Your Body Remembers Pleasure

"When you push just slightly too hard, you went past the fascia. When you don't push enough, you're not in connection with it. When you find that exact still point - the boundary between my finger and the client's body dissolves."
Explore this episode and deeper teachings on somatic sexual healing: https://rahichun.com/podcast/susanne-roursgaard-stine-krage-soft-de-armoring/
Who this episode is for: Pelvic floor and sexuality practitioners ready to go deeper, and anyone who has sensed their body is holding something that has never had language - or safe enough conditions to surface.
Susanne Roursgaard is the originator of soft de-armoring and the Gaia Method — a body-oriented modality weaving together de-armoring, breathwork, sound, movement, energy work, and psychotherapy. A psychotherapist, body-oriented trauma therapist, family therapist, and sexologist specializing in sexual abuse, she brings 23 years as a midwife and over 30 years of experience to her practitioner trainings across Europe and beyond.
Stine Krage is a certified midwife, somatic therapist, integral sexologist, and Compassionate Inquiry practitioner. Through her practice Amosoma and as co-creator of the Prostatic Portal, she has become one of the most respected voices in male sexual health, prostate healing, and the intersection of emotional release and erotic aliveness.
In this conversation:
What de-armoring actually is - how it differs from massage, what it touches in the fascia, and what "matching tone" means for a practitioner
Why 70–80% of what lives in the genital tissue traces to early childhood wounds that have nothing to do with adult sexuality
How the body tests the practitioner before it trusts - and what it takes to pass that test
What prostate work reveals about male surrender, and why men arrive carrying shame about the very area most in need of healing
How breath patterns can lock the nervous system in fight-or-flight - and why Stine addresses breath before she addresses anything else
The role of sound and sounding in de-armoring: vocal cords, Tibetan bowls, and why frequency medicine bypasses the mind's defenses
What genuine space holding requires - including why sexual energy leaking from a practitioner into a session is a real and addressable phenomenon
The psoas as a psychoemotional and sexual organ: why you cannot massage it into release, and what indirect approaches actually work
Timestamps:
00:00 — Rahi introduces Susanne and Stine: the two most-downloaded guests in five years of the podcast
01:00 — Susanne Roursgaard's bio: the Gaia Method, soft de-armoring, practitioner training across Europe
02:00 — Stine Krage's bio: Amasoma, the Prostatic Portal, male sexual health and prostate healing
04:00 — What de-armoring actually is: fascia, nervous system, and the ultra-light touch
05:00 — "Matching tone": the still point where the boundary between practitioner and client dissolves
06:00 — The energy body, the HeartMath Institute, and the two layers de-armoring works on simultaneously
07:00 — Presence without agenda: why being a blank slate is a cultivated skill
09:00 — Why the body tests the practitioner before it opens — and what that testing looks like
11:00 — How Stine's sessions begin the moment a client walks in the room
13:00 — Why the pelvis holds so much — and the cultural avoidance of genital touch for healing
15:00 — Why Susanne stopped using the phrase "sexual de-armoring" — and what the tissue actually reveals
17:00 — The core wounds that surface in pelvic work: self-worth, shame, and the voices formed in early childhood
19:00 — Prostate work: the parallel between prostate and cervix wiring, and what surprises people most
20:00 — The level of surrender prostate work requires — and why it is so transformative for men
22:00 — Space holding: what it genuinely requires of a practitioner
25:00 — Clear sexual boundaries in retreat and session containers — and why ambiguity here costs clients safety
26:00 — Slowness as a skill: how slowing down creates the conditions for the body to surface what it holds
28:00 — Breath as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool: the three diaphragms and how Stine reads breath from intake onward
30:00 — Breathing space into tension: a simple practice for communicating with the body through breath
32:00 — Over-breathing, CO2 tolerance, and why a trauma breath pattern can make de-armoring unreachable
34:00 — Sounding in de-armoring sessions: vocal cords, the cervix and prostate connection, and amplifying what the body is already doing
36:00 — Tuning forks versus Tibetan versus crystal bowls — and why overtones matter
37:00 — The advanced Gaia Method training: how it came together and what excited both practitioners about bringing it to the field
39:00 — Why clinical knowledge matters alongside intuition — including when erectile dysfunction signals the need for medical referral first
41:00 — Palpation training: why practitioners need their fingers to recognize anatomy, not just their minds
43:00 — Energetic ethics: why sexual healing is a murky field and what this training does about it
