Welcome to your Body. Remembers pleasure. I'm your host, Rahi Chun. This podcast is devoted to sexual embodiment, intimacy, and the body's innate capacity to heal, feel, and remember pleasure. If something here resonates with you, you're welcome to explore more writings and resources@rahichun.com. And now let's begin.

 Today's interview is a real gift as we hear from Christiane Pelus and the fruits Baird from her ongoing inquiry and practices. Of rewilding, of questioning what is truly authentic to our nature as ecologically embodied beings, as well as creatures of belonging within our respective mycelium networks, as opposed to what has been conditioned and subjected to pressures of fitting in and how this shows up in our embodiment.

As you listen to our interview exploring the ecological state of our existence, cohabitation and belonging, I would invite you to question for yourself how these themes can be applied to your sexuality and erotic embodiment. Can we allow for the authentic desires of the body to be fully expressed as they are?

Can we accept and celebrate what feels non-normative about our erotic desires? And can we hold space for a playground of rewilding from the inside out and from the ground up by nurturing the rich soil and soul of our nature, both essentially curious creatures as well as interconnected communities and tribes.

I am feeling tingliness in my feet and excitement in my heart and just a joy emanating from my heart space as I am here with Christian. The going pelvis, that's my nickname for her. Okay, so a little bit about Christian. I first. Got turned on to Christian by Her Fabulous Guide her authored book called Trauma, A Practical Guide to Working With Body and Soul.

But more recently we shared a retreat space, a co-created retreat space up at Salt Spring Island and got to. Have an experiential shared experience of a lot of the themes we'll be exploring today. So Christian, I'm just gonna do an intro so people have a context of your background.

So Christian is the author, co-author of three fabulous books. Aforementioned trauma, A practical guide to working with Body and Soul which is so succinct. It's all just the essentials and I love it. Recommended highly to anyone who works with trauma in therapy or sexuality or just wants to understand their own embodiment.

A lot better. Two other books, women's Wisdom Guidebook and Card Deck, also wonderful. And it's really a collaborative of culture perspective. Experiences from all around the world. It's really fabulous. And then she contributed to the anthology Healers of the Edge, and she's currently gestating a new offering that is eminent.

She's the founder of the Institute for Erotic Intelligence and the one woman movement and project and co-founder of the Verdant Collective. Interwoven throughout her endeavors are themes that involve erotic embodiment. Nurturing community and belonging, honoring and reclaiming our feminine essence in nature, sexuality, and intimacy as ways for rewilding ourselves on each other and listening and cultivating relationship with our ancestors, with nature, and returning to our true wild and undomesticated essence.

Christian, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming onto the podcast. No, it's so fun to be here. Rocky. I thought I would start with this quote, and it's a quote I picked up somewhere amongst your many expressions of these themes that are so vital, I think, not only to our existence, but they're really vital to our integrity and honoring of our nature.

The quote is, our souls Speak a first language, one, which is indigenous to all life. Remembering this language is the key to self-love, to our purpose, our passion, and our power. I would love, besides hearing from your dog, I would also love to hear, what this quote what this means to you, like our, how our souls speak, this first language that is the key to our passion and our power.

Yeah. What is this first language? What is this first language? I'll, I, maybe I'm just gonna dance around it, but our first language is the language of our belonging and, we just spent quite a lot of time. On Salt Spring, really exploring belonging and we all come to it with a different sense of it.

Some people say we have to find our belonging. And some people say we have to cultivate our belonging. And my shtick is, no, we don't need to. We just have to remember that we belong. It's very simple. It's a change of perspective. We belong, we're here, we belong ecologically, it's a. It's an ecological fact.

It's a physiological fact. It's not a philosophical moment or, a rev, a revelatory situation in a workshop experience in a workshop. It's just an acceptance that we belong and there's an indigenous language of belonging, and it's it requires that we allow that at all times, all things.

All things. The tree outside my window, the sunflower in front of it the gold, the goldfinches that are feeding on the sunflower, the puppy playing with my older dog. Everyone, all the wild ones are speaking that language and we know that language. Our ancestors had tremendous ceremony and ritual focused on remembering that language and keeping them true to that language.

