Rahi: 0:02
Welcome to Organic Sexuality, where we explore the restoration of pleasure, the reclamation of sexual sovereignty and the realization of our embodied sexual nature. An invitation to honor the pleasures of your body by embodying the pleasures of your nature. By embodying the pleasures of your nature, I'm your host, rahi Chan. I'm a certified somatic, sex educator, sexological body worker and creator of Somatic Sexual Wholeness. Before today's interview with Dr Charlie Glickman, an announcement that Divine Union for Lovers Live, the three-day immersive retreat exploring the intersections of sensual somatics, sexological bodywork with plant medicines for lovers, with Ariel Zabo and myself, is being offered again this August and this September here in Santa Monica, california. For details and registration, visit divineunionforloversmykajabicom. Forward slash divineunion-retreat or simply visit divineunionforloverscom and scroll down to the very bottom of the page for the link. Dr Charlie Glickman has been in the sex education field for over 35 years and, in addition to co-authoring the Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure, he's one of the best sex educators I've had the pleasure to know. Today we explore the ins and outs of anal play just love, that pun, including how to ensure that both lovers have a smile on their faces at the end of lovemaking, ways to eroticize a previous shame or sexual trauma and, of course, his experiences and research, co-authoring one of the very few books on prostate pleasure out there Today. I'm really thrilled to have Charlie Glickman Dr Charlie Glickman onto the podcast. I've known Charlie for I don't know gosh, maybe six or seven years. It's been quite a while and it's been such a pleasure. So Charlie, for over 30 years, has been studying, learning all kinds of sex, explored through his personal experiences, academic study. He has a PhD in in um sex education, his professional trainings, which I've attended and he's a great teacher, uh and by working with literally thousands of people from all walks of life. Charlie's career in sexuality began when he was in college, providing safer sex and queer outreach workshops as a peer educator. He was also the education program manager at Good Vibrations for 16 years. He's coached thousands of individuals and couples, taught hundreds of workshops, trained doctors, therapists, clergy, spoken at conferences across North America and has also trained hundreds of workshops, trained doctors, therapists, clergy, spoken at conferences across North America and has also trained hundreds of sex educators. As I mentioned, he has a PhD in sex education and is the author of this fabulous book, the Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure, which covers everything from prostate orgasms to phases of ejaculation, learning to receive solo and partnered explorations, tips for combining with cock play toys, strap-ons, prostate health and so much more.

Rahi: 3:32
Charlie, thanks so much for joining us today. What a pleasure to be here. Thank you, rahi. Yeah, you're so welcome. Great to see you. Okay, so I usually like to start off as a kind of jumping off point by asking like you've been a sex educator since your college years? This is not something that I was aware of until I was preparing for us to talk today, and since then, obviously, you've received a doctorate. You were a somatica coach, a sexological body worker. There's so many trainings and teachings you've been involved with. What were some of the pivotal experiences, either personal or professional, that really influenced the trajectory of who you are now as a somatic sex and intimacy coach?

Charlie: 4:21
Well, chronologically, I think, is a good way. There's two in particular that I want to name. One of them is that about I don't know 20 years ago now, I guess I injured my lower back, I herniated the disc between L5 and S1 and everything went into spasm, as often happens with that kind of injury, and I literally couldn't stand upright because of because of the muscle spasm and, uh, I could feel that my pelvic floor was just locked up tight. And uh, I I was living in Oakland, california, at the time, and so I started asking around who do you know who can do body work on this part of the body? Because no body worker I had ever found was willing to touch anywhere that would be covered by a bathing suit, a Speedo maybe, right, right. And I eventually got referred to Chester Maynard, who was one of the people who helped co-create what we now call sexological body work that term didn't even exist at the time and I was working with him and within two sessions of pelvic massage by him, I could suddenly walk up right again. Oh my gosh, he was that good and I had the pleasure of being his client right up until he stopped seeing clients towards the end of his life, and that really highlighted for me the power of touch, especially pelvic massage, and remember this was for medical reasons rather than sexual healing or psychological reasons, but it's still really highlighted for me that here's this part of the body that almost never gets touched outside of sex or medical contexts. And so that was one piece.

Charlie: 6:30
And then the other piece that really shifted things for me is that, as you mentioned, my PhD is in adult sex education and I was doing a lot of research and learning about shame. And I was doing a lot of research and learning about shame and I realized that I knew how to talk about shame on a sociocultural level and on a community level and in relationship and on an emotional level. So all of these different scales, different scales. But the piece that I hadn't yet seen anything around was how shame manifests on a somatic level, on an energetic level, not in any real detail. And so I thought to myself well, chester helped me unpack the shame that I was holding in my pelvic floor as part of our work together. So I'll sign up for this training and then I can write the book that has been simmering in my head for the last few years and during the training program. You know you're doing practice sessions. You find friends to practice on, um colleagues, whoever.

