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 it gives me great pleasure to invite Dr. Liam Snowden, or Captain as I am used to calling them who was the director of my somatic sex education training years ago. How does one explore and discover their sexual truth when their embodied experiences are outside of society's narrowly defined norms?

Dr. Snowden generously shares their journey, in addition to sharing insights into the various somatic sex education trainings they've been a part of over the years, including the one they've co-founded. The Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education. So I'm really honored and thrilled to have Dr.

Liam Snowden to the podcast today. I know him as captain. He was the director of my sexological bodywork training at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, which was pivotal in my journey of becoming a somatic sex educator. Dr. Snowden for over 10 years has been co-teaching within one or both of two of the main somatic sex education trainings in North America currently at the Institute for Somatic Sex Education.

And then the one in North America, the one that I did was the sexological Body Worker training as well as being faculty on the Institute for Sexual Education and Enlightenment. Captain, thank you so much for joining us. It's great to see you. It's my pleasure to be here, Rahi. It's great. I just wanna let you know that I think that when we met I was trying on the pronoun he for a while, and I'm back to using they and loving Ah, okay.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, thanks for letting me know. Because you've been, because your life is really so involved in depth and breadth, and you've seen the evolution of somatic sex education in a variety of different programs and perspectives. I would love to know what the influences and experiences were in your journey that guided you towards becoming a somatic sex educator and trainer.

Oh, super sexy question. Thank you. I guess as a way of just centering in the land and recognizing the territories that I'm on, which is an important piece for me, I just also want to say that I'm coming to you from Lagan territory territory of the song he and peoples indigenous folks here AKA Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Colonial names. The colonial names. Yeah. The journey around all of this, I think, I didn't figure that, I didn't figure this out till later, but definitely the pieces around being a kid growing up with a ton of learning disabilities and having the ways that I learned in the world not being valued, that was that was at a time where there wasn't a lot of understanding or knowing about learning disabilities.

And I had this little spark in myself of knowing that I was smart, but not in the ways that were valued in the system at the time. And so I would just go around and engage with the world, through my body and through my senses, and not as much through my head and in a really communal way.

Like I always cared about what was going on with people and. How people were relating to each other and what happened when groups of people got together. And so I think that, that manifested in jobs like working on the streets in harm reduction and working in queer health. And then I was at a point in my life where I was coming out as transgender.

I had come out as queer earlier on and been privileged to be exposed to all the things that won. It was exposed to in the nineties when, sex and queerness were so connected, even though I got exposed to kink community and polyamory and all the ways that queer folks had figured out how to be in relationship with each other outside of normative practices of relationship.

And so I was like, what do I wanna do now? And it was like spirituality, sexuality. And so I explored. That I'm a witch and I practice in the reclaiming tradition of witchcraft, but I was like, the sex was calling me more, so I did some exploration around what could. What could I do that would keep my attention for a whole bunch more years?

And I found the institute in San Francisco that's no longer there, that we both went to. And yes, somehow they accepted me to go to school. So I went down to sex school in San Francisco and learned a lot more about myself. And at the end of doing my doctorate down there, people had been telling me all the way along that there's this course that I would really called Sexological Body Work.

And it was a separate thing, so you had to do it separately. And so I gave it to myself as the present for being done my doctorate, and then the lights went off. Boom. Body and Sach, not just heads and ect. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you know what's really fascinating from what I'm hearing, captain, is the learning disabilities, it sounds like it was a blessing in that it gave you access to your sex, to your sensual and sensorial intuition and wisdom, rather than what happens a lot, I think in our current educational structure where we get cut off from our bodies because there's so much focus in the in, in the mind.

Absolutely. Yeah. And then here you were very like Sensorially, intuitive. Intuitive to your sense, feeling sense. And then moving into queer communities in the nineties, it sounds like, where you, where the culture was very much about exploring that sensorial intelligence and pleasure.