And one thing domesticated culture has done, society, conformist to consumer society has done is to completely erase that language. And that's strategic, that's a capitalist maneuver to erase that language and replace it with the language of fitting in. And so if I'm getting close to coming to, some sort of concrete answer that it's, it that.

That indigenous language, that indigenous con conversation and language is the language of our belonging and we all know it. And likely much of our malaise, whether it's, hedonia, whether it's despair, whether it's rage whether it's depression, whether it's, whatever it is is a response, a very healthy critical, ecologically critical response to that be rman.

Yeah. Yeah. There, there are many important, themes that you just touched upon. The practices and rituals of indigenous people to celebrate that sense of belonging is one theme. The capitalistic, kind of consumerist society that. Structure that, that we have been conditioned by and that, it's like we grew up in the soup, so that sometimes it's hard to recognize the soup from, like our authentic essence.

That's like another really important theme. And then I wanna, I want to explore like some of the practices that you support your clients and communities with to return to that sense of embodiment erotic. Essence and sense of belonging. Beautiful. Yeah. Going back I think the first and third points are connected.

As you shared the indigenous peoples, were steeped in rituals and practices that were so community based. As shared that reflect our nature. And it seems to me like you have brought or you have learned the wisdom of these practices. You have, facilitated in some of the community gatherings that, that you have been a part of.

Can you speak to what are some ways that like listeners can start to cultivate within their own communities and tribes rather than getting together and, having a cocktail or a potluck? What are some rituals that are very simple that will really foster that, that sense of reminding us of our nature.

It's interesting Rahi that you say, rather than getting together and having a cocktail or a potluck, there would be nothing. Those practices could be in the category of what you're, of that reclamation behavior, reclaiming some of the practices that keep us well, that keep us embedded.

And and not just speaking that language, that indigenous language of belonging, but actually letting it. Evolve and iterate. Instead of devolve and atrophy. It could be, I think it is so simple and you said that, it is, it's. Part of the problem is that it is so simple.

We keep thinking it's monumentally complex and it involves higher education and it involves laborious workshops and it involves gurus and experts and it, it involves deep soul searching and discomfort in, digging around In my wound. The phrase is doing the hard work.

How many times do we hear somebody say, oh, I just met so and they're they're really great. They're just, man, they're doing the hard work. I just that sounds awful. Just what does that mean? And actually our wellbeing and our robust experience of our belonging is probably so much more homegrown than that, quite literally, and quite.

Deliberately, so much more homegrown. So for me. One of the things that was so critical is for me is that I shift my therapy practice to one of mentorship and guiding, and as I've gotten older, I've added the words eldering and grandmothering. Like I'm the grandmother. I'm the grandmother you come to.

And I'm not gonna hold myself up here. I'm not up here. I'm farther along. And I'm wiser, no doubt. But I'm not up here. I'm not an expert and I'm not a guru. And oddly, I might also be directive like good old fashioned grandmothers might be like, that's a bad choice. Yeah.

And I'll tell you why I think that's a bad choice. And will I love you if you make that choice? Absolutely. Will I stand by you if you make that choice? A hundred percent. But let me just tell you, I think that's a bad choice and, therapy with its back here. Listening and inviting and contemplating and it's a kind of anaerobic environment.

And so one of the things I had to do was just shift, give up my license and shift what I call myself and sit with people in a much more, in a much more kind of, literally hands-on way, but also Yeah, hands-on, metaphorically to replicate that sense of. If you have something that's troubling you, Rocky.

You're just gonna walk across the compound and you're gonna knock on my door. So I practice out of my home. You knock on my door, you come into my home, whatever I'm cooking, you can smell. If I'm doing laundry, you can hear it. If other people are here, they're gonna be here and we're gonna go and sit down and have our time together.

But there's a way of just bring it home. Bring it intimate, bring it local. So that, that was a personal and professional decision I made. But also. Inviting my community into community, and we have this idea that community, we have this very interesting idea about what community means and looks like these days.

