Episode 13
The Feminine Libido - Part 1
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Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, Functional Nutritionist and Integrative Health Coach, coming to you with a scientific and spiritual exploration of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance by becoming deeply and fully nourished in a world that wants to dull us down. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary, and please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
So today's episode is on a very highly requested topic, I would say maybe it's the most requested topic that I get here at Jessica Ash Wellness. Actually, scratch that, you know what the topic that I see the most DMS come in about is hands down, “How do I make my boobs grow bigger naturally?” That is a direct quote, that is a direct quote. But then after that, I would say the topic that's most requested is the female libido. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. I think it fits really well on the back of the vulnerability conversation because libido goes so much deeper than just the physical or physiological. And there's a lot to this conversation.
Asking the Right Questions
In the last episode, I talked about how our sense of self is so important before we go establishing boundaries, because if we don't really know who we are, and what makes us who we are, and you don't really understand our purpose, we tend to not really know where we start and another person begins, those boundaries start to get really muddled. And it's very difficult to hold boundaries when we don't know where we end and someone else begins. Sometimes we as women, we start to really soften and open up in places or to people that make us feel really, really unsafe and knock us into a state of fight or flight or fawn or freeze, because they're not someone that our body feels safe being vulnerable with or connecting with. And we're kind of overriding our body's response. And that puts us in a state of - even if it's just a slight state of survival - where we feel like we now have to step into our masculine energy to protect our safety, but on an energetic level that can be really energy draining. That can have real physical impacts on our metabolism.
Because if we're staying in a slight sympathetic nervous system state where we're not really going into parasympathetic, we're not going into rest and digest regularly, we're kind of staying in the sympathetic state, staying in fight or flight, staying in that masculine energy state because we feel like we're having to protect ourselves, we're going to utilize resources very differently. We're going to expend resources very differently, and our hormones are going to shift in order to do that. It increases our adrenaline, maybe increases our cortisol, our blood sugar, manipulating hormones, both glucagon and insulin. And it can really impact, of course, our reproductive hormones, our production of estrogen and progesterone and testosterone, and really also impact the nutrients that keep estrogen and progesterone in balance. And so if you just want a “how to hack your libido” episode, this episode is not going to be for you. I really want to explore the deeper parts of libido, both the energetic and physiological components.
If you're just looking on how to boost your libido, or how to hack your libido, I'm sure you can just go search that on Google and you'll get a million hits. But I like to go deeper than just like throw maca powder at it, or even the people that say, you know, all you need is just a little hormone replacement therapy and you're going to be back to normal, you know, just get your estrogen levels up or just get your testosterone levels up or just get your progesterone levels up. And oh, you'll be back. You'll be back to normal. And I think, really? We always miss out when we just ask the question that starts with how do I hack my libido? How do I boost my libido? The answer to our health questions never really lie in questions that start with ‘how,’ it always starts with the question, ‘why?’ And so instead of asking, “How do I boost my libido?” We should be asking the question, “why is my libido low in the first place?”
A lot of us are really reliant on Band Aid solutions. And what I mean by Band Aid is that if we use maca, for example, you know, it's like if I have a low libido and I'm like, Oh, I'm going to take some maca powder and oh, I start taking maca powder and my libido goes up. Well, if I go off of that maca powder and my libido goes back down, I didn't really resolve the issue that was driving libido. I just kind of put a bandaid solution on it that was more symptom suppressing than actually root cause healing. And so we find a lot more root cause answers when we ask the question why?
And so the conversation that needs to be had today is not how do we enhance our libido but why is our libido low in the first place? I think when we're trying to approach a subject and a topic and the reason why I say this is because we want to teach you how to research for yourself. This is something that anybody can do. And when you're trying to approach a huge subject, it can sometimes be really hard where to start. So the best place to start sometimes it's just to define something for yourself. I think it's really important for you to define what libido is to you. Is libido just kind of this shallow, kind of lustful physical desire for sex? Or is your libido deeper than that? And does libido mean more to you than that?
