Chloe Macintosh, founder and CEO of the sexual-wellness education app Kama, describes building a platform that treats pleasure as a modality for wellbeing rather than as pornography or medical risk-prevention. She traces her interest to her first pregnancy nearly twenty years earlier, when the changes in her body made her realize she had never asked basic questions about pleasure, hormones and cycles, and says roughly fifteen years of research followed before she launched the app in 2020. Macintosh argues that sexuality is best understood not as who a person has sex with but as their relationship to their own body, and therefore as an indicator of general wellbeing. She and Pinchbeck, who met at Medicine Festival in England, discuss declining rates of sex, generational differences, and shame as the default frame.
Guest: Chloe Macintosh
In brief
- Macintosh argues that wellness generally begins as problem-solving, moving from physical to mental and now to sexual health, and that sexual wellness should instead become a way of life offering permission rather than remediation.
- She says most people approach sexuality from shame and guilt, confronting emotional blocks, trauma and disconnection from the body rather than curiosity.
- Macintosh states that people are having measurably less sex than in the 1960s and 1970s, across age groups and not only among the young.
- She cites the Singles in America research, run by a major dating platform, for the finding that people over fifty consistently report the most satisfying sex of their lives.
- Macintosh argues that resources for improving one's sexual and relational life are genuinely hard to find, because the field is split between pornography and clinical harm-prevention.
- She says she and her company remain shadowbanned across social platforms, so her name and brand cannot be found by search, which she treats as evidence that cultural progress on the subject is overstated.
Full text
hey everybody uh today I'm here with Khloe Mc Intosh the founder and CEO of Kama the an app k. laab um uh and yeah maybe Chloe I'll let you explain a little bit uh what it is and and uh what you've been exploring okay thanks Daniel um so yeah Kama is a educational platform that uh helps people reconnect with pleasure as a modality for well-being it's the idea that when we experience pleasure we are more connected to our body we can get out of our heads and that actually could be an Avenue for people to uh explore um better connection with themselves and then that can have them a positive knock on effect on our relationship with others I launched uh an application on um both app stores uh early to 2020 and the app has been running since since as a paid product and it's really designed as a library of exploration where whether you know what you're looking for there is a problem you want to solve you want to last longer you want to be more connected during sex you want to learn how to build sexual tension and you don't know how to do that or you don't know how to start your journey uh with bettering your sexual well-being and you can go to the app and start tapping into different types of topics very cool and what was for you the Genesis of this project which L what led you to want to focus on this you say it's kind of a recent thing for you actually well I actually started to get really deeply interested in the field uh of sexuality and intimacy when I got pregnant with my son who's 19 now and it is through the uh transformation of my own body during pregnancy that it became quite clear to me that I had never really asked myself fundamental questions about my body and pleasure and what happens and sexuality and hormones and cycles and it's at that time that I started the research part you know I researched this industry for a very long time before understanding what product could be a point of contact with people because as you know within the sex space there is either a lot of pornography um and we know where to find it and it's a lot of people going towards those uh websites and then we have medical platforms that are there to prevent for things negative things that happen at the back of having sex Etc but there was never really any brands or destination or platform that were destined for you and I to continue to learn and evolve as sexuality it's actually quite difficult to find resources um for improving your sex life and your relational life so it is really maybe 15 years into my research that I started to touch what I think now is really the core uh of the interest which is looking at sexuality not as who we having sex with but looking at sexuality as who we are as individual and how our sexuality our relationship to our body is such an important indicator of our overall well-being and the way that we relate to ourselves and it is in that realization that I felt actually having this resource on an app letting people explore in the privacy of of an application and starting to inform themsel was the product that would help people Bridge you know the from the question to some answers very cool um yeah well I mean for context you and I met at medicine Festival in England with your amazing and our amazing friends VA and Melissa and we had some incredible talks I know that I'm GNA wish that I could remember because you went on some great riffs uh during those talks and that's kind of like inspired me to want to follow up and get to know you better and also have this uh you know this chat and so on uh if you if you remember as we're talking what those particular riffs were remember there were a couple very good ones but let's sort of start with um yeah how do you see you mentioned a little bit like you know this so this is the area of sexual Wellness like how do you see the state of sexual Wellness uh in the world today and I guess there's different cultures societies like you live in AA that's one kind of culture that probably has an attitude or an Ambiance or sexual wellness and there's more like you know generic middle class culture and then working class cultures but yeah what are you seeing in the world and um uh what's what's your what's your view on what what needs