Charlie: 7:43
And the second time I put my hands on somebody's body with this intention of exploring sexological body work, I realized that I couldn't just take the training, I actually had to do the work as a practitioner so that I could experience how different people's bodies hold shame and how different people move through that healing journey. That was 10 years ago and I'm still unpacking new pieces, although I am getting closer to the book that I actually think I'm going to write about it. But it was, you know, it was these two experiences that I had where I realized that even after being a sex educator for decades at that point it was still all talking about it, and don't get me you so far we get more movement sometimes when we have an experience with a practitioner. So it's in a specific container and I just fell in love with the hands-on work. It lets us do things that you can't access with words.

Rahi: 9:07
Oh, absolutely In a huge, huge way. First of all, charlie, what a blessing in disguise that led you to be on the receiving end of a master like Chester Maynard. I mean, those of us who are certified sexological body workers have been exposed to his training videos that are old, but the content is just gold. I mean, he is such a master of pelvic work and anal work, and and and sexual healing and all of it. So how brilliant. And then it's so great that you realize that your body had to experientially have the knowing and go through the process and the wisdom of releasing shame and understanding how your conditioning affected your body, your embodiment, in order to hold space for others.

Charlie: 9:59
All of that, and also even though there were people who had been teaching and writing about anal sex Jack Morin, Anal Pleasure and Health, and Carole Queen and Robert Lawrence with Bend Over Boyfriend. It's not that I was breaking new ground, necessarily, but it was the intersection of pelvic floor and the hands-on work that was the game changer for me, and it's just not something that you can access with words sometimes.

Rahi: 10:35
Absolutely. And to your point earlier. You know, like I think you know it's so kind of bizarre that when we go to any kind of massage therapist, the areas of the body they avoid, I mean, I feel like it's sending a message, like a subtle message of shame. You know it's like why can't my glutes? You know they're muscular, they pull on my lower back muscles or my upper thigh muscles and you know all the muscles are interconnected but there is such a avoidance of these very core, integral parts of our body.

Charlie: 11:06
Yeah, it's true, I used to have a session trade with another sexological body worker and she decided to take the training in massage therapy. She didn't want to become a massage therapist, but she wanted to learn the skills, and so she was practicing them on me. The skills, and so she was practicing them on me, and it was a fascinating experience. You know, after however many sessions we had doing sexological body work, and now all of a sudden she's practicing draping a sheet on me to keep my genitals covered, and and it was such a contrast.

Charlie: 11:43
Yeah, and I understand why body workers do that, sure, but it really it was fascinating. Like exactly to what you're saying, rahi, I could feel a contraction in my body, yeah, around this feeling of like, oh, we have to tuck the sheet in, because if your penis is visible, you know a regular body worker could get into trouble. Right, right, right For that, yeah, yeah yeah, and it was such a fascinating thing.

Rahi: 12:14
Yeah, yeah, the contrast of cultures so fascinating. So okay, charlie, I want to talk about embodied anal sex with you, sure, I want to talk about embodied anal sex with you, sure. So the question is so, for those listening in our audience, who may be curious or intrigued or wanting to enjoy and explore embodied anal sex, but haven't yet because they don't know you know they're gun shy or they're not sure if their partners are to it or whatever what would you like to impart to them about the experience? Oh, there's so much to say.

Charlie: 12:52
There's so much there, okay. So I think the most important thing is that successful anal plan. When I say successful, I'm not measuring it on whether everyone has an orgasm or whatever. I'm measuring it on whether people have a smile at the end of the experience. That's my definition of success when it comes to sex. And so, when it comes to successful anal play, it never has to hurt. But there's this myth that just will not die in this culture that anal sex hurts until you get into it enough that somehow the pain magically transmutes to pleasure. And some people do have that experience. But a lot of people are kind of forcing themselves to do something that hurts in the hope that it will change.

Charlie: 13:48
And so what I always tell folks is that it's not a question of stretching the anus open or pushing anything in. It's about learning how to relax your body open. And this is something that's very confusing for people, because that's not what it looks like in porn, and that's for two reasons. One is that in porn they do all of the warmup and they apply the lube before they get in front of the camera, so you never see it. It's kind of like a cooking show where the chef says toss in half a cup of chopped bell pepper and it's just magically there on the counter. Nobody had to wash, chop clean, it's just there. It's magically convenient, right. But the other thing is that people who do porn are sexual athletes. They do this all the time, so it is often easier for them to just dive in without much warmup, which you know you could do. If you had anal sex once or twice a week for a while, you could probably get to that place yourself. But what it creates is this idea that anal sex doesn't need lube, it doesn't need warmup, you can just go for it. Nobody needs to stop and take a breath, um and and.

