What Excites Us!

Episode 49: Exploring Sexual Fantasies as Transformative Stories with Artemesia de Vine

Transcript:

Ep 49 - Exploring Sexual Fantasies as Transformative Stories with Artemisa Devine ===

[00:00:00] Gwyn: This podcast is about sex and sexuality, so please only listen if you are an adult without kids or other ears around that cannot, or do not consent to sensitive language and content. Thanks.

[00:00:17] Artemisia Devine: But to connect. To let go into pure experiencing and connect with somebody else, to merge You have to get past that castle wall temporarily.

[00:00:29] Gwyn: Hello and welcome to What Excites Us, the podcast that discusses sex and sexuality from a variety of perspectives. My name is Gwyn Isaacs. I am a certified sex coach who has been professionally helping folks feel good about their sexuality and how to approach it with glee since 2017.

[00:00:50] Oh my goodness, you guys, this conversation, though, completely blew my mind. I'm talking with Artemisia de Vine about exploring sexual fantasies as transformative stories.

[00:01:04] And, wow! We barely scratched the surface, and I learned more from it every time I listened to it. Every. Time. And a little peek behind the curtains, when you edit a podcast, you have to listen to it a bunch. It seems as though the possibilities of having this level of insight into your own mind is... Endless.

[00:01:29] Artemisia de Vine is a sexual fantasy coach and writer. She helps leading experts and self discovery seekers gain a profound understanding of sexual fantasies and master skills to engage an erotic narratives on an embodied level through sexual or BDSM play.

[00:01:48] We talk about how she's discovered the power of fantasy in unlocking our own potential for personal growth and super hot sex play. We discuss how to approach it and some beginning steps with her Devinery method. She even shares a link for a free 45 minute lesson, and I can assure you, you want this

[00:02:11] thank you, Artemisia Divine for joining me on What Excites Us this is going to be a really interesting episode.

[00:02:19] Artemisia Devine: I'm so excited to be here. Excitement's the theme of the day, and certainly sexual fantasies excite us, so I think I'm in the right place.

[00:02:27] Gwyn: Yes, absolutely. That is not something that a whole lot of people in our field are talking about. So, what led you to want to broach this subject?

[00:02:38] Artemisia Devine: Excellent question. While I'm a sexual fantasy coach now, I wasn't always. I've spent the last 30 years being a sex geek in various forms, but actually the most impactful was the over a decade that I spent as a sex worker and a professional dominatrix. Where I was literally paid to become people's sexual fantasies.

[00:03:01] So, I was in there exploring the actual bodily experience, the emotive experience of being in it with them for thousands of clients. And what got me really curious is the client responses themselves. I was like, okay, this is interesting. What is happening here? These, all of these interesting stories that people come in and each person is really different.

[00:03:26] When I first started sex work, I just wanted money. I wasn't analyzing it all. I was just like, okay, that person's turned on by that fantasy. Sure. I'll just act it out. And it was fun to do that. And we got to a certain level, but when I started getting curious about the story of the sexual fantasy and I started, understanding the story mechanisms behind it and doing a proper, pre play interview.

[00:03:47] Where I sat them down on my red velvet couch and had a little tea ceremony and asked them all about their sexual fantasies and listened to the story narrative behind the fantasy. Right? And then brought those psychological mechanisms to life in play. That's when super interesting things started to happen. And the responses were really quite profound and incredible. Given the circumstances we were in, right?

[00:04:17] So that's what got me interested. I'm like, okay, there's something to this. Yes, I knew it was it was good fun and really pleasurable and super exciting, which is good enough reason in and of itself. But there's even more to this. We're now entering states of being together with a complete stranger I just met, you know, an hour or two ago. And here we are with our guards completely down. And we're feeling quite touched and open and connected and sometimes even entering into some pretty profound erotic states of consciousness.

[00:04:54] Okay, there's something in this story. This story is important. It's not just some brain fart from our subconscious. It's a deliberate part of us showing us the way to something. And then that's when I ended up creating a whole system around working it out, experimenting with real life people all the time and seeing the results in the moment and going, okay. Okay. Now I've got it. If I, noticed this part and I noticed this part uh, we bring it to life in this way this effect happens. And ended up creating an entire system around understanding how the mind works in sex.

[00:05:34] Gwyn: That's amazing and beautiful. It's really interesting to me how people will open up when they feel as though they are really being listened to.

[00:05:43] Artemisia Devine: I think, absolutely, you're on to it. The very first thing we have to do is trust that fantasies are there for a reason.

