Episode 4: What Women Want (It's not what you think) ft. Naomi Batiste

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Sureya: Hello everyone. Welcome to Nectar: sex and soul with Sureya Leonara. It is such a pleasure to have you all here today, and it is such a pleasure and gift to have a very special guest here today. This is a very incredible woman who I met in Maui just a couple of months ago, who I am so blessed to have crossed paths with.

I am so truly honored and inspired and excited to have her here today. Her name is Naomi Batiste and she is based in Australia, also from Australia, and she's a sensual embodiment guide. We had such a beautiful instant connection. From the moment we met, we realized we were both projectors in human design and that we both work in the realm of sexuality, and we got to have some really incredible adventures together from that point of connection, and some incredible conversations, and some really interesting stories, and things that happened that inspired us to get together and do a podcast. We're going to be talking about all kinds of topics today ranging from what women want, to self-pleasure, to embodied sexuality, to how to really have a more deeply meaningful connection with your sexuality. 

And we're really just gonna see where this conversation takes us because we just love to bounce ideas off of each other and we have a lot of fun talking. We're really excited to welcome you all here into this conversation with us and Naomi, thank you so much for being here.

I would love to give you the opportunity to share a little bit about who you are and your work before we get into this conversation.

Naomi: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Sureya. Thank you for having me here. It's so exciting. Like you said, just feels so natural, like we just had the most epic conversations on Maui.

You came and stayed at my little hut that I was staying in and we would stay up talking about the juiciest topics. So yummy. So a bit about me; I am a sensual embodiment guide. I really work in the realms of sensuality and pleasure and my approach in that is really about sensitization; sensitizing to your body, to the sensations in your body, and learning how to listen to them; this real unraveling process of delayering the conditioning, the shame, and journeying into yourself, your body, and how that feels for you specifically. And working from there to invite and cultivate pleasure in your body and aliveness. 

Sureya: Mm, thank you for sharing that. You embody and ooze the essence of the work that you do so beautifully.

It's so magnetic and so delicious and I really encourage everyone to continue diving into Naomi's work after this podcast, which I’ll let you know how to do at the end here. You've got to really witness this woman in action; she's truly incredible. I'm so excited to dive into this with you.

Naomi will probably be on this podcast multiple times because there's so many different directions and many things that I want to discuss with her and that I love hashing out with her, and putting ideas out there. So we're going to dive into some of these topics based upon a really funny conversation that we had on a nude beach that made us realize that there's a big topic that we want to get into and share with people. We met this guy on the nude beach, who, you know, when he found out that we work in the realm of sexuality, he wanted to ask a million questions as people often do. He started out by saying, so what do women want; do they want to be fucked or do they just want to be eaten out all day?

Naomi: So specific.

Sureya: We just, we laughed. We thought it was such a funny question, and we started sharing our thoughts on the matter, and he kept asking all these other questions circling back to the same type of question, where he was almost missing the point of the answer.

He was like, well, what's the most arousing thing somebody has ever done? Is it, like, you know, moving a feather along your body? Is it group sex? You know, what is it? We were talking a lot about how it's not about a one size fits all approach, every single person's body is so different and every moment is different.

The way that someone's body might interact with this lover could be completely different than the way that it interacts with another lover. And what she loved last week, she might not be into at all this week because her mood is different, her vibe is different, her hormones are in a different place, and there's so many factors that play into it.

So the question of what women want is not one that you can sum up in a list of tips and tricks. It is much more nuanced than that. What would you say about that, Naomi? What were some of the things that came up for you?

Naomi: Yeah, it was so enlightening for us.

I think we both just kept looking at each other with this knowing, and every time he would ask a question, it was like he really just wanted specific answers.His brain wanted to be like, okay, this is the thing. Every time we would answer, essentially saying the answer is to come into deep listening, listening to what she wants, feeling her, asking her even. Coming into presence and listening and I think his brain just really, really wanted something more specific.

It's never the answer; not for one person, not for one moment. It's always about the presence of what's interacting internally with you, internally with your partner, and then what's between you as well. The more you can be in your body, the more you're going to actually be able to feel that resonance and feel that transmission between you.

It was very enlightening to realize, ah, okay, if he's asking these questions, he's probably just the person who's brave enough to ask them. And so many other people are wondering the same thing. They're just too scared to ask. 

Sureya: Absolutely. Yeah, I really loved his courage and his willingness to just come out with with all of his questions.

Naomi: good on him. 

Sureya: Yeah. It was awesome. It was a great conversation, and yeah, it was really enlightening. Even though I've worked with men for so long, I’m still realizing that so often, especially in the west, we like to have things figured out, we like to look at things logically. We like to check things off lists, and have this very logical framework.Sex isn't really like that. And the female body isn't really like that. And so it's very important to come out of the head and into the body. Like you said, that deep listening, listening to the moment, listening to the synergy, feeling what is moving through us right now, what is wanting to be co-created between us.

If we come into that with the trajectory, let's say, I told him these are the things that turned me on the most. And then he takes that to the next woman he connects with, she might not be into it at all. 

Naomi: That's it. That's it. 

Sureya: I can't even say these are the things that turn me on the most because it really depends on my mood and my vibe.

It's something that if we are in tune with our bodies and we know how to communicate, and we know how to listen, and we can slow the fuck down and stop trying to get somewhere, all the answers come clear in the moment. It's not something we have to plan ahead for, or study in advance. There are many things we can do to get to know our own sexual energy in our own bodies and to work with our sexual energy in particular ways, but there's no going into it having all the answers figured out because if you try to do that, you're going to be missing what's actually here right now with this unique individual. 

Naomi: Mm, definitely. I think that's a really interesting point is, we in our society are so focused when it comes to pleasure and sexuality; to focus on the other and what I should be doing.

