The Importance of Bringing Pleasure Back Into Your Life with Emily Morse

On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I am bringing you Emily Morris. Now, some of you may know her as Sex with Emily. She has had a podcast and has been teaching the world about the importance of sex, how to have good sex for over 20 years. She is a two-time best-selling author. She has a membership group called Smart Sex. She has an incredible website if you want to check it out. But for the sake of this conversation, why I wanted to bring her to all of you is that I am having more and more conversations with women about how disconnected they feel with their bodies as they age. And for some of us, this might show up as we don't feel like having sex anymore. For other people, I've heard a lot of women talk about how their orgasms aren't the same as they age. I've had some women really who have gone through trauma and sexual assault feel like they don't even want to think about sex anymore. And yet sex is pleasure. And so in this conversation with Emily, I wanted to talk about the art of pleasure. And you're going to see that we talk about it from a couple of different angles. We talk about it from just how do we as women experience pleasure. So many of us are disconnected from what pleasure even means. And this doesn't have anything to do with sex. She and I go through a whole conversation about all the ways we can get pleasure that is not even sex-related. Then we go through connecting you to your body. And we talk about how do you make your feminine body feel safe? How do you allow sensuality back into your life? Also, not anything to do with the physical act of sex. And then at the end of the conversation, we talk about the benefits of either solosex or sex with another from the lens of creativity, from the lens of health of your body. We went in a lot of different directions with this conversation that was way more than how do you have good sex? So please listen all the way through. Again, my goal always is to help all of us be more in our body, to fall in love with our female bodies. And if that means having better sex, if that means making sure you have pelvic floor health, or if that is what you'll learn at the end, a possibility to connect to your root chakra to bring more abundance into your life. I mean how to take pleasure back as a female is incredibly important. And Emily and I have a beautiful discussion about it. So Emily Morse, sex with Emily, pleasure. Here we go. Enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. First, I have to welcome you to my podcast. I adore you. I loved our time together in February and I can't believe it took us six months to get here on the podcast to talk about sex. So thank you, Emily, for being here. Oh, I'm so honored to be here. I adore you too. We had a great dinner conversation. We're just going to bring it to your podcast right now. Exactly. I always say that that's what I want my podcast to feel like is like you're sitting in my living room and you're having a conversation with like a girlfriend conversation I typically would have. So I totally agree. I feel like you do that with people, Mindy. I feel like you make people feel very comfortable that they are sitting in your living room even when they meet you at a dinner table. Thank you. That's so sweet. I appreciate that. So here's the thing about sex and menopause. I think it is very complex. I think we have the confluence of people who have been in long-term relationships and maybe just having boring sex. I think we have a situation of lower oxytocin and orgasms don't feel the same. And I think we maybe even have plummeting testosterone where our desire is, it seems to be waning. And when you put that together in a heterosexual relationship, you have a serious libido mismatch that can lead to marital strife. So my first question is, do we have a normal idea of what a woman is going through menopause? What the heck is her libido supposed to be like? Do we have any normality of that? So it's really hard to normalize anything when it comes to sex because we're all so different. But I would say what I hear mostly is that yes, there's the hormone factor. So we've got to drop in the testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. They are not normalized, stabilized at all. So that is a big factor. Also our bodies are changing, right? So the loss of estrogen could also lead to pain, vaginal pain. So there could be some pain around that. There's also the factors that we've been with a partner for a long time. It might not be interesting to us anymore. There's been a lot that's happened a lot of years have gone by and we're just like kind of bored, kind of becoming best friends, kind of over it. And yet when we think our libido is gone, we all of a sudden maybe run into that crush from high school. We can reconnect with them or something happens. If we see them at the gym, we're like, oh my God, I actually do want to have sex, but just wasn't with my partner. So there's just a lot going on at this stage. And I just want to say is that the first thing is, I think we have to normalize the fact that when I asked most women, I gave a speech and I said, I want to ask you all how your sex life is. Like raise your hand if you've ever thought, if you never have sex again, you're going to be okay. And a lot of women raise their hand. I would say that's the most common thing that I hear from menopausal women is exactly like that. Like, I don't really care. If I do it again or I don't do it again. So I hear that like, what I hear is our sex drive is fluctuating. We're bored, like I said, we're in relationships. Our sexual desires aren't getting met. We're like, how should we actually have sex at all? So what I would like to say, so at this time of life, I think the most important thing is that we actually own our pleasure for the first time ever. We may not, because I like going to ask these women, I say, okay, I get it. Like that's all true right now. Sex drive is fluctuating. We're in bored relationships. Our desire isn't there. And then I also want to say, well, how was it 20 years ago? How was it ever really that great? And when I go deeper, I find that there are a lot of women, they're like, well, when we first met, well, it was really great for everyone we first met. That's why we made, we have something called the honeymoon phase. We have the most delicious cocktail, feel good hormones, dopamine, ectitocin, serotonin. We could have sex with really much anything for six months, two years until the, the, the, the, the, the, the hot hormones are great. And then they come back like any great drug, what comes up, comes down. So I get that it was great in the beginning and then you have kids, right? So a lot of women have kids, right? A lot of us have kids and then after kids, I was like, well, did it ever get great after that? And you kind of think about it like that's when the trouble really started. Because we also know this is when the pressure starts for so many women, I guess when we're talking about women's fluctuating hormones that you have kids and the doctor tells you typically I think you tell me, I don't have kids, but like what I hear is you're fine. You're going to be ready in a month from now. And then that's when the guilt starts in and women start feeling like, you know what? I'm actually not ready yet, but now I'm feeling pressure. I've had this whole, I gave birth to a human came out of my vagina. And now you're asking me to actually want to do something else for somebody else. And my hormones are gone. I'm, I'm exhausted. I'm taking care of another human. And now I'm supposed to have sex, but it's kind of painful. I don't feel it. I'm exhausted. So I feel like when I ask women to really break it down, they're like, well, guess what hasn't been that great for a while. So to go back to women at this part of decade, we could own our pleasure, our desire and our sexuality more in this decade than we ever had before. In fact, this is the time, this is the time where, where, where none of us were bored with owners manual and we've had to figure out our bodies the hard way without accurate sex