44:00 — Learning to consciously open and close sexual energy flow — and the live feedback process in training
47:00 — The three-month online container: seven modules, monthly Q&A, and how the live intensive is structured
48:00 — Specialized trauma knowledge: how early childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual abuse present differently in the body
49:00 — The psoas as the seed of the soul: fight/flight/freeze, TRE, the vagus nerve, and the rebozo tradition
50:00 — Why the psoas cannot be directly manipulated — and what indirect approaches actually work
51:00 — How to find the training, the landing page, and the application process for practitioners outside the Gaia Method
54:00 — Susanne's retreats for non-practitioners, her online female community, and the coming 21-day embodiment challenge
55:00 — Stine's Prostatic Portal practitioner training and add-on certification pathway
57:00 — Closing reflections
Resources & Links
Susanne Roursgaard & the Gaia Method: https://the-gaia-method.com
Stine Krage & the Prostatic Portal: https://theprostaticportal.com/
Stine's practice, Amosoma: http://amosoma.com/
Advanced Gaia Method training: https://gaiatrain-ke7mejo6.manus.space/
The Gaia Method 21-Day Challenge: July 2-July 22: https://www.the-gaia-method.com/product-page/21-day-challenge-a-womens-journey
 The 3 Keys to Genital De-Armoring — Rahi's practitioner training: https://rahichun.mykajabi.com/the-3-keys-live-training-CA
Reclaiming Your Pleasure course: https://rahichun.com/reclaimingyourpleasure/
If this conversation reached something in you — follow, share with a practitioner colleague or someone on their somatic healing path, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps this work reach the people who are ready for it.

"Her rational brain said this is what happens at the border sometimes. Her body registered it as a sexual assault."
Explore this episode and deeper teachings on somatic sexual healing: https://rahichun.com/podcast/tema-mercado-birth-consent-sexuality/
Who this episode is for: Anyone navigating postpartum disconnection, birth trauma, or the quiet question of whether desire and a felt sense of self can return after everything the body has been through.
Tema Mercado is a Licensed Midwife in California, Partera Profesional Certificada in Mexico, and founder of La Matriz Birth in San Diego. A first-generation daughter of Purépecha and Yoreme lineage, mother of six, grandmother of two — her own births span the full spectrum from medicalized hospital settings to reverent home births. Before midwifery, she spent years as a sexual assault survivor advocate. When she entered birth work, she expected it to be different. It wasn't.
What she found in the delivery room — the same power dynamics, the same coercion, the same PTSD symptoms in mothers who were supposed to be celebrating — changed everything. Out of that recognition, she built a practice grounded in somatic consent, ancestral medicine, and the truth that sexuality doesn't disappear when motherhood begins.
In this conversation:
Why the delivery room mirrors the power dynamics of a sexual assault investigation
How somatic prenatal care metabolizes fear before it becomes armor in labor
The woman who arrived saying "I have no trauma" — and what her pelvis revealed
Why postpartum loss of desire is almost never about hormones
How a father's newborn caregiving rewires his brain — and reopens intimacy
Belly binding as ancestral somatic practice
How being truly seen during birth transforms how a woman moves through the world
Timestamps:
00:08 — Tema's origin story
14:33 — Consent as somatic practice
22:58 — Ancestral medicine and belly binding
32:13 — The woman who "had no trauma"
46:18 — What actually brings desire back postpartum
59:29 — From disempowerment to sovereignty
Resources & Links
Tema Mercado: https://lamatrizbirth.com — @matrizmidwife
Somatic sexual healing and embodied intimacy: https://divineunionforlovers.com/course 
Awaken Pleasure course: https://rahichun.com/reclaimingyourpleasure/ 
If this resonates — follow, share with someone postpartum or healing, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps this work reach those who are ready for it.

Explore this episode and deeper teachings on somatic sexual healing: https://rahichun.com/podcast/erotic-sovereignty-cervical-awakening-sex-work-truth/
In this raw, unfiltered conversation, I’m joined by writer and somatic sex educator Ariel Szabo, creator of The Erotic Frontier, for a deeply embodied exploration of sexuality, trauma healing, and erotic awakening. This episode moves beyond surface-level conversations about pleasure—and into the deeper terrain of nervous system healing, cervical awakening, and the reclamation of erotic life force. Ariel shares her journey from sexual numbness and trauma into profound embodied pleasure, including how working with plant medicine opened pathways to authentic sexual expression and inner truth. We explore how shame and fear become wired into the body… and how presence, grief, and devotion begin to unwind that conditioning. 