It's very curated. And it's you go to my Pilates and my yoga class, we, and we practice the same meditation. Oh my God, we're practically siblings. Let's you know, you're part of my community. And that's not actually how community works. That's a little bit antithetical to community.

In fact, 'cause community is a robust, diverse ecology that iterates it's rubbing up against itself. It's pushing, it's challenging. And the very nature of it is that it. It evolves because of that. And to have, so I host gatherings here, different gatherings every month that are on the calendar.

Anyone can see them. They're drop in, one of them is free, and then the other are two are donation. One of them is just in my home and we have actually a potluck. And the other two are around the fire in the kka that I have here in my land. And it's drop in. I have no idea who's gonna show up.

Has it backfired occasionally? I guess it depends on how you. Look at that. I've gotten some live wires around the fire. Some people don't know how to sit and listen, but how will we learn if we don't include everyone? And the nature of the indigenous community is that. Everyone's welcome around the fire.

And you learn your place. And you learn your place. Not because you're shamed, but because you're mentored. And so these are the kinds of things that we are gonna have to remember how to do, and we're gonna have to do them. And the last thing I'll say about this is that. It is. I've been doing the community dinners, just, I just open my door.

It starts at six 30. I have no idea who's gonna come through the door. Wow. And and we gather and we have dinner. And it's not curated at all, but it's also not guided. It's not facilitated. We're just being I see. Social with each other. Yeah. It's time to not be so serious and earnest and, and over again.

Now for, let's see how long those have been going on for 10 years, those have been happening and over again, people are in tears about how extraordinary it is that I open my door and have this every month. And that to me is shocking and. And, if there were like a deep, dark pit of despair, for me, that's one of the things that would have me go into it.

Because Rahi, think about it, people are in tears, overwhelmed with the how do you do it, Christian, how do you, it's so extraordinary what you do. And it clearly is, it's clearly extraordinary. And it's devastating that it's extraordinary. Yeah. I feel like you're really speaking to the other theme of dismantling the structures within this.

Capitalistic consumer society by getting so simple and really holding a container to allow for the organic ecological process to, to be alive, and to breathe Really. And allowing that process, the space to be what it is and what it will be. Which is so antithetical to the top down, mind control, structured, need to maximize or be efficient or, whatever it is.

Totally. Yeah, it is antithetical. I really like to say that there are very few either ORs in the cosmos, in the grand great cosmos. Yeah. And belonging and fitting in are one of them. If you are belonging. You are actively working, you're actively undermining the musculature of fitting in.

And if you are working towards fitting in, you are actively undermining the musculature of belonging. There're antithetical endeavors. Yeah, that's really fascinating, that distinction and that observation. Because it is true, they are antithetical, aren't they? One is a, is an effortful doing and one is an acceptance of our what is like our primal nature.

Yes, absolutely. And that effortful doing is a very prescribed doing. It is that I must change. My unique and ecologically essential shape. My never before seen shape to fit into an already existing shape of your design or desire. You being the culture, society, the tennis club, my, whatever it is.

Yeah. And they don't. In order to do that, I have to cha I have to slice something off and I have to deny a thing and I have to subordinate a thing. And I have to make wrong and shame a thing. And I have to just extrude and fit and squish and pretend myself into something that I am not.

Yeah. And that is when trauma occurs. Yes. Yeah. When there is an outer agenda imposed onto the organic nature of the body and what the body's desire is. Yeah. I would love to I love this, I love everything that you're illuminating and I would love to. I hope I'm not applying this top town approach by having my mind wanting to like shape this conversation.

But because the podcast is organic sexuality, I would love to meditate on how this applies to rewilding, our erotic and ecologically embodied natures. Because my god, I think. We would, those of those of us who are privileged enough to hold space for clients, see the effects of.

I think my, I don't know how else to call it, but mainstream parenting where people from, the most, the greatest love in their hearts want their children to thrive, but I feel like in this society, it comes with this wanting to thrive within this structure. And so we need to train these little infants in certain ways before they have a chance to really organically find their own way.

