Reid Mihalko Yey! Thank you!

Reid Mihalko The way to simplify this the most is that our ability to say what we’re not saying. This is just not in the bedroom but in life in general. Your ability to be able to figure out what you’re not saying either because you’re afraid or whatever is keeping you from speaking up, identifying it, being able to put it into words like get it clear and, being able to communicate that especially to the people that you’re intimate relations with. That’s a skill that they just transform lives.

Reid Mihalko We all grew up in a time and in cultures all over the planet where we’re not supposed to be talking about stuff because we’re supposed to not rock the boat or make people upset or ask for too much of be burden. These things keep people from sharing and in a sex negative culture, that gets augmented and we end up not practicing sexual communication that we want or the adjustment that I wished you could make in bed because that thing you think makes me feel great, actually kind of annoys me. Not talking about sex erodes connection and intimacy and starts building resentment in a relationship.

Reid Mihalko The idea of being able to figure out what you need to communicate and have the courage to put it into words transform sex lives too. We’re not practicing sexual communication for the most part in our culture unless it’s like pop culture and media. Those conversations usually aren’t really high quality conversations about sexual empowerment and intimacy. Because we’re afraid to talk about stuff and have sexual communication and we don’t know what to do, we turn to porn to try to get role modeling for how to be better in bed and points in entertainment media and not in educational media. As a result, people are picking up even the wrong cues in the bedroom because we don’t talk about media literacy when it comes to porn.

Reid Mihalko I think there’s like 2 or 3 main things going on all at the same time. First is somatic practice. Can you actually slow down enough to be in your own body? What are the things you’re doing on a daily or weekly basis to get better at being able to feel more? That’s tricky for people because feeling more means your body or your emotional history wants to come up and be felt. Most of us have had crappy stuff happened to us in our lives and we don’t really want to feel that. We only want to feel the good stuff which leads people to self-medicating, using substances and, certain activities to try to augment or shift their blood chemistry or brain chemistry in a way where things are just euphoric. It’s really just an escape mechanism to try to not have to feel all the crappy stuff. The irony is if you want to feel more ecstasy or orgasmic pleasure, you actually have to practice feeling which means you feel the crappier stuff too.

Reid Mihalko The thing that we don’t talk about with sexual communication is when you get really good at feelings, emotions, and sensation, you move to the crappy stuff faster. People do this unintentional version of hoarding all the negative feelings that they don’t want to feel and then your lives become very cramped. If you could just feel all the crappy stuff and get rid of it, you have so much more room in your life for the ecstasy, pleasure, and orgasmicness of life. But we just don’t approach it like that in this culture or in a lot of cultures in fact.

Reid Mihalko Yeah, it does. When you get yourself to heightened states of arousal, the blood chemistry you’re releasing also makes you more vulnerable and you feel more connected which is pretty much the setting to let your body feel the crappy stuff too. There’s the euphoria of crying during sex or after sex because you’re just so happy. There’s also the euphoria that sex can create where you’re releasing a ton of old stuff that may or may not be resolved. Learn how to feel your feelings. And experience sexual communication. Feelings just want to be felt and you burn them off or release them. You then end up becoming a healthier and better person. Rather than devoting a lot of your energy to move this really heavy manhole cover lid over your pelvis so that you don’t have to move all that energy around. The visual that comes to mind is when you’re cleaning a swimming pool for the new swim season, the water’s going get cloudy when you start dredging up that old stuff off the bottom of the pool. But the benefit when you do that cleaning process and moving sexual energy around and just being able to feel pleasure is circulating a lot of the stuff. You can start pulling up that old crappy stuff from the bottom and get rid of it so that your pool is pristine.

