95: Sex + Pleasure with Danielle Savory

Summary

In this episode, I have a conversation with sex and pleasure coach, Danielle Savory. We delve into the common obstacles faced by working moms when it comes to experiencing pleasure and intimacy. Danielle shares her personal journey from neuroscience pre-med to becoming a sex and pleasure coach, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness and self-discovery in navigating challenges. We’re giving insights into breaking free from guilt associated with pleasure, understanding desire, and prioritizing ourselves in various aspects of life. The episode is filled with practical tips, including the transformative power of scheduling sex and embracing pleasure as a personal priority.

Danielle Savory is a master certified coach who helps women experience more turn-on and pleasure in the bedroom and beyond. Over the last decade she has helped thousands of women revitalize their entire well-being and tap into the pinnacle of personal growth through the lens of sexual and sensual pleasure using her expertise in neuropsychology, mindfulness, and somatics.

Recently her podcast "It's My Pleasure" was selected as the #1 Sex & Relationship podcast of 2023 on Mashable. Danielle lives in Portland, OR with her husband, two girls, a pitbull named Bruce and a kitty named Dottie. She loves hiking, house/yard projects, dancing all over the place and cross-stitching as she contemplates ways to dismantle the patriarchy.

Danielle's Links: 
It’s My Pleasure Podcast: https://www.daniellesavory.com/podcast 
Follow Danielle on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepracticeofpleasure/ 
Danielle’s Website: https://www.daniellesavory.com/ 

If this podcast resonates with you, get my Free 5 Minutes Per Day Weight Loss Mini-Course over at: https://www.theunstoppablemombrain.com/email 

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• How to embrace mindfulness in daily activities, such as filling a water bottle or brushing teeth, to cultivate awareness and break free from mental patterns.
• The impact of guilt rooted in societal expectations, encouraging women to shift from shoulds to genuine desires, fostering a sense of agency.
• The importance of prioritizing personal pleasure, challenging the narrative that everything else should take precedence.
• Danielle introduces the concept of responsive desire, emphasizing the need to initiate action before feeling "in the mood," reshaping perspectives on sexual desire.
• Why Danielle advocates for scheduling sex as a powerful tool for self-empowerment and to prioritize their pleasure within the realm of intimate relationships.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

• It’s My Pleasure Podcast: https://www.daniellesavory.com/podcast 
• Follow Danielle on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepracticeofpleasure/ 
• Danielle’s Website: https://www.daniellesavory.com/ 
• Get my Free 5 Minutes Per Day Weight Loss Mini-Course by clicking here.

Full Episode Transcript:

Click here to download the full transcript

• Priyanka: Hey, this is Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. And you're listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast. My conversation with sex and pleasure coach, Danielle Savory. I am thrilled to bring you today's guest. Daniel Savory is a friend and fellow coach who coaches women on sex and pleasure and how to have more of it. For the professional working mom. Who wants to experience more pleasure and wants to make more space for that this year. I really hope that you enjoy this conversation where Daniel's going to share some of the common obstacles that have come up for working moms, why it sometimes feels hard to experience pleasure and be in the moment and some tangible and specific steps that you can take starting today to have more pleasure in your life. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast episode with Danielle. This conversation was seriously so fun, and I really hope you enjoy it. Let's get into it. If you want to reach your ideal weight and create lightness for your body, you need to have simplicity, joy, and strategic decisions infused into your life. I'm a physician turned life and weight loss coach for ambitious working moms. I've lost over 60 pounds without counting points, calories, or crazy exercise plans. Most importantly, I feel calm and light on the scale and in my life. There's some delicious magic when you learn this work and the skills I'm going to be teaching you. Ready? Let's get to it.
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast. I am thrilled to welcome my guest today, Danielle Savory. She is a sex and pleasure coach, and she's the host of the very popular podcast, It's My Pleasure. Danielle, welcome to the podcast. It is so good to have you. Give everybody a little bit of a rundown on who you are and how you came to be a sex and pleasure coach.