But actually the greatest thing you could be doing for your lover is in your own time outside of connecting with them; really exploring yourself and really coming into connection with yourself and your body. Because when you can understand how your body works, how your body feels, what you like; when you do come into connection with another you're very aware, you're aware of your sensation, and you're connected to yourself.

So you're not in your head about, okay, what's going to feel good. You're feeling what's feeling good. And you're both in this resonance together. There's all these magazines about all the tips and tricks and techniques, and really, I think actually the answer is opposite to that; It's coming back to the body, cultivating pleasure, self-pleasure on your own; Cultivating it in your body and feeling sensation, coming into the sensitization. And then when you in connection with your partner you're not thinking about what should I do next? You're both in this transmission, this resonance together.

Sureya: Absolutely. A lot of those tips and tricks are on a very surface level and are not actually revealing the depth that's possible. If we don't know ourselves sexually, if we don't take the time to connect with ourselves sexually there’s so many ways that we're not going to be able to show up in our fullest expression. One, if we're expecting our partner to turn us on and to be the thing that stirs our sexual energy, they're working with dead weight, they're working with cold water.

The more that we can be stirring that caldron within ourselves; going and knocking on the door of that primordial energy that lives inside of us, that we are made out of, that is that living breathing vitality. We can knock on the door of that, and connect with it, and listen to how it's moving each day, and take time to let the water flow, to really stir that pot instead of letting it stagnate or become repressed or waiting for somebody else to come along and do that.

We're turning ourselves on, we're making ourselves more magnetic and more available, more alive for the connection, and we're taking ownership of our own sexual energy. I think a lot of times people outsource their pleasure, their arousal to other people, where they need this person, or porn, or this fantasy to be the thing that lights that energy for them.But that energy didn't come from those other people; it came from deep within us, they were just the mirror that activated it. 

Naomi: Mm, absolutely. And what you say about taking self-responsibility for our pleasure; it’s like inviting pleasure into our lives, into our bodies in general.

How can we expect them, when we're intimate with someone, to go from zero to 100 and expect them to be able to take us from zero to 100. Whereas when we're cultivating this on our own, we're taking responsibility; we’re self-pleasuring, we're inviting pleasure into our day to day life, finding pleasure, and joy, and aliveness in all of life.

Then we're not having to go from zero to 100 when we’re intimate. Actually we're probably existing on like 50%, 75% where we're feeling that in our day to day, so when we're intimate, we're able to really drop in so much more easily. 

Sureya: Yes. I'm so glad you said this because I talk a lot on this podcast about how sex is so much bigger than the act of sex.

This isn't just about your explicitly sexual self-pleasure practice, but how are you enjoying your food or your cup of tea? Are you getting into your body and stretching and moving? Do you pay attention to the way the sun feels on your skin? Do you allow yourself to sink into the hug that you share, or the sound of your friend or lover’s voice?

There are so many sensual riches throughout the day that if we're on autopilot, if we're in a rush, if we're not present, we're not actually absorbing the rich nourishment of all of those moments. Every single moment has the ability to feed our turn-on, to revitalize our system. Even an uncomfortable situation carries a charge that is energy, that is vitality.

If we know how to breathe that through our system and move and work with it, we can be allowing every part of our day to be feeding us in some way. We can be in deep communication with our body, and then when you bring that to the bedroom, you've already been alive and present and aware. Each moment you're not saving that for the bedroom and saying, well, I haven't been present or turned on all day, and now I'm expecting to be able to turn that on like a switch now that I'm wanting to be intimate. What is it to be intimate with every moment and then bring that to the bedroom? 

Naomi: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's it. That's it exactly. When we're existing in numbness and dissociation outside of sex, how can we expect to be able to drop into our pleasure?

That's when we're really needing to depend on hyper-stimulating tools and arousal to be able to go there, whereas if we can really drop in and slow down and feel, really coming into intimacy from a totally different reference point, that's when we don't need to ask those questions of what do women want, but actually being able to just be in that space of deep listening.

Sureya: Absolutely. Absolutely. And if we can listen to our own bodies, and we can listen to our lover's body, there's not even a question of what do they want because we're just feeling and following the energy, and we're tracking with the energy instead of coming into it with a trajectory of where we think it's supposed to go.

That's another thing too, is knowing our own body because if we don't self-pleasure, if we don't take the time to get to know our own body, then we expect our lover to know our body, that's a lot trickier. We want to be able to offer guidance. Especially for a female body; our genitals are tucked away; they're hidden, it's dark in there. If we've never taken the time to explore that and then we're like, hey, you figure it out, and if our partner does not also have a female body, that's going to be really challenging. And even if they do have a female body, every female body is designed so differently and works so differently.

We have to give our lovers that grace of taking the time to know ourselves and being able to communicate what we like and what we don't like, and offering some guidance instead of being like, well, good luck in there, figure it out on your own. 

Naomi: So important. Also, on that note of everyone being so different, being intimate with different people creates a different transmission.

Different people will activate different things in you; they'll bring out different parts of you. You might find yourself really stifling with certain people, and then with other people, finding yourself really fiery and different people are going to bring out different things, and so you might like different things, you might not like different things, you might have different boundaries with different people. So it's just so important that we're not seeing sex through this one size fits all of what's going to work for one woman is going to work for another or even a man. Always coming back; coming back into listening, coming back into openness and receptivity.

Sureya: It's really similar to dance or any other co-creative process where people can bring out such different qualities in your dance, and introduce new ways of moving, and open you up in new ways. Some people you find synergy with really easily; some people it's a little bit awkward and you've got to move through those edges. Some people it's just not vibing and it's not really going to work. So getting curious and feeling into, where is that point of harmony and synergy between us? Maybe we do have a shared interest, but we're coming at it in different ways and we need to figure out how we get on the same page within the desire to explore this particular arena or this desire.