Yes. And when that applies to one's sensuality and exploration of their senses and pleasure, it can really lead to, a very, two gendered normative, this is the right way. Girls need to be this way, boys need to be this way. And, all of the things that we're seeing finally, some resistance and progress against.

But as far as rewilding, our true undomesticated essence with sexuality and embodiment. As a mother and as a le and as a space holder in this field what do you feel like are things that are audience members can. Start leaning into or exploring one, to give themselves permission to, let's say, lean into this desire, which felt shameful or wrong, or engage in, their friends or lover ships in ways that are more edgy, but more authentic to their desire and nature.

How is it okay if we get, more personal here? Of course, you're if that's where the ecological actually say no. Yes. If that's where the mycelium roots want to go, let's go there. Because, I think you know that one of the things that was my desire in participating in this retreat on Salt Spring with the six of us.

We, we all had an agenda and then that was a, a kind of high mind agenda. We had a particular desire to explore the realm of psychedelics and somatic sex education. With seasoned practitioners. Would, is there a way that we could imagine a world in which that those really rather disparate.

Universes could, or experiences could be woven together. Practically. And that was great. And I had my own agenda, one of which, some of which was that I wanted to apprentice to this idea of erotic friendships. Yes. And this is, so this is actually, we can take my example very specifically, but we can also extrapolate from it that just.

Noticing the ways we've been shaped to compartmentalize our human experience and like this is what this is. This is what I do over here with that person. This is what this is and this is what I do with these people right here. And then this is what this is and this is what I do. And nowhere in any wild universe does that exist, aeros arrows is main idea is says who. Its main function is Oh yeah. Oh yeah. These never, this doesn't ever go over here and we don't ever do that with them. And it's just that, that the world, the cos, the cosmology of possibility is such that it wants to disrupt and, co-create and make a mess and see what's possible.

See what's possible. Yes. And so it seems, for me, for my part in my ongoing rewilding work on domestication work it right at the moment, among other things it has to do with, wow, I do have these compartments. And I don't like them. I might choose after going through this wonderful apprenticeship to that, my life might not look much different from the outside, but I don't have these compartments that are. These steel boxes placed in the, in my fertile forest that tell me thou shalt not overhear and thou shalt over there. So the idea of erotic friendships being, is it possible for me to extend my experience of. The tending of my physical, sexual, erotic nature.

My body, my soul, my spirit with people I'm not partnering with whom I might not even have an overt physical kind of lustful attraction. Is it possible for me to do that with people who were my former students? Oh my God. That's crossing all sorts of boundaries and totally messed me up. Is it possible? And we're talking about in a field of deep, intelligent consent. What happens if I start to disrupt and break down some of the barriers that were put there as you have shared, parental, the barriers parents put up were put there even with the most wonderful and loving intention.

Yeah. I'd love that you are being real and bringing your personal experience into this because that's really what it requires for communities and tribes to be. To foster that ecology is to really be transparent and real with each other. Totally. And I'm hearing that this examination of these, this categorization that really happens reflexively, I notice in my own mind, when I meet people, like it happens.

And then I'm like why is that the case? Is that really true? And questioning that, and just to your point earlier RO, the nature of Ros is. Chaos and possibility and like we're all sexual beings. And if you would just accept that, then there's sexual potential with anyone.

Yes. Yes, there is sexual potential with anyone. And yeah. And when you get right down to it in terms of the erotic nature and and the kind of flavor and. Tone of wildness. There are gonna be certain people who, certain humans who are, who really do a beautiful job of tending to each other's erotic nature.

Yes. Sexually erotic nature. But different aspects of us come out with different, with different personalities and can. Open up the field enough to imagine that my sexuality, my intimate sexual expression, and that landscape isn't just for this one person. It's actually the wellbeing of that is a community endeavor.

Yeah. I think what you're, I think what you just shared is so true and for some reason in our society today, it feels very like. A rebellious, like wild, but it is so true. It's like when we look at nature and we are expressions of nature, the forest is in its fullest, healthiest when it is all chaotic and wild and intersecting and just really responding to the other elements in nature.