  Danielle: Yes. Well, first of all, I'm so excited to have this conversation and be here with you. So thanks for having me. So yeah, I have been in kind of the, I want to say mindfulness, semantics, like teaching and then coaching space for a decade now. And I really started out because of my own journey, as many of us do when we go through a hardship or a challenge and then we find what works for us and we're like, Oh my gosh, this is really what I meant to do. So my background leading up to that was I was neuroscience pre med and wanted to become a brain surgeon. So I was kind of on the track to do that. And reached this point in my life where it just felt like, well, first my body gave up. So I had this complete like chronic pain, health issues, was bedridden for a better part of two years, like not a lot of like explanation. It was right after my husband and I had gotten married and, and it was a really, really dark time. I'm like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life. If everything feels like it was for everybody else and not for me, and now I'm being restricted from doing everything. And this was like young. This was in my twenties when all of my friends were running marathons and like going after their careers. And it was just, I felt like I had no purpose. And even if I figured something out, I was so restricted because of my body. And also during this time, I wanted to have a baby, like I wanted to start our family and that had always been a dream of mine. And I was struggling with fertility. Plus, when you are dealing with chronic pain, you don't want to be touched. You don't want to have intimacy. And that was such a hard. And I want to say hidden and almost shameful thing for me, because I knew it wasn't that I didn't love my husband, but I didn't know how to bridge that gap between us of how can I be intimate in this body that feels like it's my enemy and in this body that I don't want to touch and everything felt like I would just tense up in reaction. And that's kind of what just propelled my journey into I found mindfulness at this time. I dove deep into like the neuroscience behind mindfulness. This is before it was kind of a buzzword everywhere. And so living in Portland, Oregon, it was. approach through a very, you know, crunchy lens and granola lens as Portland tends to be. And with my science background, I wanted the science behind it. So I had to find like teachers elsewhere. I went to a bunch of seminars and trainings with like Rick Hansen and Richie Davis, who were kind of the, the beginning of, you know, mindfulness meets science sort of thing. And I had to find people that spoke my language. And then I just. was like, I know this is it. I want to teach, you know, meditation. I want to teach mindfulness. It helped me so much. And that's when I started noticing the tools that I was using to calm my body and calm my nervous system were also helping me be with my pain. And then by being with my pain, I also noticed there was also a lot of pleasure there. And there was also a lot of pleasure that could be right alongside my pain and working with that to like heal so many of the intimacy issues. And then becoming a coach. It just felt like such a natural thing and a natural transition. And I did become a mom and there was all these challenges then, like how do you keep the spark alive being in this longterm relationship? And now you have kids hanging on you and your body's changed in different ways. And so I always just knew this was such a, an important and part of my relationship and part of my marriage, but also just a part of me as a woman to have like You know, this agency over my sexuality and my pleasure and the rest is history.
  Priyanka: I love that. You know, I think, and also this is the title of your podcast, It's My Pleasure, and I'm just curious what your perspective is on that, around how working moms especially, I think women who are living with multiple hats on, they're moms, they are career people, and they have a lot of work to do. So many responsibilities that they feel the burden and the weight of what happens when it comes to their pleasure.
  Danielle: Yeah. I mean, in so many ways we're doing these responsibilities and really everything is for everybody else. Everything is from this place of giving that pleasure. If we do give ourselves permission to experience pleasure, not sexual pleasure, just pleasure in general. Let's just put it on in that. That arena, it ends up being a guilty pleasure. It ends up being something that we feel bad about. We're like, have to sneak it in or like, Oh, I'm staying up late to like, get a little bit of me time and alone time. And maybe it's Netflix or maybe it's a food that you really delight in or whatever. And then you feel bad about it. You're like, oh, I should have been doing all these other responsibilities. I should have gone to bed at a good time. So I wasn't so exhausted the next day. And so then we get into this. cycle of not only criticizing ourself from having pleasure but withholding any pleasure because we really don't feel like we have the space for it. Everything else takes priority. Everything else needs to get done first. And then if you go to the sexual realm like that, that is so far on the back burner for most women that it still feels like even if there is time for intimacy or when you do find time for intimacy, there can be this. Feeling that I'm giving it for somebody else, you know, I'm giving it to my husband or I'm giving it to my partner. I'm giving it to my spouse. It feels like one more thing. That's for somebody else. A lot of times driven by guilt because I should still be doing this with my partner. I should still be doing this with my partner. still be this turned on woman or I know that it's an important part of a relationship. So it can still be driven by guilt, but it's guilt to get you an action where the other pleasure ends up being guilt because you took the action. And so whatever way we look at it, we're not giving ourselves permission for pleasure. And then once it's had, it's not coming from a place of true desire.