[00:05:51] Gwyn: Yeah. And that's, really hard. I mean, trust in general around sex can be very difficult. But trusting our sexual fantasies, those can be very scary.

[00:06:01] Artemisia Devine: They can be very scary, they can be taboo. Lots of people get full of shame and total confusion around being turned on by either treating other people or being treated themselves in ways that they'd never want to do in real life. Never. It would be harmful to do it in real life.

[00:06:20] And yet in a story within consensual container enacted through play, the buffer of play, you end up with the exact opposite result to harm. You end up with something deeply beneficial. Right. yeah, but it's very hard making people, you can intellectually understand that, but how do you know it in your bones?

[00:06:42] How do you know it in your, in yourselves and really experience it? So I guess I have to teach people through somatics. I can't just teach them through lecturing at them, you know, I have to show them how this story works. Where did it take them? What are you looking for in your fantasies? What parts do you bring to life and which parts do you just keep as symbolism. So that's my area of geek out.  How about you? have you worked with sexual fantasies at all?

[00:07:09] Gwyn: Personally, certainly I mean, I am deeply kinky. And so there was a lot of shame involved in that. And I think that's what led me to be a sex coach. Shame and fantasy from, yeah, absolutely. I don't know any person who wants to actually be ravaged or raped, but certainly 70 percent of the humans have those types of fantasies and coming to understand that was huge for me.

[00:07:38] And then professionally. Yeah. I. certainly have helped folks feel more comfortable with it, but I'm very intrigued about how you, do that because it. Yes, we can talk about it all day long, but actually internalizing that feeling as though these fantasies are okay is entirely different than just saying, yeah, they're okay.

[00:08:01] Artemisia Devine: Yeah, it It's not helpful. Is it? Actually, I've got, a lot of other sexuality professionals as my coaching clients, and just as it turned out, I didn't aim for this a lot of therapists are now my coaching clients learning about sexual fantasies. Because they recognize that there was no model actually answering the questions that they had before.

[00:08:21] And they didn't know what to do with them. There's lots of sex educators who are really open minded, intelligent people who are switched on who do understand that sexual fantasies are normal and healthy, and yet they don't have a framework within which to really guide themselves .To really understand them and to really guide their clients into understanding. Not only understanding, but getting the benefit out of them.

[00:08:46] Right.

[00:08:46] Gwyn: Right. Those are two separate sections, as it were. I'm so thrilled that you're working with therapists. My goodness, that seems like, a blessing for the planet. So many therapists, I mean, I'm sorry, therapists, if you take this personally, but I don't know any that aren't a little bit nuts. Because we often come to the work that we're doing to help other folks because it's the work that we need to do. And that includes my therapist as well. And my own self, as I mentioned, I came to doing sex coaching because I had some sexual issues that I needed to work out. So that you're helping those folks feel better in themselves and then they can help more clients that they're working with. That's really amazing.

[00:09:30] Artemisia Devine: Well, I'm like you too, it's not just the client's reactions. It was also my own sexual fantasies. How do you make sense of the fact that, for most of my life, I really strongly identified as a feminist. And, I remember being, I don't know, I wasn't even in, in kindergarten yet. I must have been pretty little and I was in the church parking lot and I'd already worked out that women don't get respected for being women. So I had my arms crossed and I was all, I'm never going to wear pink again.

[00:10:00] And then to have that kind of thing where you really desperately want to be respected and have power and autonomy for who you are and then to have sexual fantasies of the exact opposite, where you get used or humiliated or submit to somebody else's control proper. And for me, my sexual fantasies were very specifically sexist as hell.

[00:10:24] Like, it was hotter, the more sexist they were, the harder it was.

[00:10:28] Gwyn: Yes. that taboo piece is so strong. The thing that is the worst possible can often be the most exciting.

[00:10:38] Artemisia Devine: That's it. I'd love to tell you my theory about why I think that is.

[00:10:42] Gwyn: Please do.

[00:10:44] Artemisia Devine: I think that instead of thinking of sexual fantasies as unfinished childhood business, although definitely you can't separate anything about sex from the rest of life and the way we're socialized, of course, all of these things are included in the way that we're wired in every area of our lives.

[00:11:00] But instead of focusing on that thing that therapists do, what's the problem that needs healing? I just like to notice that actually sexual fantasies they're designed to change your state of consciousness. They're designed to move you from your everyday state. To an open state, and that can start with the first layer of altered state is just being horny.

