LaidOPEN Podcast

As a society, we are struggling with how to hold people accountable. The trend of cancel culture is public shaming with the hope that those who are canceled will lose their power and position. Often, they regroup anyway and do the same thing again in a new place and a new community. This is the cycle of abuse at play. This week, I welcome Bay Area sex educator Charlie Glickman on the podcast to talk about being canceled and the self-discovery that unfolded in the multi-year accountability process of healing himself, his relationships, and his place in his community.  While speaking on his experience, Charlie explains how to set up an accountability team, how essential somatic therapy is in rewiring the ways in which we respond when under stress, and how he discovered his own trauma response. We also talk about the ways that gender role conditioning impacted him, how the patriarchy sets up boys to be divorced from their emotions at a young age, and how this makes it impossible to have the men these boys grow into communicate responsibly until they unlearn the characteristics of toxic masculinity. Charlie is a case study of how we can approach people whom we need to hold accountable. He also models what can be expected when someone addresses their own trauma. This is an important episode and an even more important topic that we will all need to address if we want to make changes in our society to move forward and end cycles of violence.

These days, lots of us are being forced to see how the ways we exist in the world both help and harm. Today’s guest is queer, Bangledeshy author and artist, Fariha Róisín aka @fariha_roisin. Her latest book “Who Is Wellness For?” does a tremendous job of tackling this topic through the narration of her own life. She uses her story of surviving childhood sexual abuse and a mentally ill mother to guide us through the resources that aided in her healing. While also, attributing all of our traumas to the lack of wellness within society and how that’s all reflected in the larger systems we live within. Fariha’s vulnerability on her journey with wellness and dis-eased history and the way it mirrors the global systems of capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy speak on the ways oppression is designed to repeat itself. Part of this has been done through the destruction of ancient ways of knowing, better known as epistemicide. This includes a near wipeout of magical women with witch hunts executed globally, which is really an attack on the knowingness of womanhood.  Although there is much to learn from Fariha, this remains one of my most tender episodes to date, as it speaks on a variety of topics including selective wellness and how that sends ripples globally. We end with an energetic composting exercise on how to clear everything from the energy we collect throughout our day to the energy that’s been attached to us for generations.   

It is such an honor to welcome this week’s guest onto LaidOPEN Podcast. Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey (@drbisbey) is a clinical psychologist, acclaimed sex/intimacy coach, author, podcast host, and GSRD (gender, sexuality, relationship diversity) therapist with over 30 years of experience. She’s also the Specialist Relationship Therapist on the UK show “Open House: The Great Sex Experiment,” (you have to watch!) and host of the weekly podcast “The A to Z of Sex®.”   In this episode, we talk about her journey moving from a trauma victim to a survivor and how she integrated her life into her work to help others step into joy and vibrancy in their own lives. Plus, we cover a variety of topics related to this including: the nuances of boundaries and consent inside powerplay BDSM relationships, learning to discern and listen to danger signals, healing PTSD and shame, and life after becoming a survivor. The episode ends with Dr. Bisbey breaking down the Four Parts Of Consent so have your pens handy, you’ll want to take notes.  

This week we welcome Christina Carlson, an embodiment and energetic coach, speaker, teacher, and the host of the podcast, “Bitches, Witches & Queers." Christina and I talk about her experience of being raised as an Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian, leaving the church, and how dance helped free not only her body but her mind.  Eventually, Christina discovers another church, and falls in love, but over time signals in her body help her to recognize that the church environment is not for her. We also talk about how this paved the way for what she currently does, working as an embodiment and energetic coach, and the ways she employs practical spirituality in all that she does especially her work.  Christina ends this incredible conversation with an exercise that eases us into the practice of observing ourselves and staying inside our bodies.

Welcome back to LaidOPEN Podcast! This week we welcome Catherine Drysdale, a pleasure activator and sex & relationship coach. She’s also the host of Your Pleasure Path Podcast, which went viral on TikTok earning over 16 million monthly listens.  It’s easy to see that helping bring joy and vibrancy into people’s lives is Catherine’s calling. We chat about life as a sex educator and all the roads that can lead to healing–even though not all healing roads are meant for everyone. We also talk about her success as a coach, finding a sex-positive audience at Cosmopolitan Magazine, and her sex magic master class Multi Orgasmic, featured in the magazine. We end this episode with an EFT Tapping exercise designed to help people incorporate self-love and acceptance into their lives, and most importantly, feeling worthy of pleasure. You’re not gonna want to miss this episode Catherine is a true delight.   