Yes. And it's like we have the capacity to do that with all sexual beings, whether they're human or not. Just like the plant world and nature. And we explored that, in our retreat, just in imbibing with the energy of nature and making love and being made love too by, by elements of nature.

I mean it's everywhere. And I think like when we take the agenda or like the mental. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's preferences or identity, sexual identity affirmation or like when we take any kind of agenda out of it. It can't not, but expand our experience.

Yeah. Like any kind of engagement is gonna Absolutely teach us something more about our potential and our essence and possibility. Totally. And I think that's one of the reasons that psychedelics have been so impactful for many folks is that they really they pick us up where our mental efforting at identifying those enclosures, those arbitrary enclosures.

They. Pick us up right where we, have petered out. Like I can't. I know I can't see, I can't see the woods for the trees here. I can't see the enclosure I've been given and that I've adopted 100% and that I'm now forming my life around. And, and Entheogens in particular.

But psychedelics just they start there and they toss us into the land of. Oh my God, I don't know anything. Everything's upside down. I'm seeing this tree as the most exquisite lover and it's a tree and I don't even, and it's, and there's not even a questioning of that.

Yes. There's not even a questioning of that. Yes. Yeah. I, yeah I get really excited. As far as like throwing that societal top-down imposed structure out the window, like I think psychedelics is such a tremendous aid. Obviously also in creating n neuro pathways and I think somatic pathways in the body.

Yes. Like I love. I love taking psilocybin before going to ecstatic dance because I find that my body is dancing in all these new kinds of patterns and movements and, it just opens things up beyond the past patterns. I, I feel like we're touching upon this Margaret Atwood quote which I know has been dear to your dear, to your heart.

And the quote is to stop seeing things for what they are called. And instead see them as they are. I feel like that's what we're speaking to. Yeah, absolutely. That's the essence of Rewilding. It's the, it's the essence of says who. I might come out with the same. Not everything gets just tossed out and burn to the ground. Some things are like, yeah, that's actually true about me, and that's true about the world and how I see the world and my place in the world but I, but it comes from my direct experience rather than, as you said, top down. Or outside in. It comes from my visceral, intimate, somatic.

Spiritual experience of myself in the world. I gathered the data, I verified the data. Yes, absolutely. I feel like there's certain elements that I wanna underscore in our exploration here. Like one is, how simple it can be to lean into and. Invite the Rewilding experience as we hold space for community gatherings.

There doesn't have to be, as you said, some kind of program or agenda or, it, it's just a space, it's just a healthy, invited, warm space for the ecology of community to unfurl. But the other thing that I think is also important is, what you are sharing about. The transparency of us to show up and to be honest with ourselves about our desires.

To be honest with ourselves about our desires and our yearnings and our wantings with each other. Can really reveal those kind of imposed mental constraints for what they are and that they're just all in the head. Yeah. They don't have to be a lived in reality. Yes. Yes. I wanna talk about the ethics course.

The embodied Ethics course because I have some friends who've taken it. But before we go there, Christian, I wanna ask you as you are engaging in this juicy, beautiful apprenticeship. Of exploring your own personal life and examining what, what has been in the way of your authentic Eros expressing itself or exploring its nature?

What have you recognized as the things that have gotten in the way of that maybe were in your blind spots before you took on this apprentice? Because I think they're, we all have those blind spots and we all have this, especially those of us who are in the therapy field and have a lot of clients and hold space and we're put up on a pedestal or seen in a certain way and it can be very limiting when we buy into.

The way other people are putting us up on a pedestal. Yeah. Oh. I, this is a topic, this is a terrain. It's not even a topic. It's an entire terrain that I is so juicy and and alive for me. Because it's, it is absolutely the terrain of ethics as I see ethics. Yeah and you're you're asking me what are some of the things I personally am discovering and exploring in this place here.

And for me, definitely what I run up against is the dismantling of the externally imposed boundaries and, the thou shalt nots Yes. That I inha, that I inherit from my culture, some of which I don't wanna. Toss out. Sure. Some of which I actually just wanna keep, and some of them I wanna tweak and, refine for myself.