[00:11:22] You know that is an altered state because you think and feel in entirely different ways. You perceive yourself and everybody else and everything around you. Suddenly that cucumber is interesting in a whole different way. Like it's an altered state of consciousness, right? Right.

[00:11:39] So that's a change, but horniness is just the beginning of where that can go. When you talk to people about the best sex that they've ever had, the peak experiences that they've ever had, it really focuses around, they say things like, Oh, I just lost myself. I was able to just surrender. I felt like I couldn't tell where I finished and they began. The whole world opened up and I just felt like so connected with everything. My heart just exploded into euphoric feelings. Everything was shinier and brighter. The birds were singing like, Oh, and I'm noticing it in a different way.

[00:12:15] It's this open, it's this complete lack of guardedness. It's being in the flow of pure experiencing without thinking. No thinking anymore. Just being. No guards up. Completely open. So these are these beautiful peak experiences that we can sometimes stumble across. But sexual fantasies are actually the story, they're the exact story of our fear of vulnerability.

[00:12:45] our guardedness. They're the exact story that we need to hear so that fear is appeased and we can let our guards down and open up into that purely open, pure experiencing state of being. So of course the story has to include whatever our fear is of being vulnerable. And also it's antidote so that the end result is the exact opposite to what we thought it would be.

[00:13:16] It's positive, not harmful. that's what stories do. They transmute obstacles. They transform something that's in the way and all stories, even ones you don't even realize that the movies, all stories do that. That's how they work. So. It's like when you start looking at it through the frame of a story, Oh, of course we all, whether we've had childhood trauma or we had the perfect childhood, all of us have natural, normal, healthy guardedness in our everyday consciousness that needs to move out of the way if we need to change into this other open, pure experiencing state.

[00:13:56] And all of us have an ego who's afraid of vulnerability. All of us. And so we have to get that ego to stand down in order to be able to get to that state. And sexual fantasies are the exact story that will convince your ego it's safe to let its guards down so that you can open to this place. [00:14:18] Gwyn: That's brilliant. Sure. I can. Yeah, absolutely wrap my mind around that.

[00:14:24] A couple of things that came up when you were talking about the openness and it being an altered state. It reminded me very much of being intentionally altered to have experienced that type of oneness with the universe and to be as though I'm vibrating in the same vibrations as the universe is. And sexuality can be a much cheaper and easier way to attain that without as many harmful effects to one's body.

[00:14:53] The other thing that I thought was that I recently learned, and by recently, it could be the past few years, because You know, age brains is that story is how our brain rests that we are constantly telling stories and tapping into that and not being angry at it because I know a lot of folks have a lot of issues with why won't my brain just stop talking? It's okay because that's what it's designed to do We have to work hard to make it. I mean, that's what meditation. That's what some forms of meditation can be is Training your brain to be quiet, but the idea of reaching into the story to tease out what it's telling you is something that not a lot of us are really doing. And I love the idea of doing it around sex.

[00:15:50] Sorry.

[00:15:52] Artemisia Devine: Yes, I'll geek out with you as long as you like. This is wonderful. That point you just made about the meditation, getting to that stillness place behind that, that is one way to do it, but that's resisting and pulling away and mistrusting the story. I want to go into the story and trust that the story is also a way there.

[00:16:09] And when you really know how to engage that story with awareness and recognize what it's doing. Oh my goodness. It's powerful. It's really powerful, but the next step is not just leaving it in your imagination. It's going, okay.

[00:16:25] And this is what I help people do is I help them unpack resistances to letting go. The story has to be unique to our resistance, right? So I have to listen to all sorts of elements within that story. And I learned very quickly as a sex worker that if I tried to just mimic what was in somebody's mind's eye, it would be fun and you get a high and you get a hit, but it didn't satiate the real desire behind the story symbolism. It didn't take you where it could go. What I was doing is as a pro domme and and a sex worker, you know, in classics, forms of sex, as well as kinky forms of sex, this works for everyone. Right.

[00:17:07] It was treating it as like, okay, if I understand your narrative, I can create the same effect in a real life play session. Now this is becoming a story we're living together. I'm not trying to enact the exact symbols in your story. I'm trying to enact the same effects they created. and that was more powerful. If I listened to all of the different parts, it was much more powerful. And I'd end up doing something like that.