to happen you know well I I think First Wellness I think is a very interesting space because Wellness should be what you do every day to prevent bad things to happen it's a way of life is how we change our habits to uh change our reality in some ways and you know we started with physical wellness we realized we're not well physically we actually have to exercise and eat better and then we became not so healthy in the head and then mental Wellness became a thing and so sexual Wellness is also a sign that something isn't really integral you know to how it could be for us as an experience so initially Wellness is actually still trying to solve a problem rather than actually giving you um you know initiating like a way of life where young people would be invited maybe the way you and I haven't in our generation to really explore pleasure their body sexuality with a much more you know with encouraging them and and giving them permission rather than operating from shame and guilt which is often the the tension that we experience you know when we think or explore sexuality we confronted with our limitations our uh emotional blocks the trauma that we may have the lack of connection we may feel with our body the lack of ability that we have to connect and be intimate maybe because of the expansion um and transformation in the way that we use communication through like text for example you know it doesn't really help people connect in real life so I feel that statistically we are having a lot less sex than we have in the past let's say is in the 60s 70s so I'm looking at relatively short span so there is defin yeah that across all age groups I thought that was mainly like younger people or you know yeah yes it is younger people one of the most consistent statistic is that people over 50 are having the best sex of their life usually so that's been consistent there is a really interesting uh body of research uh that's done called singles in America that's done by one of the big dating platform and they often and regularly uh report that yeah old the people actually are quite satisfied with the way that they have sex and you're right the digital you know kind of transformation that has happened since maybe the launch of the i Phone in 2007 is that a lot of the social um curves or the way that we report how things are going from an individual relational way haven't improved greatly you know people are feel more disconnected and struggling to be intimate so on one end there is pornography came as a disruptor uh because it's now the main source of information and education around sex there is also mainstream media that represents in all of the mainstream films a type of sexuality where we get really excited we kiss all our clothes goes off and then we have sex without hands suddenly we penetrating each other and and and there's no touch there is no communication there is no foreplay and then the next morning everyone is happy hopefully we had an orgasm together and that's still kind of what main most films even the smart films represent in terms of sexuality so there is a lot of gaps you know I think that sexuality I feel is one of the few things in our uh in our life that hasn't evolved positively the place of woman has evolved uh there is more openness in the way relationship and ification but the way we having sex hasn't really formed uh away from a very reproductive the majority of the sex that people are having yeah let's talk about um shame a little bit I I heard you on another podcast and you were talking about the um the prevalence of Shame um yeah I mean um why is that I mean and also you're from I guess France supposed to be a more liberated society around around sexuality but is is um you know shame still like you know a major force and yeah why why is it why is it there why is it so hard for us to to deal with well I mean I definitely believe that U institutions uh religions have contributed greatly to separate ourselves it's almost like if you want to be spiritual religious you cannot incorporate your Sexual Energy your sexual desire it's almost been like always uh that you have to cut it off and actually most religious practices do not include the bottom two chakra you you kind of working you know from the heart upwards and so whether that's a good thing or bad thing I do feel that it has created shame around Why Can't This energy be integrated what's wrong about them that they can't be integrated and what's wrong about them is because we have lost the knowledge and the practice around this idea that Sexual Energy isn't just to have sex sexual energy is also life force and it's also Chi and it's also Prana and it's a very powerful force inside us that when mated gives us a lot of you know potential for self-healing for self-actualizing and these experiences are not necessarily conducive to having people oppress and control you so there has been I think a voluntary separation and the shame has been used to make us feel bad about building this connection with our Sexual Energy about questioning our desires about um accepting our fantasies which come as you know from from complex programming from childhood for example so it's not like we can really control our fantasies they are what they are and so the fact that we have shame around pleasure that pleasure is still feels very much an Indulgence you know people think I can allow myself pleasure when I've done everything else it's definitely not something that we prioritize there is still not a single doctor for pleasure all the doctors help you not to have pain but none of them help you to have more pleasure and yet pleasure is a very important part of what the human body can create like if we can have infinite pleasure it surely is something that's good for us so I feel that it's uh the the shame is a narrative that we have inherited from past generations and Pathways of thinking and then it gets reinforced with things like um even between woman there's a lot of Shame you know if a woman behaves a certain way other woman might judge her for being sexual or provocative or using her body in a certain way so we almost project and judge others but usually