3. Reclaiming Your Sexual Liberation & Self-love with Katrin

In this episode, we dive into the important topic of vaginismus - a condition involving the involuntary contraction of the vagina making penetration painful or impossible - and how it can impact our self-esteem, sexual liberation and self-love.

Katrin shares how she navigated her personal experience with vaginismus, the societal pressures and insecurities that shaped her sexual identity, and how she overcame these big challenges to now feel safe and sexually liberated!

If you are ready to shake off sexual shame and step into your full sexual experience - this episode is for you!

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About Katrin
As a sexual liberation mentor who has overcome painful sex and continues to support women in releasing the protective body response of vaginismus, Katrin has a deep understanding of how survival strategies of the mind and subtle protective mechanisms of the body can sneakily keep you from feeling like the incredible woman you are! She is here to love you as you re-discover your unique signature of play, pleasure and purpose. She gently calls you into your zone of genius and lifts you up as you bravely build your legacy from that place of aliveness and erotic overflow.

• Follow her at both @katrin.with.love and @vaginismus.sisters
• Website

About Andi

Hello! I'm Andi and I'm a Voice & Expression Coach, Medium, and Actress, and I love all things spirituality, expansion and being brave. I have been on a really long journey with my body. If my journey has taught me anything it’s that as humans we are incredibly powerful self-healers. When we allow ourselves to be brave and share our stories, we embody our most transformative ally – our beautiful, empowered strength. I am here to help you reclaim your whole creative, connected and confident self so that you can become EVERYTHING that you are here in this life to be. xx

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• Be a guest on the podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Body Diaries, the podcast that shares our real, raw and unfiltered body stories so that we can finally shake off shame, reconnect with our whole selves and ignite everything that our bodies are capable of.

 I'm your host, Andi Matthies and each week we connect with some of the world's most inspiring body-led humans and explore the energetics that changed their lives. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, or you are craving to finally unlock your whole experience, this podcast is for you.

Andi: I am really excited to introduce our guest today. Katrin with love. Katrin is a leading Sexual Liberation Mentor who overcame her experiences with painful sex and vaginismus to now support women on their own journeys of self discovery, pleasure, and sexual freedom. 

In this episode, we dive head first into her journey, 

 and she shares her wisdom in overcoming vaginismus and how to create safety and curiosity in the body.

 I'm not gonna lie, navigating my own journey through sex when I was younger was both physically and emotionally painful, with so much shame. The knowledge that Katrin shares today would have been so powerful to have had when I was going through that.

Let's dive in. 

Welcome to Body Diaries Katrin. I'm so excited that you're here today.

Katrin: Thank you so much Andi for having me. I'm looking forward to our chat.

Andi: Yeah, me too. We are going to be diving into the world of sexual [00:01:00] liberation today,and how to finally claim this for ourselves. I guess I want to start our conversation by asking you, what is sexual liberation?

Katrin: That's a wonderful question. And I feel like any sort of label that we put on as a life experience can mean so many different things depending on what has brought us to this space. And so for me personally, when it comes to liberation, that is so very much synonymous with an unshackling of sorts, a movement from a suppression to a sense of expansiveness and otherwise freedom that we get to claim for ourselves. And therefore what is freedom? Well, Freedom feels like conscious choice. It feels like spaciousness. And it feels like being most of the designer of your life. Not feeling like you are limited in [00:02:00] any way by anyone else's power. conditioning or expectation. You are free and sovereign.

And when it comes to our sexuality, sex uh, the way that I understand it is actually just our aliveness. It's our erotic energy. It's our life force energy. And so sexual liberation is really feeling free. To express our aliveness in any way that feels authentic and also to do that through our bodies, where, of course, the body is such a pivotal aspect to what we're talking about today.

Andi: Yeah, absolutely. I love that you described that as an unshackling, particularly as women. I know that, that, that shackles on that contraction feeling can actually start really early on in our lives. And so this notion of being able to express and expand into that is really exciting and really attractive, but also a little bit intimidating.