The more that we can communicate, not just with our words, but kinesthetically, energetically, through the breath, slowing down. Because if we slow down, we can pick up on all the little subtleties that again, we’re blowing past if we're in a hurry to get somewhere. 

Naomi: Yes, definitely. Really being able to notice the nuances in your body and that's coming back to knowing yourself, connecting with yourself, taking time with yourself, devoting yourself to your pleasure.

That's what my work is really about. It's about being able to hone in on those nuances because there's so much going on around us and in our bodies and our minds. It's so easy for that to be drowned out, so easy to be distracted from that. It’s a practice, and it's not going to happen instantly.

You can't expect yourself to just be so embodied and full of pleasure straight away. It really is something that needs to be coaxed out of you, and cultivated, and really tuned into. 

Sureya: Yes, it is. It's a practice and the Taoists call it self-cultivation because we're not going into it with an expectation.

Sometimes self-pleasure doesn't have sunshine, rainbows, and orgasms at all. Sometimes we show up, and we meet the pain, and we meet the loneliness, and we meet the frustration, and we meet whatever is there. It's a practice of showing up to let it express, to let it move through, to not need it to be a certain way.

So often people are talking at their sexual energy rather than with it. We can have these demands. Why aren't you showing up in this way? Why am I not wet? Why am I not hard? The body is always communicating something. If we are not able to elicit the response that we want from our body, we need to check in and listen. Say, what do you need? What's out of alignment? What are you trying to communicate with me? How can I tend to you? It's not that something is wrong with us or that something's broken; it's a matter of needing to listen to the language of the body and feeling into what is my body desiring.

Instead of being demanding of it and saying, do this for me, give me this experience, how can I be in dialogue with you? How can I listen, and meet you, and show up to offer you what you need instead of expecting you to perform in this particular way? For me or my partner.

Naomi: Yes, I love that so much. And I love that piece that you spoke to around self-pleasure not always feeling good because our sexuality, our pleasure, there's a lot of layers that have been compounding over many years of socialization conditioning. And so sometimes when we come into that connection things arise, things can come up and we expect that it's always going to feel good; It's always going to be nice, and like you said, rainbows. Sometimes grief will come up. I went through that process earlier this year. I was moving through some grief and I would connect with my self-pleasure every day, without any expectation of orgasm or anything like that; just to move pleasure through my body and allow the grief and the pleasure to dance, and to ask myself how can my grief actually feel pleasurable. Not to change it, but just to feel it and allow it to move through my body and allow my self-pleasure to transmute that grief and allow them to meet one another. 

Sureya: Naomi, I love that you just spoke to this because that is so powerful, and is such a deep piece of the work of tantra and Taoism; to allow polarities to co-exist, to be together. It's not like we can't experience pleasure when we also have grief or fear or anger or another big one. There are so many horrible things happening in the world right now. There is so much pain and suffering, and that doesn't mean that we should feel guilty for being in our pleasure, for being in our joy. Can we hold both at the same time without spiritually bypassing, without trying to override one emotion or one experience? Can we recognize that on this planet at all times, and within each of us, since we are microcosms of the whole, we are holding the full spectrum expression of reality.

Everything can and does exist. And so, can we be simultaneously with the longing that we have for a partner, but also the love that we have for ourselves? Can we be with the fear that we're experiencing, but also the deep trust in the mystery? Can we be with the pain and the pleasure? Can we find our yes in each moment?

I don't mean this in a way, like we're overriding our no, but can we find our yes. Which is like, what part of this situation can I lean into, and be fully present with, and receive the medicine that it has to offer? Where is my yes in this that I can show up for and find pleasure in, even if it's incredibly uncomfortable.

Naomi: I love that. 

Sureya: I met someone a long time ago. God, I must've been in my early twenties and I was at a festival and my foot fell asleep and I was like, oh, my foot's asleep. And he said, enjoy it, even if you don't. I thought it was like the cutest little riddle. I was like, oh yeah, this is all like pins and needles and prickly and I don't really like it, but actually there's kind of a piece of me that does. If I lean into it, there's a pleasure there. Can I find that and enjoy it, even though the mental part of me that's making meaning of that sensation doesn't like it; that duality is a construct of the mind. The body experiences sensation and energy, and the mind makes meaning of it and says, I like this, or I don't like this.

And sometimes we can expand our capacity to be with a certain sensation in a way where even that grief or that fear, you know, it's been said that fear is just excitement without the breath. There's a charge, there's an energy in all of these emotions that we have. Can we allow ourselves to feel that and to flow with it?

Grief is a big one that has come up in my sexual journey as well. Where I feel like I've tapped into the collective grief of the feminine and the earth on deep, deep levels in my exploration with my sexual energy. The tears that have flowed and gushed through me and being able to to be in the vessel of a female body, connected to the earth, and connected to all the other women through that space of sexual energy; grief has been such a powerfully potent healing portal.

I hear so many women say I cry during sex all the time. Is that normal? And yes, let the tears flow baby. Our sexual energy is the element of water and it needs to flow. That's just one of the many ways it can express.

Naomi: That's it. Our eros, our life-force energy, and when we bring our emotions to it; if we bring our grief along, we bring anything going on in our lives, we bring that to our eros, to our pleasure, itt is so transmutational. It's so transformational. This energy is so potent, whereas we usually we just leave, sex for sex and desire, but there's so much room for everything. Everything, all of the emotions to be merged with our pleasure, with our eros.

