Episode 12: Embracing Pleasure and Redefining Sexuality with Dr. Rosalyn Dischiavo
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What does embracing pleasure look like as a woman whether your a woman without kids, a mom, a woman in menopause, a grandmother, etc? In this conversation with Dr. Rosalyn Dischiavo, founder of the Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment and author of The Deep Yes: The Lost Art of True Receiving, she shares her personal and professional journey into sex education and therapy, exploring the profound intersections of sexual health, mental well-being, and personal identity. She dives into her story of overcoming infertility, pursuing a doctoral degree, and the importance of integrating pleasure and desire into our holistic health practices.
We discuss:
The cultural stigmas surrounding sexuality and how they disconnect us from our bodies.
Why sexual health is essential to mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
The often-overlooked connection between receiving and pleasure and how embracing both can lead to healing and growth.
The creation of the Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment and its mission to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and personal empowerment.
Rosalyn’s book The Deep Yes: The Lost Art of True Receiving and the powerful practices it offers for embracing pleasure, nature, and rest without guilt.
Rosalyn reflects on how societal messages, like the Madonna-whore complex and hustle culture, inhibit our ability to truly experience life’s joys like enjoying a sunset or embracing intimacy. She wants us to rethink our relationship with pleasure and provides actionable insights for cultivating deeper connections with themselves and our partners.
This is a conversation that goes beyond sex. It’s about reclaiming wholeness, honoring our bodies, and redefining how we show up in the world.
Links and Resources:
Learn more about Rosalyn Devo and her work at the Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment.
Check out Rosalyn's book, The Deep Yes: The Lost Art of True Receiving, available on Amazon.
Follow us on Instagram @RedefiningUsPodcast for more empowering conversations.
Connect with Dr. Roz:
http://instituteforsexuality.com
IG: @HolisticSexEd https://www.instagram.com/holisticsexed/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/InstituteforSEE
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Yes-Lost-True-Receiving-ebook/dp/B01COCGE74/ref=monarch_sidesheet_image
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Would you like to chat more about this episode's topic? I would love to continue our conversation over on Instagram! @wellmindedcounseling
I wrote a book! Becoming Mommy: Aligning with yourself and finding your voice during pregnancy and motherhood, available at all major retailers . View on Amazon
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Sexual health is not separate from mental health. It's not separate from physical health. It's also not separate from our lives. We often think of it as a health issue when really it's part of who we are. It's part of our identity. But we also forget that this is a piece of us and we put it away in this corner in the bedroom and say, this is where this belongs. And in fact, it doesn't. So I find many people and women in particular who they've done all this work on themselves in every area, but this is the one area that they forget about and they forget that it is attached every other area of our lives and every other area of our healing because it's attached to our body and if we're ashamed or have been shamed even if we don't think we are ashamed we've all been shamed about our body or about sexuality then we are also by definition and by proxy shaming our whole bodies so shaming sex means shaming the whole body shaming the whole body bumps into women's issues women's bodies have not been valued except for sexual objects
Speaker 00
00:60
This is Redefining Us, and I'm your host, Stephanie Contrera, licensed professional counselor. And I'm so glad that you joined us today so we can dive into what it means to be a woman in today's society, figuring out We'll see you next time. And I am so excited about joining the conversation and being in your ears each week. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Redefining Us. I'm your host, Stephanie Contrahera. I'm a licensed professional counselor. And today I have with me Roslyn DeCiavo. And we're going to talk all about sex education and sex therapy. And I'm really excited to dive in. So the first question that I really have for you is, you know, how did you decide this is the path that you wanted to take and dive into sex education and teaching other people about sex therapy and all there is to know about pleasure and desire?