  Priyanka: We should probably talk about this because I see this coming up. with women across the board when it comes to weight loss and how they feel about their bodies, even their desire to lose the weight they want to lose, they sometimes feel guilty at the idea of wanting to lose weight because they think body positivity and I shouldn't, I should accept myself the way I am. And there's guilt there too. So somehow it's like guilt has become this buzzing feeling that's following us a lot, it's like, it's like a backpack we're wearing all the time.
  Danielle: Yeah, all the time.

  Priyanka: I'm just curious, where have you found, in your experience, where does guilt come from? When it gets attached to pleasure and then the second part I think everybody would wanna know is how do you start to drop the guilt so that you can have more pleasure, you can enjoy yourself more in this one body that we have.
  Danielle: Yeah. I mean, I think for regardless of where we're talking about guilt for doing something or guilt to help propel you into action, either way it's coming from a should, you know, this narrative of. We shouldn't be doing things that we're not doing or we should be a type of woman or a type of mom or a type of wife that we're not. And so when we look at like the societal messages that we are being fed, it's like, Oh, I should have all of this under control. I should be, you know, able to. Wear a hundred million plates and still have time to get it on with my husband at the end of the day, right? Like so guilt, you know from this should from this narrative of all the things Whether or not what's like getting blasted at us. It's this internalized thing. You know, it's this thing that we assume Is what it looks like to be a quote unquote, good woman, whatever that means, right? You know, or a well rounded woman or a super woman, however you want to label it. We've picked up these little messages along the way. And so the guilt comes in really in this idealized version we see of ourselves and then we use it against ourselves. I should be working on my marriage. I should take time to rest and self care. There's so much shoulds. Even if the shoulds are. Towards good things, like you said, like with the weight loss, right? It could be a really good thing, but then we always find a should to counteract it.
  Priyanka: Yes. It's so funny when some of my coaching calls, whenever we have the word, whenever the word should comes up, I put a little shit emoji, a little poop emoji on the board. And I, and I always tell my clients, I promise you, we're going to get to this thought in a minute, but I just want you to see. The impact of how we've been so programmed to think in how we should be. I shouldn't be polite. I should not cry or I should not be loud. There's so many shoulds that have started at a really young age that I think it starts to become like a fact. We don't realize that this is part of these invisible rules we have given ourselves. And I think the impact is that it's getting in the way of our best lived experience.
  Danielle: Exactly. Right now. It builds up, like you said, it becomes this belief system, right? Of all these shoulds that the consequence, the other big consequence that I see is it gets us so disconnected from our bodies and so disconnected from our actual real desire. Like we don't even know what desire is. We don't even know what wants is because nothing now is driven by want. Everything becomes driven by should. And so when we look at in the realm of pleasure and sexuality and you compound that with being a mother, there is so many shoulds that our whole body is just inundated in and absorbed them, that we, don't have access to desire. So when so many women are like, I don't have libido anymore. It's like, well, of course you don't. Like you haven't asked yourself, like, what do I want? And I always think I actually just watched the notebook with my girls for the first time, you know, in that scene where it's like, what do you want? What do you want? And she's like, I, it's, I, I don't know. It's not that easy. And it's like, that is the truth. It's not that easy because there is, you know, these things that we really have to break through those shoulds to even give ourselves permission to be like, Hey woman, what do you want? Because that is the unpracticed skill of Um, asking ourselves what we want and knowing what is an actual desire and a want versus another should.
  Priyanka: Right. The other part that, I'm curious what you think about this, the other part that I've noticed comes up is we want to pick the best answer or most. the most right answer. So when I'm thinking about what is it that I really want, sometimes what I'm actually asking is like, what's the best answer? What's the right answer? And I think that also blocks us from really dropping into our bodies and into like our intuitive senses and allowing that to guide us. Because for a lot of professional working moms that kind of impractical or it's like, what is that going to do? Let's be efficient with our time. Yeah. What would you say to that? Why is that skill valuable to be able to answer that?