Sureya: I love that you said that because if we reserved sex for, this is only when I feel happy and turned on, we're actually missing a huge piece of what's possible. So for those of you who listened to my first episode of the path of Dharma that led me to this work, I discussed the connection between pain and pleasure and how for me, I had to move through my pain to access my pleasure.

The only way around it was through it, they are two sides of the same spectrum. What I had been doing was running away from sex because it was painful. I was avoiding it. And then when I realized I actually had to lean into it and gently work with that, and that there was so much medicine to discover through that space, a whole new dimension of sexual exploration opened up.

The same with dance, that eros energy is moving through everything. For example, sometimes my partner and I instead of having a verbal argument, we move through it with dance. We move that energy through in a way that it's like we're pushing those edges and where we're letting it express in a way that sometimes words can only scratch the surface of. And that kinesthetic communication can be huge.

We can bring all of that to sex too, and say like, wow, like I'm having so much sadness right now. And I want to show up to meet that with my pleasure, with my embodied expression, my humanity and let it move, embody it, feel it. That's a beautiful way to work with it. 

Naomi: I love that.

I love that so much because we're feeling our emotions somatically, so why not also communicate them with each other somatically, from the body?

Sureya: Absolutely. There's such a rich vastness to what's possible in the realm of sexual healing, and we can heal so much more than just our sexuality through the realm of sexuality.

I encourage everyone to let yourself off the hook in feeling like you have to show up to that space in a certain way because there's so much more available than that. 

Naomi: Yeah, so you have to look a certain way or be a certain way, or be sexy. It's like expanding that capacity and those belief systems of what's really possible within sexuality and sensuality.

Sureya: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's interesting, a lot of people can have very narrow ideas of what sex should or can be and just dropping all the shoulds. I often imagine what would sex be like if we had never seen anyone else do it in the movies or porn or elsewhere; how would we approach that scene?

What would shift if we could just bring that most pure curiosity where it's like, wow, this energy is moving through me. I'm feeling this energy. I'm feeling this wa in my body and, oh, there's this attraction with this person. And how does this want to express. And wow, the different flavor it would take on, the different journey it could take us on if we weren't in this concept of like, well, this is how this goes, this is how people look, this is how fast they move, this is the linear trajectory, this is when she's supposed to orgasm, and then when he orgasms it's the end and like whatever. All of these ideas that have been given to us are so limiting actually.

Naomi: Definitely. Absolutely. Yeah. And like, how should they sound and how it should look, but it's like coming back to that erotic innocence, curiosity, exploration, which is what we're saying now is like, what we should be coming back to? I love that. This curiosity of like how would we approach it if we'd never seen anyone else do it?

Sureya: How could that be uniquely our own, and so authentic to our own bodies, and to the moments. It's so helpful when we can take any sort of agenda off the table and just really be present and listen, and to not have this linear trajectory, to not be trying to get anywhere with it.

The tantrikas see orgasm as a potential by-product of sexual connection, not as the goal or the point marker of, was it a success or not? And so what if we let go of that expectation too? We're not trying to achieve anything or hit a target; what opens up? 

Naomi: That's it. How can you feel pleasure in every touch during intimacy, and when you feel pleasure somewhere in your body, how can you really tune into that and amplify it just through your presence. And so that through every interaction you're feeling orgasmic? You don't need to literally have an orgasm or just be thinking about when you're going to get to the orgasm, or how are you going to get to the orgasm. Actually feeling orgasmic in every touch?

Sureya: Yes, because the whole body has the potential to be an erogenous zone. When your full circuit board is lit up, when you are fully turned on, and fully immersed in the moment. I mean, I've, I've witnessed thumb-gasms and just like the craziest, most unsuspecting parts of the body come alive with such incredible pleasure. If we're only focusing on the genitals, and if we're kind of racing through this delicious five-course meal to try to get to the dessert, we're missing the whole journey and every single part of the experience has the potential to be so precious and to fully come alive.

And so I encourage in self-pleasure to work with the entire body and when connecting with another person, explore their entire body; don't just go for what you think is the good stuff. It's all of the good stuff. Every single little part of the body is capable of so much more than you can imagine. 

Naomi: That's it, that's it. And such a good practice for that, something that I love to do is when I self-pleasure, I don't have the intention to orgasm. I use sound, breath, touch, movement to explore pleasure in my body, to cultivate pleasure in my body, and if orgasm wants to come through, that's so beautiful and that's such an extra, but actually allowing yourself to feel pleasure through the whole journey, the whole experience - that's going to leak out into your life; it's going to bring pleasure in your body and allow it to ooze out of you through your whole life, especially when you're intimate with somebody else. Having that mentality and that intention of finding pleasure in every touch, breath, every sound you make, movements, how can you find pleasure there?

How can you explore pleasure there without doing it just to have an orgasm? 

Sureya: Absolutely. I often say that orgasm and sexual energy are really similar to cats. Cats are like these very elusive, on their own flow kind of creatures. And they require a finesse, a coaxing, a flirtation. They’re on their own terms.

You can't go to a cat, like you can a dog and just be like, let's play. The dog’s always down, but the cat, not so much. The cats like, wait a minute, you got to coax me. You have to be present, you have to invite me into a consensual interaction. If we're chasing the cat, the cat is going to run away so fast.

If we're chasing that orgasm, it's probably going to be really elusive. Or maybe we can squeeze one out with all our might. Sometimes we can squeeze out those quick, sharp orgasms when we tense. But it's when we slow down, when we relax, and we breathe, and we invite, and we become open for, and work with this essence of allowance, that cat is seduced to come into our presence and to come into connection.

Naomi: Yeah, come rub up against us, allow us to pet it and play with it. Yes, I love that analogy.

