Fun, more pleasure and menopause? Can these experiences go together? In this episode and the next, we present talk radio show host Rebekah Beneteau and her guest Yvonne Wray, a researcher from the Welcomed Consensus. These two women have a lively conversation exploring this paradoxical theme.

Rebekah: Good evening everyone and welcome to the Ask Me Anything Love and Sex Show. It is January 30th, 2013 and although it’s frosty outside it is going to be nice and warm on the show tonight because I am thrilled to have as my guest a woman that I have just discovered by the name of Yvonne Wray.

I will tell you a little bit about Yvonne and how I found her as a referral through Twitter to her blog. www.menopause-flashes.com is her website, Menopause Flashes – Turning up the Heat.

Yvonne’s background is that she’s a sensual researcher with the Welcomed Consensus and she’s been intensively focused on Deliberate Orgasm and pleasurable living for the last 18 years. More recently when she celebrated 50, she began her menopause blog which highlights her experiences and research into this topic. I think that she has a lot of really positive viewpoints about menopause and just about life in general, about living a pleasurable life which you all know is my goal in life to get everyone on track with finding what pleases them and living their life that way. So, everybody please help me welcome Yvonne. Welcome to the show.

Yvonne: Thank you, Rebekah. I’m glad to be here.

Rebekah: The first thing I want to know, we always like to start at the beginning, is how did you get into being a sensual researcher? What set you on that path in your life?

Yvonne: That’s a good question. Well, I was in my early 30’s and I was having a very successful career in Silicon Valley. I am actually a tech geek, you could say. My background is computer science and I have a degree from the University of Texas. I was in Silicon Valley in the early 90’s when the internet was just getting big, just starting out. Although I was gratified with my career and all of that I was really looking for a way to express myself and for more to life. I had a wonderful relationship and a good sex life, but I just knew that there was more that I could be experiencing as a woman. So my ears and my senses were perked up to hear anything that came along my way that might be something like that that I could add to my life. I was introduced to the Welcomed Consensus when I was about 31 and I started taking some sensuality courses. A good friend was the one who introduced me. I immediately thought that the things that they were saying made sense. I tried on some of the things they had to say and I loved it from the very beginning. That’s when I became a sensual researcher.

Rebekah: Okay. And what did that entail for you in the beginning? What types of sensual research did you do?

Yvonne: In the very beginning I took my first sensuality course, as I said, with the Welcomed Consensus. It was called Common Sensuality and it’s a class that was lecture/discussion. Some of the things that we talked about were how to look at sensuality and look at sexuality from a different way than what was out there in the men’s magazines or the women’s magazines or the newspapers. It’s a class that anybody can take. The Welcomed Consensus, we still have that class. It is also the same information that is available online in the DOing Essentials Sensuality Teleclass so people don’t have to travel to take it. Yeah it’s great. New technology – we just love it.

Rebekah: I’ll tell you I first heard of The Welcomed Consensus in 1996 when I was at healing school and a friend of mine had heard about the teachings. They were coming to Boston. A team from the Welcomed Consensus came to Boston and she took the Common Sensuality class and she came back and she told me everything that she’d done. I thought wow!

Yvonne: Oh right. I was in Boston, I was assisting that course.

Rebekah: Oh my, wow. So you know my friend Marilyn?

Yvonne: I do.

Rebekah: There you go! People who have been listening to me for a while know that I have been a student of Lafayette Morehouse and I think that the information that you all have is very similar. They are very parallel tracks, have a lot of things in common. One of the things that I love about all of you is that you are very tech savvy. They have a wonderful website, folks at welcomed.com Correct? Go ahead spell it.

Yvonne: w e l c o m e d dot com

Rebekah: There’s a lot of resources on there, DVDs and all kinds of things. A lot of articles that I think people would enjoy reading.

Yvonne: That’s right.

Rebekah: There you go. There’s a saying that you can’t copyright the truth. I love knowing there are different people presenting similar information with some differences because you go to the teacher that calls to you. You go to the place that you’re drawn. And the place that you feel comfortable and this way more people can be exposed to good information, I think.

Yvonne: I absolutely agree. Absolutely

Rebekah: But this is my first time getting to have a formal conversation with someone from The Welcomed Consensus because I haven’t actually studied. I’m really fascinated. What would you say is the core of the philosophy?

Yvonne: Right off the bat I would say Deliberate Orgasm. Deliberate Orgasm encompasses its technique, a particular technique for having and producing female orgasm and orgasm in a partner’s body. It is also a model of sensuality. It’s a model of orgasm and it’s a whole lot of viewpoints on living sensually, living pleasurably and having winning relationships. Because there are many people out there that just don’t know how to please their partner or win with their partner. Deliberate Orgasm and the information included gives you those straight forward, winning viewpoints.

Rebekah: One thing that I’ve found is that when I am well cummed the whole world looks better. I’m a much nicer person to be around. I enjoy the people around me a lot more. I have more to give when I’m filled up.

Yvonne: Yes, we find that too. Yes, absolutely. It’s one of those things, it’s a basic. All the things it takes to have a Deliberate Orgasm, for me to have it in my body with a partner or I can have one by masturbation. All the things that it takes for me to lay down and actually have pleasure, be pleasured. All the things that it takes are the same things that it takes to live pleasurably, be a pleasant person, have winning relationships, have fun conversations and fun in my whole life. I mean all the same things apply. So it’s not isolated to the bedroom and it’s not isolated to the sex act. Although the sex is so fun, it’s not isolated to that and that’s the great thing about Deliberate Orgasm. It spreads out into your whole entire life which is really how this research, my personal research that I’m doing with menopause actually came about.

Rebekah: I love that. I love the idea that it’s not just limited to the bedroom, how you said it filters out through your whole life. So what was the connection, how did you go from the sensual research, how did menopause incorporate into that?

Yvonne: By living with these viewpoints from Deliberate Orgasm, by living in a pleasurable and sensual way, and being used to having orgasm every day. I have what are called DO dates, Deliberate Orgasm, with a partner, I have that every day. I have this really fun practice that I have in my life every day. So I notice my body, I notice the cycles throughout the month. I have been doing this for 18 years and very seriously looking to see what does Deliberate Orgasm do? What are the effects in my body, in my mind and in my life? It is something that along with my tribe, along with the Welcomed Consensus all of us we talk about on a daily basis. So for 18 years this has been an integral part of my life. I began to notice the signs of menopause in my body, which I didn’t actually recognize at first as being menopause. As I started noticing these changes that I thought were kind of weird, I was able to notice them pretty quickly because I was used to paying attention to my body. I was used to paying attention to my monthly cycles. I was used to noticing the changes in my sexuality and my response and my desires, all of those things.

Rebekah: Thank you. You said so much and there are things that I want to come back to. The first thing I want to say is that you have been living in community. The Welcomed Consensus is a communal household, but you can have a community without walls as well, right? If you create, cultivate like-minded people around you you can have this kind of environment wherever you are, would you say?

Yvonne: Absolutely. Definitely. In fact, the research that we do or the conversations that we have include people immediately here in household but they also include people who live elsewhere. It is an extended community of people who are interest