  Danielle: Well, I think there's so many wonderful impacts of really tapping into your desire and One of the things I always come back to is just the impact it has on our body and it has on our nervous system. Because when you consistently are acting out of a place of should, we wonder why we're in this place of lacking or wanting more or aren't fully satisfied. Because you can't be fully satisfied when everything that you're doing or asking for is coming out of a narrative of what you think you should be asking or pursuing. And when we do that, we don't get to experience true satisfaction. And so, so many women, they even wonder, Oh, well, I feel like I should be happy, look around me, I've checked all the boxes, I've done all the right things. I've, I'm in shape now, I've got the family, I've got the house, I've got the career, I've created the money I want, why am I not happy? And it's because so many of these actions have been done from that surface level or superficial level of the shoulds where when we start to ask ourselves, like, what is it that we truly want? And we listen to that, we get to experience. True presence, and we get to experience more true pleasure, which leads to joy, which leads to satisfaction, which leads to happiness. And when it comes to relationships, we, you know, we all desire these deep emotional connections, but you can't have deep emotional connections. If nobody knows who you really are, if you don't know who you really are, then we're not in this place where we're able to really form that intimacy that we're seeking with other individuals because it's still acting, behaving, thinking, saying, doing from this narrative of what's the best rather than what is it that I really want.
  Priyanka: You know, what's coming to my mind right now is I used to be under this I still did this right now, but definitely my weight loss journey is a rival fallacy around at my heaviest when I weigh a little over 200 pounds. I remember thinking when I lose the weight, then I will feel good about myself. And it turns out, like I lost over 60 pounds and it didn't change how I feel, felt. That's the thing that I've noticed because even though I hit the goal, my brain has immediately leaped to the next thing that I could be doing. And then the next thing and then the next thing. So it turns out I hold pride and satisfaction hostage for my lifetime waiting for the next mile marker. And I think this is the big piece of what you're talking about, being able to stay in the present, versus I think what a lot of high achievers are doing, and I know working moms, we're always leaping forward to the next thing we could be doing.
  Danielle: Even during sex, like, let's call it how it is, right? Oh, here I am actually having sex and you're like thinking about what you need to make for lunch the next day or what didn't get done or is something like that I'm not thinking about or preparing for, like, it's all of it. everywhere. We're always leaping ahead.
  Priyanka: Yeah, that's such a real example. When you think about this tendency, it's almost like a habit of leaping forward to the next thing. How is it that someone can start to unravel that piece where they can drop that so that they can actually be present in the moment?
  Danielle: Yeah. Well, I mean, the studies have come out about how useful and helpful mindfulness is, and I feel like I'm living. Proof of, of that because I have a very hyperactive brain, you know, ADHD, my brain is pinging all over the place. And so having a regular, whether it's a meditation or a certain kind of mindfulness practice, and I know it's like one of those things you hear it and you're like, Oh yeah, one of those again. But what I am doing usually, cause I work mostly with moms and high achieving women that just have so much going on. And it's finding those moments that you can practice without making it an extra practice. So for instance, like, I make sure that I practice mindfulness every time I'm filling my water bottle. I've got, you know, one of the huge water bottles like everybody. And it takes a really long time and I noticed like every time I filled my water bottle, my brain was naturally like, Oh my gosh, this is taking so long, like, let's hurry up. How can I get this going quicker? What's next? So I just make sure that I sit there and I listen to the water going in and I notice if my brain is going on to the next or worried about something I said and I'm just like, no, right here. Listen to the sound. feel your breath, like really present just with the experience of filling my water bottle. So that's like one place. It's like, I know I'm going to be doing that multiple times a day. And I know I'll at least get that in. And the other time I do it is brushing my teeth because I use an electric toothbrush. It takes two minutes or whatever the timer is. And so for those full two minutes. I'm not doing anything else. I'm not thinking about anything else. I'm not planning anything else. I just give myself that two minutes to feel the vibration, to notice the minty ness on my tongue, to be able to experience my teeth being brushed. Now these examples might sound silly, but it's these kind of small habits you can work in where you really start to notice how often your mind does wander. And when we start to notice that habit, then we can start to create a new one and we'll start to notice it in different things like when you're driving or when you're with your kids and they're reading out loud to you and you're thinking about a million other things. They're these small moments where we're like, Oh, there I went again. There my attention went again. Okay, back to this. What are we doing here? How does my body feel next to my kiddo cuddling? What are the words coming out? And so we can just continuously add on to those small habits as we become more aware of what our brain is doing.
  Priyanka: I love that. So I love it because you kind of described mindfulness in little ways because I know a big one for working moms is like thinking they don't have the time. It's not too busy to introduce some of these kind concepts and topics. But what you're saying is it doesn't It doesn't take more time. It just takes moments of attention in the moment you're already in.