Sureya: Yeah, it is. There's very much that building of energy and just like being curious and not having that expectation, but being grateful to receive the blessing should it arise.

You mentioned several things about sensitization and I think this is a huge one that I want to get into here because for a lot of people's self-pleasure has been geared towards the point of this is to get off to blow off some steam, to release pressure, and nothing wrong with that. But if you're trying to cultivate a deeper capacity to feel and to learn your sexual energy, then it's really helpful to try to take that goal off the table and to get really curious about prolonging and expanding pleasure and sensation, and being able to listen and to journey deeper and to see where it takes you.

One of the biggest pieces to this is re-sensitizing our bodies because if we've been in a pattern of using vibrators, or watching a lot of porn, or just using a very aggressive, fast touch; being too in the head, not in the body, all of these things can result in our body not responding to subtlety; it kind of being shut down or numb and not being able to go to those deeper places.

I'd love to hear anything that you have to say about that, because I know this is something you work with a lot. 

Naomi: Definitely. Yeah. It's about that hyperstimulation. We are often dissociating as well, and wanting to get into this arousal to get this quick fix and to get there quickly, and that can be really addictive and that’s sort of the danger zone of using things that are going to be hyper-stimulating for us. Whereas everything else we've spoken about of listening to the body, feeling the nuances of the body, that's very hard to do when we are using things that are going to be just hyperstimulating us, only perhaps in the genitals as well.

So again, we're missing that orgasmic sensation through the whole body. Coming back to it being addictive as well; we can get into a sort of a habit with it. I definitely don't want to demonize using these tools every now and then; just be what you want, that's what you're craving. It feels good. It's nice to just get in there and have fun with them, but it's because it can be so addictive that we're doing it so often, that we're missing out on feeling; we’re missing out on sensitizing. We’re literally desensitizing. So when we want to then come into a space of deep connection with a partner, with ourselves, we then think, oh, I can't do this. I can't feel anything. I'm numb. I have to dissociate. And like having all of these things come up and it's because we haven't been cultivating that pleasure in our whole body. We've been allowing ourselves to just get the fast food, get in and get out. And that's when the issues can really arise when we're actually really wanting to be able to feel.

Sureya: Absolutely. Fast food is a great way to describe it. It's like the difference between the fast food and a really good organic five-course meal that's truly nourishing. Trauma happens when there's too much, too fast, too soon, and I actually think that when we come at ourselves in those very aggressive, abrasive ways with really intense touch, especially when our body's not warmed up. So the body actually can be receptive to more pressure and speed when it's fully opened up and aroused and in a space to receive that. But if we go right for that, it can be way too much for the body and it can kind of short-circuit and go numb or become hyper, hyper, hyper-sensitive.

It's really important that we're paying attention to how we are wiring the body when we do this. A lot of times I'll hear women say, I can only come with a vibrator or my partner can't make me come. I only count with the vibrator; that's because you're desensitizing yourself with that.

It doesn't actually resemble human touch. You know, your partner is not going to be able to do something similar, not with their body, and it's going to be harder for your body to be receptive to those more nuanced subtleties. If we can slow it down and work to build pleasure, build energy, instead of going from zero to a hundred, because with most things in life, if we go from zero to a hundred, we're going to blow the nervous system out.

And so we just need to be mindful of how we're doing that. The same goes for men who can't get hard with a partner or who are coming sooner than they'd like, very often. This has to do with overusing porn, being too in their heads, being desensitized, having too high of a tolerance, for novelty for whatever it is that they've been diving into. Or that it's hard for them to be present with the person in front of them and with the sensations in their body.

Learning how to come home to that essence within ourselves, without all these extra bells and whistles. What does it mean to really just open up to what's already here and if we feel bored,   being with that. If we feel numb, being with it, taking the time to lean in and to just be present with the fact that I feel bored right now, or I feel numb right now, can you stay with it and continue getting curious and maybe notice what are you not picking up on because you're used to having more loud sensations or more loud expressions of pleasure. So it's kind of like if you cook with a lot of butter and salts, or a lot of fat and salt, and that's the way you make something taste good, rather than working with like the natural flavors of the food and the spices, and bringing out that full, orchestral delicacy of that full experience; all the textures. It's a different thing.

Right? So we want to be careful. Are we just loading this up with friction and speed? Or are we taking the time to really see all the little layers of what's here?

Naomi: That's it. Yeah. And that's a great analogy as well with the food because it's like our taste buds, you know, if we're always using the natural flavors, our taste buds are going to climatize to that; they're going to acquire a taste for what we're usually eating and be able to feel the richness and the fullness of those flavors.

Whereas if we're always using these really intense spices, and butter, and loading it up with garlic, it's going to be overpowering to our taste buds. And so then when we've got the natural flavors, it's like, I can't taste anything. 

Sureya: Oh, I am so glad you said that too because actually sugar is a great example of a very addicting thing.

Just like fast food types of sex. And when we detox from sugar, our palette gets reset. We cleanse our palette, and then coming back into exploring the sweetness of things that maybe we didn't even recognize as sweet before can feel like, so sweet. Being able to pick up on those undertones that maybe you didn't even notice before because you were so steeped in this higher tolerance.

So food is a great analogy to work with, with sex, because also we have a tendency to devour food a lot of times, or to not be present when we eat. I love to offer the practice of slowing down with your food and letting it be something that appeals to all of your senses and savoring rather than devouring.

Can you really be present with every little texture and flavor and let it melt in your mouth because you actually get to enjoy it for longer when you do that. Otherwise you scarfed it down and it's gone. It's the same thing with sex. I mean, if you love sex, don't you want to be able to luxuriate in it for longer and to really expand the space within which you get to play and enjoy all of that.

