Deborah talks of finding love with a partner who has sensual training. She expresses that DOing has added to her sex life. It makes sexuality an integrated part of love and their relationship. She has this wonderful sensual energy and connection with her partner throughout the day with DOing.
“That whole way of putting the attention on the woman in order for both people to find happiness or to find pleasure is extraordinary and I think revolutionary.”
Wendy: How did you decide to take a sensuality retreat at this point in your life?
Deborah: How I decided to take the sensuality retreat workshop is that I met a very special person in my life who wanted to and shared his experience and told me more about it. That resonated with a lot of things that I was already seeking in my life or doing in my life and so I was very comfortable. It allowed me to feel more comfortable to explore the idea. He suggested, why don’t we do this together? and that’s what I really liked. We were going to have a shared experience together taking a workshop together so I got introduced through this very special person.
Wendy: What were you looking for when you found the Welcomed Consensus?
Deborah: I was looking for more ways to meditate. Essentially, I was looking for more ways to have a mindfulness practice. I’ve been doing a lot of mindfulness practice in my life, everything from sitting meditation to moving meditation. I am a sound healer, also and even in my teaching in performing arts. So everything that I am interested in is gravitating towards a type of mindfulness.The Welcomed Consensus website and what I was hearing about it seemed that was on track with what I was seeking.
Wendy: Did you get what you were looking for?
Deborah: Yes, I think I did, and what’s wonderful about getting what you’re looking for is that you also receive what you weren’t seeking, which is a type of wonderful surprise. Yes, I feel much closer to my partner and I feel like I grew in ways that I didn’t know I was going to grow, too. So I got both, which is great.
Wendy: Do you have any specifics about how you grew in these areas?
Deborah: I think one thing that I’m struck with is having the workshop in this ranch retreat-like setting so the information is one part of the workshop and the community in which it is held is another huge part of the workshop. To me, it’s the entirety of the experience that has informed the transformation that I am having.
Wendy: What concepts during the Common Sensuality course stand out any flashes or aha’s?
Deborah: One of the first concepts that stood out for me is about seduction because it has to do with me allowing the man to put all of his attention on me. It’s actually something that is a very new concept. But as soon as it started happening, I felt with my partner, because he has had a lot of training in this work, I felt like it was this thing that I’ve always wanted. It felt so right and yet very different from how I’ve been living my life and how I’ve been looking for a partner. So that whole way of putting the attention on the woman in order for both people to find happiness or to find pleasure is extraordinary and I think revolutionary.
Wendy: Was there one particular goal that you had that you attained over the weekend?
Deborah: The one particular goal that I had was to be more comfortable with receiving attention. I think that I am a person who directs a lot of things, I teach a lot of things. I am an entrepreneur. I’m out in the world putting out a lot of charge. When the receiving of attention is a type of release and that I have been focusing in my life how to listen more and pay attention to my needs and receive. So I feel like I have allowed that to happen, not just from my partner, who I was with for the workshop but also from the entire community I was with for the weekend who was here. I felt really taken care of.
Wendy: Have you made any discoveries about sensuality?
Deborah: I think one of the biggest discoveries about sensuality which I may not even be able to articulate at this time is the powerful impact of watching an hour long intensive session of cumming. That was opening and expanded my view of how people can share sensuality in a community because we were all there together. We had a shared experience, which is something that I am very interested in because I am an actor. I create shared experiences. So that was a very important aspect of it that resonated with me. It was very intimate and universal at the same time. I think that any experience that is at once both intimate and universal is a type of truth with a capital T. So that will be a lasting transformational experience. It’ll resonate in many ways, I have no idea at this point.
Wendy: Are you in a relationship?
Deborah: I am in a relationship with a person who used to be a part of this community in a very intimate way and is still very connected to The Welcomed Consensus. So I think that our relationship is directly informed by his training and is sort of setting a template for how we’re going to communicate going forward.
Wendy: What do you mean when you say that your partner has training?