  Danielle: Yes. Yes. Or like the first sip of your coffee. Not the whole cup of coffee. Mm hmm. First sip. You know, you feel the warmth on your hands. You smell it. You experience like the anticipation before you have that first hit of coffee. What it feels like going into your mouth. Like just that. It's a few seconds. And when we learn how to train. our brain for that. We can learn that there's so much pleasure to be had in any given moment, we just need to turn our attention towards it.
  Priyanka: I really feel like that is missing. And I often say for working moms, I always call working moms these unique unicorns in that we're living multiple lives. Like, the lives of our career where we have a desire to have massive impact and do, do amazing things. And then the last of raising the tiny humans and wanting to do an amazing job raising tiny humans. And then we kind of, at least in my experience, I used to be the last. So taking care of my career, taking care of my kids, and then I'm somehow getting the crumbs at the end of the day. But what you're saying is you don't need. More time. No. To create intentionality. It's like little moments at a time. What is your thoughts about the crumbs at the end of the day? Giving yourself the end, the last, putting yourself at the, at the bottom of the list versus starting to bump yourself up?
  Danielle: Oh, well, I mean, I'm a huge advocate that it should be you at the very top, right? Everybody else gets the crumbs. Yeah. But I know it's like, that's easier said than done. And this isn't a should, but it's like, again, why would I want to. You know, we really want to come back to these ideas of like, why is this desirable for me? Like, why do I want to, and from so much of not just like my practical studies of working with hundreds and hundreds of women, but also just my own. Research that I've done in all of the literature out there that is for brain optimization and performance like this is actually the key like when we talk about, you know, stress and nervous system, and I like to also think of just the qualities of our brain, you know, like focus, self compassion, love, empathy, the energy, like energy is a big one with mamas.

  Like when we start with us, and especially when we start with prioritizing pleasure, I like the idea of when you aim for pleasure rather than happiness, when you aim for pleasure rather than performance or achievement, you get so like juiced up physiologically mood wise. It's brain wise that all the other stuff actually does become easier. And it's a really hard one at the beginning because every societal message in your brain will be screaming at you to like, this isn't okay. This isn't right. This isn't doing anything different. But time and time again, every time a woman gets through that rough patch and starts. And by doing that and prioritizing her pleasure in multiple arenas, she will see that everything actually gets done and you enjoy your life. Like that cliche of enjoy the process. It's like how? Well, you start by prioritizing pleasure and really looking at your day. your task, the way that you, you know, calendar and do your schedule, the way that you make sure that you're prioritizing time with yourself, time with your partner, fun, play, music, like all of these things, it really does make the rest of it easier.
  Priyanka: Yeah. It's like the, and I think it was like, you get to have your cake and eat it too. But this is something I see also with, with weight loss, when you do prioritize feeling at home in your body and good in your body and you feel taken care of, all of a sudden you want to be connected with your partner. You feel more present with your kids because it's like you've been filling your cup along the way that you're not feeling resentful. What about me? Who's taking care of me? This is another invitation, and it's our job. It's our job to take care of us first, and then every other part of our life starts to get leveled up. What I'm curious about, you said there's pleasure, and then there's the far end when you go to sex. What is the leap? Why is there such a leap, number one, in your experience? And how do we bridge the gap where sex stops being such a taboo topic that I think a lot of women, they want to talk about, but then they hold themselves back from talking about or getting help on?
  Danielle: Yeah, well, I think part of the gap and part of why it seems so far away when we bring in another person, then it's like, wait a minute, like this really feels like that for them. And when we are specifically talking about heterosexual relationships, the way that media has presented it is it's all through the lens of male pleasure. And so when it's been all through the lens of male pleasure, and it's something that they quote unquote, desire so much, then it does be something like something that we are just a part of it. Their experience rather than it being our experience and it's a really hard belief system to break through is because every single thing that we have learned about sexuality in heterosexual relationships is that this we are objects of pleasure. We are the things that are desired, but we are not the vehicles. of experiencing the pleasure and we are not the ones that have the desire. And so switching that takes some, I don't want to say take some time, but that takes some work with doing mindset work, thought work to really get your brain on board that this is actually for me. Scheduling sex is For me, for my benefit, for me to feel good, not just something that's good for the marriage or good for taking care of your partner or anything, but like, this is. for me. And that's why I call my podcast. It's my pleasure because it is really fully owning that this is for you.