[00:17:34] Tell me about their sexual fantasies. And I would say tell me all about your sexual fantasies. I'm not going to try and be your ideal mistress. I'm going to be me. But I'm going to be listening to all sorts of things you don't realize that you're giving away about yourself. And I'm going to use them to get the effect that I want from you. And they'll be all shivers. That's good. so I'd get in their consent for me to add lib in this way of going about it.

[00:18:05] And then I would end up doing things that to them was a complete surprise. And they're like, how did you know mistress? How did you know to do that? I, And then they'd start saying really touching things. Some of the most common comments I would get was, I had no idea I could feel this way. This is the feeling that I've been trying to get to my whole life.

[00:18:29] I feel so, I feel like my, I've come home to myself. I feel like this is the real me. This is who I was supposed to be all along. This is, wow. And so they're opening to these really valuable places when I listened to the narrative and brought the narrative out of their heads and into their beds or into the dungeon in embodied ways where we get to have the trifecta, right?

[00:18:54] Where sex educators are often talking about being really present with your partner is the key to great sex. And that's important. Being really present with your embodied sensations is key to great sex and that's really important, but then they don't know what to do with the mind. But the key to mind blowing sex is to understand the role the mind plays in sex.

[00:19:13] So if you can get the trifecta, if you can get a moment that is drawing on that story, but you are being deeply engaged with your partner, 100 percent attention, hyper focused, and also really aware of your own embodiment, then you, that's the winner. That's the winner right there. [

[00:19:34] Gwyn: you know, frequently when I tell people what I do for a living, they ask for a hot sex tip. So what I say, not really knowing them or any of their situations is that most sexual issues can be helped with more and better conversation, or lube or both. Now, conversation is really on you, although I can help you if you'd like me to. I do that as a coach.

[00:20:01] But when it comes to lube, there are two brands that I always reach for first. Uberlube is my go-to silicone lube. It's pure. It's not full of any unnecessary additives that make it smell, taste, or feel, unlike you me. It comes in a beautiful glass bottle that I'm happy to have on my nightstand, and it's great in most situations.

[00:20:28] However, if you prefer a water-based lube or have some other intimate needs, I recommend Good, Clean Love. They have a variety of great products to help everything in the bedroom goes smoothly, huh.

[00:20:43] They've got some vaginal care kits, some cleaning solutions, oils and candles. It's really great. Now you can find an affiliate link for these at the podcast's website whatexcitesus.com And to be clear, you do help me out when you buy through these links, but I specifically reached out to these companies because I truly love their products and I believe in what they're doing. [00:21:09] So help yourself. Help me help these lovely companies and get better sex with better lube. Go visit the links for UberLube and good Clean Love at whatexcitesus.com

[00:21:25] Yeah, I mean, that is what we're all hoping for and searching for, is to find that, piece where we're so engaged that we forget to think about what it is that we're so engaged with. And I think you're right, tapping into that story aspect is really a missing piece for. So many of us. So how do we do that?

[00:21:47] Artemisia Devine: How do you do that? Yes. Well, it is an art form. So I can't actually um, just teach you on this podcast. Exactly. But I can.

[00:21:55] Gwyn: Of course. Just tell it all in your 15 minutes. Go!

[00:22:02] Artemisia Devine: Well, I can give you a good place to start. And later on I will definitely share with your audience a a freebie, a 45 minute audio lesson. You can listen to while you're jogging it's non explicit, but it will guide you through the actually embodied experience of how the story works. So that you can feel for yourself what I'm talking about.

[00:22:20] Cause it's one thing, as we said before, to understand it in your head, but you've got an feel it in your body. But the very first thing we do, is start to look at the story symbolism, right? By learning the art of how to craft a really great story helped me understand sexual fantasies.

[00:22:36] We, think in stories all the time. We're hardwired for stories. We are affected by stories. Powerful empires rise and fall on the strength of the stories they tell. Everything we do every day is about meaning making stories and they're symbolic. Even when you, just had an experience down at the shops and you come back and tell your housemate about them you will have changed what actually literally, you don't just actually say, literally you've reinterpreted that leaving out spits and adding other bits in, not even consciously.

[00:23:07] You think you're telling the facts, but you've created a story to actually communicate the essence of what you felt and your perspective in that moment, rather than just the matter of factness of it. It's always meaning making that we are creating in the way that we communicate with each other. And in fact advertisers know this, it's a billion dollar industry in telling the right story to get you to buy their things.

[00:23:31] They're very powerful. This breaking down of the story, we need to understand that stories are about transformation. If you go to the movies. And you're just being entertained and you have no intention whatsoever of growing as a person or becoming self aware or anything.