Katrin: Absolutely. You're right. And I feel like that's why we have a hard time often [00:03:00] stepping into that journey of claiming our freedom is because the intimidation factor is real and we don't quite know what's on the other side, right? Because there is this concept of a normalization of our current circumstances that just feels, this is my life. This is my life by default. This is how other people live life. This must just be what we're quote unquote supposed to be experiencing. So, Stepping outside of that feels like a bit of a death. A death of current self and therefore an incredibly scary experience to go through.

Andi: Yeah, I completely relate to that. And it's interesting how, when we think about the term sexual liberation and the way that you've described it is quite expansive, but also it has such a stigma attached to it. We've paired it here with self love and this notion of feminine energy and expansion, yet our [00:04:00] minds and society with its labels, liberation, particularly sexual liberation, can be considered to be quite a negative or unattractive trait. 

Katrin: Yeah, it's a beautiful question. And as you were speaking there, what came to me to share is also the difference between how this label can be perceived between the genders. 

What I remember is an example of this difference between genders and how we perceive sexual liberation between men and women is just some of the gossip that I had heard back in high school, for example about the trophy that guys in our classrooms could hold up almost as the total number of women or people that they've slept with or hooked up with or etc.

And by all the bros that's applauded and seen as this achievement, accomplishment, an overtaking, undertaking of some sort. When it comes to the other side of the spectrum, often the word slut [00:05:00] is associated with that kind of thing. And what we experienced therefore when it comes to our relationship to our sexual energy is that very same contraction that you mentioned, because we learn from a very young age, whether that was a first experience or not.

There are so many other things that may have happened before that, but we experience a shunning of what is otherwise our life force, our aliveness, our desire, our arousal as well. And that's very unfortunate. Because we shut down a really powerful aspect of our sexuality and our aliveness. So to answer your question more specifically, as well as the relationship of sexual liberation to self love, I feel like there is that key ingredient there of acceptance and encouragement of whatever feels authentic on the inside to also be [00:06:00] expressed in a healthy way and to be loved by self to be explored to be gotten curious about. That's how we can really land the self love and acceptance in relation to our sexual energy.

Andi: I love that. And it's really interesting when you mentioned the word curiosity, I'm really interested in, you know, if somebody is now starting to want to feel into that curiosity, what does that look like?

Katrin: In my experience, what it looks like is actually going one layer deeper and to a more foundational level underneath that curiosity. In my experience, curiosity leads to pleasure. But in order for us to be able to access curiosity again, we really need to land this key word. That we keep coming back to when it comes to this journey of freedom, and that is safety. It is only on top of safety that curiosity can start to [00:07:00] bubble up and show up in all the beautiful ways that it does. It's that playfulness that gets to be created only when we have a sense of safety to feel. To feel sexual energy, yes, but also to feel any emotion on the spectrum of emotion. 

There's a study that was done in, in schools that if the backyard the playground of that school was actually opened up. Just non-defined through a fence or a boundary. What we would see is kids playing in these little clusters of groups kind of close to the school building. As soon as a fence was put in, they extended to all corners, nooks and crannies of that backyard to be. By the fence, knowing that they're safe by this container that holds them, that holds their being.

And in my experience, [00:08:00] to land safety within ourselves, we also have to create this cocoon almost, this space around ourselves in which we at first feel safe to express. And that might be a pretty small one to start. But it's going to continue expanding as we give ourselves the opportunity to really hold ourselves in intensity, in joy, in sadness and anger, all aspects of emotional expression

Andi: That's a really interesting study that you've just raised. And as you were speaking, I was kind of, you know, thinking about different parts of my life where those safety boundaries have enabled me to explore further. And it is so true. This brings me then to ask you about your journey to find this safety where did that start for you?