  Priyanka: So tell me, so do you recommend scheduling sex? Like, let's get into this topic. Like what, what are your thoughts on this? Absolutely. That people should be doing. Yeah. Okay. Tell us why. Tell us. Yeah. And I need a lot more. Danielle, I have to get, get me what? Tell me all the things when you're like, just in the mood.
  Danielle: Yeah, so many reasons. But number one, what you just said, when we're just in the mood, that is the biggest fallacy that we've been fed is that we just get in the mood, that this is something that just happens to us versus something that we. Create something that we have agency over when you schedule it. You give yourself the opportunity to create the mood that you would want to be in when you're getting it on with your partner. So a lot of women and especially women, you know, there's different seasons in our lives. And what I find for most women that I specifically work with and they tend to be moms, lots of stuff going on. They tend to have what's called responsive desire and responsive desire means that we actually have to be into action before we want it. So typically how we are told that sex should act as you want it and then you start getting it on. But most of the way that our, you know, physio, physiology works here is that We have to start getting into the action before we're like, Oh, this is a good idea. This actually feels good. Like maybe we could keep going, but we don't give ourselves the opportunity. Cause we're like, I'm not in the mood or I'm really tired. And so we get into this mindset and this mental pattern of like. Well, I'm never in the mood and we're sitting around waiting for someone just to wave a wand and spark our loins on fire. And it just doesn't, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't happen like that. No. There's no magical wand. What do you mean? Yes. Where's my libido? Like, like magic here. Right. So it just doesn't work like that. So scheduling, it gives you an opportunity. Number one, to see all of this stuff that's in your brain, that's objecting to it in place. It really allows us to start taking that responsibility. Okay, obviously, if I'm not looking forward to this, then that is saying something. Why? Why am I not looking forward to it? Am I telling myself I'm too tired for it? That it's not for me? That it's such a hassle because I'm gonna have to get up and pee afterwards? Whatever it might be, right? And the other reason that I love it is because you can prepare. You can prepare for it. And the, again, the, the fallacy here is that we have believed that we didn't prepare for it when we were dating and I'm like, yeah, right, you totally did. If you knew you were going to get it on or if there was a possibility, you're probably shaving your legs. You weren't wearing your ratty period underwear on your date. Like, You did take necessary preparations and you anticipated and you got excited about it and excited about the possibility that's all still possible when you schedule it.
  Priyanka: Right. And what I'm hearing you say is when you schedule it, all of a sudden you'll hear all the excuses that you've really been having yeah around why you haven't been.
  Danielle: Yeah. How will I feel afterwards? The other thing here too is why I believe so much in scheduling is, Cause then you can give yourself a buffer. Like I call it a bridge to the bedroom. Being a mom, being a working mom, being busy. We do have all those things going on in your head. And so having a transitionary period between, you know, day mom work life, all of the to do's to I'm getting in my body now and now I'm going to get intimate. Right. So we, we forget that there's. There can be the space in between and we ignore that and so this is like pre foreplay foreplay sort of Situation where you're allowing yourself to land where you're coming home to your body where you're getting Sensual meaning getting in touch with the senses the felt sense of what's going on in your body And when you do that, you'll realize that, you know, the arousal that so many of us can struggle with or how long everything takes and all of that shortens because you're not trying to transition into your body while you're getting it on, right? You have done that. Now you're in your body and now you can invite more pleasure in with your partner because you've already arrived. And so many of us don't give us ourselves a chance to arrive and then we're wondering why we're so distracted or it doesn't feel good or why does it take me so long? Why am I not feeling anything down there anymore? There's all these other things that then become a result of us not landing and coming home to our body to start with.
  Priyanka: The other question that I have on this on this topic is how much of this do you Communicate with your partner. You want to keep it to yourself, but you don't, do you tell your partner? Do you not tell your partner? How much do you share? How much is oversharing? Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?