Deborah: So what I mean when I say that my partner has training is that he’s gone through years of courses with The Welcomed Consensus and also living in the community. So that means that he is trained to give Deliberate Orgasm and also trained in a high level of interpersonal communication skills. He has a vision for how he wants to live his life that’s very specific and chosen and that is very rare for anybody. Specifically, I think for me, and if more men would do it, they’d find more women that really wanted to be with them. So I feel really lucky that I found one.
Wendy: What do you want in a relationship?
Deborah: What I was looking for in a relationship, and what I was looking for a long time, was ever unfolding intimacy. I felt like I was having intimacy and learning how to open myself up in many different ways through many different courses and art’s practices and mindfulness practices that I was doing on my journey. I was searching for someone who could have a level of expansion and skills that would meet me in order to be able to have the common ground to go into that ever unfolding intimacy with me. That’s what I was looking for.
Wendy: What do you want in your sex life?
Deborah: What I want in my sex life is for it to support every other part of my life. So that everything that happens in the bedroom informs everything that is happening in the rest of my life. I think that sex can be a litmus for other places of experience and it can play out in the bedroom, for example. So if I can have an amazing sexual experience, an amazing series of sexual experiences or just an amazing sex life, then I can have an amazing life. I was talking with my partner just this morning and we were talking about how we’ve kind of been having the same orgasm the entire time that we’ve been together. It’s just had various levels. I feel a buoyancy being with him and that’s very different than being with other people.
Wendy: What do you like about Deliberate Orgasm?
Deborah: I think what I like about Deliberate Orgasm is that it’s completely focused on one person or the other. It’s a meditation for both people in terms of it’s a gift you can give to be the receiver, which is my experience. It’s a gift to give myself, that time to focus only on me and to have my partner focus only on me. That’s a great feeling.
Wendy: How did you first feel about deliberate sexing and having a Deliberate Orgasm?
Deborah: How I first felt about having a Deliberate Orgasm, when I first heard about it I thought, “Well that sounds great!” And what I also liked about it is that there is a container for it with a protocol and that protocol is the same for anyone who is doing it. So there is a way, a set container, which this amazing experience can be shared between two people. So that made it feel safe for me to want to try it with someone I didn’t know very well at the time and it had a prescribed beginning, middle and an end. Also, the communication that goes along with it. There’s a lot of verbal communication and there’s a feeling that I could stop at any time and I could say no at any time. I have control over my own body in that I can decide how much, how little, even how much time I want it to be and that that gets communicated with the person that’s Doing me. That makes it feel safe and makes it feel fun.
Wendy: Did you say everything about the protocol thing, putting it in a container?
Deborah: So one of the things that I like about the Deliberate Orgasm is that it has a framework and it has a protocol which my partner was able to describe to me completely before we even tried it which made me feel really safe. It also made me feel safe knowing that that was the protocol for everybody that he was DOing, everybody who does it. And there are certain ways that you use a cloth, there is certain ways that you handle the lubricant. There’s a specific way to communicate verbally with each other. It’s a back and forth so that I feel that I have the control over what kind of duration that I want it to be and pressure, tempo and those specifics help make it feel safe by it’s being predictable and just more fun. It doesn’t sound like it is because you think that if things are mysterious it will be more fun and then spontaneous, but having a very specific container allows the mystery of the orgasm to unfold in a very safe and beautiful way. So the two concepts actually work really well together.
Wendy: How did your partner approach you at first about having a DO date?
Deborah: When my partner first introduced the idea of a Deliberate Orgasm, he first talked about communication and talked about the community in which he lived, the qualities of the people, the interpersonal communication and how he talked about values. Then after I was able to ask a lot of questions. I was curious about that. He was very disclosing about specifics. I felt very comfortable that he was sharing specific and intimate information with me which built trust. Then he started talking about actual sexing. Just the act of what it means to give a Deliberate Orgasm and in a very specific way, “First I will do this and then this will happen”, very sequentially and matter of fact but also talking about what it does between the two people. That was very interesting to me, how it could be a shared experience between two people and deepen a relationship. At first, I was hesitant because I’m a native San Franciscan. I am aware of a lot of different cultures, theories, practices and communities and I’ve experienced, at least on the fringe, some of those. I think my impression is that some are more beneficial than others. So I asked a lot of really specific questions to see if this was something that would resonate with me and where I am at this point in my life. He was very forthcoming and very specific so that helped make me feel safe and curious. Also that this was going to be an enjoyable experience. The first experience that we had was very short, it was like 5 minutes. I think that also helped because it was a very profound 5 minutes. One of my favorite parts about it is that you talk about it after because that to me is where the transformation happens. There’s an experience that‘s shared and then there is a left brain process that happens after that integrates into your whole life.