information with a lot of sex being about performance, pleasing our partners bodies. We, you know, we, we've been figuring it out through trial and error and maybe a lot of shame given where we grew up in the world and feeling bad about our bodies. And maybe we were part of the birth control pillar and antidepressant or our bodies. And then we wake up at parent menopause, menopause, or we thought we figured it out and look, everything has changed again. Yeah. And we're frustrated and we're tired and we're angry. And like now it's changing because of menopause. And I can say personally, I've been on this journey for almost 20 years. I had a wake up call that came to sex with them 20 years ago, in my early 30s. And now I'm like, oh, shit, we got to figure out again. So I get it. So what I want to say is the first thing is pleasure. We're missing out on pleasure because we are focusing on everybody else still. And I think we kind of know this, but we're like, it's our kids. It's our husbands. It's the work, it's the families. We're pleasing everybody else. So we're like, how do I actually tell you that this, that's my first point for women in menopause, you can prioritize pleasure. You deserve it. Pleasure is your birth rate. This cut more than ever. You know, it's so interesting that you bring up the pleasure thing because in my new book, I'm talking about this transition, what happens to the brain as we transition through menopause and what the cultural conditioning for so many women has been to be selfless. And if you're selfless, then you will be loved. And I actually think this has blocked women from even knowing what pleasure is. So that word, even, even me, I'm like, where do I allow pleasure into my life? Because everybody, everything else that I've been trained on in the culture has taught me to not accept pleasure that I should be doing for everybody else, not receiving pleasure for myself. So how do you even get, figure out what pleasure is and bring that back into your life? I love this. So here's the thing. Most of us, maybe look at pleasure as something we only deserve once we've jumped through a bunch of hoops to get it. Right. So we have to check out everything I can do less. And then maybe I can get that massage or maybe I can go out with my girlfriend or maybe I can take a day off once I do everything else. So we put conditions on pleasure. But what I want to share is that pleasure is actually productive. So the more we can think about pleasure is actually helping us in every other area of our life and prioritize pleasure as an important part of their mental and physical health. It's going to change everything. So how do we do that? Well, first, it's not just about sex at all. It's not about orgasms, which has been a lot of my work. It's it could be walking in nature, hanging out with your friends, having a delicious meal. And the thing is, like, I've had to work really, really hard on this. So so an example is when I first started realizing that my life was woefully really like I had like a huge pleasure deficit was I was at a conference like 20 years ago when I started this work. And a woman said, we had to do this exercise where we were figuring out our pleasure percentage. And I actually just put this in my latest book. It's called Smart Sex. And it was the pleasure percentage exercise. And we had to write down everything in our lives that give us pleasure. So I even have a formula that I give people like people like I don't even know what that is to your point. And it could be anything, picking flowers, being in nature, walking my dog, you know, hanging out with friends. Like for me, it's a pretty small list, but I really started to write it all down. And then you had to do some math formula. And then I add it all up. And what it came down to is only 3% of my life was spending doing anything pleasurable. And it was like, I was like out of everything in my life. And I talk about sex for a living. Wow. And 3% of my life was pleasure. So after that point, I decided that I'm going to do everything in my power to up that percentage. And so the first thing is like realizing that pleasure, we get pleasure. And the more we program pleasure into our life, the more we'll be open to receive it. And so, for example, I would look at my, still do this, I look at my calendar every week and I'd say, okay, what is for me this week? What isn't for work? What isn't for kids? What isn't for a friend? Wasn't for my family? What's just for me? And again, it was like, okay, I'm going to go on two hikes a week with friends. I'm going to get a massage. I'm going to go who knows, not like getting a haircut, not something that like it's shopping, I guess, if you don't have a problem with shopping. Like just what is it? Taking a vacation, putting in my calendar that every six weeks I take a five day trip or something, you know, and I don't always stick with everything, but I realize that if I didn't do that for myself, it was never going to happen. I would never choose pleasure. I'm not programmed that way. I feel that pleasure yet to jump. Like I said, it was conditional. I didn't deserve it. So I had to learn that. And I want to say that pleasure begets pleasure. Like I just, more we do, the more we're going to want it because like think about it. Like, so the problem with sex, then we're going back to pleasure and why this is important, a lot of us beat ourselves up because we're like, why don't I have the desire anymore? And that's my next point for women at this age is the desire part. Cause it's like, well, I used to always want it, but now I don't. And then normalize in the fact that why should we've all day long, we've been walking around, not doing things for us, not doing things that make us feel good. We might even have been hating our bodies all day. Mindy, we might even walk around going, I don't look good today. My jeans are tight. I actually don't want to be naked with myself. Why should we think that we should all of a sudden, because our partner makes a gesture or just, we should just be able to get into action when we're literally no, we haven't had any pleasure all day long or all week long. And then I should want, it just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't work with our biochemistry. Right? Yeah. It's, so it's really true. And, and there, you know, there's a little bit of, if you're in a heterosexual relationship, like, like men seem to be able to turn it on and off on, on like whenever they want. And I don't think women in general can do that, but men, a puzzle women, it's like, Oh wait, like, if you, like, if you want to have sex with me on Sunday, I'm going to need to start working on it on Monday, the, the Monday before that. Right. So yeah, exactly. Let me normalize that fact, because what we're talking about is that most women have something called responsive desire. We don't have a spontaneity desire. So to your point, a lot of men, and I hate to even say this anymore, like, all of my, because men are like, I don't have that anymore. But the majority of men, like to your point, like, they're going to see their partner, they're going to think about sex and they're ready to go. They have an erection, they're turned on. There's no problems here. Let's get into the sex. Where women have something called responsive desire. We respond to things in our environment and a bunch of factors have to line up. So we're going to be ready for sex. To your point, give me 48 hours. Like that's why planning sex, scheduling sex is so important for couples, no matter what your age and people use to tell me that was the boringest thing in the world. But it's like, it doesn't work. And if you're, if you're just waiting for it to hit you over the head, that's not going to happen. So we know Saturday nights for the sex, then we get to reverse engineer that and say, what are all the factors that have to come into play for me to be ready for sex? And so then we can get into what his desire looked like, especially in menopause. Like, what do we need to have? Yeah. So I come up with the sexual intelligence or the five pillars of sex IQ are really like one of those is our health. Like really, like, are