Speaker 01
02:27
Yeah, thank you. I get that question a lot, sometimes just from students who are, you curious, but people who aren't interested in our field also want to know why the heck would you want to do that? It kind of baffles them. So I've always been a health educator my entire career. And I've been a health educator side by side with being a clinician. I was a drug and alcohol counselor for quite a while. Then I was a marriage and family therapist after that, you know, doing individual therapy, all of these things. But I always love to teach and I always love looking at health as a holistic thing. right? Not one narrow aspect of ourselves, not mental health separate from physical health. Sexual health is not separate from mental health. It's not separate from physical health. It's also just not separate from our lives. So we often think of it as a health issue when really it's just part of who we are. It's part of our identities. So that's the sort of standard answer. But the more personal answer is that I went through about 10 years of infertility treatment. And I know you've talked about that some on your podcast as well. And You know, I knew from way back that I always wanted to get a doctoral degree at some point, but I didn't want to get it just for the purpose of a career. I wanted to get it because I wanted to study something deeply, and I didn't want to get the degree before I knew exactly what that was. If you're going to spend years on something and basically write a book on it, you know, you want it to be something you love and that you're passionate about, or at least I do. So going through that, I realized that sex was this big area of life that even though I had always been pretty open about it, I'd always been pretty sex positive. I never really delved into the parts of myself that needed healing in that way. And I never really delved deeply into that until I was in my late 30s, early 40s. And having done that, I realized that this was really, I think, a lost part of a lot of our healing. We go and we do yoga and we exercise and we run marathons or we go back to school. We become mothers or whatever we're going to do with our personal lives, our relational lives. But we also forget that this is a piece of us and we put it away in this corner in the bedroom and say, this is where this belongs. And in fact, it doesn't. And so I find many, many people and women also in particular, who they've done all this work on themselves in every area, but this is the one area that they forget about. And they forget that it is attached to every other area of our lives and every other area of our healing because it's attached to our body. And if we're ashamed or have been shamed, even if we don't think we are ashamed, we've all been shamed about our bodies or about sexuality, then we are also by definition and by proxy shaming our whole bodies. So shaming sex means shaming the whole body. Shaming the whole body bumps into women's issues. Women's bodies have not been shamed. valued except for sexual objects. There's just so many intersections with this. When I went into the whole personal journey that I did, I realized, wow, I want to study this really deeply. I want to get a doctoral degree. When I got into my doctoral program, I recognized that There was a set of people who study sex for academic reasons, and I always call them the plumbers. Like, if you can find the clitoris, everything's fine. You know, if you know how to deal with premature ejaculation, everything is fine, right? And they're very mechanical. And part of the reason for that is because they were reacting against people who were indoctrinated into thinking that sex was a moral issue. So they kind of went the opposite and were like, it's all mechanical and there's no problems that can't be solved that way. And then there were people on the other end of things that were doing all kinds of amazing work with personal growth, but they didn't know a lot of the facts about human sexuality. And so after I finished my doctoral program, I wanted to bring those two things together. I wanted to bring together the people who were interested in personal and spiritual and mental growth and intellectual growth. together with the people who were interested in the academics of it and had really, really good information about human sexuality from a scientific standpoint. So that is a very long answer to your question, but it is how it happened. And so I opened Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment in 2011 to bring those pieces together.
Speaker 00
07:15
And you have, from what I've seen on your website, a broad base of different types of courses that people can take. I stumbled across it because it was the only class that I found on pregnancy and sexuality. I just felt like scouring the internet and there's such a small amount of information out there. So yeah, when I took that course, it was like really appreciative that it was even out there because that's something that I'm really interested in working with people, whether it's about sex during pregnancy or birth traumas that impact your sexual relationship or infertility that impacts your sexual relationship or your relationship with your body. Because you're like, why isn't my body not working? Or all the things that people think about when they think about sex and becoming a mother and that journey.
Speaker 01
08:04
Absolutely. And it's sad, right? It's a sad commentary that you could only find one class on it. But it's also, is it really surprising? Because we have that Madonna whore complex still in our society that as soon as you become a mom, you're no longer a sexual being, which is ridiculous. I mean, we become mothers because of sexuality, but right. So yeah, I can understand that.
Speaker 00
08:27
Yeah. So I guess I'm curious, you wrote this book called The Deep Yes, The Lost Art of True Receiving. I'd love to hear more about that and what drove you to write that book.