I think we live in a society where the lines have been really muddied with the difference between lust and something deeper, a true sexual driving life giving force. I'm a big believer that our libido is deeply intertwined with our reproductive energy. And so therefore, our feminine energy, our sexual energy, our co-creative energy, our fertility, and our desire for reproduction, our surrender and acceptance of our life experience and experiencing life to the fullest, really living in a place of feeling your way through life instead of just kind of like robotically moving your way through life, all of these things are intertwined. And you can't really tell where one starts and the other begins, right? Because our sexual energy and our libido itself is intertwined with who we are as women. And unfortunately, I feel like a lot of us as women were sold really short in the education department, not just the physical act of sex, but more an understanding of our own energy, because at the end of the day, the female libido and the male libido are completely different.
The Female Libido
I feel like the female libido is really just something that is neglected in this desire to kind of replace men within society or rise to the same place that men are and to leave our feminine energy behind to let it kind of wither and die. We have kind of unwillingly or unconsciously taken on the male libido as around this like kind of constant desire for sex, and being able to be easily aroused all of the time. Those are things that are really not as much a part of the feminine sexual experience. Our libido is more of an invitation energy, our libido is more of an opening and a softening and an opportunity type energy. And it's not a huntress, “I'm on the prowl” type energy at most parts of our cycle. But let's dive deeper into this. Because remember, our libido shifts and changes with our cycle. So taking a step back for a second, you know, we have to remember we've talked about up until this point, this co creative energy in this life force that moves through the female body. If you haven't listened to episode two on bioenergetics, and episode five on the difference between masculine physiology and feminine physiology, I would say pause now and listen to those episodes first, because they really do act as a primer for some of the concepts we're going to be talking about. But we've hit on how behind all of life, there is this deep driving hum, something that keeps it in motion that we define as energy, and in women, but in all things, all living things.
But in women, we have a deep driving reproductive lifeforce, this kind of co-creation energy, that we're constantly channeling, because we have unique physiology that allows us to be open to the Divine or the great beyond or whatever you want to define that as. We have a womb, we have a cervix, we have ovaries, we have these reproductive organs that connect us to life itself, to something way bigger, that we can tap into at any time. And so when we're talking about cellular metabolism, really metabolism in and of itself, our ability to take things like carbs, proteins, fats, minerals, nutrients, and turn them into energy within the cell. That cellular metabolism is really a representation of energy flow and how energy is being both created and utilized by the body.
One of my goals in life right now is to make the female body spiritual again, because it's always been spiritual. But we have forgotten this and in doing this, we have really given away so much of our power. It's pretty incredible. You know, on a physical level, we are a representation of all of creation. We are made up of the same dust that the dust we walk upon is made of. We take in living things, plants and animals and concentrate all of that energy and life force into our tissues, we use small trace amounts of the rocks and stones that we see around us to be able to utilize these nutrients, metals, and minerals, we also are made up of so much water, which is a wonderful conductor of energy and electricity. We and the world around us are one at least nature and all of creation.
But even on a deeper level, our bodies, the female body itself, is a constant reflection of the life-death-rebirth cycle, the need for blood to bring newness to all of creation. So when we bleed, our menstrual cycle starts the cycle. That's why day one is when we start bleeding. And that is a time when our body turns inward and kind of almost mourns in a way and utilizes its energy to shed the uterine lining. Then as we move into the second half of the follicular phase, you know, it's almost like we go from winter to spring and the blood brought in the space. Now we can start moving into creating new things. And estrogen is kind of that hormone of potential, or that hormone of newness. As it starts to rise, after menstruation, then it will start to build and build and build until we have this peak of estrogen that then brings on and brings enough proliferation to bring on ovulation. And then this is when our testosterone peaks for the female cycle. And then, of course, the corpus luteum, the empty egg sack that is empty during ovulation, then becomes a hormone-producing gland that produces progesterone. Then progesterone kind of becomes the dominant hormone of the second half of the cycle during the luteal phase. It's called the luteal phase because of the corpus luteum. We have a second rise of estrogen mid luteal phase, but progesterone usually remains the dominant hormone of the second half of the cycle.