On today’s episode, our guest is certified conscious executive and leadership and life coach Nick Palladino-King (@nickpalladinoking). In addition to coaching Nick’s spent his career training and teaching movement, breathwork, meditation, and entrepreneurship to clients. He brings these tools to his podcast Conscious Conversations with Nick and Nintin. Together with his co-host, Nick focuses on having conversations with guests that elevate the consciousness of the planet through conversations that change people's lives. Nick brings his conscious conversations to LaidOPEN Podcast where we talk about the matrix of coaches, teachers, and therapists that have begun to emerge since the onset of the Pandemic. And how this community works together to support and refer clients in order to get people the help they need.  We end this episode with Nick leading a short meditation that can help you learn to check in with yourself and regulate your system in a quick and easy way.

Welcome back to LaidOPEN Podcast. This week we have renowned intimacy expert Susan Bratton, author and publisher of 34 books and programs, including “Relationship Magic,” “Revive Her Drive,” “The Steamy Sex Ed®️ Video Collection,” and her Amazon #1 International Bestseller, “Sexual Soulmates: The Six Essentials for Connected Sex, as well as, FemiWave. Susan joins us this week to talk about her expanded orgasm practice, which can help you to have better and better big Os your entire life. She also speaks with Charna about female arousal, embracing ageless sexuality and how getting off is a learned skill any of us can accomplish if we put in the effort to learn. Plus we end this episode with an exercise from Suaan about how to slowly warm up and turn on a vulva owner’s whole system and all aspects of their genitals. Find the visual component for this exercise here.    

Did you know that you can go in for any kind of surgery at a teaching hospital, and while under anesthesia receive pelvic exams, from multiple students, (yes this happens to men with anal or prostate exams) without your consent?  Most people are shocked to discover that they could go in for a knee surgery and be given an anal or pelvic exam they did not consent to. However, let’s call it what it is, medical rape and 85% of medical students currently report having done this.  On today’s episode I speak with activist, author, educator, speaker and filmmaker A’magine about her award winning documentary film that tackles this topic, At Your Cervix.  These pervasive exams are still very much legal in 27 states in the US and continues to occur where it is illegal despite laws meant to prevent this practice. Together A’magine and Charna talk about when pelvic exams happen when you’re unconscious, medical rape, sexual assualt in Western medicine, and unlearning the dehumanization that causes sexual assault in the medical filed and society at large.  The conversation is capped with an embodied mindfulness practice led by @Amagine.    

On the season opener of LaidOPEN Podcast, we welcome LaidOPEN Podcast producer Sabrina Cognata as our guest. When Charna receives a message from a listener who wants to potentially work with her and then sends a sexually explicit message, Charna reaches out to producer Sabrina who says, “Make art, not war. In addition to being a producer of a variety of podcasts and projects, @sabrinasee is the creator of The Dickoupage Project aka @thedickoupageproject, which you can find on IG. Initially, the dick pic art project was available online, but you can sign up to read it via her Patreon, to get a better idea of her work and how it influenced and informed the conversation she has with Charna. Together the two talk about consent, vulnerability, boundary crossing, the motivation behind sending unsolicited dick pics, fight, flight, and freeze responses, anger, manipulation, and of course, the bait and switch. The episode ends with a fantastic exercise from Charna to help address a variety of reactions when you find yourself in a situation where someone you trust or attempted to trust has set out to manipulate you.  

This week we welcome, William Winters, Rebecca Ferrar, and Tyson Adams to talk about their various experiences with cults or cult-like communities with a special focus on the One Taste community. Tyson Adams is an integrated men’s work practitioner and happens to have done a lot of searches around cults after having his own experiences in different communities. You may also remember @tysonadams_ as a returning guest from Episode 55. William Winters is the founder of the Bonobo Tribe, @bonobotribe on IG, a sex-positive community that throws parties, teaches workshops, and offers general resources to poly people. And Rebecca Farrar is a well-known astrologer better known on IG as @wildwitchofthewest, who also participated in the One Taste courses. She is still integrating and understanding what she took away from her experience there.  Together we spend an hour dissecting our own experiences, yes, even I have my own experiences with the One Taste community and chat about a variety of things related to One Taste and cults at large. This includes the differences between cults and communities, our natural desire to belong, how to spot a cult, the sense of language or jargon these communities often have, and what it means if you leave the group and ultimately are forced to abandon the community you’ve learned to lean on. If cults, the brainwashing used by nefarious leaders, and how people become drawn to and eventually a part of cults is something that interests you, make sure you check out our episode when it comes out tomorrow.