We dive deeply into:
• The difference between disconnected pleasure and embodied pleasure
• How slowing down rewires sensation and opens the cervix to profound warmth and climax
• Why sexual visibility can actually increase safety in the body
• How erotic energy fuels creativity, voice, and life purpose
• The power shift from “power over” to “power with” in intimacy and culture
• The crucial distinction between consensual sex work and trafficking
• Why decriminalization — not legalization — reduces harm
• The emotional cost placed on survivors within our judicial systems
This conversation moves from the deeply personal—genital listening, cervical awakening, and embodied pleasure—into the collective dynamics shaping sexuality, power, and culture. If you’ve ever felt numb, disconnected from desire, or shaped by narratives that limit your expression… this episode opens a new possibility. Because erotic sovereignty isn’t about performance. It’s about presence. 
And your body may be waiting for you to ask: What do I need? What do I want? 
Go deeper: Explore somatic sexual healing and embodied intimacy : https://divineunionforlovers.com/course
Learn How To Awaken Pleasure: https://rahichun.com/reclaimingyourpleasure/
Connect with Ariel Szabo: Website: https://sacredmoonflower.com 
Substack: The Erotic Frontier 
If this resonates: Follow the podcast, share with someone you trust, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it helps this work reach those who are ready for it.

What if arousal and pleasure weren’t “inappropriate”… but powerful markers of health?
Explore sexual sovereignty and embodied pleasure:
https://rahichun.com/podcast/sexual-sovereignty-pleasure
In this richly embodied conversation, Rahi Chun sits down with Dr. Saida Desilets — pioneering teacher of sacred sexuality and creator of the Embodied Psychosexual Method — to explore sexual sovereignty, erotic innocence, and the body’s capacity to heal through pleasure, breath, and deep attunement.
Saida shares the astonishing origins of her life’s work: from a childhood rooted in natural sensual connection, to surviving violence, to being told at age twenty she had only two weeks to live — and the radical path of choosing life, reclaiming vitality, and rebuilding her relationship to desire from the inside out.
Together, we explore how shame disrupts the body’s natural aliveness, why relaxed arousal is the foundation of true intimacy, and how rewilding in nature can restore the pre-verbal sensual intelligence that makes us more connected lovers and humans.
This episode bridges:
embodiment • sexuality • nervous system wisdom • pleasure-based healing • and the wild intelligence of the body
Inside this conversation:
• Saida’s origin story and how her life force became her teacher
 • What “sexual sovereignty” actually means — beyond the buzzword
 • Why arousal and pleasure can be normalized as wellness indicators
 • The difference between performance sex and relaxed arousal
 • Erotic innocence: reclaiming turn-on without shame or meaning-making
 • How wilderness rewilding restores sensual attunement and presence
 • Why leaning into discomfort in intimacy can transform into deeper pleasure
 • Breath as the simplest daily practice for reclaiming aliveness
 • “Yum vs. yuck”: training attention as a pathway to more vitality
 • What it really means to “marinate in your own essence”
Learn more about Saida’s work: embodiedloveuniversity.com
More resources about Somatic Sexual Wholeness:  rahichun.com
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What if your sexuality was never broken — only buried?
Explore rewilding eros and reclaiming aliveness:
https://rahichun.com/podcast/rewilding-eros-shame-healing
In this expansive conversation, somatic sexuality coach Victor Warring explores the process of “rewilding eros” — reconnecting with the innate erotic intelligence we’re all born with before shame, culture, and conditioning taught us to disconnect.
Drawing from his work in somatic psychology, grief work during the AIDS epidemic, and sexological bodywork, Victor shares why grief and pleasure are inseparable, how shame limits our erotic capacity, and why reclaiming your aliveness is a radical act of healing — and even activism.
We explore:
the connection between grief and eros
sexual shame and “upper limits” to pleasure
erotic sovereignty and owning your desire
how culture domesticates our bodies and sexuality
creating an erotically alive home and community
why healing is subtractive (removing conditioning, not fixing yourself)
erotic embodiment as activism
practical ways to expand your pleasure ceiling safely
This episode is an invitation to remember: your erotic nature isn’t something to learn — it’s something to uncover.
Learn more about Victor’s work at RewildEros.com
More resources and writings: rahichun.com
If this episode supported you, leaving a 5-star rating or brief review helps this work reach more people.