So if you look at the blood as a representation of sacrifice or almost death, then it creates space. And then as estrogen starts to build, there's a newness. And then of course, ovulation is a potential for new life. It really is the star of the show of our cycle, or ovulation is the most important part of our cycle. If it's not happening, we're missing a huge half of the cycle. It's what the bleed was for. It's the spark of life. And so every ovulation our body believes there could be a possible pregnancy that has taken place. As the metabolism and body shifts into the second half of the cycle, it's in preparation for a possible implantation, because the implantation wouldn't take place until later on in the cycle when we're supposed to get our period. And so for two weeks of every single month, or every single cycle, our body is preparing as if we are having a potential pregnancy and ovulation is often compared to summer. And then the luteal phase, the end of the luteal phase is usually compared to fall, you know, so we kind of have this winter, spring, summer fall. I think those are great representations for those kind of death-life-rebirth cycle.
When you look at the female body, it's really a representation of the lushness and abundance of all of creation, this ability to just continue to be lush and reproduce and be self contained where all life flows from it. It's a representation of all that as holy. You know, it's a living and breathing altar of continuous worship to the Divine when it's in alignment, of course. And so when we think of ourselves this way, and you might be like, “just cut out, way too spiritual for me, that's, that's way too much. I'm not a living, breathing altar.” I'm here to argue that you are. And there's a reason why we have two hormones that are dominantly our female hormones, there's that big lie that we talked about in episode six that had two parts, where we have grown to believe that estrogen is the only female hormone when in reality, estrogen in comparison to progesterone, they're both female hormones and they need to remain in balance to do their jobs.
Estrogen is a hormone that brings a lot of newness, it's a hormone of potential because it causes cellular proliferation. It draws water into the cells, it causes growth. Whereas progesterone really provides a lot of consciousness and direction to the growth that comes with estrogen. And so when you have estrogen that's unchecked by progesterone, you will often find you have this unchecked growth, this constant energy suck, you're utilizing too much energy, you're creating too many new things. And psychologically, you will also feel that as well. There'll be this constant kind of insatiable drive for things more information, more this, more that, more sex, but it will never feel satiating and will never truly penetrate you. It will never truly change your experience without progesterone.
Progesterone is the hormone that really calms estrogen down and directs it into a place that creates really a conscious continuation of life. We can't be pregnant or carry a pregnancy without progesterone for that very reason. It directs the growth of estrogen into new life. And so for me, I really see libido as kind of this craving for newness. I see it as a craving for connection with the Divine. And I see it as a reflection of our lifeforce energy, a reflection of our reproductive energy, and really on a deeper level, our cellular metabolism. Because, when you think about sexual energy and feminine energy being deeply intertwined, you can't really separate one from the other, they're really like one in the same, our womb is really the center of it all. It's where we store all of this co-creative energy, it's where it's channeled, which is why our uterus and our ovaries and all of the parts of our reproductive cycle and tract play a big part in the reproductive process. They are such huge energy consumers. Not only do they require huge amounts of nutrients to do their job, but they also require a lot of energy. And when there's so many energy blockages, our hormones are going to start to struggle first. Because if there's a blockage in energy flow, our hormones and the center of that co creative energy is going to scream at us first.
Energy and Structure
We talked about in the bioenergetics episode how energy begets structure and energy and structure are intertwined. We can't get one without the other. And we really don't know where one starts and the other begins. And so our structure is going to be the thing that generates the energy, but the energy is going to be the thing that impacts the structure.
I find it really interesting how the female structure and the male structure both reflect their unique energies. The female structure reflects feminine energy, it's a little bit softer, it's physically weaker, which shows the need to be protected and provided for and taken care of. Our hips are a different shape, or our pelvis is a different shape, our skeleton is a different shape, we have a little bit of a different center of gravity, our center of gravity is in our hips. Whereas in the male structure, the center of gravity is within the chest, we feel the most filled up when we're taken care of, when we're safe, we're stable, we're cozy, we're fed, we're nourished, where the male physiology is not as concerned with those things. It's more focused on action and staying in motion.
When you look at the nature of femininity itself, you know, remember, it's constantly in a state of receiving, it's surrendering, it's opening up. Its desire is to be penetrated not just by what you're thinking, but also life itself. And it really wants and desires and almost magnetizes, that's our type of energy, we're magnetizing what we want toward ourselves, we're not actively going out and just constantly forcibly making it happen, or taking on that masculine energy. When we are in that constant state, we're going to feel really, really out of alignment.