Katrin: That started at 18 years old. I was in my ex boyfriends at the time [00:09:00] room while he was living in his parents. I remember clearly we had already decided that we want to take the next step and experiencing penetrative sex together, we had already had other forms of sex touching, kissing, genital touch, fingering on the outside, and all of that seemed incredible. There was so much arousal built up and pleasure and desire. And on a conscious level, safety on a conscious level, trust. Definitely love being shared and this openness and vulnerability. And what happened is that in the attempt of allowing this beautiful human inside of my body, my body said, no, what that looked like was the desire to let him in, but my pelvic floor muscles literally bracing and contracting and anticipation of that penetration, putting up a wall, the wall of China, [00:10:00] right between my legs and on the first attempt of PIV sex, penis and vagina sex, it was just absolutely impossible for any penetration to happen. I was incredibly confused. Why is this happening? I want you to be inside. Right? There were all of these, it was a roller coaster of emotion, but at the same time with that first attempt, there was also this sense of, all right well, the first time is, as we hear in our society, it's supposed to hurt, or it's not supposed to go as well as we thought.

So, All right. You know, We tried to stay calm and just try again the next time and the very same thing repeated. But as we continued to basically force himself in, in a way, in a consensual way to just kind of like push a little harder, my body started to allow some penetration, but that was led by the most excruciating pain that I have ever experienced in my life.

[00:11:00] The only thing that comes close was a sinus infection that I had when I was younger where my whole eye swole up and shut the eyelid and that was also very painful. But this pain really is indescribable and the only way that I could paint a picture for you is if you imagine taking a knife and just warming it up over the fire until it's nice and glowing orange and then slowly inserting it between the legs.

That moment is when I knew it's not supposed to hurt this much. I have heard other girlfriends experiences and this is just not it. So that is where that the depths of the exploration of what is happening with my body really started.

Andi: Thank you for sharing that story. I had a very similar experience.And it's interesting the things that we internalize when that happens. Like I remember being shamed by my [00:12:00] boyfriend at the time about, you know, being too tight and to this and to that. And he ended up cheating because he wanted to find someone who didn't have this condition that I had. I'm really interested to hear like, what was your journey when you say it started that exploration process? And were you also dealing with those layers of shame at the same time?

Katrin: Very much so, and thank you so much for sharing also your story with that. Um, I find it so powerful when we realize we were never alone in the first place. And when, exactly in these kinds of containers, with The Body Diaries being a beautiful example, we come together with such stories and uh, we all of a sudden feel like, you know, we were never in isolation around this kind of shame and stigma and pain.

For me, what happened with my initial exploration is that I visited my family doctor at the time, and unfortunately, the very first thing that I was told [00:13:00] is that my body must not be ready for sex just yet. And on some level, that's actually true. But hearing it in that moment uh, you know, it was very disappointing thing to hear from someone who I felt like could be the person to tell me and to help me and to guide me and to support me with what next step to take.

So I went home, disappointed with that answer. There were many late night Google searches to try to understand what was happening. And I actually did come across a term that was very much seeming like what I was going through. And that term is vaginismus. Unfortunately, under the umbrella of sexual dysfunction, which I do not like to use because as soon as we understand and we own this label of, "I am experiencing a sexual dysfunction" or "I have a sexual dysfunction", we automatically create it as an identity of being dysfunctional.

And that is the most disempowering thing that we can take on in this [00:14:00] really difficult journey that awaits us on claiming our sexual liberation. Here I was vaginismus. All right, I go back to my doctor and I put my foot down and I say I'm pretty sure this is what I'm going through. And the next recommendation is now all right, I guess you need to relax.

So how about you have a glass of wine before attempting again?

Andi: Oh my goodness.

Katrin: And uh, you know, hopefully that works out for you. Now we laugh at it now, but it happens so often that this is. The medical professionals recommendation at that age being 18 in Canada. I was actually under legal drinking age as well. So that's another funny aspect.