it's only a reflection of what we don't accept about ourselves M realized uh over this period of like Evolution and research and experimentation how many layers of construct and conditioning and shame I was carrying some of them where from my education as a good Parisian you know young woman and you can't do this and you can't behave like this and a woman does not let herself down uh you have to be always in control of yourself so I think there is definitely still today I was talking to go some girl friends of my son who's 19 and we had a nice User Group here actually sitting just behind me and they were saying to me that they still don't feel invited to masturbate as woman the same way it's very uh common for that conversation to happen to happen amongst boys and that as as a sexual young sexual woman she still feels that there was a lot of judgment and there was a lot of Shame and in in my work actually there is a a series of U of of training that you can take which reconcile you with your and your and actually you go into each archetype and you allow yourself to be all of these facets uh because that's how we can reconcile them and actually stop having the shame have more acceptance and therefore stop judging others and we don't often do that work we carry that Shem often throughout most of our life very cool what's your perspective on uh changing relationship patterns I there seems to be a sense that um the monogamous couple is becoming sort of less uh the focus or or you know it's you know obviously many people are still in monogamous Partnerships but um I mean actually just hung out with a beautiful friend of mine who's in her early 30s and she's in a relationship that she's trying to maybe get out of but she said she doesn't even have any friends all of her women friends are single and um you know all all looking for that that sort of perfect partnership so yeah it feels like we're going through some kind of like awkward difficult transition in relationship pattern where nobody really knows where like the you know the the safe secure Lighthouse is in a way yeah and I I think this is also not just that I think it's uh there's a lot of things that happen es par talks about this you know the way that we look at partners ship has changed we want a lot more from our partners uh but yet we are not I mean we are but for a long time we were not doing that much work on ourselves so my view is always if you want to be in a monogamous relationship and be true to yourself and true to your partner and if you want really that to last the amount of work you're going to have to do on yourself is great you know because you are going to be able you need to be able to pass the different challenges of your own Evolution with in a relationship and how the relationship has to constantly evolve to adapt to you changing is something that often we don't do it's a little bit unconscious in a relationship we agree we're going to be together forever and then we just expect things to work out and then when it doesn't we go and see let's say um a couple therapist or counselor which isn't really much of a solution um when often what's needed is that their couple does not know anymore how to connect um and does not actually know necessarily what happens so I find that with monogamous relationship the question is more that there are many different agreements that you could create with your partner and that it's not one fit all model uh and agreements means that you actually have a conscious conversation and write down what are your needs and what are your desires and does this agreement allow for this to come together you know because if we don't do this consciously we'll end up with well I always wanted to eventually open the relationship but I never really mentioned it or I never wanted kids I mean I have couples who who separate because they realize quite a far way in that actually one of them does not want children for example so at the core of it is we not conscious enough about relationships we we not having the important conscious conversation about how to create a specific relationship that's for you and that works for you and then get into a habit of every year sit down and take a view on that you know is it still valid do I still want to recommit to you rather than expect that because we said yes you know while back this is enough to to create the bond which It Isn't So on one end there is redefining monogamous relationships so that maybe we can have more successful rates amongst those and then as you said there is new models I think the younger generation which is much more fluid with way of thinking and also its way of identifying is rejecting a lot of the stuff that statistically isn't really working and doesn't really fit them and are looking for alternative ways I would say there's two branches one is the open relationship which is a very big bucket because open just means we open to defining what that is uh whether it's monogamish whether it's we bring people into the relationship whether it's we do that and we can also both whether we communicate around this or we don't tell each other there's lots of variations around what that can be and then there is the polyamorous model which often for me is more poly Agony than polyamory because it's very difficult to do this well it requires a very evolved person to be managing multiple relationships uh and to do this with an open heart which is what polyamory is multiple love you have in love feelings with multiple people you engage with your heart open it's not just sleeping around you know so these are challenging models that I think we haven't really yet found that many examples where this works but I have met people that are um very much naturally polyamorous they've always known it they've always wanted to be with multiple people and I talk to them lot because I'm not like this maybe yet or maybe I don't understand or maybe I will never be like that but it's very interesting for me to hear their experience of having this multiple ways that they could be uh involved in loving relationship with multiple people it's something very new uh as as a model for