And then when you look on the flip side to that masculine energy, it really wants a safe place to go and be seen and be safe. It wants to worship at creations altar, and wants to give and be received. And that is really the power of femininity, right? We can receive or we can reject. And at the end of the day the masculine wants to be received. I think this is why a lot of people say that men want to be respected. Men want to be respected. I don't think that's quite it. I think the masculine wants to be received. It wants its wisdom, its guidance, its protection, its love to be seen and to be received. And the craziest part about that is without reception, masculinity and masculine energy really loses its purpose. Something that's needed is to give, also need something to give to, or it can become really, really dangerous.
The Loss of the Sexual Encounter
So once we start to really understand these concepts, I think most of us can say like, wow, we live in a really messed up society, we, we live in a society where tons of people have energies that are flip flopped, we have women living in a constant state of masculine energy, and then men who are frozen, so they're just kind of in the state of feminine energy. And then on top of that, we have another layer of where it's becoming more and more normal for people to be exploited sexually or to exploit themselves sexually. And the power of the sexual encounter has really been lost. People have forgotten how sacred divine sexuality is, in exchange for this kind of shallow, surface level lust. And to be honest, I think a lot of us have confused libido with shallow, surface level lust. We think things like, I just quickly need this physical release. We think that that is libido. But the thing is, lust and sexual energy are not the same thing. Lust, which is driven by estrogen, which we'll get into into a second, you know, lust and sexuality are two separate things because one fills and satiates and fulfills and brings energy to you and supports energy production, and then one actually empties and drains us of energy and life force. After the initial kind of high and then fall of those hormones, it actually makes us feel more and more empty, more and more hungry.
When we're acting on our true sexual energy that is intertwined with our feminine energy, we are going to feel so nourished and fulfilled and filled up. Whereas if we are just kind of in this physical frenzy of hormones, and in this kind of shallow, not so satiating lust, we're not going to feel nourished and fulfilled, we're going to feel really much the opposite. Not only is it going to make us feel lonely, but it's going to make us feel unsafe. It can also really start to deteriorate some of our sense of self, because we start to see ourselves very differently. It's kind of interesting to me, because there's this really insatiable kind of shallow physical drive and urge for sex that happens when somebody is in a state of high estrogen, especially males, when they have elevated estrogen, they can have this kind of constant desire for sex, but they will never be be satiated. And they'll never really have a fulfilling climax. They won't be able to usually last very long, their erections won't be very good, and their releases - we will put it that way - will actually end up being physiologically draining, it will end up coming with the release of a lot of sex hormones. This is why you see men that masturbate to pornography a lot end up becoming very estrogenic.
They will also tend to have higher prolactin, less drive, less testosterone, their dopamine centers will then the reward systems will be really inverted. And in reality, what's happening is sex for a man he needs to be in his masculine energy. And porn is really an inversion of feminine and masculine energies, because here a man does not have to work, he does not have to woo, he does not have to do what is required or give right to be in his, he does not have to be in his masculine energy at all, and give and be received. He is now having something handed to him that he didn't have to work for, and doesn't have to be in his masculine energy to do.
I think for women, a lot of the aspects and fulfilling parts of sex beyond a physical level are the essential parts of it, the beyond just the physical arousal, but actually the parts of us that are feeling and being in the experience, that in and of itself is a really important part. And the intimacy and connection is often what makes us feel the safest and the most surrendered. For a woman who is in her masculine energy all the time, it's going to be very hard for her to let go of control. And it's going to be really hard to let go and surrender and to just be in the experience and be present in the present moment. Because when you are in your survival energy you're either going to be living in the past and worrying about some interaction or what has happened within the past three days, or like, did so and so get mad at me because I said this, or you're going to be in the future. You're going to be constantly worried and overwhelmed and thinking about your to-do list and all of those types of things. That doesn't lead you to a place where you are going to feel very connected or seen or able to really experience the sensations around you, which is what's important for really arousal and therefore, libido.