Charlie: 15:11
So what I tell people when they want to explore embodied anal play. The place I always start is breath work. Um, and that's because, uh, because the pelvic floor is a place that we hold a lot of tension and emotion. You know how, when a dog or a cat gets scared and they tuck their tail between their legs, human beings do the same thing. It's just not quite as visible because we don't have tails attached to our tailbones anymore. But there's a reason why people who were stressed out all the time we call them tight asses, or somebody who stresses me out is a pain in the ass, right, um. And so the place that I tell people to start is learning how to relax your entire system, and the best way to do that to start with is with the breath, because when we inhale, our heart rate speeds up and when we exhale, our heart rate slows down, and you can actually measure the difference between those two rates as an indicator of how relaxed your body is feeling. So what I have people do is two minutes of breath work with a long, slow exhalation. So and I'll do it now, just for folks to follow along, I'll do it once, just so folks get a sense of the pacing. Um, but so it's in and it's out, I did it a little audibly so folks could hear it, but you can do it silently if you want to. You can hum, you can tone, but it's that long, slow exhalation that tells your body to slow down. This is something most of us intuitively realize. When I was a kid, if I broke something I broke a glass and one of my parents would come into the kitchen. They would look and they'd go ah right, that long, slow execution because it works.

Charlie: 17:24
And then here's the key for partners is, instead of telling your partner hey, sweetie, you seem really tense, why don't you take a couple of deep breaths, what I've done, if I say that is, I've just pointed my finger at you and said you're doing it wrong. What's going to work better is if you say to your partner hey, let's take three breaths together, let's set a timer for two minutes and breathe together. And that does two things. One is I'm not telling you what to do, so there's no blame. And by doing it together, our systems are starting to sync up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're co-regulating. Come back to the breath. Same thing with any kind of insertion, whether it's a finger, a toy, a penis, whatever is. Stop and take a breath, and what I tell people is when the receiver is exhaling and relaxed, that's when you slide in, and you slide in until the bottom of their exhalation and then you hold still while they take another inhale and as they exhale you slide in a little more. Maybe it takes five or six or 10 breaths to get all the way inside, but by doing that you're working with the body rather than trying to make the body do something it doesn't want to do.

Charlie: 19:01
And then the third tip I have with this is arousal. Get turned on first. If you're nervous about your first anal play experience being uncomfortable, start off with oral sex. Start off with spanking. Start off with a hot makeout session. I actually say this anytime anyone wants to try anything new in bed is make it the side dish. If you want to try spanking for the first time, start off with oral sex time. Start off with oral sex. Get super turned on and then throw in some spanking. You might always need it to be a side dish, that's okay. You might always need a vibrator on your clitoris or to be stroking your penis while receiving anal penetration Totally fine, totally fine. You might get to a place where you don't need that also, great um, but that's just an experiment at that point.

Rahi: 20:04
So it's really all about working with your body yeah, yeah, um, yeah, that's so beautiful and I'm struck by how simple it is and yet how right that is. Yeah, I love your guidance as to the penetration happening on the exhale so slowly after both nervous systems are co-regulated and really down-regulated, and there's so much relaxation in the pelvic bowl. So beautiful, charlie. For our listeners who are same-sex, female or hetero and have never received a strap-on or used a strap-on, would your guidance be any different?

Charlie: 20:56
Not really it's. It's the same guidance, the. The difference, though, is that if you're using a dildo whether it's a strap on or you're holding it in your hand um, you don't have nerve endings telling you, as the giver, what's going on, in the way that somebody who's using a penis you know they're getting some biofeedback about what's happening. So if you are using a toy, especially with somebody new, I think it's really important to let the receiver have as much control over the experience as is possible. So that includes depth, pacing, speed, size. One of the things I love about strap-ons is you can start off with something on the slimmer side to get used to it, and then maybe build up to something bigger. Maybe not, but the more control the receiver has over the experience, the more relaxed their system will be, the easier it is, and that goes a long way when you're using toys. Because, yeah, they don't. They don't have nerve endings. I wish they did.