relationship even though it's probably not new historically but I do think that it's relatively new so apart from this open model which again there is not a lot of resources around how to do this well um I find that the other aspect that's changing is identification to types of sexuality I think more and more it's acceptable for you to today want to be with a man and tomorrow with a woman and it doesn't Define who you are it's just a kind of where you at and that I think is a very positive change uh for people to have the the space to explore thems away from you know the the the way that in the past you have to choose what are you are you you know um able to sleep with one person or different people so I think that's one of the changes that's happened that's positive definitely um I guess I had a question for you actually have like 50,000 questions now so we're not going to have time to get to all of them I'm afraid but um yeah I guess I have a sense right now we were at this Festival medicine Festival which felt like there was like 1.3 women to every man there uh and I not what's that that's nice yeah but I also noticed that there were like a few people having like freakouts like one guy climbed up on a t they were always the men and I felt like it was also a no alcohol festival and I felt like um in a way like the men didn't really maybe even know how to deal with sort of rising of the feminine energy I guess there's a little bit of a sense right now which we could look at in different ways that women are kind of like pulling ahead like they're doing more work on themselves and men are you were saying like like if you know men who don't want to date women or don't want to date women can't why aren't they at this Festival like why you know why why you know so it's like um yeah we see like in the US I think 70% of women are now um uh college graduates 70% of college graduates are now women uh and all these like changes are as women equalize economic power uh that's leading to them like men now have more body dysmorphia uh because if a woman has an equal amount of economic power she no longer was looking for a provider she's looking more for like a you know a trophy boyfriend uh but then a lot of men are kind of retracting and becoming kind of like incels in the US and moving back into their par basements and you know you know getting involved with like Trump and and the far right and so on just kind of curious uh what do you see happening in this sense it's more like sociological anthrop what do you think could be done or what would be an approach to kind of healing this it yeah just feels like the Divide between men and women is actually growing and a lot of women and men feeling alone and leading to the you know the lack ofx sex and all this stuff or lack of intimacy you know yeah so at at the core is that we do not have the right narrative around what it means to be a man a woman and how what it means to come together and the idea of masculine and feminine energy and not integrated in most people's mind they don't really know what that means and how to access it and what to do with that so again the individual has to do the work and evolve through uh this inner marriage between their masculine and their feminine before they will be effective in coming into relationship especially as as you say access is much greater than before we have more choice we have more desires we have more expectations we have the world is become you know much more up and so with that people are having children much later actually having sex is no longer the most productive way to reproduce you know a lot of people have to use other manners so sex it's time is about to move into a new era where sex is about actualization it's about revealing more of life to you as you go into this introspective research uh within yourself and so what I've noticed is that yes women are starting to accept and understand because they are given a little bit more permission to do so that their sexuality is not at service of neither reproduction or the pleasure of men which if I simplify for a very long time it has been the case and that there is a a new definition for a lot of women that Sexual Energy is is about them being sexual being and moving that energy inside their body is not anything to do with another person primarily it's it's a singular experience with yourself it's to be in intimacy with life through building layers of connection with your body with your emotion with your pleasure the more you connect the more intimate you are with life when it comes to this kind of Avenue and so I see a few things I see that we do not have coming of age rituals which means that very often a man and generalizing um a man would become a man from a boy but there will be no one really giving them responsibility and accountability for that apart from telling them oh you're 18 now you can drink or drive a car right so the fact that men are not going through rituals of actualization as men is also resulting in a lot of boys in men's body who are still very focused in a relatively imature desire and fantasy world that is about goal oriented sexuality that is focused on penetration where there's a lot of friction and then there is an an ejaculation and that's the programming that's a programming in their masturbation and it's the programming and the sex they having the alternative to this will be initiations you know to Sexual Energy as an internal force and starting to cultivate as a Young Man Sean retention um edging and building um an experience of your Sexual Energy where you're not constantly leaking it out from the bottom but you're holding it up and starting to work with it so that you tolerance for pleasure and sexual desire starts to grow and settle within yourself so that every time you have an arisal thoughts you just want to Wi quickly to porn because it's like an itch that you need to get rid of that energy because it's uncomfortable and you've been told well you can't be aise at work you can't be arise around people you don't know you can't touch you you know so we have a lot of restrictions which is twisting us um to actually understand