we at hormones as I was already depressed? Are we moving our bodies? Are we eating foods that make us feel good? Like there's just so many factors that go into it. Are we communicating with our partner? Are we having sex that actually makes us feel good and not bad? Do we actually know? And it's okay even as women in menopause, do we know? Cause one of the pillars is self awareness or self knowledge. Do I actually know what I need? Do I know? Do I need the sheets to be cleaned? Do I need the kids to be gone? Do I need the six sinks, the kitchen, the kitchen to be cleaned up? Do I have to have shaved or worked out that day? Do I need foreplay? The majority of women are going to be turned on like that. We are, you know, men are more like still cookers. We're, we're frying pans. We're still cookers. So like there's all that, a lot of factors. It's a little more complicated than that. But a lot of us are just like, just shame ourselves for it. So I encourage women to think about what does actually turn me on. The last time I was asked, what was happening? And then work backwards from there. You know, like, And I think that plan, I really like your idea of seeking pleasure beforehand. So you have a relationship with pleasure because what, what I was thinking when you were talking about like going for a walk or getting a massage is like, what does pleasure actually feel like? Because there are different levels of pleasure. And I think a lot of women have, have like, even if they're getting a massage, that might be pleasure, but they're, but they're thinking of their to-do list of what they're going to do when they get out of the massage. And so do we have any kind of like, is pleasure anything that brings you joy? Like, would we have a definition of pleasure that we can help people understand? Well, yeah, pleasure doesn't just start. Yeah, it does not start in our genitals at all. It starts in our brain. And it's like, I like to think of it with our senses. It's like every sense, it's our sensory touch, smell, fantasy, gets processed in our nervous system. And then our nervous system is going to say, this feels good. And so I like to think of it as, do I have a calm nervous system? Has my nervous system been set up to receive pleasure? And most of us are in a sort of fight or flight, stressful place that no matter how much pleasure I've been, I've, I've, I've had plenty of massage thinking about the do list. I've had plenty of sex thinking about the to-do list. And so to me, it's a nervous system regulation thing overall, meaning like the rule, you know, like, yeah, like, how do I, how do I make sure that my body is calm, that I have worked on, you know, making sure I have less stress, less anxiety. I think about like the, how else do I explain it? Like the, yeah. Let's go to safety. I want to go, I want to go to the nervous system because I think there's something really powerful in what you just said that is happening to both women that are cycling and menopausal women. And I think it's a combination of not feeling safe in the culture right now. I don't think, I think women have felt like they've had to perform for the patriarchal culture. And by patriarch, I'm not meaning men. I'm meaning the power and the system. And that there's a, there's an expectation in how women should show up in our culture that causes us to not feel safe. And because I'm not safe, if I have to show up and look beautiful all the time in order for you to tell me I love you. And I'm not safe if I'm working at my, in my incorporate world and I'm having to put in a 60 to 70 hour week and I'm dying. And I'm not safe when I'm having to continually wipe the butt of a two year old who is running away from me. Like our nervous systems in this modern world is so frazzled. Is like, I think maybe before pleasure is safety and how does a woman make herself feel safe? Yeah, it's huge. You know, if we don't feel, it's really hard for women to receive pleasure, have incredible sex, even release for orgasm and connection. If they don't feel safe. And to your point, a lot of us have never really felt safe sexually in our own bodies. It's always been based based on pleasure and our partner's pleasure and performance. And there's been nothing in our culture that has ever celebrated women's sexuality and us taking a moment to actually say, what makes me feel good? What kind of touch makes me feel good? It was always based usually on the male gaze and the male touch. And so a lot of my workers, like we getting women to actually take time to figure out on their own. Like this is one of those, when you talk about self compassion, self pleasure, self accepting, self love, it's really like taking the time to figure out my own body. People don't love the word masturbation. So I can say, solo sex, if that feels better. But people have people have a problem with the word masturbation. When did that happen? Oh my God, Mindy, really, it's from the beginning of time. Well, honestly, yes, a lot of people do. Like I hate that word. Young people, I don't know. I don't, I'm fine with it, but I don't know about your. Listen, women don't want to be. They might never have masturbated before. They might never have looked at their genitals. They might never have. So yeah, if they're not safe, because they've always been told that it was enough, they weren't doing it right. And honestly, for so many women, they were never having pleasure. The sex was never about them. And the sad part is that I even know a lot of young people in my life right now, too, we're talking teens and twenties who literally could have been me. Like not much has changed. And people, we like to think a lot has changed with sex education and with porn. And now they know, they don't know, they're still doing it for the male gaze. And so I think safety is a huge factor that for constantly walking around in this fight or flight, it's really hard to receive any kind of joy at all. So that, so then building up those not. So I, I'm thinking like, I'm always thinking in terms of steps. And I'm thinking, okay, first step is you got to get your nervous system to feel safe. Second step is you've got to get to a point where you understand pleasure. And this is even partner related. Like this is like your responsibility for you. And then the third step I'm thinking, cause I, you know, a lot of women get to menopause that they don't feel safe. They don't know what the pleasure is. And now their testosterone's low and oxytocin is less, they're less sensitive to that. And they weren't even really having great sex to begin with. Yeah, it was never, it was never great before. Now we're menopause and we're like, holy shit. Yeah. But what I'm saying is it can be better than ever. Have you seen it for already? Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Have you seen the, the movie Hello, Leo Grand or good night, Leo Grand? The sex target. Yeah, I loved it. I feel like that is the most beautiful, beautiful example of where menopausal women land if they haven't been in a relationship where there was an open discussion about what they like and what they don't like. And if it's, I forget the exact title, but it's so, such a good example. So if you're in a relationship where you want good sex, but you, you feel nervous to talk to your spouse about it, like how do you open up the conversation? Like, hey, my neurochemical system's gone down. I'm working on pleasure, but we got to talk about technique here. We got to, we got to get into this a little bit more. I think it's just also saying to her, if we're in a trusted relationship, I realize that we have not really spent a lot of time focusing on our, talking about our sex life, we're at different places. Cause you'd be surprised, Mady. How many couples have never, ever talked about it? They talk about everything else in their life, but they've never actually said, what could we do to be the best lovers to each other? How can we continue to make this better? It just became like another item on, on their to-do list. And so I think recognizing the fact that we have grown, we've changed our body change. Let's figure out ways that we could both do this together. And