And of course, I had already tried it. So many of the women in our community. We have gotten blackout drunk trying to have sex. We have potentially gotten [00:15:00] high trying to have sex, essentially trying to dissociate from the body so that we don't feel anything. And of course, this is partially what was already happening, the dissociation, the lack of connection with ourselves.

So the next step, and I really won't go through all of the little nooks and crannies of this, but the idea was that when I arrived at a sex therapist's office, through my partner's parents at the time. So we actually had to, have that conversation and share it with them, which was incredible that we had the space and opportunity for it.

But it was at a sex therapist office that I was first told that and confirmed, yes. You are going through vaginismus. I was given the next step to try, which was very much a physical approach of practicing penetration with myself through these things, using these tools called dilators, which are essentially a set of plastic, unfortunately, at the time I used plastic tools [00:16:00] from the size of a little bit less than a tampon diameter all the way up to potentially your goal size dilator being the penis size of a partner and I was just told to use these dilators and to insert them slowly one by one and to kind of graduate in sizes as I got comfortable with them. This was the physical approach and it is a very valid step of the journey, but in the way that I guide women through it now, it comes only at the very end when we use these tools to essentially check the boxes that we have done the emotional healing work, the erotic exploration work, the work to feel safe to surrender, in such a vulnerable experience, like penetrative sex, especially as a woman who lets another human being inside of her. So, If you'd like, we can dive deeper into what the emotional and neurotic components really are like, because the physical will come when the physical comes, but that's uh, it really shouldn't be [00:17:00] the focus, because we would cause ourselves a lot of unnecessary pain, like I did trying to use dilators.

What can you relate to from that

Andi: So many things, except without the uh, the sex therapist guidance, it was trips to sex stores to try and figure out apparatus to do the same thing, because it's interesting. We assume that it's a physical defect. So what are the physical objects that I can use to start kind of, I guess,opening and softening and making my body perform to this performative element that sex often feels like. 

This brings me then to ask what is the energetics, what is it actually that's going on in our bodies that is causing this vaginismus and this lack of safety that we actually need to start with, as opposed to the physical?

Katrin: Beautiful question? And I love what you said about the performative aspect, as well [00:18:00] as what we, what we decide about ourselves as women in the world, as sexual beings in the world of like, I'm no good at sex, in my case, you know, I, I am not a good girlfriend and you deserve better. And so there were these backs and forths with my boyfriend at the time. And then. The next one as well in another long term relationship I was in where I was essentially trying to convince them to go find someone else because I can't give you what I feel like you deserve and therefore I'm not good enough.

Andi: Oh my goodness. Yes.

Katrin: Yeah. And so many of us in, in one way or another believe that we are not good enough. We're not enough. And on the other side of the spectrum, we are too much. As well. And I feel like whether it's one or the other, we can all relate to somewhere there on the spectrum. So the performative aspect, I want to tell you a little story about how I grew up so we can really understand the depth of what overcoming vaginismus and any [00:19:00] sort of claiming of freedom I feel like, especially in the sexual space really involves.

So I grew up in a very left brained focus, you know, performative and high achieving family where that was the thing that was valued most about who we are to become in the world, right? What is there to be proud of was the high grades and achievements and extracurriculars and getting in the right schools and getting the career, that is the quote unquote good one. And my parents immigrated to Canada when I was nine years old, and they made a lot of sacrifices in their life in order to give us the opportunities for education and work that they feel that we deserve. And this was a really big aspect of why they too had this idea of what we, what we can create for ourselves to be proud of. [00:20:00] The left brain aspect, though, also meant that logic was what was valued. It was not so much the beingness and the emotional expression, it was the doing and the accomplishing. Aside from that my family unit at the time also involved a lot of chaos. My parents fought a lot when I was younger. And of course, they did the best that they could within their own relationship.

But that chaos that I was experiencing meant that I had no control over what was going on in the family unit, and in order to find safety, I needed to find control and some other aspect of life. To me, that meant putting my head in the books, getting those high grades, et cetera, et cetera. So I became this high achiever, good girl.