I'm a big believer that sexual experiences build on each other. So there's pheromones involved, there's obviously hormones, such as oxytocin, and dopamine. But for women, if we feel safe, and something fills us with a sense of safety and pleasure, and brings us into the present moment, we're going to crave it more and more and more. You know, the act of sex itself, for a woman is so incredibly vulnerable. There is an act of softening and surrendering and letting go that must take place for it to be really comfortable. It's a really conscious choice to open up the core of yourself and to allow something and someone into the place that holds all of your lifeforce, all of that co-creative energy, and the place that you connect, where you end and the divine begins, and to connect there with somebody else, to bring someone else into that triune connection that is the most intimate and powerful part of yourself.
And so not only in addition to removing all of the layers of brainwashing, and having other people's ideas of what sex and libido is from our minds, and really peeling all those layers away, peeling all the layers of the societal beliefs around sex and libido today, it can be really, really tough, especially when we as women have gotten to a place where it's kind of just like, you know, sex is for pleasure. Just go and you can have sex with whoever you want, whenever you want. There's really no consequences, just don't get an STD, don't get pregnant. But you know, do what you want to do. That is the mentality that we as women are being taught, and the lack of desire to really, truly understand our physiology, and to really, truly understand what biologically drives us so that we can not only just experience pleasure, but experience life in its fullest, you should be kind of angry at the state of sexual education today.
I think for myself, you know, I think of how I grew up in a very conservative Christian community where really, the only conversations that were had around sex were just like, save sex for marriage, you don't want to have sex before you're married. You know, it's a sin outside of marriage. And it's good within marriage. And that's pretty much what people repeat over and over again, and I'm sure that every single person listening, every single woman listening has had a different experience. So many of us, I think, can relate to not being taught about our own bodies, and not really understanding that our sexual energy is just entwined into us. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's a part of us, it's the very core of us. It's not taboo. But at the same time, it's not something to just be messed with. It's not something to be debased and devalued so much that it loses some of the layers of its sacredness because there is something sacred about inviting someone into the very core of us.
The only reason I bring this stuff up is because I do get a lot of questions from women asking, you know, what do I think about purity culture? I think there's a lot of women that have asked me questions that lead me to believe that they're in really unsafe relationships, and there's a reason why their body is responding to their partner in a certain way. I think a lot of us are really not confused about sex, but confused about our bodies and libido and sexual energy and how it's intertwined. And we kind of have really disconnected from that part of ourselves, whether that be shame, or something else. But at the end of the day, our libido is going to be a reflection of both our feminine energy, our reproductive energy, and just our cellular metabolism as a whole how much energy we have to reproduce. If our body is hurting for energy, our body is in a state of survival, a state of fight or flight where it's having to use its resources just to survive. It doesn't really want to be making a baby and you're really gonna have that kind of go out and get it type of drive when your testosterone rises around ovulation.
The rest of the time, there's really this more gentle kind of life force, low hum of libido, and it needs to be maintained. I think of it almost as like a campfire. Can you tell I live in an RV? A campfire or a fire that needs to be constantly tended to. You can't put too much wood in or it will just go out. But you can't put too little in or it will completely burn out. We have to be constantly in a state of safety and surrender, desire to experience what's around us to feel our way through life. And that will keep us in a continual kind of low hum, where our libido isn't from zero to 100. We almost cultivate a constant low hum of feminine energy which is going to coincide with sexual energy. And once we get our cellular metabolism and energy in a good place, well, then our libido will follow. Our libido will be a representation of that energy. So this is the end of part one. In part two, which is going to come out on Thursday, we're going to cover those aspects more in depth. So some of the more physical aspects, we've kind of hit on more of the energetic concepts or some of the concepts that we need to really understand before diving into this big conversation of the male libido versus the female libido and some physiological shifts that we can make to get our libido back to the place that it was meant to be. I hope today's episode about libido resonated with you. I will see you in the next episode that will continue this conversation in part two.
Episode Links
In this episode, I mentioned:
Episode 2: Energy is Everything: An Introduction to Bioenergetics
Episode 5: Unleash the Rhythm: How to Respect and Optimize Your Unique Physiology
Episode 6:Trading Fertility for Fantasy Part 1: History of Female Physiology and Forging a New Path for our Daughters
Episode 7:Trading Fertility for Fantasy Part 2
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