what I, what I encourage couples do is maybe you just take the penetration off the table for a while and you've learned to just sort of explore each other's bodies again from a place of, of just discovery. Maybe you're giving each other massages and you're just slowing down and you're, and I feel like a lot of sex has gone way too fast for women's, for women's nervous system, for what they want. I mean, that's why foreplay. I would say it's just a light suggestion. It's actually a requirement and foreplay can even be the main event. I tried for years to just rebrand foreplay, take the, I don't even like the name foreplay because it's center sex on penetration. And for the majority of women, they're not even going to have their most pleasure from a penis at all. So saying it's about touch, slowing down. We have time. Let's just all these secondary brought bringing back like making out and, and arousal and building arousal through breath, through connection, through touch, through music, through our senses. I mean, all the other ways that we're doing things, people are really into sound healing or breath work, or maybe we just live in frigging California. But I'm telling you, there's a reason why, like these things calm our nervous system. They actually make us feel more connected to ourselves, to source, to our femininity. And, and, and if that doesn't, it's like couples could take a course together. They can do something online. They can learn to just let's slow it down and get to know each other right now. Let's give each other massages. Let's just say that we don't know. Let's just explore again as if we are being again. And what about orgasms themselves? Because a lot of women that I've heard just say their orgasms without estrogen being as prolific, their orgasms are not the same. It's a very different orgasm. Have you heard that about from menopausal women? Oh, yeah, I've heard this a lot. Yep. So like even the even the if it was your main event, it doesn't have the same oomph that it used to have. Well, I'll say yes, and that sucks. And also how exciting because here's the amazing thing about women's bodies is that we can have orgasms in so many different ways. We can have orgasms through just breathing throughout touch. We can have nipple orgasms. We can have orgasms through energy. We can have or like so I understand that the normal way of having sex because of the loss of estrogen and because of this age of having orgasms has changed. But this is why I'm I'm I'm urging people to have more of a conscious conscious sexuality, a conscious connection with their partners where they're where they're where they're like slowing things down and they're building up the orgasm now through their through their pelvic floor, through their breath, through movement, through energy, releasing blocks, feeling safe. It's not about the old in and out or just even oral sex or using a toy. And what I found that when women start to rebuild it again and reclaim their sexuality or maybe they're claiming it for the first time ever through more mindful work of like touching themselves using like, you know, like these wands or a jade egg or we can get into all that. I don't want to lose people through woo because I'm like the I'm not a woo sex educator. I can bring you to those people. But at the end of the day, what I look at is that that is the stuff I don't like that it actually is where women find like, oh, I may I can have incredible sex through the end of time. Like women's orgasms are if you go back to the Taoist sex or Tantra, it's like women can actually have hundreds of orgasms a day. We just were never trained that way. So what I'm saying is like, if we slow things down, if we take a beginner's mind to our own sexuality, if we have trusted partners who are willing to grow and explore with us quietly, taking baths together, using massage oils and lotions and building up our senses and creating a sexual space that feels good, like lighting candles. Like I love thinking about the senses. So whenever or now here's something that's helped me is like, I have a vanilla candle that I always light when I have sex because the scent is actually sitting on my system that I'm going to have sex. I make sure that everything is soft and I have soft sheets and soft pillows. What am I hearing? I have a playlist that's actually working on like the neuroplastic blades of my brain that's more like binaural beats for sex than it is just any like old rock playlist. I'm really conscious about what comes into my environment. Taste can be whatever it can be your glass of wine or water or whatever it is that that one's a little bit harder with sex or less you love aphrodisiac foods. So when I'm in the moment of sex, I think, what am I smelling? I'm smelling the candle. What am I hearing? That music that's getting my body ready for sex? What am I feeling? What am I hearing? I'm hearing or what am I seeing? I'm seeing my partner's beautiful body in front of me. What am I feeling? My hands on their body, my hands on the sheets. And the second you round yourself in your senses in a loop, you find that you become way more present, that you're way more in the moment. And that's where it is. I get mindfulness. Pleasure lives in presence. Pleasure lives in mindfulness. So if you have a full multiracial experience with your sex rituals, where you're becoming a president bedroom, there's more of a pathway for pleasure and for orgasm and for sex. Beautiful. That actually really makes sense. You know, like I have like a playlist to go work out to. And like when I went and when I don't feel like working out, I'm like, OK, put the playlist on, get the shoes on, get the outfit on. And then yes. And then the minute I do all that, I'm like, OK, I feel like going now. That's it. You leave your shoes out the night before. I've often said that to you. I'm like, we do that for the gym. That's exactly what you're saying. We leave our shoes out or outfit out. We can't cancel the workout. We've never done. We've just we've done about sex, many the opposite. We've been like, I'm just going to close my eyes and hope for the best. I hope that tonight I'm going to be. But no, like set your environment up for sex. Know what that is. And if you don't know and I'm going to tell you, most people don't know, then be conscious about it with your partner. Build a space, build a connection or rebuild a co-created connection that is ready for for your sexual connection. Makes a lot of sense. Feel like a lot of women. I want to go back to the breath work and do you feel like a lot of women are just cut off from that root chakra? Again, not not to be not to be too woo-woo, but I'll tell you, Leanne Rimes is a good friend of mine. And I started to learn so much about vocal cords through her. And one day she said to me, did you know that the vocal cords in the cervix were were the same tissue in utero and that they actually separated out? And I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, go look at a picture of vocal cords and go look at a picture of the cervix and you will see that they almost look identical. And then my brain was like, wait a second. So when women lose their voice, do they lose connection to their cervix? And when women are raped, do they lose or have had some kind of sexual trauma? Do they lose their voice? There has to be if there's tissue connection, there has to be something there. Yes, the absolutely is a connection between our voice and our pelvic floor and our tissues and trauma and all of it lives in our body and absolutely like literally losing their voice or proverbial losing their voice or just like because they lost my voice, the child, it's all connected to our ability to feel pleasure. Absolutely. Those tissues are related. What's the other connection they're making now between our everything? Like even back pain, pelvic floor, everything going back to our pelvic floor. Truly. And it would make sense in our vocal cords. Isn't it all connected? Yeah, I do to answer the question. Like more and more women I'm hearing are doing pelvic floor exercises. They're going to pelvic floor therapists and and and having like work done on the pelvic