Speaker 01
08:40
Thank you. Yeah. So the deep yes, it kind of came out of my practice and my study of tantra, which is an Indian practice. It's a spiritual practice, really. And it's a sister science to Ayurveda and it's a sister science to yoga, but not a lot of people know about it. And in the West, it's treated as an entirely sexual phenomenon that, you know, it's all about sex and it's not. Tantra is no more about sex than yoga is, but you can apply it towards sexuality. And so I was studying that, and what I was realizing is that the discussion of yin and yang, which is often seen as feminine and masculine, I realized that part of the reason why this culture absolutely worships masculine energy, right? And hyper-masculine energy. not just healthy masculine energy, which is all about doing and initiating, but hyper-masculine, right? Because we're a capitalistic society, we have to produce. Everything has to be produced, produced, produced, produced, produced, which means we have to do, do, do, do, do. We're not allowed to just sit and be. We can't just sit and rest. But The feminine energy, or what is considered feminine traditionally, we can argue that. I have no problem with saying, look, let's just call it yin energy. It's not necessarily feminine. It's not necessarily associated with women. But that energy is the energy of taking in. It's the energy of receiving something. And if you think about how taboo it is for people, and particularly women, to say, Oh, thank you for that compliment. You're right, I do look beautiful today. Or thank you for this lovely gift instead of you shouldn't have, right? Or let me enjoy this amazing, delicious food instead of the guilt because this food is too rich and I'm gonna gain weight or it's too sugary or what have you, right? So these are all ways that our culture blocks receiving in general and it worships the idea of giving, right? but is impossible to give without receiving. You're receiving either way, right? And to cut off and create a dichotomy there when really it's a continuum is really unhealthy. So what happens is it then becomes unhealthy for us to accept help. It becomes unhealthy for us to create community. All of the things that go along with not being able to receive. So what I did was I wrote a book about embodied receiving how to receive through the body a compliment, touch, your food, sleep, all of these things that are essential for our well-being and not just our health. And sex, of course, is one chapter. But even how to receive beauty, how to really take in beauty from our environment, how to receive nature, these are not things that we know how to do very well anymore. And some people are great at it, but most of us We have to remind ourselves to do it. So this book is ways to practice receiving. And they're very concrete, but it's not that abstract. I mean, there are abstract parts of it, but it's also like, how do you enjoy your food? How do you enjoy your sleep and not feel guilty for doing something that is good for you to begin with, right? So-
Speaker 00
12:03
Yeah, it's so interesting, the idea that we've created a culture in which even just the idea of simply enjoying nature is so far removed from what we do every day. It's like nature's around us all the time, but we're like, oh, we need to get to work or, oh, we need to go to the bank or, oh, we need to do, again, do, do, do, do, rather than like, oh, wow, look, the leaves are changing. And maybe people are enjoying nature for the purpose of taking a picture and posting it on social media, but maybe not actually sitting and embracing its beauty.
Speaker 01
12:37
Exactly. And even when people are... Let me go take a run in the wilderness. A lot of times there's, okay, now I've got my... My watch, my Apple watch, it's telling me how many steps I've taken or did I make good time. So we can't even enjoy that. There's got to be some goal attached or we feel guilty for just walking around. And I'm lucky I come from a family where enjoyment of nature is basically, I would say, a strong value in the family. So if you're in the middle of a conversation, but some gorgeous bird flies by, you are absolutely expected to say, hey, wait a minute, look at that bird. Let's interrupt what we're doing and stop and look at that bird or that sunset or that mountain or whatever it is you're seeing. And I think that's part of being present is taking in these things. But it's also part of being well.
Speaker 00
13:35
Yeah, it almost sounds like this idea of taking mindfulness a step further, not just noticing, but also appreciating and allowing yourself to experience that appreciation and allowing yourself to experience that moment.
Speaker 01
13:49
Yeah, and it's even more active than that, you know, Stephanie, because if you can imagine yourself energetically taking it in, right? So there's the noticing moment. which I think is one kind of energy. That's almost yang energy where you're just sort of, you're curious and you're going out of yourself and noticing. But if you're seeing this thing, then there's the yang and there's the noticing, but then you're actually going, wow, isn't that incredible? And allowing all the feelings and feeling it in your body. Look at that bird. Look at that sunset. Look at that person. Look at that gorgeous person. Whatever it is that you're doing or Let me taste this apple. Let me really taste it. There's an energetic taking in that goes beyond this idea of mindfulness.
Speaker 00
14:38
Interesting. I think a lot of people would probably really get a lot out of this book as a reminder that life is more about doing, doing, doing. So I think even though we've maybe rephrased like hustle culture and work hard, play hard over the past several years, I think there's still this tendency to be in this doing mindset.
Speaker 01
14:59
Yeah. And of course, that goes into the sexual arena as well. Because I know you wanted me to talk about that. Yeah.
Speaker 00
15:07
Yes. Yeah. So where does sex come into all of us? I know you wrote a chapter specifically about that. So yeah, how does one receive in that space?
Speaker 01
15:19
Yeah. So this starts with the question, do we allow ourselves to feel pleasure? Can we truly take in pleasure? And many people cannot. They literally cannot. They feel guilty or they feel ashamed or they feel that they should be doing something more worthwhile. And so as a sex educator, you know, as a therapist, of course, I did it in session. But now I get to do this in a much larger scale because I'm teaching groups of people and I teach people who teach other people. So there's a ripple. But if we talk about how do we relate to pleasure? and our own pleasure? And how do we begin to own it, begin to cherish it, begin to honor it for the thing, the worthy thing that it is, one of the things that makes life worthwhile? And that's a really important question that a lot of people have never asked themselves.