[00:23:49] You're wanting to be entertained. God damn it. You want, you want some fun. But yet you go through the experience where your body becomes alive. When there's a shock you might cry, you might feel grief. You might fall in love with the main character. You might swoon, you might get goosebumps. You might squeal with a fright. And each of the characters as they've gone through that story have changed from the beginning to the end.

[00:24:15] There is no story without obstacles to be overcome. Right. It's not just a, we're having a happy day and the happy day continues. And that's the story. That's not, that's no story. It's always a theme. There's always a theme that we as the audience may never even become conscious of, but we know. That we like that story because it had a good theme and we don't like that story because it had a rubbish theme. Right. One of the things that holds it together is a theme of transformation of the character from the beginning to the end.

[00:24:50] Really obvious examples of themes. Okay, let's go Spider Man. Spider Man's theme all the way through is with great power comes great responsibility. And he's starting off, not very powerful and becoming more powerful, transforming and meeting lots of different obstacles of what to do with this power all the way along the story. And the other characters are also dealing with the same theme, but coming up with different solutions. Right?

[00:25:17] the villains are also having great power. But no responsibility. And we get to experiment what that's like through watching the character wield this power with a bad relationship to responsibility. But then all of Spidey's mates and family are also dealing with the same issues on various different levels in various different ways. And we watch them all try on different solutions with varying degrees of success. And. At the end, we have subconsciously tried on all sorts of different relationships to power, even though we just thought we were being entertained.

[00:25:52] And we get our climax of the story. Hint, hint. And then a lovely coming down period where it all integrates and we've got another new normal, right? So we've moved from one status quo with lots, through lots of obstacles with a theme to another one with a nice big climax. So that's how a story works. A sexual fantasy, it does the same thing.

[00:26:17] Even little fantasies of just flashes of images of sexy boobs or rock hard abs or something. If you look closer, they've got a story involved in them as well. They're never just the physical thing. It's how that physical thing affects you. The story you have around the meaning of that thing is what we're really trying to draw on.

[00:26:38] So each person's sexual fantasy has a theme let me just jump a little to a sideways to a slightly different thing and then come back again. Sexual fantasy themes are very specific. Sexual fantasy themes are all around our sense of self and a fear of letting go of our sense of self so that we can merge temporarily with somebody else.

[00:27:00] Sex is the urge to merge. You have to let your guards down to merge, right? So, the theme is always, how am I going to let go of my sense of self enough to move from I to we? sometimes even to the all, right? Merge with everything. That's always going to be the theme. So it's always going to be our egos resistance in particular, that are the obstacles that need to be overcome in that particular fantasy story.

[00:27:29] And lots of people argue about definitions of egos and therapists get all their knickers in and knot about, Oh, but Freud says this and blah, blah, blah, blah, let's just go

[00:27:36] with a really simple story metaphor version, not a therapist version of an ego.

[00:27:43] It's just like, this is a sense of self. What gives you your sense of self and what is important to that sense of self and what guards it? Right? So the things that are important to egos are your self worth. Am I valued? Am I sexy enough? Do you want me? The self worth stuff, it's going to get in the way.

[00:28:04] Self identity. I believe I'm a considerate person. I can't possibly be selfish enough to focus on my own pleasure. I have to keep my identity as a good girl. Otherwise sense of self, will be threatened. How can I get to my pleasure and keep my identity? How can the story solve that problem for me?

[00:28:22] Or I'm a masculine man and real men do this. They don't feel vulnerable. How can I get to it? Or, you know, all sorts of, whatever your identity is. I am a, a upper class person. I don't do that. I'm not primal like an animal. What is your identity?

[00:28:39] And the last one is social status. Your ego and your sense of self is very concerned with how the collective, the tribe, the group perceives you and where you're, where you rank in there. So it's all about power. But because it's very, very primal part of us our ego, it's afraid of. Very rightly, if we are rejected by our tribe, we cannot survive. You know, if we are cast out from the tribe, you know, the food didn't just magically appear in the supermarket, society created the opportunity for that food to come to us. If we're cast out, we will not survive. And so being accepted by the tribe is a very primal part of our way that we create our own identity and sense of self.

[00:29:24] And we can tell that our ego gets upset about this every single time something happens, like if you feel as though somebody's being patronizing to you, your ego will immediately arc up. It's like, who do you think you are? You need to be brought down a peg or two. You think you're better than me. That's your ego protecting your sense of self and your rank in society. So these things uh, those three S's like three guards. So if you imagine you're in a castle wall, you're inside that castle wall is the boundary of your sense of self and it protects and guards and keeps you solid in there as a sense of self.