And later in life, also, I could identify with the term alpha woman, being in control of things, having a plan and like you know, getting shit done.

Andi: Yep.[00:21:00]

Katrin: The fact that I could be quote unquote perfect in all these aspects of life and here was this other piece that I was just not high performing and like I was used to performing in another aspects, right?

It really put this gaping hole in my identity of just succeeding in life. And hence right, when we experience such a thing, we sweep that aspect under the rug. And I did for, for a long time, not wanting to really deal with vaginismus and kind of giving up on the journey on a few different occasions. But it really is the perfectionism piece and I feel like so many of us can relate to that.

And there's so much heaviness and expectation and pressure that it leads, it comes with, and it leads us to experience I had to come to terms [00:22:00] that I had a challenge that I wasn't miss perfect all the way through and through. Right. So coming to terms with that and actually coming to a place of acceptance of all right, this is going to be the thing that I need to work with.

And then arriving in a place of feeling like I have been quote unquote perfect all along, but also seeing perfection as not a thing in the 1st place and seeing the perfection and in imperfection. That was a really beautiful lesson to learn, and I feel like I'm still learning it. It's a really life, lifelong journey for me because I keep falling into these patterns of, wanting to be seen as perfect. 

the alpha woman aspect and the good girl aspect where of course the good girl meant I'm going to keep my parents together if and when I X, Y, [00:23:00] Z, right? They're going to be proud of me and hence there's going to be reason enough for them to stay together and keep this family alive. When we adopt the good girl, it also means that the bad girl is nowhere to be seen and often that too means, you know, the, the eroticism aspect, the sexual aliveness and arousal that we associate with the non good girl tendencies. All of that to paint the picture as well when it came to sex meant that I had found the survival strategy in my life within control. And here I was at 18 years old in my partner's room at the time, where I was met with the situation where control no longer worked as a survival strategy. What we require in a sexual scenario, whether it's penetrative or not, is safety and vulnerability.

It's safety and openness, and therefore not safety and control, but safety and surrender. [00:24:00] And I hadn't learned that yet. And I think so many of us haven't had the chance to learn feeling safe in the unknown of life in the mystery of life and therefore feeling safe to surrender. And I think if we were to talk about the depths of what sexual liberation is all about, it's exactly that finding safety and surrender.

Andi: I love this notion of safety in surrender. 

 what does surrender look like for you and for your clients?

And how does that differ? 

Katrin: Yeah. I feel like every person's journey is going to put in their path the very same tests or unique tests, but of similar categories and containers for them to learn from when it comes to safety and surrender. And for each unique story that might look quite different. But here are some [00:25:00] of the themes and patterns that I've seen.

First, we have the unexpressed energies become a little bit more intense and almost be knocking at our door to be heard and to be seen and to be expressed because surrender on some level before we have this canvas that is empty and open, we actually have a cleanup to do of everything that exists already and is being held in the body and is desiring to no longer be carried in this actual physical expression of tension and heaviness and trigger and reaction.

So before there is the spaciousness with it. Oftentimes it's past traumas relational dynamics that come up to the surface to be resolved on some level. So we may see in working [00:26:00] with someone that their relationship to their mother all of a sudden becomes, quite intense or there's some sort of conflict that arises where life is giving us on a silver platter this opportunity to resolve whatever there is there.

Of course, relationship to parents is quite common, and especially in the journey of overcoming vaginismus that I support women with it is the relationship to the mother and the repression of the feminine that often is something to be uh, loved again, you know, the expression of the feminine rather than the repression, and at the same time a resolution with the fear of the masculine. In my life, because I had walked on eggshells around both of my parents, but also especially my father when I was younger, I hadn't landed in my body a masculine energy that felt really nourishing and nourishing at [00:27:00] all times, nourishing consistently, rather than nourishing sometimes and then sometimes kind of explosive and scary.