And so it it set you up perfectly to be a. A trainer and educator in somatic sex education because you were already so attuned to your body senses. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really great way of looking at it. And what I hear in that is a thing that I reflect on sometimes is like the wounds, the wounds being the gift some of the time.

Not always, but yeah. And I just had, a tremendous amount of community support around. Being who I am, because once you question one pillar, like sexual orientation and then the other pillars of like, how am I gonna do relationship? And then the other pillars of like, how am I gonna be in my body around gender?

The Greek, Roman coliseum just falls down. Because all the structures that we're holding it up and then we get to make up, we get to make up our lives. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that because I think we came of age around the same time. Like I, my high school class was 85 and the AIDS scare was coming out like people were afraid, around sexuality then.

Yeah. But like back then, were there support systems for you to explore your identity? Or 'cause if I'm, if I think back to my high school, twenties, there was definitely gay and lesbian resources. I think the resources and awareness or education or support around queer identity was even lacking then much less trans.

Yeah. I wasn't exposed to anything until my twenties. And I, and I wasn't living in a particularly conservative place or with particularly conservative parents, but it just, it wasn't available. Nor did I have the language, which I think is the other thing to describe myself.

And so how did given the lack of kind of support systems and the awareness and the culture that was not there at the time, how did you like your own. Exploration and understanding of your own identity, how did that evolve? Because it sounds like you explored your queer identity and that evolved into un understanding and accepting your trans nature.

Yeah. The first gaggle of people that I found that some of me fit with was fabulous, amazingly political and diverse. Feminists, some of who were lesbians and dikes. And so I, I got an education that I will be lifelong grateful in around feminism, patriarchy, and power and oppression and privilege, and of course, that I'm.

Always learning tons more about, but yeah, that foundation really I found a way of welcoming being, I found community there, but the, and the problem with that was that my politics felt fit really nicely there. And I was finding like liberation for lots of pieces of myself, but I wasn't particularly interested in having sex with women.

Parts of me fit. And then you've always been communal, you, so the politics fit there with that community. You've, and then how did your, it's a very personal question but how did your, how did your sexual needs get met? And through, through doing so, how did your sexual identity evolve and blossom?

That's a sweet question. Lots of trial and error, and lots of gracious lovers. Once I got more comfortable with my own body. And pleasure, pleasure with myself. Things got a lot more possible with other people. I think that there was a lot of things were happening at the same time.

I was scoring a lot more kinky related things. I was. Traveling around more in radical ferry community. So back to the land queer men's and other beings movement and finding more communal spaces to be in around sexuality. And then just living more as on the gender spectrum in a place that felt more comfortable for me and being seen in the world a little bit more in the way that I wanted to be seen.

So it sounds like when you say getting more comfortable in your own body and your own, like exploring, and it's such a like foundational practice for our somatic sex education is the orgasmic yoga to really be. To take ownership really of the, of our own pleasure and get so familiar with the erotic terrain of our own bodies.

And it sounds like that combined with being in community with other like folks that, that were not identified with kind of the boxes that were being presented by society. The I think our sexuality is really infinite and undefined, but you found your tribe in that it sounds like.

Yeah, and I think that I've been in and out of lots of different gaggles of people and having, lived up and down the west coast of these two countries. There's a lot, there's a lot of different communities that I've been a part of and, but definitely like queer, the words queer, the words kinky, the words trans, the word gender queer, which is my favorite.

The word leather, like those are all. Boxes that fit to some degree, and also help me find my people in a community, whether it's online or in person. Very cool. So I wanna ask you, captain, because I know you're also an anti-violence worker. I wanted to ask you about the role oppression plays in sexual embodiment and expression.

And I feel like the, I feel like it's not, I don't think it's really discussed very much in sexuality or sec sacred sexuality circles. It's I think people like, once it's the topic is broached or introduced, people can see how it, the pivotal role oppression plays in our sexual expression.