Rahi: 22:07
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fascinating, yeah, you know I um. So, you know, with clients who have never received anal massage, I, you know, I mean especially for my male clients I really encourage really getting in touch with and becoming intimate with these nerves that are like a treasure of sensation and pleasure. Like a treasure of sensation and pleasure. You know, I feel like female. You know, vulva owners have an orifice that can access their intrapelvic nerves, but for cock owners it's really the anal canal and so many people are kind of walking around with kind of like, like, not in touch with, like all of the energy and sensation that is available in the pelvic bowl. And then certainly with female clients who have trauma so that they can't receive intravaginal touch. Intraanal is such a great way to wake up those nerve endings, for the vagina to be ready to receive some kind of palpation.

Charlie: 23:16
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and and I do see so many men in this world who are just locked up between their navel and their knees- yeah, it's fascinating.

Charlie: 23:29
It's fascinating, it is, and it causes back pain. It causes so much back pain because you're not moving fluidly and it limits your ability to live your life, and it is also accelerated by how much time we spend sitting. Sure, you can see people walking down the sidewalk sometimes where, instead of their feet being parallel to each other, their toes are rotated outwards and they walk kind of like duck feet Right, right. And that is frequently because we spend so much time sitting that the pelvic muscles get tight and it rotates your thighs externally. Yes, and that causes so many problems for biomechanics.

Rahi: 24:14
Sure sure, but you know, I also wonder because, in preparation for this interview, I went to your blog posts and your most recent one spoke about the developmental trauma that affects toxic masculinity. And you know, in concert with what you're saying, that, frozen from the belly to the knees, I wonder to what degree it's also this toxic masculine culture where little boys are unconsciously hypervigilant for approval or their survival, and that all gets stored in the pelvic bowl as well.

Charlie: 24:50
Sure, well, what's the worst thing? You can call a man or a boy. It fits into three categories either you're a girl or a woman, right, or a pussy, right. That all fits within that. Yeah, you're gay. You'll get called a fag or a homo, or you're a loser, you're a wimp, you're a weakling, which says some real interesting things about sexism and homophobia, because all of these things fit together.

Charlie: 25:28
But you're very much on target that if I, as a boy or as a man, if I feel fear, that, like if I move my hips too much, somebody will tell me I walk like a girl, then I'm going to lock all of that down Totally. And not only does that limit my ability to be embodied and receive anal touch and anal pleasure and all of that, but it also locks down cock energy. Yes, because the whole pelvis gets locked down. You, um, renee Brown makes the point that we can't turn off just one emotion. If you try to turn off your sadness or your grief or your anger or your shame, you're limiting your ability to be, to feel happiness as well. And I think the same thing here. How can you lock down your pelvis and then still be embodied in your penis, right?

Rahi: 26:19
Right, yeah, yeah, and it's so surprising. Um, well, it, I guess it shouldn't be surprising, but there there are. There is so much armor around people's cocks where they're not feeling as much sensation, um, as they're designed to for sure. Um, I had a question for you and that is like the, the term. So it's not anal sex, it's embodied anal sex, and I love that term so much because there's so much that that communicates the embodiment. You know, like it's not just having sex anally, it's being embodied and and enjoying that, that, so you can be available to all of the sensations and the pleasure. For a lot of people who are not embodied right like as we're describing, a lot of men are cut off from the navel to the knees the breathing to relax, to downregulate the body, getting warmed up, you know, enjoying foreplay beforehand, and I guess the key is to really really go slow so that you can be present and embodied, you know, moment by moment.

Charlie: 27:25
Well, yes, and along the way, what emotions are stuck there that are starting to come out? And, in particular, fear and shame are the two that I see there a lot, for lots of different reasons, whether it's painful sexual experiences or sexual assault, or being told that you're bad or whatever it is.

Charlie: 27:52
There's all kinds of stuff there, and so what I find is that people moving towards sexual embodiment, and especially anal embodiment, often have these emotions start to come up, and there's a beautiful opportunity there to complete whatever process those feelings need, rather than just being locked down for the rest of your life. But I say that because I I also have spoken with people who have tried to move into this more embodied way of living or feeling, into their pelvic floor and their partners floor, and their partners maybe didn't have the skill to hold the container for that, and this really is one of the reasons why I'm so happy that somatic sex education and sexological body work are becoming more widespread, because we can do more in a couple of hours in a session than can happen between lovers over a period of months. Absolutely Simply because I have no skin in the game right. I have no attachment to your outcome other than I want you to be happy with it.

Rahi: 29:11
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no-transcript.

