Kiana Reeves: Episode Link

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotflashesandcooltopics

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@HotFlashesCoolTopics

Join our private women’s FB Group–

On this episode, we are speaking with Kiana Reeves.  Kiana is a Somatic Sex Educator, Doula, Intimacy & Relationship Coach
Chief Education Officer at Foria. We discuss what is somatic sex and how can it benefit your sexual wellness.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to hot flashes and cool topics today. We are going to have quite the interesting conversation with Keanu Reeves. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much. So delighted to be here.
Well, we appreciate your time. And you know, as we mentioned in the preview, we, you are a somatic sex educator. educator, certified somatic sex educator and for his chief education officer.
And I thought we’d start with a very simple question. What is somatic sex? Um, so Soma refers to the body somatic sex, basically body oriented sensation oriented,
um, the coherence between what’s happening, like what’s actually physically physically happening and alive in your body and your sexuality.
And so it’s orienting people in pleasure. It’s orienting people in their sensation. It’s being able to experience our sexuality through our physical body in a really deep and meaningful way.
You know, so many women in our demographic and one of our big questions that we get from a lot of our listeners is I’ve lost my libido. I don’t know what happened to it. It’s gone and I know that it’s addressed in so many,
it’s really addressed by things that you do is sometimes they’re having sex just to please their partner and not because they really want to, but what is something that women in our demographic can do to find that libido back again?
Drive, libido. Get it back again. What are some things they can do? Yeah. Libido is such an interesting topic because it’s, it’s not necessarily complex, but there are a few different factors that really can impact your relationship with your libido.
One is your hormones. And so if it’s a hormonal impacts because of perimenopause or perimenopause or your postmenopausal, then you might want to explore.
how different hormones like testosterone or estrogen work for you and impact your libido. But also important is what’s happening in my relationship.
So the relational field really plays a huge role on libido. And I think most people gloss over that because they feel like they’re just supposed to like feel a particular way about their partner.
But our sexual desire comes from our sense of closeness, our sense of safety, our sense of feeling seen, our sense of feeling loved in a relationship, and our sense of draw and attraction towards someone.
And those are all different areas of a relationship that need consistent, intentional attention to be alive, and to be fully online.
And so that’s that’s a really important thing that we can discuss. And then there’s also the sexual relationship that we have with ourselves. So are you masturbating?
Are you having a solo sexual practice? Are you actively engaging with your own sensuality and your own sexuality in a meaningful way so that you have an anchor into that relationship?
That doesn’t depend on your partner that doesn’t necessarily depend on your hormones. It depends on you being in relationship to it because if we don’t have that then we’re probably not going to be feeling this like huge active libido all the time.
That’s interesting because I think a lot of women in our demographic specifically their bodies are changing. Yeah. And they are really unfamiliar. unfamiliar with their bodies.
It’s almost like you’re meeting someone new for the first time. How can they give themselves some grace and feel comfortable exploring what you’re talking about? That’s a great question.
And I think he said something really important, which is the fact that your body is changing during this time, just like it did if you had children and you went through that whole change.
I mean, that’s an incredibly new identity for most people, just like it did when you first started your period and you grew breasts and suddenly you have a whole new relationship with your body. And so we are by nature and by our biology,
very cyclical, very changing beings. And if we look at this time in our lives, mid -lifes where our body changes yet again,
and we have to refamiliarize ourselves with it. What are some of the things that you can do to anchor yourself in, oh, this is like, this is what feels good to me now. Maybe it’s something completely different than five,
10 years ago. But I think one place I would start people is, if your body is changing, use your hands to explore what feels good now.
Make sure you have a lube, make sure that you have a lube. a mirror so that you can actually look at yourself and then spend time in the mirror with lube, looking at how your body is changing,
noticing what feels different, noticing what feels good and maybe what doesn’t feel good, what used to feel good, so that you have a map that then you can share with a partner. That’s crucial.
Start there and then if you have more questions, I can give you more details. – Thank you. Well, you know, one of the things, especially women our age, you know, we were brought up in a time where things were so taboo around sex.
I mean, even talking about even talking with your partner about it was what is something you can maybe get women in our demographic to just kind of relax when it comes to that area.
Yeah. So talking to our partners about sex is hard. because we don’t have practice. And it is, I would say, generationally changing quite a bit from generation to generation.