So to find that safety and surrender within self, we often have this external representation of the masculine and feminine energies that we get to work with in order to arrive at that inner union and define balance between the masculine and feminine within ourselves. The masculine, which I like to refer to as the alpha energy is really that holding. It's that stillness, right? It's that bedrock underneath the movement of the river and all of the chaos and expression and movement of that water. The masculine, the alpha is the stillness. It's the witnessing. It's the holding. It's the presence. And very often on a sexual liberation journey, we first want to cultivate that within ourselves to develop the container in which we hold ourselves, kind of like that same, you [00:28:00] know, backyard of a school playground container, that fence.

So quite often, that's kind of one of the first themes we start to work with. When the container becomes a little bit more developed, it starts to feel safe for us to witness our own omega, our own feminine, our own emotional expression. We then kind of bring that energy into a container that can now hold it in a nourishing kind of way.

And we start to feel more, we start to allow ourselves to access. Emotions that we had suppressed for so long, and oftentimes that's also anger uh, as kind of the one of the first main ones, because that dragon that we've held inside of us, it wants to roar, it wants to actually take up the space that it deserves to take uh, after we had shut that energy down for so long.

In my life. I had seen anger outside of myself, and because it was scary, when I noticed [00:29:00] that that out there also exists in here, I was very quick to shut it down, put it in a dark room and shut that door. And hence, it was quite difficult to then open the door and let that anger in a healthy way be expressed and played with uh, so that I can love all parts of myself and our emotions are parts of ourselves to, to, own and to nourish and to, to love.

Andi: I absolutely love that analogy that you draw around the bedrock, you know, being able to build that foundation to then hold that energy. 

 It's really interesting how sometimes we're not shown or taught how to build that foundation from a very young age. And you talked a little bit about um, our mothers and our relationships with our mothers, and also the modeling of feminine energy. I'm really interested in your thoughts around inherited generational trauma 

Katrin: Yeah, [00:30:00] I believe, and through my own experience with certain modalities, the generational impact is one of the most significant ones that we carry in our scaffolding, our energetic scaffolding that we come with into this life. And in my family, a couple of the ways that this has shown up, one has been the registration of fear around the alpha in general. And so this sense of, you know, the sense of conditional love, therefore, that gets created being in relationship with men and therefore the contraction energy of the feminine. 

And the other piece that I've discovered over the last while that's also very interesting to me is that there has been almost like a a sacrifice of intimacy and connection in favor for perceived safety. So [00:31:00] what does that mean? More practically? Well, a woman in my family system in the past may have stayed with a man because of all of the reasons that she felt safe financially, because sex also has so much to do with our experience and relationship to money and financial wealth and wealth in a more broad way, but staying with someone feeling that they will take care of you but at the same time, not feeling quite at home in that relationship, not feeling fully like this is your person. This is your, your love, right? Like your chosen one in all the ways, but almost sacrificing a part of the relational dynamic because it is the safer choice. 

And so in my life, in this incarnation, I have been through a relationship dynamic where I had to put out that fire that was started generations ago and not quote unquote settle for the [00:32:00] safety financially uh, and go out looking for that deeper connection and intimacy and love.

Andi: I find that so powerful how you put that false sense of safety, and almost trade for particularly around money around feeling like having someone else validate us as a beautiful human and the sense of safety that that creates instead of cultivating that in ourselves.

I find that. Um, and that. you've made, and that safety actually leads me to ask you, I know you've gone through your own personal journals and you've got a diary entry that you want to share, and it does touch on some of those themes that we've talked about around partnership and safety, we'd love to hear it if you're ready to share.

Katrin: For sure. Uh, Let me tell you a little bit about how this piece of text kind of came to be uh, my partner and I, we just recently, before five [00:33:00] months ago now started a nomadic stage of our life. And we feel like this is the time the adventure bug is calling and we've listened. So we sold about 90% of our furniture and stuff.