But I'd love to hear from you because Yeah what role does oppression play in our sexual embodiment and expression and does its very omission from the conversation affect our collective sexuality. Yes. I love this question. And of course I'm learning tons about this stuff all the time and making mistakes and trying to get up again and try again, but I.

Yeah. I think what's really important, especially in spiritual communities, there seems like there's a lot of, still a lot of sort of spiritual bypass of these of the questions of oppression and power and privilege. And sexual violence and gender based violence. Where it's, there's still this oh, we're all just one.

Let's not get mixed up in that kind of stuff 'cause we're all just one and really, no. Yeah. Yeah. And I think and really. Like my liberation is tied up with your liberation is tied up with black Lives Matter. Liberation is tied up with the embodiment of each of us being able to be ourselves, but in a culture that's also impacted, like deeply impacted by all of the systems that have been so oppressive to so many of us.

And I think that. It has a huge impact on us, as in as individuals, which I think is what's being talked about a lot more lately, which is fantastic. But also it impacts us being able to connect with each other across difference, right? If we've got all these ways that maybe we've been taught overtly or not overtly to engage with each other, who are different or in this box or that box. Our bodies act differently around each other's bodies. And and not necessarily consciously. So working to unpack the, I'm interested in working and playing to unpack how our bodies engage with each other body each other's bodies as a way to.

Unlearn and learn ways of being in love with each other in a better way. And, there's lots of, tons of great work being done Rema medic and whole bunch of other folks around cul the cultural nerve, the cultural nervous system, and what oppression and privilege and power and white supremacy has done to the cultural nervous system.

And if we can look at that. In a broader way too. There's lots of, there's lots of door doors into change there and it's, that's really damn exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm hearing is that, like in the way that our nervous systems. Are like tuning forks.

If there's stuckness in one, there's gonna be, it's gonna resonate throughout all the tuning forks, and yet it, it feels the whole nature of pleasure and sensuality. Requires a safe and present nervous system. And if there's any obstruction to that and influences lip oppression is going to hamper and impede that not only for one person, but for the whole species.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm not sure if I, as a white person, I'm the right person to talk to talk about this stuff at the moment, but I there's a fabulous person named Onika Henry who is from Trinidad and Tobacco, and I love to listen to her about this stuff. And. There's a piece on YouTube that she's done that's about reclaiming sexual identity through Carnival.

She's from Trinidad and tobacco and there's a lot of in there about reclaiming and fully embodying the tools that come with all of our sort of ancestral wisdom in when we can get ourselves in. Situations of collective embodiment and collective joy, which I think all of our cultures had some at some time.

Whether it was more recently or way long ago. So I'm just, I'm super excited in hearing, hearing from people who are talking about collective joy and collective liberation through the body these days. It's one of the reasons why, you know, when you talked, you asked me about, you mentioned the different programs. I think that you, and we're around the same age, so it's there, there's, there was a period that seems to me, at least on the west coast of our countries, these countries here, where like the way into sexuality and sexual healing was catharsis.

Like you had to go big, have the huge orgasm, have the big multiple person experience, like override or just. Super activate your nervous system, right? And that's, and then we went, oh yeah, maybe that works for a few people. Yeah. Yeah. Not everybody. And who's being harmed in this process?

So I think like the found the pieces when I first studied Sexological body work, it it was in that time. And so it came and early on when I was teaching it, I think I came a lot more from that, that, let's just get to the sex thing. We know it's full of shame and stuff, but let's like ignore the shammy stuff a little bit and just try it.

And so I think like now what we've, collectively learned and what we wanted to create in our, in, in our school is like a trauma, trauma informed practice, anti-oppressive practice. Creating these safety rails into all these fabulous modalities, which are under somatic sex education of like masturbation coaching.

General mapping and pleasure mapping. Orgasmic yoga, which we now talk about as mindful erotic practice because it neither needs to be orgasmic or yoga. So like these practices are great, but not everybody can just jump right into them. So we wanted a lot more pre. With people, which I'm sure you've discovered in your private practice, it's no, people don't want to, can't all just get right on the table, nor do we want them to.