Charlie: 29:42
Yeah, and even those of us who do this work professionally struggle with doing that in our personal lives, for our partners, because when I'm with my partner, I have an attachment to the outcome. I don't have the neutrality that comes with being a practitioner, and I'm not saying that that's impossible, but it does make it more challenging, right? So, yeah, right, yeah, absolutely. There's a lot there.

Charlie: 30:13
There is one other thing I wanted to name, though, about embodied anal sex, which is that when I talk about anal sex and I know you, rahir, are on the same page, and I'm guessing most of your listeners are too, but I'm not talkingotic anal touch. So if your girlfriend likes you to tickle around the outside while you're going down on her, that is anal sex in my book. So I just wanted to name that, because, for most people, when they hear the term anal sex, they assume intercourse, and I like to open up all the possibilities.

Rahi: 30:57
Yeah, and opening up all the possibilities kind of goes to. You know just the keys that you shared before about. You know the importance of foreplay and relaxation. I mean the foreplay can involve the wide range of the possibilities for anal sex. It can be the fingers, it can be oral, it can be. You know the possibilities for anal sex. It can be the fingers, it can be oral, it can be.

Charlie: 31:19
You know so many different things before you know any kind of like genital penetrative anal play comes into the bedroom. Exactly, exactly. And I think it is a particular challenge for men as givers, because we so often get excited and we want to rush to the goal. And you know, I didn't come up with this line. This might have been a Chester line, I forget where I heard it but you will get there faster the slower you go, oh I love that.

Rahi: 31:49
I love that. Yeah, one of my colleagues in Europe, suzanne Ruscard. She always says the slower we go, the faster we progress. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Emphasis on the slow. Yeah, awesome, well, charlie. The other topic I wanted to ask you about involves playing with the erotic shadow, and I wanted to, as a jumping off point, I want to hear about what exploring your erotic shadow has opened up for you and your sexuality. How much time you got yeah, well, we've got a long time, but I wanted to start off by asking what is playing with the erotic shadow mean to you, just so our audience can kind of like grok that first.

Charlie: 32:36
Sure Well, so I'm going to zoom out a little bit and I want to acknowledge something that Sigmund Freud really got right. My inner 20 year old really resents it when I say this, because when I was 20 years old I was like he's the old white dude with beard, whatever, like we're not going to listen to him. But I got to say Freud and Marx got a lot more right than I was willing to acknowledge when I was 20. And one of the things that Freud got right is that there's often a relationship between our core wounding and our hottest sexual fantasy, and the example I often give this is a real story.

Charlie: 33:17
I once had a client many years ago who had grown up in a very religious Catholic family with all of the stereotypical shaming that goes with sex shaming, body shaming, woman shaming Not that that is inherent in Catholicism, but they often go together. And she was in her early 40s and married to her husband, monogamous, and was freaking out because she was having fantasies about group sex, particularly being the focus of a gangbang, and she was panicking does this mean that we should break up? But monogamy, but this, but that. But when we started digging into the emotional foundation of her fantasy. What we discovered is that in the fantasy, every time she orgasms, all of the men stop what they're doing and they clap and they applaud and they tell her how sexy she is and oh, I can't wait till it's my turn. It's not that she wanted to be in a gangbang, she wanted to be celebrated as a sexual woman because that was the healing for her core wound right. And if she had enacted the fantasy without realizing this, maybe it would have worked, but it also could have been a train wreck.

Charlie: 34:42
When we've done enough of our healing work, around our shadow, around our wounding, we can play with it erotically and have it be fun. It's kind of like when you have a bruise from working out or doing yard work and it kind of feels good to press the bruise. Or when you're a kid and you lose a tooth and you keep poking the gap with your tongue, even though it hurts Sure, sure a tooth and you keep poking the gap with your tongue, even though it hurts, sure, sure. But when we haven't done enough of our healing work, playing with those wounds in sex just has the risk of re-traumatizing us because it hasn't healed. So what I often suggest to people in terms of playing with the shadow is first, let's identify what the shadow is. What is the piece? For the example I gave? It was shame, particularly sexual shame. So we kind of map it out and we look for the places where there can be healing around that. How do we soften that? Let's talk about your sexual shame and figure out how to redirect it. And when we have done enough of that, we can start playing with it in sex.

Charlie: 36:10
And so she started telling her husband like hey, you know, I really want you to be more verbally expressive of how attractive you think I am. You know, I really want you to. You know, when I'm doing dishes after dinner, you know I want you to come up and whisper to me oh yeah, after the kids go to bed, I'm just going to ravish you. So you better get ready, baby, I can't keep my hands off of you and we can play with it there. It's not just that being told by your lover, I can't wait to ravish you with sexy.