But if you grew up when your parents absolutely didn’t talk to you about sex, masturbation was absolutely unacceptable. You know, you were a slut if you had sex before marriage or you were a slut if you were having sex.
sex at all, you know, in your teen years or early 20s. There’s probably some level of internalized shame around sex, which makes it hard to talk about.
And a really simple way, a really simple framework that you can bring into your relationship is I love when you dot,
dot, dot, and I would love. if we could dot, dot, dot. Because then you’re, you’re giving positive reinforcement. Here’s the things I love.
I love when you kiss me and your lips are really soft and you look me in the eyes. I love when you grab me by the waist and, you know, growl in my ear. And I would love if we could spend more time before penetration because sometimes that it’s.
uncomfortable for me because my body is changing. I would love if I could have an orgasm before we go into penetration, because my body will be so much more receptive to that it’ll feel so much better to me.
And so when you frame things up in that kind of language, it’s actually an invitation to your partner, and they don’t feel like they’re doing something wrong or like they’ve messed up or like you’re needing them to suddenly be completely different.
You’re just focusing on these very specific functional realities about how your two bodies are working together. That’s a really good suggestion for a lot of women.
I think that the less they have to kind of think about what they’re going to say and just say it, the more comfortable the conversation can flow. So, for a lot of women, say it.
is so much in the brain. And for men, it’s so much in other parts. And how do you marry the two? Like, how do you say to your husband, I need more mental stimulation and then you might need.
Oh, that’s interesting. So when you say mental stimulation, are you thinking like, like, give me an example of what you’re talking about. Well, I think for women,
it starts way before you get in the bedroom. Like, you know, it’s a date. It’s, it’s, and for men, it’s like, okay, I’m ready. Let’s go. Like they never seem to have a problem being ready. Okay.
Yeah. So I understand what you’re saying though. So we need lead up. We need build up. That’s what I’m saying. And, and really like physically we also do. So on average,
female body takes 20 to 40 minutes to reach heightened, full arousal. And when we look at heightened full arousal in someone who has a penis, it can take like two to three minutes to become fully hard.
We need the same amount of blood flow in our bodies. Like when we’re in utero, when we’re little babies in the belly, the genitals are the same and they differentiate in different ways,
and they organize themselves in different ways, but the erectile tissue beds. are the same beds, and they’re just distributed differently for, for our vulva and intravaginally.
So think about all of the blood that needs to go into the penis. That’s a lot of blood. For sex to feel good, you need that much blood flowing into your vulva and flowing into your vagina.
And like I said, it takes 20 to 40 minutes. And like you said, our brain is our largest sex organ. So if our mind is getting in the way, if we’re thinking about everything we have to do during the day,
or thinking about how, because he left this morning, or in our partner left this morning, and like, didn’t kiss us goodbye, and we’re not feeling loved, and suddenly they want to have sex,
and you’re like, what, like, see me, you’re not going to be available. And the worst thing to do in that situation is to try to override what’s true in your heart,
your true feelings in order to please someone else. You actually have to have integrity and continuity in your heart for your body to open, for your, you know,
for your sexuality to open and get turned on. And so the lead in often is emotional intimacy. And I think that’s what you’re pointing to the lead in isn’t just,
Hey, baby, let’s go. go, you know, let’s go have a moment. The lead in is actually hours before when your partner takes a minute to be present with you and says, I love you,
you are so beautiful. Thank you for all you do to us, or all you do for our family. Thank you for all you do for me. And it’s those moments of micro nourishment that really help build that sense of intimacy.
that then feeds into our sexual relationship later in the week, later in the day or whenever. And so whoever’s listening to this, you know, however you want to get that information to your partner is up to you.
But saying like, I need and I love eye contact. I love when you tell me how much you love me. I, you know, like really reinforcing again,
with this positive language, all of things, the things that they’re already doing that make you feel loved. And when they know that impact, they will do more of it. They will like your partner likely wants to love you well and doesn’t always have the map and so it’s our responsibility to give that to them and celebrate when they’re giving that to us so that they know like okay,
that’s really working. Thank you. Yeah you pointed out something I was going to ask like how do you get your partner to do that and yeah but because in the media and for so long you just even portrayed on movies or television shows it just showed the guy was ready woo and everybody jumping into bed or whatever and that is just not really the case you know especially for the female and the female.
female brain. And I think you kind of answered, you know, whoever’s listening, is there a way we can, any advice, um, any strategies that women places,
they can go like, I know you have the rose map, but I know that that’s something I want to talk about as well. But any strategy is to get a partner that may not be as receptive to listening to get them on that.