  Danielle: Well, I don't think there's anything that's oversharing if you are in a committed relationship, but I do think every relationship is different and there can be steps, right? Like if it's like something you never ever talk about, then maybe like give yourself permission at the beginning to get used to the idea on your own. Like every, some couples I know they talk about everything. So they're like, of course I'm going to talk about that. Other people. Not as much, but they can get into talking more about that as they start getting into the action of creating more of the space for it and more of the intimacy for it. I've had some women who just don't tell their partners at all and have had great success. Like they won't even tell them that they're scheduling, but in their head, They're like, Wednesday night, I'm going to initiate or Wednesday night, I'm going to, you know, like say yes. If they like, if they're the ones that initiates every night, I'm going to drop some hints or something, but they're still knowing that it's coming. So they still get all of those benefits of preparing in mind and body in space. For it, you know, other times, you know, I found it was really helpful for me personally to explain to my husband why I, you know, why I wanted to schedule and just what was going on with me. Like this is, you know, our brain is our biggest sex organ and like I'm holding a lot. I know I'm really distracted. You know, I'm dealing with a lot of stress in my body. So this helps me enjoy this. This helps me want you like this helps me and there's, there's nothing between us. It's not that I'm not attracted to you or I don't love you or I don't, whatever, but there's so much else going on. This is why and giving them a little bit of an insight into how our brain works, how our nervous system works, why you don't feel like you've been in the mood as much. is not a blamey thing. It's not like, oh, this is I'm asking you to like relieve me of all of these things. But this is why it might look different than it did when we first started dating and why I would really like to put it on the calendar so that we can look forward to it together and we're making sure it happens.
  Priyanka: I think the other one, because you mentioned this idea of blame, not blame, but almost like assigning the responsibility to your partner for you to be in the mood. I cannot tell you how often, this is not even around pleasure or sex, but this idea that like if my partner just did more and if they were just nicer to me and if they were just, I don't know, if they were just a certain way, then I would be more in the mood. What do you say? To that.
  Danielle: Yeah, well, this is most every yeah, I think they're just like if they just did more chores if they appreciated more if they didn't like grab my ass when I was in the middle of taking like making dinner, whatever. I don't want to say that there's not any truth to it. We all have a layer of truth but to delegate all of responsibility to someone else to get you turned on is very disempowering. If there is something that would allow you to relax a little bit more or would allow you to share the mental load, I'm always an advocate for those things. But at the end of the day, it's your responsibility to access your desire. Your pleasure is your responsibility. Your orgasms are your responsibility because you can have your partner do all of those things. And your nervous system is still out of whack. As women, I think we have had the mental load conversation a lot, the emotional load conversation, having a quality more in the house and fair play. And I'm a huge advocate of all of that. So I don't want to like downplay the experience of like you are carrying everything and it's really hard. That's an important conversation to have, but it shouldn't be just for you to have sex with them. Then that becomes this transactional thing, but it's more like, this is the kind of home we want to be in, or this is the kind of relationship we want to be in. Let's talk about that as a separate thing of like, oh, then I'd be in the mood.
  Priyanka: The sense that I get that happens is when women are not in the mood, when they don't feel like doing it, they're just trying to figure out why. Yeah. Like you're trying to not, not. The goal is not to assign blame, but their brain is trying to figure out, like, why am I not in the mood, why am I never in the mood to get it on with my partner, and they assume that it's because I've overworked, I'm overtired, and that's because, like, let's just follow the thread, it's because I wish my partner did more, I wish my partner could kind of read my mind, I wish my partner just knew the things that I wanted them to do, and if they just did that, then we think we would magically be in the mood, and what you're sharing is, While it's true that potentially if we were less tired and less, you know, stressed or had less things to do, we might have more space, but it's our responsibility to communicate that and make it clear. And I think that that part is, is incredibly empowering. And I also just want for anyone listening, So that it might feel a little disconcerting if you haven't, if you're not used to taking that first step of asking for help or putting something, you know, delegating something, it might feel uncomfortable. And also it could be really a lot of fun to play with.