Charlie: 36:46
I think a lot of people would find that a turn on. But in this particular case it was also the medicine that her shadow needed. Right, you know, and you know, for other people it might show up as um as freedom. You know, one of my, one of my core wound patterns is around autonomy and freedom, and so a lot of my fantasies either center on either I have complete freedom, I can do whatever I want, and everyone I'm with is a full yes, and they're all into it and they're all celebrating me doing whatever.

Charlie: 37:25
Or I don't have any choice here. I have to do what my partner tells me to do. I have to be a good boy. I have to be a good whatever. I need to do what you tell me to do. So the way my core wound shows up in my core erotic theme, my fantasy world, is either I have all the freedom, and that is honored and celebrated, or I have no freedom, within the context of consent, but I have no freedom. So I don't need to be challenged by saying no, by taking autonomy and claiming my power.

Rahi: 38:02
That's how it shows up for me. Other people out.

Charlie: 38:05
There are going to have different things, but the thing that I think is the most important thing in this is that if you play with your core fantasies and you wake up the next morning and you've got a big smile on your face awesome, you're on the right track. But if you wake up the next morning and you feel cranky or irritable or you have some shame feelings going on, celeste and Danielle call that a shame over. It's like a hangover, but emotional. Yes, yes, that might be a sign that you overdid it, you went too deep or too far. Or maybe it's telling you that you like it when your boyfriend calls you this word, but not that word. Right, don't tell me that I'm a, I'm a dirty slut. Tell me I'm a good slut, whatever it is. And so when I talk about playing with the shadow, what I really mean is like, where are the places that this magnifies or or accentuates our erotic connection? Where are the places that maybe need some more healing? Right, right right.

Rahi: 39:19
I think that's the real. You know, that could be a fine line and that's really the question here. It's like eroticizing our childhood core wounds can be so sexy because there's already, as you pointed out, an erotic charge there. You know a fantasy, you know, because there's already, as you pointed out, an erotic charge there, you know a fantasy, you know desire to be fulfilled. And I think the question maybe our audience members are wondering is well, have I done enough work on this wound to begin eroticizing it in the bedroom and enjoying it? And that you know what you distinguished as far as the next morning. The gauging is really great. I'm wondering for listeners what are the ways that you recommend people work on their core wound? Let's say someone's listening to this and they realize that they were beaten by their father or something like that, and they have these fantasies of an authoritative, you know, male figure dominating them. How can they feel like they've worked on that, that core wound, enough to start playing with that in the bedroom with their trusted and safe boyfriend?

Charlie: 40:28
Yeah, Well, I really wish that there was a way for people to know when we were crossing our boundaries, other than how crappy we feel afterwards.

Rahi: 40:41
Yeah.

Charlie: 40:41
So it's a lot of like.

Rahi: 40:42
It's a lot of trial and error.

Charlie: 40:44
It's a lot of trial and error, but, but it's also.

Charlie: 40:46
It's also a little bit like um you know when, if, if somebody decides to get into shape and they start going to the gym or taking classes or Pilates or whatever, when you're new to it, you're constantly waking up the next morning like I can't lift my arms above my head.

Charlie: 41:05
My ab muscles hurt when I cough. I overdid it yesterday, so now I know how to dial that back. And then what makes it tricky is two months from now, when you're stronger because you've been going to class, you have to increase your workout to stay at that same edge, in that same learning edge. So it really does become this practice in like how do I know how much is just enough and not too much? How do I know when I go to the gym that I can lift a hundred pounds but not 110 pounds? What does that feel like in my body? And I'll acknowledge that when I started working out at the gym, part of how I learned that is, I overdid it and I hurt myself and I had to take two weeks off and go to the chiropractor a bunch of times.

Rahi: 42:01
Yeah, yeah. So what I'm hearing is is move at a pace that feels safe. Um, constant communication, obviously, but but also like really gauging, like your own kind of nervous system and your next morning response or after play response, and modulate accordingly.

Charlie: 42:24
Yeah, and I think something important in that is that overdoing it, being sort of emotionally tender the next day, is not inherently a sign of failure. I think a lot of people have this idea that that means that they screwed up or whatever. It's data collection. The only experiment that's a failure is the one where you don't collect the data. So maybe the data is you know what? Having that third glass of wine made it feel like anal sex was more fun, and I certainly was able to take more than I could before. But I woke up this morning feeling really raw. Was that because I had that third glass of wine? Was it because we overdid it? What would have happened if we'd done three glasses of wine but a smaller dildo? It's all just data collection so that you can figure out your individual puzzle.