path. – Yeah. Your best tool is your expression and your body, right? If you have a good partner and you know that they actually, they’re doing their best to love you and they might not know how and they’re not gonna go seek out a book or they’re not maybe gonna like immediately jump into couples,
sex counseling or whatever. Your best tool is the truth of what’s happening in your body and in your heart. you’re gonna be able to do what you want to do. you’re gonna be able to do what you want to do. And if you stay committed to what you’re doing, you’re gonna be able to do what you want to do. And if you stay committed to what you’re doing, And if you stay committed to what you’re doing, to that, even in
the face of, you know, being afraid sometimes that they might not love you if you share that you’re sad or they might get upset. You know, we, as women,
we’re socialized to care for other people’s feelings and prioritize how our feelings are gonna impact other people. And a lot of the times that’s why we hold ourselves back and we don’t share when something hurts us.
And we don’t want to… to feed into the kind of that archetype of women being dramatic or women being too emotional or women being too crazy. And so we censor these things that are actually really important information for our partners.
And so if you can remember how to go, okay, say something your partner does hurts your feelings. You don’t hold on to it for eight hours. You’re not stewing on it for the rest of the day.
And then, you know, kind of passive aggressively punishing them later, because, you know, by turning your back to them at bedtime, when they’re trying to kiss you, you actually in the moment, you know,
he walks out the door, and my partner will do this, right? Like, he’ll try to leave for work, because he’s one track mind. And he’s getting ready to go. And he’s like, Okay, bye, babe. And I’m like, excuse me,
I’m gonna be kissed, you know, and you you declare declare what your needs are. And, and then they remember it like calls them back into attention of like, oh yeah, like my woman or my partner my priority is loving her well.
And so you can do that with everything. Right, you can just you can be your body and your heart can be this mechanism of expression where they feel what’s true. You don’t have to tell them right you don’t have to explain when you do this night.
And I know it’s just like, hey, feel me because that hurt or oh, that feels really good. Like, getting really big on your expression of when they do something beautiful,
that feels good. And it’ll just start showing them like, she likes this. She doesn’t like this. It’s like, it’s these obvious things we don’t think about. But yeah, the body’s the best tool for that your expression is.
And I think for women who have had children, you’ve spent so many years like having to be quiet or having to be creative ’cause the babies.
And now, I don’t think that some women take advantage of the fact that we are now empty nesters at this stage of life. And you can really kind of have fun with your sexual relationship with your partner and kind of open up to that.
‘Cause like you said, we have been ingrained to not talk about it. And, you know, Bridget mentioned the Rose map and I was going to ask you, that was one of my questions as well.
Can you explain what that is? Yeah. So I do, you know, going back to this, like our arousal on average takes 20 to 40 minutes. Um, I’ve been doing hands -on sessions with clients for years and years and years,
and I’ve been doing hands -on sessions with clients for years and years. showing them how their body works. And it is such a profound moment when a woman looks at her vulva and goes like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never even seen myself before.” And like,
I didn’t know pleasure was available to me here. And so many of us were never given the information we needed, the experiences we needed to actually understand our own sexual function,
to understand our own… arousal and our own desire. And so the rose map is my course that’s specifically focused on that. It’s very hands -on practices to connect you with your arousal,
your desire and the map of your body. And then, yeah, and that’s essentially what it is. – And you know, there’s been so much misinformation to women throughout the years.
And we’ve spoken to… some women that like had to undergo hysterectomies and one had to have her cervix removed because they told her that was important for sexual pleasure and and I think Colleen and I don’t know about you Colleen but we had a doctor that showed us like a model of the clitoris and how it wasn’t just one little area and there’s so much misinformation.
I’m 50 56 years old and I just found this out. Like I know this. I’m 56 years old and I did know what was going on inside my own body.
So you know are there and you’re the norm. You’re more and I’m the norm. I’m the norm. You know I’m open to talk about it even and that I’m the norm. I don’t know you know other ways to get to have women become more aware of this.
and that it’s okay to have pleasure. It’s okay to know this and it’s okay to have pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like a great place for people to start.
If you’re not ready to jump into a class or you’re, you know, you’re just like, what is this body of mine? Because really, we forget like sex happens in the body. You know,
we all want to have these incredible intimate. intimate, orgasmically sexual experiences. And yet we’re afraid to look in the mirror at what we look like, or we think our volvos are ugly,
or we’re worried that we’re going to smell. And so the the first step is like being in right relationship with your own body in a way where you feel proud and confident.