Speaker 00
16:18
Yeah. Yeah. I guess it goes back to maybe people when talking about sex feel safer talking about it in this more mechanical way rather than this way of going back to pleasure and desire and the foundation of, I'm going to be bold and say what sex is about.
Speaker 01
16:34
Yeah. And I think it's really about both. I mean, that's why Institute for Sex Education and Enlightenment, the idea of those two words together really meant to be Yes, of course we need these pieces about mechanics, right? We do, because if you don't know where your clitoris is or your partner doesn't, you're probably not gonna be having as much pleasure. Likely, doesn't mean absolutely not, but likely you're not gonna be having anywhere near as much pleasure as if you know the mechanics of that, right? Or if you think you should be feeling pleasure in one part of your body and you don't realize that, hey, guess what? Any part of your body can be pleasurable. If it's your right shoulder, that's okay, you know? These are things that we need to know and there's mechanics involved. But yeah, I think the deeper questions about how we allow ourselves to receive these things is also equally important.
Speaker 00
17:24
So what do you think is the biggest thing misunderstood about women and sex and women and pleasure and desire? Wow.
Speaker 01
17:33
Where to start?
Speaker 00
17:34
Big question.
Speaker 01
17:35
Yeah, big. And in some ways, I hate to give the obvious answers, but they really are the obvious answers, which is women are taught that we don't want to have sex. And some don't. And that's fine. But the truth is that women can be highly sexual. They can be as sexual as any other gender out there, right? Or they might not be. And it's very much on a continuum, just like with anyone. The other thing I think that we get caught in is youth culture. So we define... our sexuality by what it was when we were younger or what we think we should be by young people. We have that young rubric and that comes from, unfortunately, from research because research is done largely on college students because they are an available population of people and it's hard to survey larger populations. Luckily, in the last 20 years with the internet, that has changed because now we have access to large bodies of people that we can research where we didn't used to be able to do that before. It would have been extraordinarily expensive. Now it is cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap to do that, right? So yeah, so there's the, we don't want it or we're not supposed to want it. And both of those are problems. But the other one is that somehow sex is this one thing, right? It's intercourse. Maybe it's intercourse, heterosexual intercourse. That orgasm is one thing, that it should feel like one thing, as opposed to there being many, many different kinds of orgasm that any one particular person can feel, right? And I do think that women's roles really get in the way. I think that this piece about when you become a mother, you're supposed to be more proper. When you become a grandma, you're supposed to be more proper, right? Well, what about women who never become mothers? I'm one of those. Does that mean I'm endlessly sexual? Does it mean I'm not sexual because I was not a mom? What does that even mean in our culture? What about mothers who want to be sexual? They want to continue their sex lives. What about how sex changes when people become mothers or grandmothers or hit menopause or have a breast cancer surgery and recover from that? What happens then? So yeah, I think there are all kinds of questions that we have. But I think shedding... societal norms is a really big ask because women are also socialized to be more cooperative and to go with the flow and try and help everybody get along. And as such, we then tend to want to go along with the flow more ourselves. And so it's very hard for us to buck these ideas without feeling somehow guilty or somehow like a freak or an outsider.
Speaker 00
20:25
That's interesting. I think I've seen a lot of people feeling like they want to speak up or they want to do something different, but then feel like they need to be quiet in order to get along. That seems like a very common dynamic that I see with a lot of my clients that I work with. And so trying to figure out what's the balance of like, maybe not pushing yourself to the point where you feel like an outsider and no one wants to be in relation with you, but also trying still advocating for yourself. And I think that's a, yeah, a tightrope that a lot of women find themselves in, whether it's in sexual relationships or just in the world.
Speaker 01
21:05
Yeah. And I think this is why some of the shows that we love the most, right? It's really, really popular shows. I go back a ways and I think about the Golden Girls. and how people love this show. And they love Betty White because she was so, quote, outrageous, right? Because she was bucking those norms and they were bucking those norms. And now we have Grace and Frankie, which is an extremely popular show about two older women. And they're continuing to talk about sex and orgasms and vibrators and all these things. And they're starting their own vibrator business and their own lube business and all these things, right? And so I think part of the reason we like these shows is because we see... hey, here's someone who's doing this. And it's unfortunate, but some people have to enjoy that vicariously. They can't own it for themselves. So it's both a great way to model something and also a little bit telling as far as what we're attracted to, but maybe feel like we can't quite get to ourselves.
Speaker 00
Yeah.
Unknown
Yeah.