Reid Mihalko You end up having the emotional capacity to deal with upset and negative things when they show up in your life rather than stacking that stuff on top of these towering piles of unfelt emotions which can feel really explosive for a lot of people and feel really dangerous. Your only alternative is to just practice feeling less and less. That sucks in bed as a practice. I think that’s where men and women start really closing off our abilities to feel anything. They stop all sexual communication That limits arousal, orgasm, and things like that. There’s just a lot of emotional shame, blame, and the sex negativism of culture that’s stacked on top of all that. It’s a complex situation from one perspective but it’s also a bunch of really simple things stacked on top of each other. If you can untangle them and deal with them step-by-step, you can make tremendous progress. It’s never too late to start learning how to feel more pleasure, have better sex, be a better communicator, and learn how to listen to other people’s bodies. Then the bedroom just becomes a playground.

Reid Mihalko Again for listeners, this is all my opinion about sexual communication. If anything I’m sharing, if it really resonates with you, then take it, integrate it, run with it. If there’s anything that you’re just sitting there, listening being like “My God, he’s completely full of crap” and you disagree with it completely. Don’t use that tool or that perspective. I’m not here to be like “I have figured out everything and you must obey,” because that’s bullshit too. We’re moving into an era of self-discovery and self-expression and more sexual communication. The guru model of “I have all the answers” is bullshit. What we’re here to do is we find the best tools out there. Show you how to use these tools. At least the beginning versions because you might come up with other ways of using these tools and then set everyone lose to go build the lives and the sex lives they want.

Reid Mihalko For me to give you a hammer, the screwdriver, and say you can only build a house that must look exactly like this or you are wrong, is really just kind of copying and pasting old forms of control and models that can be find in organized religion.  Not all of them but a lot of them. I have a very distasteful reaction to dogma. What I want is kind of like open source software hacking, geeking out, and playing. If I give you a soccer ball, you’re not doing it wrong if you don’t go play soccer. I’m not attached to what you create for yourselves. I think evolution and what’s evolved in relationships and in sex is having the love life and the sex life that makes you happiest.

Reid Mihalko I think dogma had its place. We’ve grown sufficiently as a species and in some parts of the world where it’s not about surviving in the same way as it was several hundred years ago. We’re moving into thriving in a certain way. There’s still a lot of work to be done. Sexism, racism, and all kinds of phobias and isms are still rampant all over the world. For me, as a dork and a nerd, sex is one of the hardest things for people to talk about with sexual communication and to feel unashamed about. And so for me, in my life journey, kind of figuring out who I am and being able to reclaim my agency and empower myself around the kind of sex and relationships I want into truly feel that I can love myself. Whatever your self-expressions and whoever you want to date and what your fantasies are, if you can start to learn how to talk about these things, open sexual communication and share them with the people you want to explore these things with, that courage and ability trickles into the rest of your life in all areas. I could’ve picked talking about money because that’s another area where there’s a lot of shame and weirdness. But for me, it was sex. And so, this is my niche and where I like to dork out. I think some people are out there holding on to this guru model that doesn’t really empower people. Rather than me just give you a fish, I can actually teach you how to fish and deconstruct fishing so that you will maybe think of an even better way of being a fisher person than me.

Reid Mihalko I want to see more of that open source thing certainly in my industry, in sex and relationship world. But, I think that is what’s going to evolve humanity in really heartfelt and compassionate ways where we’re all just kind of kicking ass together as a species. And that’s just me being a nerd but I think it’s possible and for me to sit here and tell and put fear into people and tell them they’re doing it wrong and be really dogmatic about something, I’m just reinforcing all the sex negative bullshit, failure, and fear mongering that got us in this place in the first place.

Reid Mihalko And then sex becomes truly a creative process. It doesn’t have to be pro-creative for birth and things like that but the kind of collaborative and creative energy of sexual play is really exciting and then you start adding in distinctions and tool that maybe you never grew up with. One of the things I teach in a lot of workshops on sexual communication is this distinction between sensual and erotic. Sensual for me, is about sensation.

• What kinds of ways do you like to be touched?
• Where do you like to be touched?
• What positions do you like to be and those allow you to feel the things that make you excited, happy, and feel good?

And also understanding that for some people, what feels good to them can be really extreme forms of sensation which some of us are not very kinky like “Huh?! That doesn’t look like it feels good,” but for somebody else’s nervous system, “Oh my goodness! That feels delightful.” And then there’s the erotic.