this will change when we have more capacity for it when we are able to hold more of that meure inside us we will more we will Master ourselves because Sexual Energy you know as you know is is Prana is life force it it has a lot of benefits for us to evolve and grow and mature if we can experience it if we keep the basic approach to Sexual Energy is a sexual need and it's an urge to release then we are not going to evolve because this energy is just not being used and helping us actualize so that's that's one thing for the for the men that I think they need to do the work they need to do men's work they need to do into groups of men where they have rituals and where they can express their emotions where they get to connect with who they are maybe they have um a quest around you know this idea of the man coming of age going on a Vision Quest and taking himself to the edge of himself to be able to own the right to go into the next stage of life and I think for women who are more naturally drawn into the internal experience who often have more of that cyclic because we we have Cycles so we connected very much to the Earth and so there's things that happen to us that maybe are kind of be completely um unseen by men in their evolution I think with women we have this thing happening around us and now that the world is allowing us to be more expressed what we need as spaces for women to be able to be sexually EXP ressed without it being turned into a sexual object and this is what I try to do in my Retreats you know I I told you I do Retreats now where I bring 20 people together and I put people in situation where we're going to be witnessing Sexual Energy in the body of a woman and and and I don't think I think most people in their entire life have never seen what it's like for a woman to be sexually expressed pressed outside of a sexual context it's extremely rare and it's a unique witnessing of sexual energy and as as you also know you know we have two main Center we have Shakti and Shiva Shiva is the max masculine energy come from the crown Shakti is the feminine energy kolini energy comes from the root and that energy if it's not able to rise and express itself it's creating an imbalance in the world for having too much masculine energy simply by expression so it's it's important and when you go to certain places and do you know sexuality Retreat or we go into EA other organization we get to see that we get to be in a sexual space where Sexual Energy is primarily something I experience with myself and I'm allowed to express it without this being understood to be anything else then I'm enjoying my own Sexual Energy and that's something that does not depend on a partner and that's if we understand that Sexual Energy primarily is a is a solo experience of self uh and an opportunity to investigate who we are and and what are our desires and how we uh what turns us on and what are our Kings then it's going to be very hard to then have people come together in Union and be satisfied with what the other par is bringing to the party because if a a lot of women are doing this work now as you say uh these festivals and many places I live in iisa there's a lot of women who are empowering themselves with different practices and starting to really go into this and I think men are struggling to also find the places in organization that offer something that they connect with because not all men want to go and start screaming and doing Primal rituals you know it's not for everyone yeah you can stand up yeah so we need to create you know those spaces my son and I my is 19 and my son and I um are creating a Coming of Age Retreats for 19 to 21 which basically will be tools like embodiment tools how to breathe how to communicate verbally non-verbally sexuality intimacy just like a toolkit of the stuff that of course we should be learning but we're still not learning at all you you've enrolled your son in your cult in other words he wants to do it I guess it's my idea um yeah I've been working with ISTA a bit you mentioned ISTA have I can't remember if you've actually gone through their program no not yet no I you know I think I did scream and stuff during you know Primal do things Ina so I guess I have done some of that yeah I resonate with a lot of what you're saying there I mean that was like something when I wrote my first book about psychedelic Shamanism I went to I guess I was looking for initiation without even knowing what it was because this wasn't even something that my culture had as an idea so I ended up going to gaban and going to the aboga initiation with the Bui and you know visiting the uh you know visiting a indigenous culture in the Amazon in Ecuador the sequa and so on and finally had this like you know breakthrough but um yeah then it was really actually in ISTA uh the first time I did it which about five years ago I really had a profound experience of um they do these sort of exercises around um yeah as a as a man kind of recognizing your inner woman you're inner feminine and vice versa uh and yeah I just realized um you know I think I've always I'm somebody who you know has had a lot of has a lot of feminine energy in a way but I'd suppress that because that would seem like the survival like if I wanted to get what you know qu get what I want and you know so I I sort of ended up embodying a lot of these sort of toxic masculine Tendencies just because that seemed what you had to do you know to get what you wanted to survive you know back in like the 90s in New York and and I sort of had you know it's like a constant process of like peeling away that stuff you mentioned a little bit I'm kind of curious I mean there's different views I guess on the distinctions between masculine and and feminine energy uh you know how would you you know David daa talked about that a lot and and in his his work that seems a little dated now how do you how do how do you see that well first it's the it's the most interesting for me fascinating aspect of the whole conversation it's the one that helps Unite with uh research about Consciousness and quantum physics you know that there is polarity is at the core of everything