Naomi: Yeah. Why not enjoy every moment rather than just the climax; just rushing to get there? 

Sureya: Absolutely. Yeah. I loved what you said on Maui, cause we were talking about foreplay in that conversation on the beach. And you said, I don't even like the word foreplay. And I was like, that's such an excellent point because it implies that this is just a means to an end, to get to the main act.

And that's simply not the case. 

Naomi: That's it. It's all play, it's all sex. It's all part of the journey and the pleasure. 

Sureya: Sex starts with that sexy glance across the room, or just like grazing fingers along them as you walk by, or the little text that you send earlier in the day.

You can be building that energy and truly making love throughout the whole day. There's truly no separation between what’s sex and what's not. I think that was another question that he asked us that day, actually. There's many different expressions of sex, like where do you draw the line? And why box sex into this one little piece where you're like, this is sex and the rest is just the mating ritual that we do to get there. 

Naomi: Mm. So true. So true. Yeah. And I think it comes back to shame and conditioning around sex, not wanting to admit that it's all so sexual. It's all pleasure. It's all part of it. It's all amazing. 

Sureya: Yes, yes, absolutely. What does it mean to make love with every moment? That is ultimately how we're going to have the richest, juiciest, most turned on lives. And if we tell ourselves, this isn't the moment; It's not this one.

It's like, well, why not? Why can't this be delicious too? 

Naomi: Love. Yeah. 

Sureya: Yeah. And I think coming back to that space of connecting with our own sexual energy, that becomes second nature when we're connecting with it in each and every one of the moments throughout the day. And then it becomes second nature to connect with a lover in an intimate way. When we've been doing that with ourselves, we want to have that language be fluent within us.

We want it to be something that we know our bodies. Well, we know how to stay grounded in our own sexual expression because when we're with another person like, wow, the energy is high, it gets hot. And we can have a tendency to forget to breathe, to speed up, to lose ourselves in that person, and so having that anchor into your own central sovereignty is huge. 

Naomi: Yes. Do you know how to make your way back there? Do you know how to drop into your body, into yourself? Exactly. It’s so important to have these tools, to have these practices that you do when you're alone so that when you're with a lover, you can come back to that anchor, as you said.

Sureya: Yeah. And you're not needing them to fulfill that. So this is another huge one. Cause it's like, yeah, we all want a lover to be able to explore that with, of course. that's so yummy. And also, what happens when that lover isn't in the mood and we are? We don't want to put that pressure on them.

Sometimes we just need to be coaxed into the mood, but other times it's not aligned and it's like, do we have to repress that energy? No, we want to have a way that we can go tune into our own energy and fill our own cup and continue to give from that cup rather than resenting our partner because they're not there to meet us in that way.

Rather than feeling like, oh, I can't get what I want because they're not showing up to give me this thing. And I think for a lot of couples, they end up throwing self pleasure out the window because they're like, well, that's something I do when I'm single.

I think it's a really key ingredient in a healthy relationship because you don't want it to be like, oh, my sexual energy only expresses in reference to this person. For a lot of women I've worked with them in reclaiming their sexual energy as their own because they felt like, oh, this is just for my partner; I do this for them, but it's not actually mine. Also, if we get out of a relationship and we haven't been connecting with our own sexual energy, it's like, whoa, where am I? I've totally lost touch with myself in that way. 

Naomi: Completely. Completely. Yeah. You just nailed that. That's such a big piece.

Sureya: Another thing that I'd love to touch on with you is that difference between being in your head versus your body and how you relate with self pleasure in this way. 

Naomi: Yeah, I think that circles back to everything that was spoken to; finding that space inside of you, being able to bring that awareness to your body. Most people may never have even done that; don't even know what that looks like, what that feels like, being able to come into connection, to come into conversation with your body. A simple practice, I would say to even begin that journey is, something that I tell all my clients, just put on one song a day, just one track.

It's not like you need to do big long half an hour or an hour or anything; just put one song a day where your intention for that is to just move with whatever you're feeling and to just feel your body move, whatever's alive, whatever wants to come through, it might not even look like dancing.

Even if you're just giving yourself that few minutes, over time you're going to become familiar with your senses; you're going to become familiar with what it feels like to actually be in your body. So then when you're in this environment of being with another person, instead of being in your head and thinking about what you're supposed to be doing, you come back into that place that you've been cultivating, that place you've been practicing and you've been returning to, and you can come into intimacy from that place of connection with yourself.

So then knowing your body, knowing what it feels like to be embodied, maybe your mind will still come through. Maybe your mind will still say things to you, but you don't need to attach to it. You don't need to give it weight. You know how to come back into the body, you know how to come back to your breath and your movements and your movements can drop you into that place again that you've been practicing going to.

Sureya: You're offering breadcrumbs back home to yourself. You're laying these pathways back home to you. I love that. And I love that you spoke to just putting the music on and feeling what you feel like. Sometimes I don't even like calling it a self-pleasure practice just because it doesn't have to necessarily be how you would define pleasure.

Can you find the pleasure in breathing with that? Can you find the pleasure in being with your body? You don't have to feel sexy when you show up to it, you don't have to feel happy or particularly alive, but you can stir that vitality through saying, I'm going to bring my frustration to this song and to this movement and just let it fucking move through and see what happens.

Naomi: Yeah, full permission, full permission for it to feel or it to look however it wants to look. I love that you said it doesn't have to look sexy and it doesn't have to look like anyone else. It doesn't need to look like anything you've seen, just allowing your body to move how it wants to move, how it's yearning to move.

Whatever comes through, whatever emotion comes up, just full permission for yourself. 

Sureya: It's a way to give your body a voice. Like, what do you need to say, body? This is your space to do your thing and express that's. I think it's also a gorgeous way to learn to source our turn on from within.

