Skin and Soul™: Beyond the Pale with Gwenm A. Carsley

Gwenm Carsley
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Sexuality
  • Updated Weekly

Welcome to Skin and Soul™ : Beyond the Pale with Gwenm A. Carsley. I’m Gwenm, your transformational body, soul, and sex coach. This podcast invites you to an uncensored and authentic exploration of our humanity through the lens of Eros. Together, we’ll speak uncomfortable truths, embrace open and unspoken intimacies, and dive deep into the core of our sexual essence, uncovering what makes us profoundly human. Do you feel like your aliveness is falling short, leaving you questioning everything and searching for what’s next? Stop playing half-alive! Join me for raw, real conversations about body, sex, and soul. With no pretense and no masks, we’ll push past societal limits to discover the primal truths and go beyond the pale. I use pleasure and Eros as pathways to aliveness, healing, and purpose—even in the face of our mortality. Specializing in midlife+ sexuality for men and women, I explore the grief that often comes with the well of un-lived, unexpressed parts of ourselves, and the ache of wanting more. I celebrate the body and the stories it tells—its ability to connect us intimately to ourselves, others, and life itself. Join me live every Friday at 10 AM Pacific on Transformation Talk Radio. Catch the podcast anytime—subscribe on your favorite platform and follow me on Instagram. Ready to take the next step? Book a compatibility call with me at https://gwenmcarsley.com/ . Let’s connect!

  1. Permission: Beyond Shame, Beyond Kink

    2d ago

    Permission: Beyond Shame, Beyond Kink

    Most people don't tell the truth about what they want. Not in bed. Not in relationships. Not even to themselves. In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm sits down with Amanda Dames, founder of The Kink Consultant, to talk about fantasy, kink, romance, desire, shame, and the strange things that happen when we spend years pretending we don't want what we want. From fairy tales to fetishes, from secret turn-ons to hidden longings, this conversation explores what our desires might be trying to show us and why so many of us are terrified of finding out. Because sometimes the hardest person to tell the truth to is ourselves.

    57 min
  2. The Myth of Ownership

    Jun 5

    The Myth of Ownership

    What if the greatest source of suffering isn't love itself, but our belief that we can possess what was never ours to own? In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm sits down with author, entrepreneur, and creator of the viral EroticSleepOver events, Cidney G. Green, for a provocative conversation about freedom, attachment, desire, and the stories we inherit about love. Drawing from her book All 3 in Me, Cidney shares how Nichiren Buddhism shaped her understanding of attraction, identity, and personal responsibility. Together, they explore the tension between intimacy and freedom, the challenge of unlearning control, and why so many of us confuse love with ownership. This is not a conversation about whether non-monogamy is right or wrong. It's a deeper inquiry into what happens when we stop expecting other people to complete us, save us, choose us, or make us happy. From relationships and jealousy to spirituality, self-sovereignty, and the many parts of ourselves we carry beneath the surface, this episode invites us to examine where we grip too tightly and what becomes possible when we finally loosen our hold. Topics include: • The myth of ownership in love and relationships • Buddhism and personal responsibility • Attraction, identity, and self-reflection • Unlearning control and attachment • Non-monogamy and freedom • Jealousy, desire, and emotional honesty • The many selves we carry within us • What it means to live authentically on your own terms • Self-sovereignty and the pursuit of happiness A bold, honest, and thought-provoking conversation about love, freedom, and the parts of ourselves that are still learning how to let go.

    59 min
  3. What is Wrong with Being Sexual?

    May 29

    What is Wrong with Being Sexual?

    What if your sexuality was never something to suppress… but something sacred to reclaim? In this deeply honest and liberating episode of Skin and Soul Beyond the Pale, Gwenm sits down with sex and relationship coach, sacred sexuality educator, and author Maria Merloni for a powerful conversation on erotic healing, body acceptance, tantra, intimacy, shame, and the profound wisdom of the human body. Maria shares her unconventional journey from therapist to exotic dancer to sacred sexuality teacher - and how stripping became an unexpected doorway into empowerment, authenticity, and spiritual purpose. Together, Gwenm and Maria unravel cultural shame around sex, the double standards placed on women’s bodies, and the ways both men and women disconnect from their erotic life force.

    56 min
  4. Erotic Priestess: Pleasure, Power & Erotic Innocence

    May 22

    Erotic Priestess: Pleasure, Power & Erotic Innocence

    How many women are walking around successful on the outside while feeling numb inside their own skin? In this episode of Skin & Soul: Beyond the Pale, Gwenm sits down with Erotic Priestess Patty Alfonso for a conversation on pleasure, feminine power, erotic innocence, sensation, desire, shame, and the slow disappearance that happens when a woman leaves her body to survive her life. Together, they unravel the ways women perform womanhood while starving for touch, truth, softness, hunger, rest, devotion, freedom, and real sensation. The places where the body tightens. The years spent overriding instinct. The ache beneath being “fine.” This is not a conversation about becoming sexier or more empowered. It’s about the woman underneath the performance. The one who still wants to feel. The one whose body has been whispering for years. Patty shares her work around Erotic Innocence, the remembering that nothing is missing and that the body is not a problem to fix, but a living intelligence waiting to be heard. Together they explore: why so many women disconnect from sensationpleasure beyond performance or validationS Factor®, movement, eros, and the feminine bodyaging, aliveness, and reclaiming desiregrief stored inside numbnessself-abandonment disguised as “having it together”the body as oracle, lover, animal, and truth-teller

    56 min
  5. From FBI to Love Songs: Acacia Grace on Illness, Sensuality & Reinvention