And in relationship with who you are as a as a person who lives. inside of a body and experiences life through your body, you’ll feel like your clitoris will change size because your clitoris is actually what is a penis on a man.
It’s this shaft in the glands. And so it gets an erection, it fills with blood, it gets larger, it gets swollen. Your labia get full. They have erectile tissue beds underneath them.
So your outer labia get really full and swollen. So add hormones on. that. And you’re really in trouble, Bridget, because I mean, really, I mean, and it’s it’s even,
you know, before or perimenopause, menopause, and even after the birth of a child, I know that that can be I know, I was terrified because I had to have an apesia to me.
So I was terrified. And just pain wise, and also I feel like when I was nursing hormones were all over the place and the libido was down again and I was like 27 I remember asking a doctor at the time you know is this normal I’d never heard I’d never heard that you would lose your libido and they were like oh well like too bad you know this was back in the 90s kind of like that’s too bad you know like kind of
almost a fake it till you make it thing And you know, it’s just, I feel like women, there is hope, a lot of them just think that door shut, you know,
throw away the key. And there’s so much more that is out there and available to them. Yeah. And you know, what’s so cool is like, as we get older,
we know our bodies more. And so if you’re coming into midlife or your menopausal years, you literally have more knowledge of your body than you’ve ever had.
You’ve had more experience than you’ve ever had, you’re probably more confident in yourself than you’ve ever been. And you have a freedom that young 20 year olds don’t have.
And it’s this kind of, you know, this interesting time because maybe you’re not. lubricating as naturally as you used to or maybe some of your vaginal tissues feel a little bit more sensitive,
but we have, you know, we create things that totally support that. Your capacity for sexual pleasure in these years is immense.
And there’s plenty of tools to support the kind of changes that will make sure that it’s a really comfortable. comfortable, pleasurable experience for you. And it’s such a cool time to be in exploration,
like you were saying, and to rediscover yourself and to go like, all right, maybe my kids are no longer living in the house, or maybe I’m in a new relationship, or maybe I’m in a new relationship with myself,
whatever it is, it’s like, no one realizes that we have this, you know, whether you’re going through like 40s or 50s, like on a average, half to a third of our life is lived after menopause.
And that’s a massive chunk of our lives, like a massive chunk of our lives. And so if we’re not in sexual exploration, if we’re not like, wow, I did all of the things that,
you know, all the childbearing years things, but like, who am I as a sexual being when that is not my primary? identity? Who am I?
And that’s like, to me, that’s such a cool world that it’s just such a missed opportunity. As I mentioned before, you’re a chief education officer of Foria and they do a lot of,
uh, some of the products have CBD. How does CBD play a role in sexual arousal? Yeah. So CBD is one of the many. botanicals we use in our formulas. And CBD is a very well -known cannabinoid,
which essentially helps arousal. It helps with comfort and arousal, which are two kind of key, not kind of,
they’re two key factors in your ability to experience sexual pleasure. Because if you have anything getting in the way, if they’re, you know, you’re experiencing pain. or you’re experiencing tension or experiencing discomfort,
of course, you’re not going to have pleasurable sex, right? And if you’re not aroused, if you’re not, your body’s not actively, you know, getting physiologically turned on, you’re not going to have pleasurable sex.
So CBD does this very cool thing in the body where it helps to soften and relax. [silence] helps to bring comfort to any area that needs it.
And then it also is there’s so many things I want to say that like I medically cannot say just because of the nature of you know I can’t say these things but you can go on the internet and you can see what CBD does and then you can understand why CBD is so amazing in the bedroom.
It activates your pleasure essentially. essentially. You know, I know you, you know, as your profession, it would be hard to say, but we know that when we people seek out CBD for arthritic issues,
anything, any issues in their body that can help. So I can see where that could play a role as well. If you’re distracted.
And honestly, if you are distracted in any way, whether it be. anger at your partner or pain in your body, your joints or anything like all of that plays world. There’s so many pieces to that puzzle that have to fall into place.
Absolutely. Yeah. So when you talk about somatic sex classes, or as an educator, what can people expect from a class or class?
I think it very much depends. on the intention of the class, you know, if I’m teaching something to couples, it’s likely very different to if I’m teaching a class for women.
