah, we're seeing a ton of people and even more maybe out there who are asymptomatic, but still spreading the virus back and forth. And so just because we live in a deeply pure, like purity culture, um, sexual shame-based culture, for me, I went around thinking I was never gonna have good sex. I was always gonna have to have protected sex. I have safe sex because I understand my body now. Um, and yet it's still great sex, right? Like it was just this, oh man, I just remember thinking like I was never gonna have good sex, but good sex is possible for sure. And I needed someone to tell me that.

SPEAKER_00: 37:00

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Do you want to consider that the final thoughts? Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I think that was definitely good stuff. And like I said, once people start talking about it, they're less shame about it. Yeah. All right, well, thank you very much for being on. Lots of great stuff. And if you love this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. And thank you again, Leslie, for being on. Thanks for having me. All right, thanks everyone. Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 37:27

Frank talk! Frank talk sex and dating education.