    May 15

    From FBI to Love Songs: Acacia Grace on Illness, Sensuality & Reinvention

    What happens when a woman leaves behind a life of law enforcement, survives chronic illness, and finally gives herself permission to feel? In this deeply intimate episode of Skin and Soul, Gwenm Carsley sits down with singer-songwriter Acacia Grace for a raw conversation about reinvention, sensuality, heartbreak, creativity, and healing through art. From working FBI forfeiture and seizure cases to writing emotionally charged love songs in France, Acacia opens up about the unexpected path that led her back to herself. Together, they explore chronic autoimmune illness, spirituality beyond religion, feminine desire, emotional maturity in love, and the power of music to transform pain into beauty. This episode is a vulnerable, soulful journey into what it means to soften after survival — and to choose authenticity over performance. A powerful conversation for anyone navigating reinvention, illness, heartbreak, creativity, or the courage to live more truthfully.

    56 min
  6. Be Chalant: The Mess of Loving Long-Term

    May 8

    Be Chalant: The Mess of Loving Long-Term

    In this live episode of Skin and Soul: Beyond the Pale, I’m joined by Dr. Bruce Chalmer and Judy Alexander, the married co-hosts of Couples Therapy in Seven Words. Bruce is a psychologist and couples therapist who has spent more than 30 years sitting with couples at the edge of rupture, betrayal, longing, distance, and repair. His work circles around what he calls The Passion Paradox: the tension between stability and intimacy. The very things that make love feel safe can sometimes drain the risk, aliveness, and erotic charge out of it. And then there is Judy: teacher, principal, co-host, translator of theory into real life, and author, under the name Laria Zylber, of The Blue Tent: Erotic Tales from the Bible, a work of biblical erotica that reimagines ancient stories through desire, flesh, female voice, and what she calls sexual midrash.  This conversation may move through couples therapy, sex, faith, long-term love, betrayal, romance, erotic storytelling, and what happens when two people still love each other but can no longer find the heat, honesty, or courage to reach across the table. Because romance is not dead. But it does ask something of us.

    57 min
  7. The Spark You've Been Missing: Authintimacy

    May 1

    The Spark You've Been Missing: Authintimacy

    In this episode of Skin & Soul, Gwenm sits down with Paul Aaron Travis, founder of School for Love and School for Lovers, certified sexologist, AASECT-certified sexuality educator, long-time men’s group facilitator, and author of The Spark You’ve Been Missing. Paul’s work asks what happens when love stops being a fantasy we chase and becomes something we practice. We talk about the divorce cycle, conscious endings, the voice in the mirror, dating fatigue, surface connection, the loneliness hiding inside “I’m fine,” and Paul’s framework of Authintimacy — authenticity on the out-breath, intimacy on the in-breath. This conversation moves through love, sex, pleasure, communication, men’s work, adult sexual education, and the quiet places where relationships go numb long before they officially break. It’s about the spark we lose when we perform our lives instead of inhabiting them — and what it takes to come back into truth, contact, and connection.

    51 min
  8. Encore: Shameless Parenting

    Apr 24

    Encore: Shameless Parenting

    What happens when you mix a sex-positive grandma, a childhood spent figure-skating on frozen lakes, and a lifetime of dismantling religious shame… with modern parenting, porn, and kids with iPads? In this episode of Skin and Soul: Beyond the Pale, I sit with Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers — therapist, educator, and author of Sex, God & the Conservative Church and Shameless Parenting — for a wildly honest, surprisingly funny conversation about raising shame-free kids in an over-sexualized world. We talk about babies discovering their g******s in the bath, toddlers who just want to hug everyone, and why “hands in your pants at the dinner table” is not a crisis but an invitation to teach boundaries without shaming desire. Tina walks us through what real “family life education” looks like from 0–18, why one hundred tiny, awkward one-minute chats beat the one Big Talk, and how to start when you feel like you’re years too late. We go there with porn, phones and tablets, patriarchy, boys’ right to say no too, and how to help our kids recognize exploitation instead of becoming numb to it. We also talk about re-parenting ourselves, healing the little one inside who never got these conversations, and the strange grace that can show up with aging parents and dementia. This one is for the exhausted, tender, secretly terrified parents who still want their kids to know: your body is yours, your pleasure is good, and you never have to trade your soul to belong.

    53 min
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About

Welcome to Skin and Soul™ : Beyond the Pale with Gwenm A. Carsley. I’m Gwenm, your transformational body, soul, and sex coach. This podcast invites you to an uncensored and authentic exploration of our humanity through the lens of Eros. Together, we’ll speak uncomfortable truths, embrace open and unspoken intimacies, and dive deep into the core of our sexual essence, uncovering what makes us profoundly human. Do you feel like your aliveness is falling short, leaving you questioning everything and searching for what’s next? Stop playing half-alive! Join me for raw, real conversations about body, sex, and soul. With no pretense and no masks, we’ll push past societal limits to discover the primal truths and go beyond the pale. I use pleasure and Eros as pathways to aliveness, healing, and purpose—even in the face of our mortality. Specializing in midlife+ sexuality for men and women, I explore the grief that often comes with the well of un-lived, unexpressed parts of ourselves, and the ache of wanting more. I celebrate the body and the stories it tells—its ability to connect us intimately to ourselves, others, and life itself. Join me live every Friday at 10 AM Pacific on Transformation Talk Radio. Catch the podcast anytime—subscribe on your favorite platform and follow me on Instagram. Ready to take the next step? Book a compatibility call with me at https://gwenmcarsley.com/ . Let’s connect!

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