Some of 'em I wanna utterly toss out so that I require of myself, that I build my own musculature, my own internal musculature, rather than some external scaffolding I'm relying on of. Oh yeah. Oh, we got to this place. I'm not supposed to do that. And Right. And I, there's no personal responsibility at all.

There's nothing internal that just happened there. Yeah. Yeah. It's an external, oh yeah. I'm not supposed to do that. This is what I do in that situation because I don't wanna get it wrong. So for me, when it comes to who it is that I would even begin to imagine I could be erotic friends with, that could be somebody that I would just.

Casually make out with and somebody that I might even just, more more practically go to bed with, somebody I actually have sex with or make love with. Who's a friend, who's a friend, who's a colleague who's not a partner. Or a girlfriend or a boyfriend who's not, I run into the whole I've been here for 30 years. I'm a leader in the community. I feel like I have been the mentor or therapist to at least half of the poll population of Boulder. Yes. If I haven't been their therapist or mentor directly, I've been their partners, or I am their sister or brothers or, so that means that I can't do anything with anyone here. I can only do things with people who are very far away. Yes. Who I've never had anything to do with other than, and so in terms of my exploration I've had to, I've had to say says who? Yes. Says who?

That's so edgy because I as a nurse person. Take my role of responsibility so seriously. Yes. And I don't wanna change that. Yes. But I don't want it to be limiting. I want it to be enlivening. I want it to be, an act of a role of nobility rather than a. A thing I'll hide behind.

Or a thing that that, that diminishes my capacity to be vibrantly nourished. You want it to be expansive. Because it will nourish all of your clients in the circles that you share with and how you show up. It's, it'll be an overwhelm Oh, overflowing of wisdom and energy.

Rather than a constrained one. But it is a real dismantling because 30 years of, an evolving position and stature and yes. It's almost like the more experience you have, the more you know things are being projected upon you by, and that's so wonderful to recognize what is authentic to your nature.

Yeah. And what's, could be antithetical to your nature. Yes. And I, we'll have to get together in another year because I'm so new here. I couldn't even tell you what I'm really discovering. I'm just still in the sort of yeah. Disorienting phase. Disorienting phase. Yeah. I feel I can confidently say that if any listeners in Boulder are hearing this podcast right now.

They're gonna be lining up for your monthly potluck and very excited to test your newfound like boundary expansion practice. I haven't made out with anybody at my potluck yet. Yeah, but just wait. Just wait. That's awesome. That's so awesome. And Christian, I do feel like it's critical that.

That we do this. Because we are examples really. Not only as somatic sex educators, but as I don't, like the word leader is just so weird. But we're more public and as examples of what is possible. Yeah. I think it does have a ripple effect. Yeah.

And so I think it's, it absolutely does. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So wonderful. So wonderful. Yeah. And thank you for being transparent with our audiences and sharing your process. It's really beautiful. Yes. So I wanted to ask you because I, I was so excited about your Embodied Ethics course and I have friends who have taken it.

And because we're like on this theme anyhow, I would love to hear more about. What it is and what is the invitation in the Embodied eth, the Erotically Embodied Ethics course for people who show up to examine within their own lives? I might, I'll repeat myself, but I'll repeat myself now in this specific context and that is that as I've been involved in.

Remediation and mediation and repair and transformative justice and restorative justice processes for a long time now across the practitioner modalities. And and. What I can safely say is that our ethical guidelines across modality aren't working. They're not stopping us from.

Completely and egregiously falling out of our seats and misusing our power. And and so that, that has someone like me say, because, because I'm trying to see things as they are not as they're called. It immediately has me asking what are we not? What conversation aren't we having and how are we not approaching ethics and what are we not doing that we need to start doing?

And so my, the Embodied Ethics courses that I offer, and they're, each of them, is different just as a response to what's happening in the Times. It's a, it's an attempt to at least begin to isolate the conversations we need to be having. So I don't make any promises. It's not a thing where you're gonna come and, become like.

Ethics Superman or ethics Superwoman. Yeah. Super person. It's, can we, in some cases people have shared, oh my, I feel even less tethered. But somehow more exhilarated than I was before. I don't feel any more ethical. I feel like I'm questioning everything. And to me, that is ethical.