I know I already kind of touched on that, but can you find how sexy it is to be in your skin? Can you just enjoy being in your body and recognizing, I'm fucking amazing. I'm beautiful. This body is a miracle. I don't need somebody else to arouse me. I get me to this place.

I can appreciate the beautiful temple that this body is, and that's fucking magnetic. When you feel that, and you're in a place where you can turn yourself on. Oh my God. 

Naomi: So magnetic. This actually brings up something interesting for me. I was reflecting to a friend the other day, several years ago. I had a haircut that I hated and I felt so ugly. I felt so ugly and it affected me and my self-confidence so much. And then a couple of months ago, I got this haircut and I've got this mullet and I'm not happy with it. I'm hating it. I can’t wait for my hair to grow. But I always thought that if I had another haircut that I hated that I would feel ugly again, that it would really rock me.

And it's actually the best thing that has happened for my self confidence now because I've realized, I don't give a shit. I still feel the sexiest I've ever felt because that esteem is coming from the inside. It's how I feel. I actually feel so much pleasure in my body that I don't care how my hair looks.

I don't care what haircut I've got. I feel sexy. It's not dependent on how I'm looking externally. So that's been such a huge lesson for me and reminded me of the importance of prioritizing pleasure. Self-pleasure, cultivating that so that you don't need to depend on how someone perceives you.

You don't need to depend on whether you're really happy with certain things about your appearance. You can actually just feel sexy and magnetism radiating from the inside. 

Sureya: Yes. It is so much more about how you feel than how you look. And that translates hugely. There have been so many times that I didn't maybe notice somebody physically at first, but then just feeling their energy, and the way they express themselves, and how embodied they were became incredibly physically attractive to me and vice versa.

Somebody who was visually appealing and then just feeling that they weren't embodied, or they were too arrogant or whatever; it was like, oh, I'm actually not so attracted to you. It is so how you feel, and I love that you shared that story because you had gotten that haircut right before we met.

Sureya: And I was like, oh my God, I love your pigtail. I thought it was so cute. And you told me this story about having a, well, I guess you can sum it up in a couple of sentences if you want, but I thought it was so hilarious about why you got it. And then I love that it was a catalyst for you to just rock it.

Naomi: Yeah. Yeah, totally. It was really funny. And that was a lesson, like, don't get a haircut in Venus retrograde. I got my ex-husband as well, of all people to do it. We were at my family Christmas and things had fallen through with a lover and I was grieving and I was like, I don't care anymore. I don't need to look pretty for this person because I'm not even meeting up with them anymore. I'm just going to cut a mullet. I've always wanted one and I got my ex-husband to cut it. The reason that I wasn't happy with it was because I told him so many times that I didn't want any length off.

And of course he just hacked away and took all of the length off. And I was like, oh my God, what have I done? And that was right before I met you as well. Huge lessons, huge lessons. That was so funny. 

Sureya: But way to transmute it, babe, to be like, you know, I actually don't even care how my hair looks.

I'm sexy as fuck, and I rock it. I think one of the things that I'm just so inspired by you. It’s the way that you share yourself in your pleasure, in motion in your body, and that there's been all these other women that have reached out to you and said, well, I've always been so insecure about my body and we have the same body type and seeing you and your pleasure made me realize that my body is beautiful too.

And that's so fucking incredible. And so touching. We're all our own worst critics and to see somebody so embodied in their pleasure and to be like, oh, wow, this is like really about how you feel and how you own it. To see that as a reflection, it’s like, I can do that too.

And I love that you're the catalyst for so many women in that way, and just helping them love their body by loving yours. 

Naomi: Mm. Yeah, it means everything to me. That's my why of why I do this work, is to be that permission piece for other people to drop into their sensuality, and their pleasure, and to own it and to just be like, oh, okay, if she can, then I can. We can sit here and talk about it, but there's something also really beautiful about people actually being able to receive the transmission visually. And so that's why it's really important for me. I feel like it's really important that I share myself in my pleasure. Those responses of people being like, oh my God, we have the same body type and the way that you're moving, and appreciating, and loving your body, it makes me feel like I should love my body.

And that's it. That's exactly it. That's the permission beans.

Sureya:  So good. I love it so much. And that's it. It's just getting into our body, getting out of our head of like, how do I look and how is this supposed to look? And I think that's one of the things that porn in the media has done that's really disrupted sexuality. It's become so much a visual and a mental thing.

If we can get out of that and say, this isn't supposed to look any kind of way, this isn't supposed to go any sort of scripted way. There's no agenda. There's no trajectory. How can I come into the body and let what I feel lead the way? it's a completely different experience than I'm going into this with some plan, and some expectation, and worrying about how I look, or any of that.

I have a teacher, Sarah Burton, who always says, sex is messy, and I love that. Sex is fucking messy, just let it be this thing where we're just playing and we're just having fun. And some of the sounds that we make are not going to sound sex,y and like sexy by the standard that we've been told of, like, what's a sexy sound. Some of those guttural grunts are the things that just want to move. Those can be so sexy because they're authentic, because they're real, because they're expressing the energy that is here in this moment. Letting go of the box of what is sexy and letting yourself and your experience redefine that. 

Naomi: Mm, I love it. I love it. 

On that note of loving the body that you're in, and really feeling that, and working with it. one of the questions that came up when I posted a little story letting people know we were going to be on a podcast together and somebody asked, does size matter?

And that's a question that I get asked a lot. It's something I talk about a lot in my vital confidence class, but I think it's a really important question to delve into. I'd love to give space for you to share what you think about that?

Naomi: There's so many different ways we can go with this and what feels alive for me, because this is such a topic for me that I love to go into; how can we bring more curiosity and queerness into heterosexual sex?