floor, especially if they've had kids, especially as, you know, the things start to drop as they get older and it feels and once I actually recently had a friend who went in and had some pelvic floor work and she started to remember some past traumas after she had had like there was scar tissue in there from a rape situation. So there is something about that area for so many women has just been closed off. And and is there a way for us to open it energetically back up again? Absolutely. I mean, let's just remember that the pelvic floor is like this hammock of muscles and like technically responsible for so many things like our bladder, our uterus, our rectum, all the things. But it's also like blood flow, lubrication, orgasm. I mean, there's so many. And if we've had, you know, if we know growing, we have a strong pelvic floor for a while, but then yes, we hold on trauma. So what public therapy is so interesting is or is that when we. So a lot of women, when they first start having a sex, they have something and this goes on, they'll have like vulva divinia, vulva divinia, vulva dinia, our vaginas miss. Have you heard about this? It's very common that women have pain. And so the first time they have sex or put a tampon in, they clench, they start clenching and they're tightening. So there's many women who've gone through life and maybe it was because they had a sexual assault, but maybe it could just be because something happened where they fear. And the first thing we do is think about it when something happens, we tense, right? So imagine if you had a, it could be any age, really, but a young age, you start tensing, tensing. These pelvic floor muscles then are really, really tight. And so when you go to have sex or put a tampon or just having orgasm or anything, you have now in a patterning of a tightness around it. And then you, so for a lot of women who don't, and many women don't even have sensitivity, so it's all the pelvic floor. So it is, so to your point, it is deeply connected to our nervous system and our emotions. In fact, I would say it's the most important thing. So what I love is that you could go public floor physical therapist. You could also release it on your own. You don't have to go see another doctor. You could just work on breathing and releasing. And there was like dilators you could buy, but I almost feel like you could buy like a jade egg. There are certain things you practice as you could do at home to release the trauma that has happened to your pelvic floor. There is sexological body work where you could go see somebody who actually it's, it's one way touch where they put their fingers inside of you or they help you guide through. I've had this practice done before when I was in grad school, we had all do all the things and you, a woman, a friend of mine in class would work with me where I would have my feet up in service and I thought I was feeling, I've never had trauma or anything, but you'd start to feel and she'd go like, well, like around our vulva one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. And you'd realize that like there'd be areas that have a little bit of pain. I'm like, Oh, and then you realize if you apply a little bit pressure to that area, then you just hold it for a minute. The nerve ending starts to unwind around it and that pleasure goes that, that, that, that pain can go away. So women have a lot of pain that they don't even know about that are living internally, externally. So there's a lot of different practices that can help release that. So sex, logical body work, pelvic floor, physical therapy, just frigging dancing and breathing and moving your body. Yep. Opening and opening and opening. Yeah. This is why we love yoga or we love Pilates, although again, sometimes that's a little bit more tensey and relaxing still. But I have found yoga to be very helpful to dance, to be helpful. Doing kegels, you know, kegels are also really helpful, but then believe it or not, I've been doing this so long that kegels also became controversial because women I know, Mindy, to tell people that you kegels over creating, overdoing kegels, it can, can, can create more tension. But at the end of the day, I love a good kegel exercise. I love using kegel weights. I used to wear them when I would go to the gym. They're these little balls. If you know about these kegel balls that you put inside of you, they're like progressive weights. And then I was like, I remember I used to go to spin class or go for hike while they're inside of me. So you're naturally strengthened your pelvic floor. Our pelvic floor is responsible for pleasure and organism and over time, like everything else, it does drop. So that can be really helpful, you know, movement practices. So there's to help with circulation and then also toys and tools. So vaginal weights, vibrators designed for pelvic floor health, even sitting on things like that chair, do you know about the M cellar chair? I love this chair. It's by a company called BTL and like, that times your doctor has a gynecologist office has it and it's really a game changer for women. Experiencing urinary incontinence or weakening pelvic floor. It does 22,000 kegel exercises in 30 minutes. It's using electromagnetic stimulation. You sit on this chair for 20 minutes. The three times a week is the protocol and it can be a game changer. It doesn't, there's all these, you could do it holistically on your own. You could go to see a therapist. You could go sit on a chair. What I love is that we're finally talking about the power of the pelvic floor and that women don't realize that. Talk about our sexual intelligence or sex IQ. It's not just one thing. Yep. I think since there's a lot of shame around sex, like what's the one thing I can do and I can, fortunately, taking your hormones is important, but also releasing any past trauma is important. Yeah. You know, just the foundation of our pleasure for women. It's where they arousal builds, but it's also where it can die. So. So one of the other things I've heard from a lot of women, including, including myself as they go through menopause, I call it the neurochemical armor sheds like estrogen, testosterone, progesterone are going down, but then you've got all the dopamine and an oxytocin and serotonin. It's just like this shedding that happens. And a lot of women start to have memories of sexual trauma. And I have heard this over and I'll just use myself as an example. I had a memory this year that I, my brain had completely blocked out where I was actually raped by a frat boy in college. And I didn't remember it until I slowed down. I've been doing a lot of work on myself and all of a sudden this, like literally this memory came back in all the detail, a little bit like the tell. If you've, if you've read that book, the tell, and it was like, whoa, what do I do with this? And I started to talk to my husband about it. I talked to other women about it. And I am not joking. Emily, one by one, women came to me and they're like, me too. Me too. I didn't realize it until I got into, into my post-menopausal years until things shifted and all of a sudden I started to remember, or like in my case, I thought it was my fault. I was drunk. I was drunk. And I was like, of course I shouldn't have been in that guy's room. What was I thinking? But then when I actually remembered the details, I was like, that wasn't okay. Whether I was drunk being drunk wasn't an excuse. So what do you do? What do women do to get that sensation of wanting to have sex again if they are remembering a trauma like that? Wow. Thank you for sharing that, baby, because it is so, so common. And I think it's because to your point, you slowed down, you gave yourself time in perimenopause at this stage of life to really slow down and be safe in our bodies. Most of us have been running. I mean, I have a similar, similar remembering not around sexual assault, but just around just a lot of things now that I've slowed down. It's like, oh, I've been in fight or flight for my entire life. I've had to make it like a man, work like a man, working since I was 13, getting it done, getting it done. I think that women can, we go, go, go, go, go. And