And the first location we set off to was Brazil. Right now we're in Spain, but we started off in Brazil. And it was a really beautiful, sunny day, as typically it is in Brazil. I feel like just the night before we had gone for a nice night swim, and we literally lived a five minute walk from the water.

And so that morning that I wrote this journal entry started off in a really beautiful way that I hadn't really had access to for a very long time in my life. And you'll see why uh, but that was kind of the context of when I chose to write these words and reflect on that morning and all of the deeper layers of what that experience really means to me.

So, Here we go.[00:34:00]

This morning's lovemaking session was a tender one. As the arousal built up, I sensed suppressed emotion rising up in my heart and throat, asking to be expressed. I followed the body's guidance, giving space to pain. I listened more deeply than I knew how years ago. Using my voice, I guided my man to put gentle pressure against a deep spot inside my vagina where the emotion had manifested as the slightest bit of tightness.

Yes, the body's wisdom shows up in this way. I got present to the sensations and concept slash memory that rose up into my awareness. My body was showing me what I was holding. Pain from being controlled and silenced, mostly. I let the emotion erupt and allowed my rawness to be witnessed by my man. He held me closer.

I felt safe. The waves of emotions continued until they [00:35:00] transformed into pleasure again and reached their peak. A beautiful level of openness. Openness, only accessible on the other side of safety, realness, and a vulnerable heart that is devoted to connection.

Andi: Oh my goodness. thank you so much for sharing that. The thing that really stood out to me when you were reading that is this, you witnessed this pain inside your body and instead of allowing that to overtake and potentially push your partner away or allow the dialogue of I'm not good enough, I'm still broken, you actually dove straight into it, not just Um, and you allowed him to go on that journey with you.

I find that incredibly inspiring and incredibly powerful. And I'd, I'd love to kind of hear more about how you got to that point of that openness of being able to dive into [00:36:00] it as well as have someone else witness that and go through that with you.

Katrin: Thank you so much. Yeah, it uh, I never quite imagined that I would have an experience like this. That is very vulnerable that I also felt safe enough to share with a partner and almost guide a partner in supporting me through it. And the reality of it is, is that our partners are often not equipped simply because they haven't had those experiences.

And so they also ask of us to be a guide and take their hand and just show them what we ourselves want them to witness within us. Um, Quite often, I feel like we may judge partners for not being able to do something or be present or hear us in a certain way. And what has been my experience is that we really need to, we want to take the lead in order to actually be able to share in those beautiful moments together uh, that only [00:37:00] bring us closer.

Andi: The how, is so complex on a certain level, but also simple because it comes down to those same principles of feeling emotionally safe but something that we haven't touched on yet in this conversation is also the erotic components, the erotic exploration that I feel like , we must go on solo first in order to then be able to guide our partner in in that very same thing.

Katrin: So what does that look like? Well, Quite often, the way that we perceive sexuality and eroticism really comes from the conditioning, of course, that we've kind of observed in society, what we may have heard about sex, what we see in movies, what you might read in books, and often, especially in movies, we see this one erotic language that gets showcased, and that is the language of nudity being one of the [00:38:00] things that leads to turn on, speed more direct genital touch, and this goal of orgasm.

Where it's like, all right, this is where it starts, and this is where it ends. And that is sex. Here we go, penetration. This is the holy grail of what we should aim for. There is a sexologist, her name is Miss Jaya, who's created this concept of the erotic blueprints that I like to refer to as the erotic languages.

And the one that we see in movies is the sexual erotic language that I kind of describe by these, these ways of understanding sex. But there are another four languages. And we as women, and often also, you know, men, we kind of compare ourselves to the sexual, we try to fit into what the sexual should look like, but there's so much more to what connection, turn on, arousal can look like.

There are more [00:39:00] subtle forms. There's the energetic uh, who has a superpower of literally making love in alternate states of consciousness in different spaces and universes of time and space exist, exist. Uh, There's the sensual uh, who enjoys using all five senses, including, you know, smell and taste and that kind of thing for getting present in the moment of intimacy and turn on.

