In this episode of the VulnerABILITY Podcast, Marisa speaks with Michael McPherson, author, speaker, and small business owner on a mission to powerfully upgrade men and women’s relationships to sex and understanding of sex energy. In this episode, Marisa and Michael cover topics that people often shy away from: intimacy, sexual identity and our relationships to sex, our sexual energy (and what that is!), porn, and shame. Highlights From The Episode: [2:30] MM – “I originally turned to pornography as a means to educate myself and learn… but that started a really long, probably about a 10-year, 15-year journey for me that really took me through the wringer. I had thwarted relationships to sex, thwarted relationships to women… I was incredibly distracted by my mind’s fantasies, by the way my mind was basically trained to objectify women.” [3:30] MM – “If you know anything about union, [it] will mirror any unfinished business you have with yourself.” [3:35] MM – “People shy away from this subject [sex] for a reason. There’s a lot of density there. There’s a lot of darkness there. There’s a lot of trauma.” [5:30] MM – “Instead of waiting around for someone to start the conversation with me, [I thought], why don’t I start the conversation?” [6:05] MM – “It was my intention to start a conversation that wasn’t being had. Rather than introduce a new form of dogma, let’s just loosen up things a bit. Let’s just get to a place where we can actually heal in this area, to experience the miraculousness of having an empowered relationship to sex and our sex energy.” [10:30] MM – “The most empowering thing and powerful thing we can do for our children is to heal our own relationship to sex. So that when things like this do arise, we can come from it from a more genuine place, rather than coming from our own personal wounds, our own personal history, our own personal fears, our own personal shame.” [11:45] MM – “Doing the internal work ourselves to open up access as parts of ourselves, to come into a place of wholeness going to create a sense of safety that we need in our environments with our children for them to have their innocent experience [with sex]… The absolute best thing we can do is our own healing work. I think that’s the level of self-responsibility that’s really required if we’re going to have a healthy dynamic with sex that we’re going to pass on to future generations.” [13:10] MD – “When we face the most shameful and most difficult moments, and we bring them out into the forefront, then that’s where we get the truest amount of healing.” [13:15] MM – “When someone leans in with vulnerability, it typically has a heart-opening effect on us. It has us lean in, open our hearts, and really hear them.” [14:50] MM – “We’re the ones that have to live with all the unspoken things that still hang over our heads. It does impact our interpersonal dynamics. It definitely impacts our ability to experience freedom in our relationships, to be who we are authentically and be met there.” [15:45] MD – “There [are] differing opinions about what ‘strength’ is. Men get caught up in porn, or they get caught up in the idea of dominance, or [that] strength looks a certain way.” [16:15] MM – “When I say ‘take back your power’ I’m really talking about sex energy… No one ever taught me about my sex energy. No one ever taught me how to harness it and channel it, in an empowering, constructive way. And that’s true for most men.” [17:20] MM – “[Porn] puts us into a trance, and in that trance, the imagery, the video, the explicit content that we’re watching is actually getting imprinted into our subconscious mind… What most men don’t realize is the context that they have for women and sex is primarily based on that imprinting that they receive.” [18:50] MM – “At puberty, we get exposure to sexuality—and mostly explicit sexuality—[and that]… overlapped with sex energy. Two things that are fundamentally different become one in the same.” [19:30] MM – “Men aren’t actually addicted to the nudity in porn, they’re addicted to the novelty, the continual newness.” [21:10] MM – “It’s entertainment. It’s actors…characters that are playing a role meant to get us off. It’s not real. But we end up devoting our creative life force energy—something that’s so precious, so sacred—to a false reality. To a synthetic reality. And then we never learn otherwise.” [25:00] MM – “[People] are choosing to continue to watch porn, for instance, because it’s actually an excuse to keep themselves small. It’s a reason, a justifiable reason, for keeping ourselves small and not actually taking our power back and harnessing this energy for everything that it can actually deliver to us, for all the ways it can actually contribute to us in our day to day life.” [25:25] MM – “And that’s actually where I’m really desiring to take men: Let’s unpack the past and really understand how we got here today. But let’s not stop there. Let’s actually recover our innocence and re-commune with this energy—our sacred sex energy—in a new way, from where we are now. And that’s really what taking our power back is.” [28:00] MD – “Taking back the power—I just love that phrase because… it puts the ball in our court. We have the ability to step into the identity that we were given, and the energy that we were given, and the power that we were given, and not let the craziness of the world, and what society deems as ‘attractive’ or ‘beautiful… define the way we see our relationships and our interactions with others.” [29:30] MD – “Sex is such an integral part of our lives… there’s so much shame around it. But, really, it’s supposed to be a beautiful thing for people in union. It’s supposed to be something that is a part of the human experience.” [30:15] MD -“We are sexual beings and we crave the intimacy and closeness of other people, and connections to others. And that’s not something that is inherently wrong. It’s how we approach it, and how we treat one another in the pursuit of it. That’s what needs to change.” [31:10] MM -“Sex is the perfect analogy for life: How much pleasure can you allow yourself to receive in the lovemaking space from someone you love? And that’s really going to be a mirror for how much pleasure you allow yourself to receive in life. How deep can you go? How present can you be?” [32:50] MM – “Vulnerability is not just sharing the scary things; it’s actually allowing ourselves to show how much we’re being moved by an experience, or by a person, by our loved ones.” [34:15] MM – “When you approach lovemaking from a space of ‘What can I give?’ What can I bring to this space? What amount of energy, what amount of intention, what amount of love? It totally changes the dynamic of the space.” [35:40] MM – “It’s called making love because we’re actually creating love. And energy has a ripple effect. When you create love within your union, you create love within the world.” [40:10] MM – “Trust that if you step forward and initiate your own healing—and especially start to share about your shame—that you’re going to be caught in that. And your reputation is not only going to be fine, but it’s going to improve.” https://marisadonnelly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Ep.-59-Unpacking-Intimacy-Sex-Energy-ft.-Michael-McPherson.mp4 Resources: Michael’s book, Everything You Never Learned About Sex Michael’s social media: Instagram & huMANity Podcast Michael’s businesses: REQUESTbar & KAKAO Ceremonial Drinking Chocolate For more episodes of the VulnerABILITY Podcast, click here. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, or Spotify!