Rahi: 43:25
Yeah, yeah, sounds great, sounds great. I love that data collection. For those who have not explored, like ceremony work or or um, uh, creating containers, uh, to explore a shadow um there can be. It can be really, really valuable to have that conversation around boundaries and desires and fears and what aftercare is needed, um, and safe words as well, to make sure the container is as safe as possible. Yeah, charlie, I want to ask you about this book. Okay, okay, the Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure. It is the ultimate guide. You guys cover so much material in it. How, like you talked earlier on about the book, that's kind of gestating or marinating in you around shame. How did this manifest? And you know we talked about all kind of the keys with anal sex at the top of the podcast. I'm wondering if we can kind of like add a little bit for prostate owners. Sure.

Charlie: 44:33
Totally, totally Well. I always give credit to my co-author, aislinn Amersian, because the book was her idea. Oh, wow, yeah, we were co-workers at Good Vibrations. She was working in the store and I was working in the administrative office and, for folks who aren't familiar, good Vibrations was the first women-friendly, clean, well-lit place to buy sex toys. Every other store that's out there that is clean and you can look at the toys and you can pick them up and turn them on and see how strongly they vibrate are all rooted in the Good Vibrations model. Even if they don't know that that's where they got it. It's amazing in the good vibrations model, even if they don't know that that's where they got it.

Charlie: 45:18
But so Aislinn was working one day and there's the G-spot toy section and so of course she grabs the books about the G-spot to put next to the toys.

Charlie: 45:24
And then she walked about five feet down the wall and is straightening up the prostate toy section and realized that there weren't any books there, and so she started working on the book and she brought me in about a year later and we wrote it from there and we felt it was really important actually for the book to be written by someone with a prostate and someone who doesn't, because we have different experiences of this. Sure, sure, but yeah, I always have to give her credit for it because it was her idea. But the thing that I found so fascinating about it was we sent out a survey and I think we ended up serve, I think we got about 200 responses from men and partners of men and we asked the question know, what were some of the things that maybe kept you from trying this or do keep you from trying this? And the answer is we got over and over again. Is this gonna hurt?

Charlie: 46:29
is this gonna get messy and does this make me gay? Wow, really, yeah. Various ways of asking those questions over and over again. Oh, wow. And so that really helped us, and you can even see in the book we wrote a whole chapter addressing that question about sexual orientation and masculinity and the masculinity that is so wild.

Rahi: 47:01
But once again, yeah, is it going to hurt? I guess that's like at the forefront of people's concern and maybe preventing people from really you know exploring their bodies in a really intimate you know, like like responsible way like, like, responsible way.

Charlie: 47:19
Yeah, the irony? You're exactly right, rahi, and the irony there is that the men who have received anal touch even if it's not their favorite thing, even if it's not something that they would seek out for themselves, but the men who have are consistently more skillful as givers of anal touch, because you know what it's like when it's happening too fast or the toy is too big or your partner inserted a second finger too soon. Right, right?

Rahi: 47:49
I mean, I'm, I'm. I must say, Charlie, like the first time I received um anal penetration it was at a tantric um training. Uh, it was an anal dearmoring, but it made me so much more sensitive to the, how vulnerable it is to be penetrated and I think it made it just brought, like this whole other awareness and consciousness around me as a, as a, as one who penetrates. Yeah.

Charlie: 48:17
Yeah, and, and I think I think it does a lot of things actually for for men or, you know, for folks with penises, but especially for cisgender men. You know, you can know intellectually what it means to go slow, but until you've been on the receiving side, what happens with a lot of men is we think we've slowed down from a 10, but we're actually still at a seven and where we need to be is like a three. And on the flip side, I've talked with a lot of, in particular, cisgender women who have said things like wow, I didn't realize how much responsibility comes with this. Or what I really love is when women try a strap on for the first time and then they're like wow, I just got this ab workout. I gotta do my pilates before I can do.

Rahi: 49:12
No wonder my boyfriend collapses on me after inter, right, right so it is interesting, like walk a mile in the other person's shoes yeah, and it deepens empathy for both, for both giver receiver, for both parties.

Charlie: 49:26
Yeah, I actually was once having that conversation with a woman, a client, and about this it was this mind-opening experience for her. And then I said all right, now imagine that at intervals completely beyond your control, your dildo is going to get soft and just not usable for penetration and and you could see the light bulb click on, it's like all right, I'm never gonna get upset about my husband losing his erection. I even hate that phrase losing his erection.

Rahi: 49:59
Totally, totally. You know, yeah, the empathy, the empathy goes really, really deep when you are in the other person's shoes or the other person's yeah, role.