then finally we're like, wait, I want to slow down. So there's a knowing that comes up. So at first the thing is having self-compassion for ourselves and, and, and just realizing like honestly feeling the feelings, letting it move through you, crying, talking to people, sharing it, seeing a trusted therapist. For me, somatic therapy and EMDR. So trauma therapy has been really, EMDR therapy has been a game changer for me. So I love EMDR therapy and people, if they want to find it at EMDR therapists, it's like mdria.org, emdria.org. Just, it's basically you're rewiring the neural pathways in your brain to not be added to have a lesser reaction to whatever trauma you had. Somatic therapy is really helpful where I've learned to feel where I used to like kick my therapist out of the, I'd be like, I'm not going to this therapist. When they would say, where do you feel this in your body? Like 25 years ago, I'm like, that's all I feel is anxiety. I have no room for this conversation. But now I realize, oh no, the emotions do live in my body and I've actually had to learn to feel the range of emotions. So I would just say to women, go be patient. You don't have to want, like, what if I just give everyone a permission slip to say today is the first day of the rest of your sex life? What if today your sex life starts? What if it was never, what if we all say that it was never that it wasn't really what you wanted before? You didn't really choose it. Not even because of you, because of your women, your grandmothers and your mother and grandmothers and grandmothers and ancestors. The most sex has never worked for women ever since the beginning. It's right. And if that's the case, then we're reclaiming where we're birthday, we're having the best sex, we can do it today. So to stay like, like it's okay and forgiving ourselves, forgiving of the past and saying, okay, but now I'm making, I am making peace with my body today. I'm getting to know her. Well, who is she? What does she want? What does she like to eat? What does she like to do? What feels good or what kind of touch? So that's why I love like a somatic, like I do exercise with couples where I'm like, let's just throw down for a minute and see, like, when you close your eyes and you take your right hand and rub your left, your left elbow or your hand, like say, like, if you take my right hand and you rub it around your inner left hand, like the inner palm and you think, well, what is that? Actually, I'm giving myself touch. What does it feel like? I literally slowed down. I think, what does it feel like to touch my hand? And you realize I have a lot of sensitivities. Then I ask people to say, is it more sensitive on your palm or the tips of your fingers? And we, like I'm saying, we're going to get, Mike, we're going to go slow here. And I'm going to learn to rebuild my ability to, to feel things in my body. My body was very, I didn't feel anything for a long time. I was, I got to rebuild sensitivity. So I think to women, I'd say, like, get to know it right now. That's why I love masturbation. That's why I love vibrators. Cause not even on your own, not even on your genitals. Take a vibrator and rub it on your inner elbow, your thighs, a little bit coconut oil and just wake up your body again. Shaking movement, dance, swimming, whatever it is to movement is so important. And then movement, releasing the anxiety around movement and breathing and breathing into your pelvic floor. Like breath work is so important. I think we all know how important it is, but I love the exercise of breathing in. And then when you're doing that deep breath and you get to the top of that breath, you do a kegel and you do a little kegel, which is those peace-stopping muscles responsible for the start and flow of urine. If we don't know, and when you do that little kegel, you are awakening your arousal systems, you're connecting your breath to your pelvic floor, maybe for the first time. Right. And then you're waking and then when you're breathing, you're breathing it through your body and then you're releasing and you're breathing it. You have to move sexual energy through your body. Cause most of our energy is stagnant and stale and just not even like awakened energy. Yeah. And then we're trying to get in bed with our partners and this thing hasn't had a pulse since 19 for 30 years. It's literally, and for your case, right? And I'm with you at the same age. So it's like, holy shit, what happened? So, and even in my twin, I'm always learning more. I'm always going, there's more, there's more to be awakened. So I would tell women today can be the day today you can start. And I'm telling you that also at our age, we probably already know. Like if I told you to take a moment and think about what would make you feel right now, you, you might be able to come up with that on your own. It's less pressure. I want to turn off my phone. I want to be in nature. I want to be unencumbered. I want to take a long bath. Like that's my best. It became so cliche. Like take a bath, take yourself on a date, get a bike for 20 years. I was saying to you, like, oh, really should I take a bath? But there's a reason why, because a bath is calming your nervous system. Bath, you can't do anything else when you're bath. That's why we left hands on us too. So maybe it's a sauna. It's probably not the cold punch. But it's not the cold. Not the cold. Not the cold. But I know that's for afterwards, baby. Or that's for your partner. If you can't, if you're not in the mood. Yeah. Exactly. But don't do that. Do the things that make us feel alive again. Awaken. I know that when I do my sauna, if I do it for five days, I feel more aroused. I feel more. I body. I breathe in the sauna. So does that? Yeah. What I heard in that is get your senses of your body back on track. That's, that's really beautiful. I love the idea of taking a vibrator to your arm or, or just understanding what like that kind of light sort of like sensation, that touch that is sort of stimulating, like what does that feel like? Because I mean, I can only say for my 55 year old body, and I know every woman's different is the, yeah, the quality of the orgasm is, is less. And it, that's not fun. Like it's, it sucks actually. And I don't know if what we need to do to bring the, that, that sensation back. So I like this idea of, of getting you sell, you're anchored into the sensuality of your body. Is there, is there anything we can do about the lack of, of orgasm intensity? Is there any way to bring that to a new level? Well, remember I said the first day of your sex life starts today. What if we're not even comparing it to the past? We don't want to compare my body to my 20 year old body. I don't want to compare myself to my, to the, to the, to the food I was eating 20 years ago, to the relationships I had 20 years ago. And maybe the sex I was having, what I was comparing it to isn't even, isn't even worthwhile for conversation right now. Because we're already talking about our pelvic floor might be a little bit weaker. We're on hormones, all the things. But I think it's a daily arousal practices, getting to know your body when it feels good. First I would say even for five minutes, because everything I'm learning now is it's all blood flow. If our blood flow, this is if you have a penis too, whether you have a penis or a vulva, we are having blood flow challenges. So whatever we can do to maintain our tissue health. Toys that increase circulation, these are just some ways to do it right now. And I would say get out of the compare and despair, but into the discovery, exploration and creativity. And so daily arousal practice, toys that increase our circulation. So vibrators, suction toys. The reason why these pulsating toys, do you know about these toys? Tell me. Oh, Mindy, when it either. I don't tell me, please. No, Mindy, I'm giving you the biggest care package when I see you in LA. When are you coming? I'm at the end of September. I'll be there. Okay, let's just meet up unless you need them now. I know. No, that sounds great. There's these suction toys that came out about 10 years ago. They're a game changer for women's sexuality because it literally