There's the shape shifter. There's the kinky as well. And what's important on our own exploration solo is to learn how our nervous system is currently wired for experiencing pleasure. And it truly is a wiring. It's not really a conscious choice that we make that we want to be this language.

It's simply what our body speaks at this moment in our life. And for me, I needed to really explore the energetic as an access point to my turn on, as well as the [00:40:00] kinky as an access point to my turn on and as an access point to my physical relaxation within my pelvic floor. The kinky is all about intensity.

It's about being taken. It's about the intensity of sensation, but also psychological intensity. And that being the groundwork of what helps me feel safe in a sexual interaction. And at that point, the beautiful combination between energetic and kinky was what I needed to start to explore within myself to learn, all right, this is the this is my path. This is my path to physical relaxation. And this is what I therefore need to guide my man into so that he can help me get to this place of surrender where I feel like. I don't need to make any decisions right now. I don't need to be the leader and where this goes in the bedroom or outside of the bedroom, wherever we chose to have sex.

I just wanted to feel like I can fully surrender to his leadership. So [00:41:00] that's a little component of what the erotic aliveness uh, and adventuring can look like. And then we bring that relational dynamic once we really understand what language does my body speak? And even underneath that, how does my body say no?

What does that feel like? And how is it that my body says yes? What does that feel like? 'Cause we really do need to distinguish between these two in order to even land safety and, and nourishment and turn on through physical touch.

Andi: What a great gateway, like how exciting. I guess I would love to know - What does starting this process look like? 

Katrin: Of course, we want to go to the source of who created this framework and beautiful work. And again, her name is Miss Jaya. And on her website, she actually has a quiz that you can take to start to get a little bit of a taste of at least what your mind currently identifies with as being your erotic [00:42:00] language.

Through answering some questions, you can get a little bit of an insight into that. And again, I say the mind because it's very important to also do some practical games and experiences to understand what the body says, because the body can can reveal deeper layers of this, even though the mind might say like, yes, this is how I get turned on Of course, if speaking about this and exploring it on that very same practical level sounds very exciting, a really great place to start would be one free course that I currently have available the Putting Vaginismus in the Past course where on day two I go really deep into these five languages. And by that, I mean a bit of an introduction. Of course, we go deeper, more personally, but that could be a really beautiful spot.

And the last thing I'll mention is also a fantastic Netflix show that I recommend to my clients to dive into. Um, And if you. Don't feel called to do the quiz. Go there first because it is incredibly beautiful. [00:43:00] It's called Sex, Love and Goop. You can find it on Netflix and Ms. Jaya does star in it, leading four or five different sets of couples through their own liberation on some level uh, with their unique relational challenges that they face and we get to see how the erotic blueprints actually look like on screen and in relationship.

Andi: Oh, amazing. I'm definitely going to be checking that out. Thank you so much. This has been such a powerful conversation. I really appreciate you coming on and diving into this and sharing your own experiences, giving us some advice and giving us some guidance on, you know, where to go to next on this journey.

So thank you so much for being here. It's been such a pleasure to share this time with you.

Katrin: You're so welcome. It's been my pleasure as well. And again, thank you for creating this space for these conversations that the [00:44:00] body actually leads us into and it gets to speak its truth. Finally.

OUTRO

Andi: I really loved this conversation with Katrin. and I really hope that it landed with you too, 

 especially if you're still struggling with vaginismus or finding safety and surrender in the bedroom. 

If you're feeling drawn to work with her, the best place to connect with her is on Instagram at @katrin.with.Love. Or at @vaginismussisters 

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you loved listening, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because I'd love to give you a shout out. You can find us on Instagram at @bodydiariespodcast.

You can also find me, your host, at @andi.matthies. And if you're feeling ready to share your story on Body Diaries or you have some powerful insights from your own work that you know would help others on their own journeys, fill in the guest application that's in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded in Naam, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to whom I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as any other Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be listening.