Charlie: 50:10
But you know, in the 10 years since the book came out and it's really been that long, 10 years since the book came out, and it's really been that long, which is wild to me I've learned a lot more about the pelvic floor and about the anus.

Charlie: 50:24
And here's one that you know, especially with your background in Tantra I know you'll, you'll, you'll connect with this one, Rahi which is that almost all animal life on this planet sperm meets egg and cells start to differ, Cells start to divide, and at first the cells haven't differentiated, they all look the same.

Charlie: 50:45
The very first cells that differentiate and start to form the structures that will become an organ later are the anus. And what happens is we've got this little ball of cells and it forms a little ring of the anus and it pooches in and then it becomes a tube and then opens up at the other end and that's the mouth, and so then everything else kind of builds off of that tube that runs down the center of the body. So I say this because, in my view, for people who are interested in Tantra or who are familiar with the chakra system, the anus is the first chakra. It's literally where our bodies started and everything connects back to it. All of the fascia in our body has to connect back to it, because that's the center of the web.

Rahi: 51:42
So you know, when we're really talking about these experiences, we're talking about connecting with this very core, beginning part of what it means to be a human animal, Totally totally, yeah, yeah, it is the root of our existence and you know there's so many Taoist and tantric practices that that involve engaging that anal sphincter, you know, with you know, various mudras, various breaths to um, to move the energy, to move the energy to move the sexual energy through the body and so to have a really to have a, a sensitive and responsive and healthy uh anal sphincter that is turned on, that is, you know, open for the energy to flow as freely as it wants.

Charlie: 52:31
Uh is is, you know it speaks to our health, our health and our aliveness yeah, and it's why I'm always a little skeptical of anybody who tries to make the case that the anus is in the perineum or it's inside the body. There's an anal phobia that I often see around that, and to me it just doesn't make any sense, right? If these are the first cells in our body that form, how can it not be where we all started?

Rahi: 53:05
Totally, that's profound. I didn't know that.

Charlie: 53:07
That is awesome.

Rahi: 53:08
That is awesome, charlie. Thank you so much. Where can people reach you? And, oh and, what are you up to these days? I mean, besides your practice in Seattle, do you work with people virtually? And yeah, like, how can people like get, get to?

Charlie: 53:25
you get to you. What do I do, right? Well, so my website is very easy. It's make sex easycom, or charlie glickmancom will just take you there too. Sex easycom or charlie glickmancom will just take you there too. Um, and I, I work with folks, uh, both in person here in Seattle Washington um, both, you know, ongoing and also for people who are coming into town who want to do maybe an intensive weekend. But I also do a lot of coaching over zoom. Um, you know it, it I was very pleasantly surprised to discover how much somatic work we actually can do over Zoom.

Rahi: 54:05
Yeah, I think that was eye-opening. Everyone in the somatic field, I think, were surprised at exactly that during COVID.

Charlie: 54:12
Yeah, we were skeptical, although there are definitely some limits to what we can do over Zoom. And as far as what I'm working on now, the last few years I've been concentrating mostly on my coaching practice. This last year, I've been getting back into blogging and my blog is on my website too to blogging and you know, my blog is on my website too, um, but I am also I'm I'm looking at different ways to move back into the teaching space and and in this current moment in, you know, late 2024, I'm sort of assessing where things are now, because there was the shift towards online, but also there's so much sex education information available now. So what do people really need? And so I'm putting this out there, because anybody listening to our conversation today, if you have an inspiration of like, yeah, this is something that needs to be out there, somebody needs to be teaching this, somebody needs to be teaching this. You're welcome to contact me, even if I'm not the right person for it.

Rahi: 55:26
I probably know somebody I could pass that suggestion along to Cool Love it. I mean, it goes back to what you had shared during your sex bot training that, like we have to experience all of these things through our own instrument in order to hold space and facilitate for our clients, and that's really. That's awesome. Yeah, charlie, thank you so much. It's always great to see you. Thank you for being so generous with your experiences. And again, charlie's website is makesexeasycom or charlieglickmancom.

Charlie: 56:00
Yeah, and thank you, rahi, it's always a pleasure.

Rahi: 56:06
How is this episode landing for you in your body right now? Can you attune to the sensations and desires of your anus and, if so, what are the feelings that are bubbling up for you? Are there ways in which you can hold this very precious part of your body with compassion and reverence for any past hurts, judgments or shaming that it's endured, and are there curiosities about the pleasures and joys awaiting exploration here, either solo or with your beloved? Links to Charlie's Make Sex Easy website and his wonderful book are in the show notes. Until next time, take great care.