is. They, they, it's, it's, it's pleasure, air stimulation or whatever on your clitters and it's crates a little suction. So it's literally rewire. It's like bringing it's getting the blood flow. So it's helping with blood flow and you act just on your clitters, but on your entire vulva. I'm looking for my vulva puppet, which is usually sitting next to me, but it's not right. It's summer. It's on vacation. But I have a puppet. I was going to show you that you move it through your entire vulva and you move it around and you will find that if you get one of these, I love the woman, um, the womanizer or the we vibe touch. There's some great ones. It's suctioning. So it's like bringing blood flow into that area that as opposed to like just stimulating that area as opposed to the vibrator that's like a no, this is suction. This is working with your body. You will find most women I've found are like, Oh, I'm good. I've got it back. She's back. I know her. I know her in ways I never knew before. So that's, I want to say women are like, it's not as intense anymore. I would say that intensity is even the word that, but was it pleasurable or was this intense and was intense orgasm really that great? And have you really had a great orgasm? Like this is a learned, listen, we are not sexuality learning to be good at sex or enjoy sex or have orgasms is a skill set. And it's not one when we were ever taught. So I'm saying right now we are learning it together. We are learning like, you know, and then the next thing around that is for, so the first step would be restoring blood flow and sensitivity. So we've got a daily arousal practice. We've got toys and increased circulation, topical therapy. So this is where the vaginal estrogen comes in. This is where lubricant comes in. This is non-hormonal moisture, moisturizers that can help restore that sort of plumpness. There's a lot now. I mean, no, there's, there's some stem cell ones. I mean, I get set, you probably get a lot of supplements. And I get like every product sense me and penis products. So I'm just, it's crazy. Five years ago, there was nothing, but now there's like so much innovation in women's pelvic floor health, which I love. And then how can, how do you know which cream to do? I mean, that I can, it sounds like face cream. Like if I've got stem cells, I've got estrogen. I mean, do you have some on your website that you're like, you're trying to try? I do. I would go to sexwithemily.com. I have a store called the shop with Emily. It's on my website. I have so many articles on the best. Beautiful. Potions and lotions and products that you can buy to help you because it's changing all the time and it gets a little bit overwhelming even for me. So I've tested them all. You can try them out. You can, I can give you some when you come and you'll try them out too. But the great thing is that we are now being supported. Even beyond hormones, we're being supported because we understand that our vulvas also need help to not just our faces. And we're so obsessed with our faces and the skins and we'll do with the lasers and the potions and lotions, but our vaginal skin, our vulva skin is also important and can be, it can, we can get more blood flow to it. Can we can rebuild tissues? We can have the cells start to turn over in ways that will let it regenerate. And so before it was kind of dead in the water, but that's not the case anymore. Now, what about like orgasm and sex for just overall health? Because I've also been thinking about this, that there is sex to have connection with your partner. But then like, I heard many years ago on Oprah. This sounds so, this sounds so funny, but I heard her like interview somebody and she said, Oh yeah, if you have like 300 orgasms a year, which would require that you're having solo sex, that you actually can change vaginal health. You can change, you know, things like cervical cancer and like there's a health benefit to that's beyond the connection benefit. Now that was years ago. What are the health benefits of sex and orgasm? Well, first off, I love that this was on Oprah 20 years ago because it's true and I'm always happy. Well, first off, okay, the first thing is just to feel good hormones that are released, just that that cocktail, I feel good, the oxytocin, the endorphins, the, that all of the things that the serotonin, that is going to help us lower our blood pressure. It can help treat the nervous system, fight or flight, common connected. I know it, I have an orgasm, I feel that way. So that's a great incentive to be the first thing is just stress relief, pain reductions, we get endorphins, it's a natural pain killers, our public floor health. It can just help with like the rhythmic, the rhythmic, the rhythmic contractions that happen when we have an orgasm are also really, really good for us. We can also have better sleep, cardiovascular and brain health because again, it's like blood flow. So, and think about it. It's like, I hate that saying, and I'm not even going to say it, forget it. Like the whole, you got to use it. Oh, you know, but that's true. Yeah. Want to say user or loser because that makes it seem like, you know why I'm middle, okay, I'm going to say it, user or loser, but why I'm going to say it is not in relation to your partner. It's not because you owe your partner sex. It's because you owe yourself sex and you owe yourself touch. It's just like going to the gym. If you're not using your weights, if you're not exercising, I mean, I know this is what you talk, we all talk about, we got to do the weights, we got to do the weights, but, but then we're just completely ignoring this entire area. So this, our entire public floor needs this kind of support. We need the, the orgasms, we need the lubrication, we need the, the toys, all the things to do to keep it, to keep it healthy. So this is why it's so good for us. It's going to has mood altering facts. It's good for our emotions. It's good for cardiovascular and blame for our health, because also again, the blood flow, and then it's good for the oxytocin. If we are thinking about our partners and the role, the relational well-being to have orgasms together. But again, if we haven't tried a vibe, I'm telling you, a vibrator is the sure thing and there's so many to buy right now. And I know what I would say, I don't need that. Well, like at this point in life, like I think you're going to realize that not only do you need it, you don't need it, but you really are going to like it. Yeah. Right. And it's going to be threatened. It's going to be like your quality of life. Have you, have you heard, I've heard people say before, oh, if you use a vibrator and it's too overstimulating, then we're at, when you're actually having sex, it's not, is that a myth? That's true. Okay. No, you're not healing up because it's listen, I've never heard that anyone killed, now maybe, listen, just like anything, like if you went for a really long, like I used to run marathons, I remember, I was my, I brought my bust and my knees out. I wasn't extras. I wasn't stretching after. I had an iliotibial IT banster. I was before it was a nightmare. I didn't know this 30 years ago to stretch. If I'm going in with a strong vibrator and that's the only way I'm orgasing, well, then our pathways are getting used to having an orgasm that way. We didn't break anything. We didn't burn off any cells or any like neuro pathways. We just have to say, you know what, I'm going to take the vibrator away. I'm going to rebuild touch again, using my fingers, using a lube, using a stimulating lotion, even CBD oil can be great for this. So more natural practice is to kind of allow myself to become more comfortable, get used to another way of bringing myself pleasure. It just means we got used to something, but now we can get you, we retrain our brain. It just means that we got used to orgasm in a certain way. And if that's our, if that's our root chakra and we've been disconnected from our root chakra, which so many women have, isn't the root chakra like the seat of creativity? I mean, it's, it's more than just we carried babies down there. But, but do we have, or have you seen women who start to have a