• What are those things that turn your brain up? Is it the setting?
• What are the thoughts that arouse you?

Reid Mihalko Maybe you like the sensation of being spanked or having somebody go down on you but if they’re wearing a pirate costume, “Oh my goodness! It’s turbo charged. How great to be spanked by a pirate?!” Or whatever it is. For some of us in the sacred sexuality realm, what’s erotic is the rose petals, the candles, the incense, and sitting in Yab Yum. And then, you can access this whole idea of ritual as being a way of anchoring certain states of mind and getting you into your groove. For me, as a geek, if it’s the rose petals and the chanting that gets you into your groove, turns you on, and opens you up so you can feel more things, I really don’t think that’s more evolved than you like to be tied up and blindfolded.

Reid Mihalko Start to break it down and realize, “Oh, there’s the sensation here that’s working for me and then there’s what’s working for my brain.” If you can start to separate the sensual and erotic so that you can teach your lovers how to use them together, so that you yourself know more about yourself and can teach your lover’s and your play partners how to co-create with you, not only are you getting to start to have the sex that really starts turning you on but at the same time you’re role modeling for your lovers that they can speak up about the things that maybe they didn’t realize about themselves.

Reid Mihalko There’s this how you’re touching and then there’s also where the person that you’re touching. Where are they in their own body? Where are they in their minds? Where’s their blood chemistry at? Like a great example for anybody who’s listening, however you identifying, whatever you happened to have under your pajamas, when you start touching yourself and you’re not arouse yet, the quality of sensation feels very different than when you are highly aroused. So the next time you masturbate or explore yourself, just notice what the sensation feels like when you’re just getting revved up versus when you’re revved up and your erectile tissues and gorge and your arousal centers of your brain are all lit up.

Reid Mihalko To notice that touch feels different in those states allows you to start to realize, “Oh, when I’m touching somebody else some of this is going to change depending on where they are in their state of arousal.” Like, where their body is actually. Like the joke being like “My body is ready.” Is it really ready? Or you just say it’s ready and you don’t really even have an embodiment practice? So you wouldn’t even know what ready is because you’ve never given yourself the time to really explore higher states of arousal. What you can do as a lover is slowing down the process and really enjoy exploring with a partner different kinds of touch like the light fingertip types sensations, the light kind of kisses like the eskimo, angel type kisses where you’re using the tip of your nose, your eye lashes where you’re using your whole body to lightly explore people and create sensation, playing with how that feels for your partner or having them do it to you and you witnessing what’s the difference and what that feels like, seeing and exploring different types of touch in different areas on your body at different states of arousal which kind of sounds complex. Three things you can focus on:

1. The types of touch.
2. When and where they are in their arousal state.
3. How much you and your partners are actually in your bodies?

Reid Mihalko This opens up this idea of being able to listen to your partner or have them being able to listen to you. This is where there’s so much room because even if you just get 10% better at any of this, you start opening and unlocking doors of possibility and sensation that probably my mom and dad never even got too. It just wasn’t a conversation.

Reid Mihalko And if you look at how most people grew up and the way culture deals with sex and intimacy, what most people then realized is that they’re normal because everybody’s going through this. We’re all fish swimming in water and we’re wet but the fish doesn’t know it’s wet because it’s never known what dry feels like. When you start to realize how we got here, you can start undoing it and start having the conversations. We just need to be gentle with each other and patient. At first, it’s going to be really hard to have a conversation because how do you know what to talk about when you never even knew you could talk about sexual communication in the first place and you didn’t have the tools to even consider what some of the answers to these questions are? And this is where it can be really useful to take workshops or courses or hire somebody to be your coach like your Sherpa or your guide in starting to map out these questions or learn better questions to ask. When you start to open this stuff up and you realize like “Actually, what really turns me on honey is me giving oral sex to you.” When you start getting clear on what the things are you think turn you on or even the things you just want to explore because sometimes the reason you want to go do something is “I’ve never done that before.”