as we know because without polarity the energy just can't direct itself so it's very important for us to start having a much deeper understanding of what it means polarity you're talking about the medicine Festival I loved it I absolutely loved it I thought it was wonderful but one thing I did mention to you and I noticed is it was neutralized because very often spirituality does not really reconcile with other architect so I said that the goddess needs to reconcile with the we cannot leave her out you know we still have this sassy provoking hor Like aspect of being a woman that when we take that out of the equation the we neutralize both the woman and the man and then the man himself yeah I was GNA say on the other side and the man also has an aspect of being the hunter right like I mean that that's a that's you know a legitimate part of a masculine way yes and and it's important to be aware of our history and to to understand how we are made as you say in terms of like attraction and what drives us because For the Longest Time what drived us uh what was driving us was an urge to reproduce and this is a very particular type of polarity which often is a man's desire uh is hunting nature and a woman being chosen she's not choosing in a way you know and so I think there is um for polarity sake what I find is important is to understand uh almost the metaphysic of of polarity what does that actually mean and this is the idea that and there's some really interesting practical work around archetype that for example will say that if you go into a master energy uh it might naturally put your partner into a maiden energy and that if you go into a more submissive energy it might give a chance for your partner to embrace some of their masculine uh traits so you were talking about toxic masculinity I like you went into toxic masculine traits as a um woman who wanted to have a career uh in architecture and then in technology I felt I had to embrace how to be a man in order to be accepted and be able to function in certain um sectors and ways of life so the toxic masculinity isn't about men it is just something that's happening to a lot of people and also to women you know this excessive masculine aspect so the repairing uh for me that I noticed is to work a lot with couples and trying to explain to them that the same way the space between two particles is what creates the tension between them the intimacy and the quality of the sexual tension will depend on how you treat the space between you and your partner and if you're not intentional with what you're putting in the space you will not create the effect that you're looking for because it is a dance between the two one behavior and one energy will call in another energy for example uh if you are around the fire you know your energy as a woman your energy will move because the fire is creating the polarity for the water and we are water for example so that's why there's a lot of woman Circle and and rituals that happen around fire because it activates the opposite in a sense so it's always thinking about what is the polarity you want to create if you come in um in this specific way with your partner what's your intention like what are you really trying to create in that space if we just rely on attraction that's physical that's like to become not sufficient over time and that's sometimes how attraction in relationship Fades because we are not able to have other types of attractions and polarity is a way to create attraction that is much more energetic so that's not to do with the way you look and you do this at East in a lot of other places they teach you and they and you learn to work with anyone regardless of whether you're attracted to them because if you can create polarity then the attraction will happen naturally you will be able to move energy um even though you don't have physical attraction for those people and because we are so visually stimulated because so much of our referential our stimuli our triggers our visual images and because we spend so much time in our head we are not able to connect from another place so again the embodiment work which is the other facet of intimacy really is how connected are you to your body how can you are you feeling are you sensorial are you essal are you able to feel yourself from another place of thinking about how you feel but really feeling and starting to have practices you know you're talking about sometimes we talk about eye gazing we talk about you know Tantra as a reference all Tantra is doing is trying to help you connect to the energetic polarity that sits within yourself so that it can create an effect on another person that's really what it's trying to work through so I would say polarity is first preparing the body being able to charge yourself with energy if you ejaculate every day it's going to be very hard for you to create polarity you do not have energy inside your body if you have or orgasm that are very quick Peak orgasm that are kind of go high very quickly and then there is a refractory period for example rather than focusing on Pleasure and increasing your capacity for pleasure that's actually what's charging you with energy and then when you retain it and when you hold the charge that's when attraction happens for example if you're in a relationship if you want to create polarity you have to be very clear you have super strong desire for your partner but you're not acting on it that's what's going to make them come to you because they want to be desires but they want to have the time to wake up their own attraction through your resistance so that they can then feel the attraction and then they can go toward what they want which is often what happen in relationship is that one person wants sex more than the other one person is always initiating and the other person has loss of Desire or doesn't feel really uh interested in sex in the same way and then these people are not meeting so there needs to be awareness for the fact that retaining energy is ATT traction you know there's only two ways with energy you can push or you can pull if you are holding energy inside you you pull me towards