And what this brings up for me is like, how can we actually ask a different question? How can we learn from, for example, people having sex with each other who even have penises, people having sex with each other with vulvas; like, how do they approach it then? There is no size there in the question at all.

How people with vulvas can be intimate with each other and spend hours and hours and hours exploring pleasure, exploring their bodies. We do that by bringing curiosity, and creativity, and  exploration, and coming back to the body again, coming back to that unique transmission you're creating together.

And yeah, we could answer the question, and perhaps you will of literally does it matter, but I love the idea of reframing it to how can we bring more queerness? And when I say queerness, I mean, not of the norm, thinking outside the box, thinking differently and bringing that into the exploration of sexuality, 

Sureya: Such a beautiful answer, babe.

I love that because again, what are the questions we're asking and where are they coming from? That was an interesting thing that we were finding in that conversation on the beach. If you do see your size as a limitation, can you get creative and curious, like you said. I think any limitation invites us to think outside the box and to get creative and to get curious.

We often see limitations as negative, but they're not. They're challenges to level up. They’re challenges to work with what we have. So, look at Italian food, for example. They're like, okay, we've got wheat, and tomatoes, and cheese, and some spices and some meats. What are all the things that we're going to make out of this, and how many different permutations of those ingredients do we find in Italian food?

There's all these incredible variations and things that they figured out how to make with these very few, this small list of ingredients. It's really interesting to see, how can we use what we have in new ways rather than wishing we had something different? When I launched the course, Vital Cockfidence, I always said, learn to work your magic with the wand you've been given because it's not so much about size. I'm sure some people will say size does matter, because again, everyone is different so we can't speak for everyone. Um, some people are gonna say it matters. On one end of the spectrum, it can be too small and other people are going to say it can be too big, because I hear that a lot too.

People saying, it's challenging that my partner feels a little bit too big for me, but there's always ways that we can work with it on either side. Whether we feel like maybe we wish they were bigger, or we wish they were smaller, there are always ways that we can get creative and work with that.

The body is so incredibly versatile and able to work in these different ways. The female body, for example, we can reach all the erogenous zones in the female body with the hands, with toys, and with most penis sizes because actually even the cervix, which is at the back of the vaginal canal, she can actually move on her own, towards whatever is stimulating her, which is absolutely incredible.

So the body has a divine intelligence that moves towards connection, that moves towards finding ways to open when that space is safe, and when there's trust, and when there's an openness and a willingness to explore. There are parts of the female body that are actually often going to respond better to manual stimulation, because it's more articulate than what a penis can do.

We can always get creative and think about what are the other ways that we can play with this rather than boxing ourselves into, well size is the determining factor, because it's actually such a small ingredient.

Naomi: Yeah, I love that. 

Sureya: Well I'm curious if there's anything else that you feel a burning desire to share about or anything that's alive for you right now, or that feels connected to this conversation, or connected to your work that you want to bring into this space?

I don't know if there's anything else, but I love how there's been such a common thread through this conversation and how everything's weaved into each other. Really excited for the other topics that we have planned because I know that they're all very specific to each other and very different to this.

I really know that they're all going to weave into each other as well. So I'm feeling a lot of aliveness around that.

Sureya: Yeah. I love that. So I hope it's been clear that there's this common theme that there is no one size fits all approach, and that the more you know yourself, and the more you can be open and curious and learn to listen, the more, you're going to be guided to exactly what the moment is calling for. Get out of your head to come into your body, breathe, slow the fuck down, ask questions, and just be genuine. Don’t flex, don't feel like you have anything to prove. Oftentimes, people can get their egos really wrapped up in sexual performance, which I really don't like the term performance at all because it implies that there's something to prove, that there's a performance. It's play time, it's not show time. When we can not worry about impressing the other person, but more like, we are teammates working towards a shared intention of connection, of pleasure, of exploration, and how do we support each other in that? And where does that take us? It takes on a totally different flavor. 

Naomi: Yes. I love it. 

Sureya: Well, Naomi, I'm so grateful to have you on here today. It's so fun talking with you. It’s so great that this is how we get to really drop in together again since we last saw each other. And I'm so excited for the upcoming episodes that we'll do together, like you said, so excited.

There are some really rich topics that I want to get into with Naomi, so if you loved this, definitely stay tuned and check out Naomi and her work. Naomi, what would you like to share with us about any of your upcoming offerings, how to find you, how to go deeper into your world and what you have to offer?

Naomi: Sure. I am based in Australia and I do run in person events here, but I also work predominantly online. I have currently an eight-week mentorship called Sensual Resurrection, where we really go into all of these things that we've spoken about, and these practices, and you have that support and guidance from me in journeying through this so that we resensitize and we enliven the pleasure body, and that's what this work is really about. You can find me on Instagram, @naomi_batiste, Tik Tok, YouTube, all the places. On my websites, naomibatiste.com.

Sureya: Absolutely. I will be putting all of her information in the show notes, so be sure to give her a follow up, check her out, show her some love. She is such a living, breathing embodiment of this work, and I'm so honored to know her. I am celebrating you so much for everything you're doing, everything you're offering to the world. She’s truly, a very special, incredible being. Everyone that experiences her work speaks very highly of it.

I feel so blessed to get to have her in this space with me and to share her magic with all of you. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and magic and medicine. Thank you for being here with all of us today. 

Naomi: Oh, beautiful. It's been my pleasure, literally such an honor.

Sureya: I love you too. I'm excited for more to come. Thank you everyone for joining us on Nectar: sex and soul. It's been a pleasure to have you, and we'll see you in the next episode. 

Ciao. 

Naomi: Bye.