Yeah, that's really that's great that the school in Canada, the Institute for Somatic Sex Education. It sounds like it really reflected the discoveries and awarenesses about the nervous system and about it's very trauma informed and comes from a, not only trauma informed, but also it's non-binary.

It's more inclusive, more neuro physiology based. And I was gonna ask you like the differences between the schools that you're, that you've been a part of. So it sounds like the school that you have co-created with your co-founders have taken in the evolution of somatic sex education in understanding the role a downregulated nervous system plays in pleasure and sexual freedom.

Yeah. I think we've really kept some of the. Things that we really love about sexological body work, which is, and some of the curriculum, which is like the hands-on pieces, the focus on pleasure, the noticing about what, learning about what our core erotic themes are and therefore what, charges up our sexuality and making, being able to make choice and have voice around that. But yeah, the the consent pieces, lots more consent pieces, big shout out to Betty Martin around bringing those pieces into work around sexuality and yeah, really wanting to slow to walk our talk about slowing down too.

Also, you remember the program. Go. And now you're done. But now, yeah, there's like discreet courses you can take breaks between, it's not a cohort model. It's oh, life happened, so I'll take, I won't take this course for another six months or yeah. And then just really developing.

The other thing that's really important to us is developing a community of practice and as one of those things that really keeps us in ethical practice and having people that know what our. Hot buttons are so that when we approach them with clients or groups that we have people we can be accountable to.

So Corrine D Chuck and C, and Jesse and I, yeah. We just sat down and created what we wanted to create and looked at things and said, do you like this part? Do you want to do this part? Oh, nobody wants to, it's not joyful or pleasurable. Let's not do it. Nice. So we came at it through our own pleasure.

Oh, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. When I looked at, I, when I looked through the curriculum, it seems like it would, it's all the best stuff from our training, and yet there's a respect for the pace that, that the nervous system needs to be able to integrate and digest and feel safe, really.

And moving through all of these processes. Yeah. And then you're also faculty on the at the Institute for the Sexual Education and Enlightenment. Yeah. And how does how is that different than the Canadian program? RA Devo and I went to the institute in San Francisco together for our doctorates.

And we both came out of there being like, Ooh. We could create schools or we wanna teach things. We came from really similar backgrounds around working with people around drug and alcohol and harm reduction and counseling and joy and spirituality. And yeah, so Roz was the first one to go.

I'm starting a school and so I just came along with, was delighted to come along with her on that journey and teach with her. A wide variety of things. I send a lot of, I send students who her school is so holistic. There's a lot of so like body work components. And I send people who don't have, sex education or a sex background there to learn more about sex. Ah, okay. And being a sex educator and or just, and just like information. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Whereas the institute of somatic sex education is really more geared towards professionals. Would, is that what you would, is that how you'd distinguish the two?

No, because I think that Roz has a therapist route you can go and a sex educator route you can take in her program. I think we're both really invested in people looking at their own stuff too. So I think, if in, in our program, the first two courses are. Are about looking at our own relationship to power and privilege and trauma and pleasure and centering, our own pleasure in the whole process of it all.

Often we're like, people are like what about blah, blah, blah, blah? And we're like, wait for the next course. This part's about you. Yeah. So I think we have really similar philosophies and r'S training. Most people that Roz trains don't do hands-on stuff. And when and she sends people our way if they wanna do hands-on stuff.

Oh, okay. So that's a huge distinction then the hands-on and the non hands-on. Got it. Captain, I wanna ask you what you've enjoyed the most about teaching in each program. And I'm sure every year it's different 'cause the cohorts are different and the flavor of each class is different, but like what brings you the most pleasure and joy?

Because you've taught so many different you've been a part of so many different trainings. I would say like the answer to that question is like you, the students, things that I get so much delight in are. Talking to people like so many of the students are those people that have always been the people that their friends come to talk to about sex?