So it's a desire to come up with a different context and intimate experience of ethics. 'cause when we think of ethics, we don't think intimate. We think punitive, we think a fear. A fear of getting it wrong. Fear of being, castigated in some way, fear of being what's, what, whatever the word is, would be across professions, CED in some way.

From an authority that is distant and disembodied. And so a lot of what we do is. Let ourselves have an intimate experience of ethical dilemmas. Allow that every single one of us has intimate responses and reactions, responses being our the responses come from our wellbeing.

Our reactions come from our wound to any ethical dilemma. And can we create an environment where those are not only welcome but essential. And then once we've really just allowed all the reactions and responses. What arises in each of us in relation to this specific dilemma? We've got just a library of dilemmas, not, there's no dearth of dilemmas based on what's happening in the world, what people bring in from their own personal experience, what past students have brought in.

So we'll take a dilemma and we'll work it and we'll bring in our reactions and responses and we'll just let them all be here and we'll just. Breathe together and then we'll see what comes up next. What's my inclination? What's the first thing I wanna attend to? What's my fear here?

What's the thing I'm most concerned about? What's the thing I wanna make sure happens? And we come to. At least identify where in a US ethics lives. I love that. Yeah. Just even that yeah. It's here. I feel it. It lives here or it lives here. Or it lives here, or, yeah. It lives in my pelvic floors so much.

Whatever it is. Yeah. What you're speaking to is so fascinating because it really. It really illuminates how ethics is so personal and so based on each of our unique histories, and there is no kind of standard, no ethics that you can and yet that is the what's presented to us in our society.

Yep. So you are really inviting an examination of each person to take on an ethical dilemma, quote unquote, like in, in each opportunity to see where it lives and how it lives and what is authentic to that person. Yep. Yeah. And depending on the course, will have the, each student, we'll have students upon arriving.

Br send me, a short synopsis of an ethical dilemma that's re that's recent enough for them. It's not a live wire ethical dilemma. There's no skin in the game anymore. Because it's in therapy and we're not gonna hold people through an experience. But something they, that they can remember enough to really bring in this the relevant details.

And so we might have a whole new pile of ethical dilemmas. In the past we've had that dilemma worked by a council of participants in the class. That doesn't include the person whose dilemma it was. So that person gets to witness. Oh, that's fascinating. And oh, so many things come up, but the, I'm sure the invitation is actually to imagine that ethics might be exactly contrary to what we've been taught.

That there isn't a, an external, top-down, outside in set of rote things we will always do in this situation and never do in that situation. That by nature, ethics and ecological ethics are. Mean that there's a thing that is yours to do in this dilemma. And there's a thing that's mine to do in this dilemma.

They might be antithetical to each other. It might be just categorically opposed to each other. But it takes a council to see which one. Or which ones are the right way to go forward next given this particular dilemma. So it's really a trusting that there's a, that ethic, that breaches ruptures happen within a system.

And the healthy, vibrant ecology is going to. Create the solution, the repair. Yeah. I love that because it really calls upon in that council situation, each person isn't hiding behind a position, but they're actually sharing how it affects them. And making a personal and being transparent about how it affects them.

Absolutely. And which, which, is bringing, greater. I don't know, information, support, awareness, insight. To the person who's grappling with the dilemma. That is such a novel way. I can't wait to join the class when it's offered next. Good. I did just figure out the dates.

So we're, so you're, we're getting closer. Oh, cool. Cool. Okay. So we're coming to the close of our time here, but Christian, I would be remiss if I didn't at least. Invite you to share something that you're very excited about regarding this next book that is being birthed, that's been gestating.

And that is that is being birthed into the world. What are you most excited about regarding this book? Because this is like your fourth one. It's my, yeah, the third one that I that's mine, that came out of me my fourth publishing, hopefully publishing one way or another.

Publishing opportunity or experience. Yes. Yeah. And you know what I'll say, Rahi is that I love that you're. Such a fan of the trauma book and the nature of what we're discovering, both scientifically and anecdotally is about the nervous system, what we call the autonomic nervous system. Just the nature of it is that it's changing all the time.