[00:29:59] But to connect. To let go into pure experiencing and connect with somebody else, that urge to merge, to connect with someone else or many other people or everybody and everything. You have to get past that outside of that castle wall temporarily. You have to get it down. So those three guards are standing on the bridge, self identity, self worth and social status.

[00:30:22] You have to tell the right story to the guard for it to stand down. uh, you have to include its fear, which is the poison, and you have to include its antidote in the story form so that it's transmuted. And then it goes, okay, I'll let you pass.

[00:30:36] Okay, I'll let you pass. it feels safe. This is how it works. And I tested this over and over again. If you only included the poison part of their fantasy, because it made them very sexually excited and didn't include the antidote, they would get sexually excited and then they would feel horrible afterwards and they didn't get to where they were trying to go.

[00:30:54] Right, you had to include the poison and the antidote for the alchemical reaction to the guard to truly stand down and not just get halfway up the bridge but to get out beyond the walls and to experience what you were trying to experience and then come back and put your healthy walls back in place afterwards because we need them.

[00:31:13] Let me just preface this with one thing. Everybody's fantasy is unique. So when I'm giving you some examples here, your version of this might be different. So it's not like dreams, like, you know, if you have dream where your teeth are falling out, it means this, and it means that blanketly means that for everyone.

[00:31:29] Like, it's not like you have to listen to each person and discover their unique story. Right. But to give you some overview examples fantasies about public sex and blackmail are often overcoming that guard of the social status. Okay. Can you imagine that you really want to be accepted by society and that they think that if you have this kind of sex, you'll be primal and dirty and you won't be a good person anymore. You will be degraded. you'll lose your value in society's eyes. You won't be a good citizen anymore. So you're trying to get to that place, but also keep yourself as a good citizen at the same time.

[00:32:11] So the story has to say, it's not your fault. You're being blackmailed into doing this. But now look at that. You get to experience the really fun, sexy thing. your social status is safe because you get to be the victim of something else. Someone else was the villain, right?

[00:32:32] Gwyn: Feminization is a prime example of that.

[00:32:36] Artemisia Devine: Yes. say more about that, but yeah, I agree with you.

[00:32:38] Yes, absolutely.

[00:32:40] Gwyn: Yeah, well, so many, usually men, want to nurture that what they view as feminine side, but have no way to access it themselves because society tells them they're not allowed to have even just regular emotions, nevertheless, be tender. And so, yeah, so if they go to a mistress who forces them to be more feminine, then they can address that in a safe nurtured way and then put it away and go back to being manly men again.

[00:33:13] Artemisia Devine: Perfect. You got it. And they'll actually live out the fear. The poison has to be included. You have to include it or it can't be transformed. So including being called a sissy, you're being used, losing your social status and your power, like the worst thing you could possibly be is a woman. Anyway.

[00:33:29] Gwyn: Yeah. We'll just put that part aside for the time being. Yeah,

[00:33:37] Artemisia Devine: in the real world, if you really believe that's a problem, but as a story mechanism, it's, it has the opposite effect of in the real world. That's an awful sexist thing. That's going to keep the whole status quo in place, but within consensual play, they have now address their fear that other people will think that they are a sissy, whether they believe it or not.

[00:33:58] Right. So there's social status involved again, as well and they're being called slut or sissy, but they're also most of the time, while they're being degraded and humiliated for this. There's also the antidote of the mistress either desiring them often, those sessions include her really enjoying using them with a strap on.

[00:34:17] Right. Or various other versions of it, but it's, uh, she, is getting pleasure from them. Out of them being that way, which is the exact opposite to social rejection. Even as she's mocking them, her embodied delight is the antidote. And you know, each person's going to be different, they have a different antidote. I'm just giving an example. But that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking to see what's happening that, creates the exact opposite result for them. And how do I bring that to life for them in this particular scenario?

[00:34:49] Self worth is that guard is, it's about fantasies of, do they desire me? Do they want me? Where's the evidence? And you can live out your fear of you know, not being desired, or you can just be live out. There's two ways to appease an ego, right? There's two ways to make it stand down. One is to blow it up so big, it feels like it's a deity. And this could possibly, nothing could possibly go wrong.