you if you are pushing against me all I can do is be in this receptive place so always ask yourself am I pushing energy or am I pulling energy and that's attraction that's polarity that you can create that's why it's a physical it's physics a lot of it is really physics you know me I I explain a lot of these complex concepts with simple physics because it helps people understand okay what do I do well you need to treat the space better between you and your partner how intentional you are with touch um are you uh teasing them are you trying to wake them up but you're holding yourself back how you are acting in the space in order to start creating the polarity is an every moment awareness you know you need to be present in order to create it it won't happen otherwise does that make sense to you of course I mean I just have so many different questions my thoughts are like flying off in different directions we only have a little bit of time left I know you got to take your son to University but um I was kind of curious I heard in this other podcast you're talking about what's what's the problem with the uh recent developments in the design of bikinis and underwear oh well I mean I have a lot of Reflections that's why this topic is such a brilliant as you know because you've got into it too a brilliant place to explore our culture and uh and I've realized that uh there is an issue with new and the fact that we have a lot of Shame about the naked body and in purist culture or certain religious culture it's extreme but even in France you know I didn't show my boobs on the beach it was not accepted in my family to do that right so there's still a huge amount of ideas around the body and I just noticed that as we have sexualized our culture uh we have also made the genitals more and more what's connected to sex and I noticed this through the evolution of a swimwear where let's say at least for women we used to have quite big swimsuit that covers a lot of the body and then now it's become extremely small we covering vaguely the nipple and I mean there's like a something in in the butt right it's tiny tiny tiny tiny and I think it's completely with our psyche because we have this obsession with this nipple and the the genitals as the sexual parts of the body which means that one the rest of the body is not considered sexual and very often you you can have an encounter with a man and they'll think that one two and three is the code nipple nipple you know they think that's how you get someone excited for sex so the cultural changes that I noticed in you know bikinis and underwear actually also for me in my field we don't recommend to wear underwear because again it creates that separation uh between genitals and the rest of the body and the other thing that it does it normalizes body types because as soon as you put line on the body it creates a format and a standard for how it should look and it means that we have less acceptance over the diversity of bodies because we want them to fit into those specific shape that help you to De Mark the standard that we want to identify to so there's a lot of blind spots is always the way I think of it when it comes to sexuality H that are very much invisible to a lot of people unless you start looking at it in a great detail so these things just come to my awareness because I just realize uh how obsessed and I see obviously with Instagram where I'm Shadow band and having lots of problem to grow on the platform that we don't take responsibility for those problems you know we are not really looking into this as uh as an issue and then uh socially it does impact us relationally it does impact us it actually changes our Behavior towards each other and it's also changing our psychic you know the fantasy the the turn on are starting to become completely overly focused on a small area of the body which is not sustainable that so much energy your entire rasle is focused on such small parts of the body it's just not a healthy way to think of sexuality yeah you're reminding me a little bit of well as I said I have too many thoughts in too many directions we'll have to have a longer chat but Herbert maruza did you ever hear of him he was like a Frankfurt School philosopher what called AOS and civilization back in the 50s and he thought that the liberation of sexuality would lead to more like polymorphis you know sexuality not so focused on the genilia but more like an open field playfulness and then when the sexual Revolution happened in the 60s and 70s he was very disappointed and he actually coined a term called um well he was he sort of mixed Freud and and marks in interesting ways but uh he he coined a term repressive desublimation um so essentially like um you know Freud wrote about sublimation right that like you know that Civilization required channeling the sex tribe into like building you know factories and Cathedrals and all that stuff were cut off you know it had to that was like why all the shame and all the religion and everything uh and so with the 60s and 70s when industrial civilization had reached a certain level of um affluence and so on you know there was a kind of pulling back on the on the sublimation um and it allowed for this desublimation where sexuality there was the sexual Liberation and so on but maruza felt that instead of that happening in a way that led to like a true kind of revolutionary IAL kind of openness or transformation of social forms like repressive desublimation where like you know people were you know free to have more sexual experience but it was still underneath this kind of repressive kind of like you know authorit some sense model like MTV Spring break or something uh and maybe where it's not really connected to some kind of more deep expression of Life Force energy or um or something like that you know yeah I mean I I see one of the main Trends distortions is actually psychoanalysis I think that we have overly indexed into information coming from the intellect and that we are very much uh valuing in our society um creation that comes from you know an intellectual cerebral place and the somatic experience the somatic healing the