And that's just so beautiful. And so the book I would write now, and it was true even by 2019, that the, that I realized, oh God, there's a second edition that I need to write now. And I just, it's, there's, I hadn't, didn't get around to it. Didn't get around to it. And when I started working on this recent project, which was almost was a year and a half ago about, I thought that I was carving out space. To do the second edition of that book. And I was really going to more clearly speak about trauma as a rupture in belonging, because that's, for me, that's all it is. It's just a rupture in belonging. And our response to that, it is, that is very basic and simple and essential.

And I'll say mostly I think we're doing it very laboriously if we're at all doing it. Responding properly. And I know that makes me sound like that's just such a. Dictator? No, based on our conversation today it, it makes total sense, in, in context of our conversation.

Why you feel that way? Absolutely. Okay. And so I thought that I was gonna be, doing a much larger, it would not be succinct, it wouldn't be efficient. It would probably be a 350 page big deal thing. And in and it turns out I am doing that. But I'm doing it through the hybrid memoir genre.

Because what happened is that I realized I, I just went, I turned towards my sabbatical and rolled up my sleeves and got out the old version of trauma and got out my hundreds of pages of notes since then and Wow. And then all of a sudden, started typing and I wasn't typing that I was typing.

Wow. And I, and it just became so clear that in order to do it justice, in order to help readers understand how I hold trauma and why what we're calling trauma is not only inevitable, but actually deliberate in our conformist consumer society. It only survives because enough of us are deeply traumatized and so deeply impressionable and vulnerable.

I realized I had to tell it through a personal story and the story that I, that was so clear to me was the story of my older son's heroin addiction. And how the family unit, and particularly me and my son and his younger brother, my younger son, the three of us, just how it was that we.

The experiences we had. The experiences we had before that, the experiences we had during it, and the experiences we've had just now after that. That I would be able to, that would give me. That would be the through line to everything I wanna say about trauma as a rupture and belonging.

And mostly it's just a, it's a book of questions. It's a book of asking questions and attempting to see things as they are not, as they're called. Yes. I don't, it's, it is not a prescriptive book. I have no interest in writing a prescriptive book. But it's just a lot of.

A story because that's really what trauma is. Trauma is a story about how safe or unsafe we are in this world. And the inquiries that invites. It sounds like it's a lot of questions and, questioning readers about their lives and their sense of belonging and what can be done in their lives to cultivate an environment that, that makes a sense of belonging the norm And can thrive. Yes. Yeah. That in fact, the singular responsibility of any community would be that it raises its children. To have extraordinary unassailable experiences of their belonging. That's the single most important thing that we do as a community is to ensure that, which is very different than what we're up to right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Oh, I can't wait to read it. Christian, thank you so much for sharing yourself and for showing up as you do as you are. In the ways that you do, how do people find out about your potlucks? I don't know if it's like people are gonna be flying in from all over to Boulder once a month for these potlucks but I'm curious, how do people in your community find out about your potlucks?

Yeah. To find out about anything. I'm up to it. It's just right there on my website. On the, on your website, christianity com. Okay. Christian pelus.com. It'll be in the show notes along with the Verdant Collective and some of the other things that you offer. Christian, thank you so much. You are so welcome.

What a pleasure. I, how was this interview landing in your ecologically erotic embodiment right now?

Is there a felt sense of any body parts or erotic inner aspects that have bought into the fallacy of society standards for fitting in or not fitting in as if there is any such thing within the vast cosmos of existence.

How would it be to accept and remind these aspects or body parts of their inherent and brilliant nature of belonging? Are there ways your mind has categorized certain members of your various tribes in ways that prevent the natural flow of life force for connection and intimacy? And if so. How would it be to just let this go and open to the infinite possibilities for connection?

 Thank you for listening to Your Body. Remembers Pleasure If this conversation supported you, the simple way to help this work reach more people is to leave a five star rating or a brief review. You'll also find more resources and teachings@rahichun.com. Until next time, take good care.

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