relationship with this part of their body and all of a sudden their creativity and their business in their life? Like, does it spill over? Yeah. Talk a little bit about that because I don't think we give that sex enough credit for that. No, I love that you're asking me this. It's kind of like, um, so what they call it now, I used to, I used to call. Okay. So years ago, I called it, and this is now there's a whole movement around it, but I called it meditate, masturbate, manifest. So I have a practice. I even have candles or t-shirts that used to say that. What I mean by that is like, you do your little meditation, you get in your body, you masturbate, and at the point of orgasm, you are manifesting. You're like, I'm going to orgasm and I'm going to be in my creativity and I'm going to, I'm going to ask for what I want. I'm going to feel as it already is. I'm going to bring in the source. I'm going to, so it's all very, very connected. So sec. So now they call it, they now it's like sex magic, basically again, like sex magic, it's the intentional use of sexuality, arousal, orgasm, intimacy to manifest desire and heal parts of our body. And yes, it is creation. It is where our source is. And so I have 1000% seen a connection between women who are more connected to their feminine, to their energy, having more abundance in their life, financially, emotionally, relationally, creatively. It's all like all blocks are related. Like how you do one thing is how you do everything. If you are completely blocked, you're like, I'm trying to come with my next book. I'm trying to create my new podcast, trying to do whatever it is, but you also sexually have to say, how's your sex life? Oh God, I have no time for that. Well, it's all source. It's all related in the neuroscience is like during orgasms, like our blood, right? Like it's floods with the dopamine, oxytocin and all those things creating a heightened focus, heightened focus, right? And so if you have that high focus and suggestibility at that time, that when you call in your greatest desires, your greatest creativity at that moment of source of release of connection, it would only make sense that that is when you're going to, you know, open up and plant a seed for manifestation. Yeah. So beautifully said, because one thing I, there's such a, a, a movement of asexuality right now, not just, this isn't just in like menopause, but I just am hearing more and more, both men and women, but a lot of them are women. They're like, I'm done. And, and I keep thinking that nothing in the body's ever done by mistake. So if you still, you know, can orgasm, there's a reason for it. If you can orgasm at 75 and maybe that reason is more than just keeping a relationship alive. Maybe there's a health reason. And then what happens to the creativity of a culture that disconnects themselves from this root chakra. And I think we have to zoom out and say, just because we have a term called asexuality now, I, I'm curious if people who are declaring asexual behavior are aware that there is a cutoff of creative flow, there is a health that you are actually damaging the health of your body by not having orgasms. Like, I think there's more to this asexual conversation that is not being had. I am 1000% with you, Mindy. I've thought a lot about this because they say like 1% of the, these are old studies, but 1% of the population is asexual and maybe it's more right now. Maybe there's current estimates between one and three, but I'm with you. I always think, okay, but if we're talking about like life force, energy and source, right, there's gotta be other things going on there. Maybe it was early trauma. Maybe it was sex became scary. Maybe it's a toxins or environment and people being born with less testosterone and less energy. Like there's so many things that have happened environmentally, socially, politically, spiritually, but I, I, I think that asexuality is limiting. Just thinking it's just about the fact that you don't have desire for sex and that you're cutting yourself off from actually a connection with yourself. Because if you're not having sex with others, that's fine to be a sexual, but, but I think it's, I think that saying like, but I actually still want to have a connection with myself. Yes. Is the, is the missing piece. Yes. And that's what I, that's, I'm so happy you said that because you know, it doesn't mean you need to go off and get a partner, but if you're 65 or 70 and you've just been like, nope, I'm done. My concern is that there's still an energy center there that's not being tended to, and there's still a biological process that if it's, if you're able to do it, are you, are you, are you actually creating more dis-ease in your body by not tapping into that? And I, I think so. And I love the idea of the suction cups. That's phenomenal. Cause that makes sense. To bring all that, that blood flow. But what, what I worry about from a culture standpoint is I'm trying to, just like you liberate women. And when we cut ourselves off from our root shop chakra, that is the opposite of freedom. Yeah. That is where we start to cage ourselves and contract. And we need to bring back more opening so that we can fully express ourselves. Absolutely. I love that too. And then talking about this more with our friends and being like, usually we accept, yeah, I don't want any sex either, but like not being complacent with that. And if you've never, maybe this is, like I said, if you've ever really experienced this, maybe you never, or you've lost a partner or you're now widowed or whatever stage your life you're at, you think you don't need it. I encourage people just like they would with any workout routine or starting anything new, just dabble in this. Like, I don't mean to be like, you don't start watching porn and buying a bunch of toys, but get curious about what it feels like to give yourself pleasure, just to make yourself feel good. So, yeah. Well, you're amazing. I you're like a wealth of information. Do people like cornering you at parties and they're like, Hey, I got a couple of questions. I get blood sugar questions. Your questions are probably a lot more interesting. It's just plain, Mindy. It's the same, but I love it. I love it because it's so, yeah, you got it. They do. But we just had a crossover. I think we did it to each other at dinner that time. Here we are full circle, but yeah, they do. And I love what I do. I mean, so we just, we just scratch the surface and I even talking to you. You know, it's helpful. Like even to so many more ways to talk about this, to help women, because it's so, I just, the message is like, yeah, you are not like, there's so much more to look at this could actually, I've seen it. I'm doing it myself and my friends. Like we are not like, we are just learning right now. And I think the best of sex is yet to come. Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Okay. Well, people find you cause I, so I can, I can tell you, I've purchased a few things off your website and yeah. And it was really cool because I trust you. And so I was like, okay, what is she recommending for vibrators? What's going on? Like, so you've, it's not like walking into the porn shop in Vegas or like it, you, it's a real classy way in which you're, you're showing people tools that can be beneficial. Thank you. I want people to feel safe. So yeah, it's at sex with Emily.com shop sex them. Lee, it's all on the site. My podcast is sex with Emily and it's 20th year. I have a membership of smart sx. You can find out about everything at sex with Emily, all social media. I have a membership. It's coaching membership where we help people, we have conversations like this one on one and groups helping people have the sex life that they always wanted. Cause I know there's not, we don't always know where to go for that, but everything is sex with Emily. Find me there. Amazing. You're incredible. And I will definitely reach out when I'm down in LA. So I can't wait to see you in LA. Yeah. I got a whole bunch of things for you to try. Thank you for having me. Love you so much. Appreciate you. Love you, Mindy. I'll see you soon. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.