[00:35:13] You are a god damn it. You are the best thing ever. You are the ultimate hero or the ultimate villain. Nothing can harm you. And that will make it safe or you make it really small so that it dissipates and then it dissolves. And that would be much more direct humiliation kind of or embarrassing or just people think humiliation is always in intense stuff, but it can just be somebody calling you a slut.

[00:35:37] It can be as mild as that, but it's still included. So there's two ways, but this identity, self worth of, do they desire me? This guard is, going to say, where's the evidence that they desire me? And where's my, fear around it. Where's the evidence that you've resolved this for me?

[00:35:52] And it could be through an example might be the person that you want is trying to keep control and dignity, but they lose it. They can't help it. They just become so primal with their desire for you that they ravish you or they risk losing their job by having public sex in the cupboard with you at their library workplace. So whatever it is, you know, it's,

[00:36:17] But it's, they want you so badly that they're willing to suffer a loss to get to you. That's proof that you're wanted, isn't it? I am desirable. They're willing to risk something. They're willing to crawl across glass to get to me. I'm desired. Yeah. That's one way that it could be resolved. There's many, of course.

[00:36:40] And identity is that whole thing that you know, before, like, I'm a good girl. I need to be a good girl, so somebody else forced me to do it. It's not my fault. As you were saying before the masculine man, the sissy, the cross dressing, that thing as well. So, I mean, the three S's, they merge into each other, but they're the things to look out for and to notice where the poison is and where the antidote is so that you can symbolically bring that story to life in your play, bring the same mechanisms to life in your play.

[00:37:10] Gwyn: Yeah, so do you recommend that folks really spend time with their fantasies and examine them, you know, in whatever form that takes for some people would probably want to write things, other people might want to talk to their people, might just want to think about things, but to really tease them apart to find out where the essences of it might be

[00:37:35] Artemisia Devine: Yeah, like people keep a dream diary, keeping a sexual fantasy diary is an excellent start for sure. You become aware of all sorts of patterns and emotional aphrodisiacs and power dynamics and attitudes and body languages that are important to you. And your theme starts to reveal itself as well.

[00:37:52] It's certainly a lot easier to have somebody to help you guide this because it's a story. Like people. don't understand how much of an art form writing is, creating a story is, but anyone who is a good writer understands how stories work. And they went and learned how this works. They might've just started writing, but then they'll have to go back and rewrite a few times over to get the editing right. So that it includes the theme properly. It includes the right obstacles and the right solutions to them. It includes the right tension building.

[00:38:21] Writers learn how to do this. And even if they then know how to do this, and then they play spontaneously from that place, or they write spontaneously from their place, it's from a place of understanding how the skeleton the, mechanics of the story, the plot, the characters, the themes, the how it works.

[00:38:38] So this is what I do, is actually teach people how to recognize that. So this is for people who really want to explore, themselves. Themselves through the lens of the erotic and for people who want to be able to help their clients do the same thing is learning this kind of expertise that I teach people in the sexual fantasy coaching program for people who want to dive in and support them on that.

[00:39:04] Gwyn: Have you run across folks who can't access their fantasies at all?

[00:39:09] Artemisia Devine: Yes. So the very first thing that I do with everyone is actually help them form a new relationship to desire itself so that they can become aware of them. Right. So in an embodied somatic level the foundation practice of my method. The divinery method is something I call the desire compass. And until you actually rewire your relationship with the logic and the language of desire, and you've got felt sense of it and build trust with this part of yourself. But let's face it. Most of us do not have, even those open minded, completely pioneering people still have to work through this because Desire, until we understand its logic, it seems to be, tell us to do things that would harm ourselves or other people.

[00:39:52] We can't, we don't know how to trust it. Desire is this force that tells us to eat all of the cakes in the bakery and not worry about diabetes. Tells you to spend all of your money and not worry about trying to save for tax and pay your tax bill on time. It tells you to just grab the butt of the person in front of you, you know, a complete stranger in the elements.

[00:40:11] But how do we trust this force inside of ourselves? And it doesn't seem to have any idea whatsoever about consequences. How do we form a really aware, trust appreciating relationship with that self and once that happens, some sort of unconscious switch will happen and people will start to allow themselves to even notice that they have sexual fantasies.

[00:40:34] That's the first step, but there's more than that as well. They start to like. Lots of people have dreams, but they think that they don't have dreams. But they can learn to become aware of them. But there are people whose arousal style means that their fantasies are going to be much more, less like stories on the surface. And they just seem to be like, I just fantasized about being touched in the right way. I just fantasized about that kind of body type or that kind of sex act. There's no story there. There is. When you take a closer look, there absolutely is.