Speaker 00
22:09
I'm even thinking of Sex and the City, right? Everybody loved that show and loved living through those women. But I'm curious how much that was put into practice. If there was any study that followed, okay, people who watched the show maybe felt more empowered to speak about sex or to be more sexual and show up in that way in the relationships differently. But yeah, I think that would be an interesting research study to see. I wanted to... transition a little bit to talk about like, where do you think sex education and speaking about sex in culture and in society is headed? And are we hopefully creating a culture and a movement where sex is more positive and women feel more empowered in their bodies?
Speaker 01
22:59
Yeah, that's the million dollar question right now in 2024, in December of 2024, right after an election, right? That is the million dollar question. I don't know. And the reason I don't know is because I'm not really sure where we're going. I can see disaster could strike. I can see many ways in which it already has. Some of the rights that have been taken away from women in certain areas of this country, even when there's absolutely an unambiguous scenario around it where perhaps there's absolutely no way that A child's life could be saved, for instance. That is still not okay to save the mother, right? I mean, some of these things are just really frightening. Having said that, I would say that we're both in great danger right now of losing many of the rights that we have fought for so hard. And also, we have never seen... a world with an internet before when these things have happened in our country, in this country, maybe other countries have. But in this country, we haven't seen this kind of revolution where we still have a digital connection to other people and other women in particular. I don't know if it's a lot harder to lose your rights as a woman, whether it be to healthcare or whether it be to voting. in a culture where we can still talk to each other, or if in fact it might be even easier for someone to take away those rights because all they have to do is control the digital world, which unfortunately there are at least a couple of individuals who probably are very close to being able to do that right now. How many satellites has Elon Musk sent up? I mean, many, many hundreds at this point. He has more satellites in orbit than anyone else. What does that mean? Does that mean he could cut off digital communication at some point? Does that mean he could control who gets to talk to who and about what? I don't know. I know that sounds paranoid, but the truth is I don't know. So I'm not sure if it's actually easier for women to lose their rights now or not as easy. And I am concerned that women are going to lose rights. I'm concerned that People of color and BIPOC people are going to lose their rights. I'm concerned that, you know, LGBTQ people are going to lose their rights. I think it could very easily happen. And women are always sort of the first place where that goes, you know, or one of the first places where that goes. Let's take away women's rights. And that is already happening. So I don't know. Sex education is not just about sex. It's about the empowerment of the individual to say, this is my body. I may do whatever I want with it as long as I'm an adult and I'm consenting with another adult. So I wish I knew the answer to that question.
Speaker 00
26:05
Which is why I think it's important to keep having these conversations and educating people and continuing to try to do our best to connect in these ways. Yeah, because who knows what could happen? And again, not to be paranoid, but anything could happen. So I
Speaker 01
26:22
think it's
Speaker 00
26:22
important to do what we can every day to... continue moving this needle forward rather than backwards.
Speaker 01
26:31
Yeah. And I like to remind myself that anything can happen and anything can happen.
Speaker 00
26:39
That's true. Well, where can people find you if they want to connect with you, read your book or follow your educational classes that you provide? Oh,
Speaker 01
26:50
thank you. So the book is The Deep Yes, The Lost Art of True Receiving, and it's on Amazon. You can get Kindle version or you can get paperback. I do want to make an audio book, but I haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I can get some of your advice about where to start, Stephanie. And the other one is instituteforsexuality.com. So Institute for Sex Education and Enlightenment, which is largely for professional development, but which absolutely any adult human could watch are classes and get a lot out of them. And I would recommend that if it's not our program, at least try and find a credible, somewhere credible to get your information because there's a lot of sex education out there on the web right now. And it's a lot of it is bad information. So even if you don't go to our website, which is instituteforsexuality.com, please find a credible place for your, for your education.
Speaker 00
Yeah,
Speaker 01
definitely.
Speaker 00
27:43
Well, we're going to be sharing all that information in our show notes and any links that Dr. Roslyn would like to share with you. And thank you so much for being on today.
Speaker 01
27:52
Absolutely. Thank you for asking me.
Speaker 00
27:57
Thank you all for listening. I hope you found some inspiration, validation, had some questions answered, or just enjoyed listening to this week's episode. I encourage you to check out our website, wellmindedcounseling.com backslash redefininguspod for any resources that were mentioned in today's episode. Check out my new program on our website as well for first-time moms, where you can join other women entering into motherhood. The program offers three phases. Phase one, exploring where you are on your journey towards motherhood and connecting with this new identity. Phase two, preparing your mind, body, and spirit for giving birth. And phase three, reconnecting to yourself while caring for your baby. I truly appreciate if you leave a review and rating so other women can find us as well. Thank you all for listening again and keep on connecting with yourself and with others in the community and redefining us.