I don't know how many times I've heard that. I don't, I'm not a therapist or anything, but I am like, I've been talking about sex my whole life. 'cause people have been coming to me to talk about it. I enjoy. People that have been called to more traditional forms of sex work coming into this practice and learning tons from them, I, I learned so much from the students we have.

'cause people are just coming from all kinds of different places. I love the, some of my favorite moments are. When people really understand in their body that they don't have to do something. Like we have this thing in our program about don't g we'll invite people to do things and then it'd be like, don't g And then when that moment, when people actually trust that there'll be no impact or punishment of not doing a thing.

And the the shift that happens in people's body when they can use their No. And it's respected and seen. I just love that moment over. I see you nodding like over and over again. That moment is so great. And then just finding there's enough people in the field now and I want to talk to you about this, about a current student.

Maybe after the call ums more people in the field now to be like hooking people up and saying, this person's been doing this for a while. You have similar way that you wanna do the work. Less like connecting and networking people is one of my favorite things too. Yeah. Yeah.

'cause you've actually seen the community evolve and grow in the years that you've been teaching. So now it must be really exciting to see, like a whole network of kind of subsets of specialties and different partnerships forming, taking the work in all kinds of directions. But you know what you said earlier, captain about.

Like seeing the don't gotta register and then the body experiencing the effect of its No, it's so huge. It's, it's like the body wakes up to new software in the system. It is just over and over again. It just blows my mind and really it is for so many people, it's just never been safe to say no.

And so being able to. Help, like of course it being different in each class, but help create containers that are safe enough for people to try on their no. And their yeses, yeah. That those moments just blow my mind and just, yeah. It's such a, also such a young profession that, of course there's been people in all different cultures doing sacred sexual healing and more traditional forms of sex work and all kinds of things.

But in this particular incarnation, it's so young that we're all making it up together, which is another piece that I just love about it. Yeah, it's exciting. It's really exciting. And to see the impact of it, it must be thrilling for you to see, it's like birds fly outta the nest and then they become eagles and, and create their own kind of flavor and expression of what's possible sexually.

Oh, yeah. And I guess other thing why I just keep being involved over, and over again is, and I feel like I like to. Check in with myself about that, that being a choice, is it still joyful for me? And the answer keeps being yes. And the, my, my love of the communal, it's a way of me keeping in the practice of checking in around myself, around pleasure or how has shame creeped back in, from culture to me and, and I get to facilitate this. For the last three years I've been doing mindful erotic practice called convi to two mornings a week. Gaggles of students and past students. And we come and. It's any other practice. We show up online at seven o'clock in the morning. And I do a little grounding thing, get us into our pelvises, and then we share with each other what our intention for our communal erotic practice might be that day.

And then we, I have a playlist that goes on for 40 minutes and we turn our cameras off and our sound off and we go off and do our practices and then come back and talk about how it went and then get on with our days. So I get to be engaged, in those ways of like everyday practice of eroticism and.

And also just be in the, everything that Eros is. As you well know, it all just gets squished down into sex. And it's just like being able to open it up and dance with everything that's possible with Erotics to just create and bring all the fire to the different things we're doing in our lives.

Yeah. 'cause it is fire. It's that life force. It is. It is, I think amongst the most powerful, if not the most powerful, creative, intuitive pleasure force that, that we are so privileged to embody. I feel like, I feel like what you're doing now in holding that safe space.

Whether it's for Convi or for the different trainings is allowing for and inviting the sexual life force to express itself in all of the ways that it's designed to, that it organically wants to, which seemed to be the thing that was missing when you were, when you were coming of age, because there were just these few boxes.

Cool. Yeah. Which is so cool. Which is so cool because, it's like you're creating what it is that was missing when you were coming into your sexual being, which is poetic and profound, which is really beautiful. Captain, I wanna ask because you've been involved in so many trainings what are some of the quality?