[00:41:04] But also just bringing people's attention to what a fantasy is, because they think it has to always be an elaborate thing where, you know, you get rescued from the fireman and this, you know, all the pool boy comes around or so elaborate scenario, but a sexual fantasy is anything that your mind draws on to become excited. So if you are imagining how you might like to live out your date this Friday night with that person that you're with, and you're imagining it in sensate focus terms, you're in partner engagement, embodiment terms. You're not thinking of it as a fantasy, but you're imagining what might happen and you're becoming excited. Thinking about what might happen. That is a sexual fantasy.

[00:41:46] If you are drawing on memories from the past when your partner held you this way and you got to feel that then that is a sexual fantasy. And they're like, Oh, I do have sexual fantasies. Oh, okay. So there's that two pronged approach to beginning. And as you said before, that keeping the diary is really valuable.

[00:42:09] That stream of consciousness writing afterwards where you're not judging yourself at all. You're just writing. You set the alarm. You don't stop. You don't put any grammar in. You don't that stream of consciousness thing where you write, and even if you get a mind blank, you just keep writing anyway. You go, I've got a mind blank. I've got a mind blank until something comes out and you just write about your fantasies. This is where you're going to start to notice the things that you actually need to bring alive in your play in order to make things, to actually satisfy the real desire behind the story symbolism.

[00:42:43] Gwyn: Wow. This is amazing. You said you had a freebie that's very generous. Thank you so much. I'd love to hear about it. I bet folks would love to find out about it.

[00:42:54] Artemisia Devine: Sure. You can get it at myfantasyis.com. It's also on my front page, artemisiadivine.com. So there's two places you can get it. It's an audio lesson, just a 45 minute audio lesson that will guide you through this experience of feeling for yourself. How the change happens through a story. So, there's, nothing like experiencing to make it click. But it is non explicit. So you can do it on the train. It's okay.

[00:43:25] Gwyn: This is important information. Thank you. I know people who listen to dipsy while they're out jogging and I'm like, how do you do that. That seems counterproductive but okay whatever works for you.

[00:43:48] So I have one final question that I ask everybody, which is Artemisia Divine. What excites you?

[00:43:56] Artemisia Devine: What excites me? Insight gasms. Oh my God. I, that is my kink. Insight, I get full body insight chasms. When things click on a deep level for me, I'm always hunting the man when they click. Oh, I like Meg Ryan in that movie. Like she's like, Oh.

[00:44:18] Gwyn: I've never heard that term. That is an amazing term. I absolutely love that. [00:44:26] Artemisia Devine: Yeah, it's an Artemisiaism

[00:44:30] Gwyn: totally. That totally works for me. And I love the concept of that. Not even looking for, but when things click together in a way and you just Get it.

[00:44:42] That's so beautiful.

[00:44:44] Artemisia Devine: It's my favorite thing. So visceral. Every level of me gets involved in that emotional, physical, psychological. It is, I don't have a genital based orgasm, but it is a full body orgasm nonetheless.

[00:44:56] Gwyn: This has been delightful. Truly wonderful..

[00:45:05] What a treat it was to talk to Artemisia. I was so bummed that I had all sorts of tech issues among others that day and our chat had to be as short as it was. But I recently learned that she is writing a book and I cannot wait to read this. Do not forget to go get your free 45 minute lesson about unlocking the power of sexual fantasies at ArtemisiaDevine. com that's A R T. E M I S I A D E V I N E. com. ArtemisiaDivine. com Which, of course, is listed in the show notes. The show notes can always be found at WhatExcitesUs. com As well as a whole bunch of other stuff. You can support this work by buying me a cup of coffee Or you can support yourself. by buying some Uber lube, which also supports me a little bit.

[00:46:09] You can record a message for me. If you have something that you would like to tell me about this show or any of the other shows, there's a place you click the button, you can send it anonymously, or you can let me know who you are. If you're interested in doing a podcast with me, I would love to hear from you.

[00:46:25] And that is a great place to do it. Again, all of that at what excites us. com. What excites us is, produced, edited, and hosted by me, I'm Gwyn Isaacs. Our podcast host is Tickle. Life. All the music I use is under the Creative Commons Attribution License. This song is Quando by Julius H. The opening song is The Vendetta by Stefan Kartenberg.

[00:46:54] Y'all, y'all are awesome. I love you so much. Thank you for listening. Go have a groovy day.