Reid Mihalko This is another thing that’s really useful just for American culture and certainly in other cultures is if you try something and you don’t like it, you’re not broken. You probably just don’t like it. That’s a win! We have this over achievingness that crept into the bedroom from American society where if you don’t like absolutely every kind of sex that there is, then somehow you’re unevolved. That’s not the case. You’re not unevolved. You’re allowed to like the things you like and you’re allowed to not like the things you don’t like. You can be in a healthy relationship and like different things. The favorite thing for your partner might be the thing you hate the most and you’d still have a relationship. There are lots of other crayons in the crayon box of sex.

Reid Mihalko The tricky part is where people teach sex from a very masculine, feminine place, men this, women that. It’s not that it’s wrong. It’s just very incomplete now that we’re moving into this new era because what ends up happening when you teach things from this David Deida way can be problematic. It works really great for the people that it resonates for. However, what happens when I personally get so old that I can’t get an erection. How do I fuck my wife into God land? In a culture, that’s very penis, erection centric and vagina centric, I’d rather refrain sex in the way you were mentioning in this kind of “This is play and discovery and what feels good and what’s possible right now” because things will shift. Maybe, I injured my hip a couple years ago and so certain sexual positions that were really fun for me were kind of impossible for a while I was healing. Does that mean I was a failure at sex? Do I have the mental flexibility and the understanding of what feels good for me and also what doesn’t feel good to be able to take care of my body and still be able to play and explore? Because when you come from those perspectives, then you can role model that our bodies will change overtime. Our preferences will change overtime. Things that turns us on 10 years ago, maybe like “Nyah!” 10 years from now.

Reid Mihalko I think this is where we’re really getting into this conversation about allowing your sex life to be alive, and to shift, and to grow. The analogy that pops on to my head right now is it seems normal that like a two year old you expect to change as they grow and you’re not going to continue treating them like a 2 year old. How about we have that kind of flexibility, that openness, and that kind of approach to our bodies and our sex lives, how we make love and how we explore. To me, that seems a lot more inspiring. It might feel daunting but it only feels daunting because no one showed you the tools yet. Once I show you how to use a hammer, a screwdriver, and a saw, go build the sex life you want and hopefully, build it with somebody who enjoys building a sex life too because there are going to be people out there that sex is not going to be their thing. That’s okay as well. We have too much shame and too much judgement certainly around sex and intimacy. I would like to see that shift.

Reid Mihalko And this is what’s interesting. Again I’m not poo pooing on David Deida’s work is important. Everybody’s work is important but it’s all part of a bigger soup of the dynamics of relating. To say that the only tool you need is a hammer, this one type of dogma or perspective. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. I’m much more interested in teaching people what the best tools are, the most useful tools that soon to be helping the most and what are the essential tools you need to create healthy, thriving relationships. Give people the permission to go run and create. It’s comes down to sexual communication and being able to use your words. Because in a culture that was silenced around sex and sensual self-expression, words are very powerful. They’re very powerful for combating shame, for manifesting, creating, and opening containers. I mean, we could debate but for the most part as a reductive statement, silence is only really good for being a good listener but silence never really helped anybody be more empowered when it came to their sexuality.

Reid Mihalko This is an ongoing journey and you’re going to get better at all these things. There are resources out there especially around skill sets so that you can understand people’s bodies, your own body, and arousal. You can feel more confident about certain kinds of sex that you might want to explore or the ones that you are enjoying. You can always get better at things and that confidence will lead to a higher level which then creates confidence loop. As you learn new things and get over your learning curve hump where the anxiety of tracking all this new information eventually starts to fade away and then you would be able to rift and play with people with these new skills.

Reid Mihalko People are interested in that stuff. They can go to reidaboutsex.com. There’s a bunch of different things if they click on the store, different programs and online courses. There are lots of free videos that they can sign up for.  If people are interested in better sexual communication tools and the beginnings of learning how to get better at sex but through the doorway of intimacy and connected sexual communication, then they can also go to relationship10x.com and sign up for some free videos that I will geek out with them on and then, I’ll invite them after they get a taste of how I teach to sign up for an online course. If that’s something they like.