  Danielle: Definitely could. And there's so many resources out there, you know, like fair play is something that, you know, has a whole card deck or a documentary where you can have these things where it's like sparking conversation around things like. What we do in the house and mental load without you having to know what to say But coming back to your point here of like we have this experience Right of like low libido or no desire or maybe we had a lot before and we do we want to find reason for it We think maybe it's I'm not attracted to my partner or if they did more or if it's because I'm so tired and I'm so Stressed that that's the thing is we don't need to find reason part of it is understanding if you're in a stress cycle If you're holding a lot in your mind, if you're disconnected from your body, you wouldn't even be aware if you were feeling turned on. You actually don't even know that. That's where I feel like the huge thought error is here is, but like we are living so much in the neck up. We're so focused on what's next. We're so getting through our tasks. And I'm sure you see it with your weight loss clients, right? It's like, that's just why you don't even feel your hunger signals, or you even go over when you have to go to the bathroom because we're so disconnected from our felt sense. When I'm taking clients through guided practices, they're like, Oh my God, like, is my vulva always feel like that? And I'm like, yeah, you have 10,000 nerve endings in your clitoris alone. Like there's a lot of sensation. We're just so disconnected. And when we are in a stress cycle. All of the blood is going away from these parts of us. And usually for most working moms, we never get out of the stress cycle. We are in a simmer level and then we go above simmer multiple times a day, but we don't actually get to a regulated part. That's why you're not feeling it. Like, right. Not all these other reasons. Those could be adding to it, but it's really, this is a physiological thing and it's something that you can do something about.
  Priyanka: Yeah, you're not broken. I think that's the piece. If you have ever felt like, I just don't have the libido, I'm just not in the mood, it's and it always seems like there's a reason. What you're sharing with us today is that there is always a step that you can take that will improve your pleasure and it's our job. If we wanted to start. taking actions to go after it. So, Danielle, I feel like we talked about so many things. If there was one specific tangible takeaway that somebody could just start practicing today that they might start to feel a benefit from.
  Danielle: Yeah, I would say scheduling sex is a huge one, you know, because then you're creating the space for it. Those little bits throughout the day to help you get in touch with sensation. That, that's the difference, right? It's like, actual sensual pleasure. So if you're washing your hair, like smell the shampoo, you know, massage your head and slow down just like you do at the salon, you know, like feel your scalp being massaged, you know, feel the warmth on your body. Start getting used to being in the sensual experience that you have throughout the day. So you can just start with just a morning thing. But then when you schedule it, that's going to allow you to get into a place of desire and pleasure quicker because you're like your brain's like, Oh, yeah, I know what it feels like to put lotion on my body. We did this this morning. What do my fingers feel like tonight? Like, where am I noticing pleasure in my body? So you can start to just train your brain. And then when you do, bridge into, you know, more intimate activities, your mind is already there. You're already have landed with your sensuality.
  Priyanka: I love that, Danielle. Thank you so much. And I also just want to share for anyone that's listening, who is sometimes maybe a little bit of a perfectionist, that it's okay if you just practice, that's not going to go from zero to a hundred over and it might listen, it might be very impactful. You might notice math that changes and also it doesn't need to be zero to a hundred. It can just be 1 percent improvements day after day, which I think. I think we all deserve to have that. Yes. Yes. Danielle, can you tell everybody how they can find you? Where they can learn more about everything that you do.
  Danielle: Yeah. Well, speaking of practice, that's why my Instagram is called The Practice of Pleasure because it truly is a practice. So you can find my IG account there, the podcast, as we said, it's called It's My Pleasure. And then my website, daniellesavory.com, that's got courses, coaching programs, if you want to take the work further.
  Priyanka: I will drop all those information in the show notes as well if you missed any of that. And if you do enjoy some part of this episode that really resonated with you, tag Danielle, tag me over on Instagram. Let us know what part of this episode resonated with you and we would love to hear from anyone that enjoyed this episode. Thank you, Danielle, so much for coming on the podcast. I love this conversation. I think it is so important. Bye.
  I hope you loved today's podcast conversation with my friend Danielle. She is truly such a gem. I love talking to her about this topic. And I also know that when you just start putting small little changes into practice with little little moments, just be mindful in small moments of the day and dropping in and connecting with your senses. It can start changing the game with how you experience your, your whole entire life. And if you loved conversations like this, if you want to experience more lightness and calm in your body, you want to start losing weight with more ease, then I highly recommend that you grab my. Free five day mini course. You can get it over at the unstoppable mom, brain. com forward slash email. In this mini course, I'll be sending you five emails, one per day over five days, where I teach you a mini concept that will help you lose the weight. You want to lose with less time. Losing weight does not take more time. It does not take more effort. It is truly just being mindful in little moments. That will change the game for you in how you lose weight this year. So make sure you go and grab that over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/email. And I will meet you in your email inbox. Have an amazing day. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast. It's been an honor spending this time with you and your brilliant brain. If you want more resources or information from the show, head on over to theunstoppablemombrain.com.