Um, but largely what I’m focusing on is reorienting people’s bodies and awareness back into their own experience. You know,
a lot of what I see out in the world of the sexual wellness industry. or sex education is kind of traditional sex education is a focus on toys or a focus on how things are used or a focus on different types of loops.
And that all is very important and completely has its place. Consent, super important has its place relational styles, very important. But it unless we are going to dive into it.
our ability to experience pleasure, our capacity to be with sensation, unless we’re going to talk about our nervous system and the entire kind of history of our own relationship with our sexuality and how that may get in the way or may not get in the way of our sexual experience as it’s happening today,
it’s going to be hard to really impact. impact people’s experiences in the bedroom, because we’re just again, like externalizing and outsourcing or sexual pleasure to someone else or some other tool or some other thing.
And so my work is very much focused on hands on somatic, body based exploration, and has a huge emphasis on the nervous system and being able to track what’s happening,
so that it feels safe. It feels safe. pleasurable, and it feels expensive. – So many women also, when we hit this age,
have undergone a lot of kind of really traumatic, whether it’s a surgical menopause, a hysterectomy, a rough childbirth,
pelvic floor issues, incontinence. How can this help women who have undergone a lot of trauma? these things? Yeah, that’s such a beautiful question because we don’t often head into those things knowing the impact that they might have on our sex lives.
And a lot of times people are unpleasantly surprised that, you know, they had a challenging birth or they had a hysterectomy and not just because of physical reasons.
or not just because of hormonal reasons, their body is not responding the same sexually. And the first place to start is to understand that your body is your subconscious.
And there’s really no separation between an emotional experience and how your body is responding. Just think of where we how we carry stress, when we are stressed out,
our shoulders get really tense, right? Or you’ll get a headache or you will get a get, you know, we have these physiological signs that we carry emotion in our body. And we have all of these,
I think they’re called euphemisms. I don’t know that proper term for any English language, but like my heart is heavy. That’s actually like that sadness that you’re feeling in your chest and there is a sensation of heaviness or I have butterflies in my stomach.
That’s describing excitement. or anxiety depending on what you’re stepping into and these are real experiences that we have and yet we’re kind of trained to override this wisdom of the body these signals of the body and when we do that we slowly start to dissociate and not remember that the body remembers things for us and holds things for us that we can’t really metabolize in our conscious waking state.
state. And so if we’ve had really challenging experiences in childbirth or we’ve had really a medical trauma or a medical intervention that in our mind is fine,
but somewhere in our body was like a huge surprise and we haven’t really been able to integrate the impact of it, then you might be dealing with long -term repercussions of it in your sex life because you haven’t…
really been able to integrate all of the emotion that went along with no longer having a uterus or surgically, like when you get put under, there can be,
the body can experience that as a threat even if you’re not consciously awake, right? You’re put into a state of freeze, you can’t move, you can’t talk, your body’s being cut open. So the body has stuff to work through after that.
that, it has to go back into a state of feeling like it can activate and protect itself. And so a lot of this belongs in the world of nervous system work. And anyone who’s experiencing that like highly,
highly recommend seeking out an experienced EMDR practitioner, a somatic experiencing practitioner, someone who’s trained in trauma resolution so that your nervous system can come come back into a state of fluidity and regulation.
Yeah, it’s so interesting. Yeah, that’s very interesting. Just bringing that part into it. And also that just hearing that women can maybe release even though they feel this kind of,
I don’t know if it’s a shame or whatever they feel, just to give them that space to say it’s not your fault. Yeah, and that’s such a big thing that women need to hear Yeah,
they do feel the shame and it’s not their fault and right. Yeah Absolutely. Yeah. So if women want to learn a little bit more about this, where can they find you?
You can find me I do a lot of educating on Instagram and on my website That’s the to my newsletter and so Keanu Reeves comm is my website That’s where my classes will be up.
That’s where I work one -on -one with people. And then my Instagram is @kianareves, K -I -A -N -A -R -E -E -V -E -S dot com. And then for those looking for support and tools and all of the amazing things for you,
I’m the Chief Education Officer for. And so we make amazing, all natural, all organic, all everything female -focused. -focused formulas for intimacy and for midlife.
Thank you so much, Keanna, for coming on and educating us on a lot of different stuff when it’s dealing with intimacy and sexual relationships. We appreciate your time. Yeah,
my pleasure. Thanks for having me. (upbeat music)