somatic therapy uh was rejected by Freud and uh as you know k young and others William R had a very a much more integrated Vision around this idea that um trauma is much more bioenergetic than it was psych psychoanalytic it is an energetic process that happens in the body and there's a lot of evidence and there's a lot of knowledge and there's so much information about this that makes a lot of sense and it is still not really prevailing uh the therapeutic field somatic therapy is just starting to come to our awareness and at scale uh we still do not integrate it uh in the process of uh therapy within the medical field you know the very very few of those somatic therapist are seen it's an illegal practice to do uh sexology body workking which is when you use somatic to actually take the trauma away from let's say the genitals so one of the I think necessary evolution is that we reconcile with the idea that again the body is a unit and it is not just happening in the head that we have different Intelligence Center one of them is the brain another one is the genital another one is what's happening in our um in our guts another one could be the information come the heart there is an Institute called the heart Mass Institute which is really doing amazing research in that field we are not there yet we are still obsessed with this idea that it comes from here and again I believe that this is an evolution of control that if we are in our head we very easy to control we very easy to to create fear uh to create shame and that then guides the our behaviors and it's much easier that way that when you start Landing into your body using the other Center of intelligence you have other types of information that uh that gets revealed to you and it is another form of Awakening it's also another form of Consciousness you know sometimes I worry that a lot of people who make the biggest decision in our worlds are in their head they don't have embodiment as part of their life they don't connect with their heart center they are not actualized sexually and yet they are defining where the world is going I'm not sure that's really helpful so I feel that the the the shift is happening in the medical field now where we know that emotion turns into disease you know so we now have agreed to the fact that if we're not well emotionally and mentally it will will create some knock on effect on our health it can turn into disease and illnesses that's already a big shift uh it wasn't like this you know when I grew up there was no awareness around that so I think that's a positive change the next step is to start working with the body now we know it's where things are getting stuck uh then it's really recover recovering those practices and helping people understand which is what I believe that life is a a practice and it's by changing habits that we change Behavior years and that's how we can transform there is not thinking about it thinking about is not going to get you there uh okay well only have a few more minutes left I know you have to take your kid to school but um what about what's been some of the like one of the one of what's been for you what was one of the most surprising discoveries that went against your Intuition or against maybe what you expected when you when you when you got into this research when you created the app is there something where you were like wow I had no idea that that was uh the situation honestly honestly Daniel I mean I I had my mind blown so many times um because the layers are so deep uh it is actually connected to a lot of uh things and uh I do really believe that it's an evolutionary thing we need to go through I mean biggest realizations my God I mean I had so many the inner marriage of the masculine and feminine being an experience with s you know was one of the bigger pieces um the level of constructs and program that I was under you know that I had to confront and lift in order to get to the next stage so there was just there so many things masturbation uh not to be understood to to be a form of self-care and how do you use it to to be better rather than you know use it in a way that doesn't serve you uh the amount of limitation coming from the industry you know I cannot express myself on platforms today I cannot acquire customers I cannot use words like orgasm and anal and and squiring and sex and I cannot do that without which is the case still I'm shadowban you can't find me on any platforms if you look for my name or the company name so it is deeply rooted still we we think we're making so much progress but then you know we look around and it's not uh it's not really happening quite yet so I think there's still a lot of things for me to discover it's a Journey that never seems to end this one very cool and we obviously put it in the in the captions whatever but if you want to tell people how they find you how they get through the shadow B how they find the app yeah so the best way would be to look on Google for. lab which will then lead you to my Instagram account I do a lot of free education there the post are a proper piece of information and proper practical and you can really learn a lot and then if you're ready uh and I will give your audience 50% off for the yearly subscription to the app so I'm hoping that people will take this as a chance to try it the app is is really the first step if you're curious about any of the things we discussed and you've been looking for a resource to start the journey into okay what does that mean to be sexually more aware then I would say the app is a great place to go and that's Kama K Ma on both the App Store and Google Play excellent and uh how do they get the 50% off or whatever well should I send you the link and you can put it in the post of the podcast absolutely put a we'll probably do a transcript of of the whole thing too okay Chloe so happy to see you again look forward to hanging out thank you to visit visa and get us some chance to hang out in person uh and uh yeah really really great to hear your your thoughts your wisdom today thanks so much for for sharing thanks Daniel love it it
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.