This week’s episode with Jess Lieu, who is a Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Body Worker, is a really special one for us. Jess and Ellen met at a recent Death Doula Retreat with Going with Grace, and we’re honored to share this incredible episode. 

Jess has an infectious love for life and pleasure, we both felt it so deeply in this conversation where we dive into all the facets of pleasure. We explore the inextricable connection between death work and pleasure work. We talk about societal expectations around pleasure, and how often those expectations don’t align with our experiences. And we dive into all the emotions and experiences that can come up in this work, especially if shame is present. Jess helps us understand the importance of boundaries and trust through this process, and how helping others reconnect with their bodies through pleasure and sensation opens the doors to deeper understanding of ourselves, more connectedness in relationships, and feeling more alive day-to-day.

“Often I work a lot with desire and consent. Oftentimes there's a disconnect between what we want and how our body is responding. Through working with the body, somatic practice, we're able to begin wiring and creating a congruency between what we really want and externalizing that through valuing what we want, trusting what we want, and then finally being able to ask for what we want. Yeah, pleasure, boundaries, feeling more pleasure, feeling more aliveness day to day or explicitly with sex and relational things, boundaries is a big one.”

In this very special conversation, Jess shows us how powerful healing through pleasure can be, and how we can use our senses to savor sensations as a way to connect with our bodies and cultivate more pleasure in our lives.

If you’d like to learn more about Jess and her work visit www.sensingsoma.com. 

Connect with Jess on IG at @sensingsoma .

Ep. 99 - Healing Through Pleasure is now streaming on Apple and Spotify.