For listeners out there who are interested and curious about the Institute for Somatic Sex Education or the Institute for sexual Education and Enlightenment, really interested in the field. What are some of the qualities you feel like best suits people for the field, and what advice would you give them?

If they're curious about pursuing it. Yeah, I think some of the qualities is like a comfort with talking about sex and sexuality in, in some of its breadth and depth. Of course, folks get, in both of the programs, folks get exposed to tons more stuff. I like a good humbleness, and an ability to go into beginner's mind.

Because we've, there's, we've had so many experiences in life, but coming as adult learners coming back into to the beginning of something can be a bit challenging. So just that piece around willingness to not know things and comfort of not knowing things to, together with this essence of the belief that we're all our own authority with our own bodies and that we're all experts in our own bodies, and maybe we can use some guidance and some support and some tools. Yeah. Having, we recommend to folks having their own embodiment practice, whether it's contact improv or dance yoga kung fu, all the different ways of centering in our bodies.

Are super helpful coming into this kind of practice. And then we recommend that people get some sessions, whether it's online or in person, have experience of the work from some a few different practitioners or attend groups or, yeah, just be being exposed, especially with the somatic sex education pieces, where there's the option to do hands-on work in this field.

Being, being an erotic adventurer and being it's an edgy profession. And so having some comfort with being an edge walker and having some investment in counter normative practices and being outside of boxes will definitely make the, our particular school people will be more comfortable in our school without kind of Yeah.

Foundations. Yeah. Yeah. As I'm hearing you share these qualities, I think for someone with all those qualities coming into your school, your training, they would thrive. Especially, I love when you said someone who can come in with a beginner's mind, because I feel like it's an invitation to relearn.

What we've learned about sex, sexuality and sex education in a, because the mainstream it's there's so many pieces that are missing. It's like we need to relearn it through our body somatically. Yeah. How many of us learned about pleasure? We learned about sex. Not very many.

Yeah. And all those things that I just listed are things that we we cultivate skill around too, so it's not like you have to have all those things coming in. It's like there's also modules about that and conversations and teachings and. Yeah. I'll have all, both, like all the the institute's website, the links on in the show notes.

Before we close out, captain, I'm wondering if you have a favorite somatic practice or exercise that listeners may explore to Yeah. Something that would deepen their sense of a sexual embodiment. Yeah, I think about the foundation of a mindful erotic practice. Take an hour, take half an hour and make sure nobody's gonna disturb you.

I know how hard that is for people who are parents or were in COVID or taking care of elders, kind finding some way to have some time that's just for you, and then bringing the things that you already know give you pleasure to the center of that hour. Like maybe stretching gives you pleasure and makes you in your body maybe eating chocolate, maybe certain music.

So doing things that, that center pleasure. And then in that same time, maybe adding in some self touch. And just like following the impulses of the body and just seeing that there's no right way to do it other than that, the way that you're doing it. Yeah. I love that it's an invitation to move beyond what one is used to or one has become, and really follow the pleasure and explore what's possible.

Yeah. I think that's a great piece of advice for all of us and all of what we're doing to move outside of the box. And I feel like you've been doing that your whole life on and off, and failing and flailing at all of it. Captain, thank you so much for being with us today. It's really great to have you on the show.

My pleasure.

How is today's podcast landing in your body?

What sensations are you aware of feeling right now, or are there emotions present for you? To hold space for and allow yourself to feel if you want. How does captain's embodiment suggestion feel to you? Can you imagine engaging in your favorite embodiment practice, whether that be dancing to your favorite music, engaging in yoga, or taking a soothing warm bath.

Then bringing pleasurable self touch to your body.

Imagine for a moment how that might feel to your senses, to your skin, to your sexuality, and how might your body respond?

Is there a time this week you might be able to explore this for yourself? Imagine the space you could create and the intimacy with yourself that could be explored, discovered, and achieved.

Can you feel this possibility in your body right now?

And if there's any part of your body that is inviting contact from you right now, then why wait?

 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.