Wendy: Is there something that stands out about that first DO date, the orgasm?
Deborah: I think something that stands out about that first DO date was how relaxed I felt and the heat that I felt through my sacrum and my thighs. And then how little was necessary for him to do in order for me to feel a lot. This is profound because we are in a doing culture that’s active. We feel like we need to be actively doing something all of the time and we need to do a lot in order to feel, in order to achieve. in order to succeed. What I realized is we can do less and do it better. So by his subtle stroking of my clitoris, I was feeling much more and that was really surprising to me.
Wendy: How has DOing added to your sex life?
Deborah: DOing has added to my sex life in that it makes sexuality an integrated part of the relationship. It’s not just something that gets compartmentalized for like one night a week. It’s like you can have a DO date and it doesn’t have to last very long in duration and then go out and live your life. You can have this wonderful sensual energy and this connection with your partner throughout your day. It integrates your sex life more into all the other things you do in your life, which is pretty fun. It’s definitely energizing. And then it’s changed my relationship to orgasm, which had been changing since before I was introduced to this work. Now it’s deepening even more. That change, meaning the idea of achieving something or having an end product or going to a final stretch, is like completely crumbling for me so that everything is experiential. The reason why I like that is that it puts you in the moment. There’s nowhere else you need to be and so the appreciation of being present. My life becomes fuller because I don’t need to be anywhere but here. Which is pretty much the whole deal for me about what I want to have out of my life.
Wendy: What was your concept of orgasm before the retreat and what is it now?
Deborah: My concept of orgasm before the retreat…I’ll back it up and I’ll say, okay, in my 20’s my orgasms were really contracted and things that I felt like I had to really control and physically grasp. My hands are making these fists because it felt like that was what I had to do in order to achieve this full body release. And that worked for a while. That’s what orgasm was for a decade or more.Then over the last few years, I’ve been allowing myself to literally release more. Observing that, my orgasms got longer. My orgasm got multiplied. My orgasms were now becoming an integrated voice and movement experience, where my voice was getting really involved in a very organic way and which felt more holistic. To add Deliberate Orgasm where the whole attention is on my orgasm, then became an even greater exercise in release and to be in total effect. It’s a wonderful way to give up control, which is something that I need to do. And I’ve learned a lot about how to have a deeper orgasm by doing much less.
Wendy: Do you think most women are honest about how much sex that they want?
Deborah: I think most women don’t know how much sex they would want because they aren’t having great sex. So if you could present to them an opportunity or a way to have sex in the way that’s satisfying for their body, and they’re not held hostage by a male trajectory of an orgasm, which I think a lot of women are. I think a lot of women are held hostage by a predisposition or a guilt or a shame or an obligation to please their man in whatever way it takes and that really clouds the desire. It represses it so far that you don’t know how to even ask for what you want. So the Deliberate Orgasm container allows you to focus on what the woman wants and this is revolutionary. If more women understood it or talked about it then they might raise their awareness of the possibility of what they could even ask for.
Wendy: What was your experience of the OIC?
Deborah: My experience of the observation of intense coming was a profound one that, quite frankly, left me speechless, which is kind of hard to do. I think because when you see something that is so primal it’s talking to you in a way that’s so deep that words can’t really describe it. Similar experiences would be, I’ve observed a cow being born on a ranch before when I was out a farm once. I’ve held my godson after just being two days old in the hospital. And I had the opportunity to touch the person who was having an intense orgasm as she was having it which meant that I was having that intense orgasm. And then I sat down and the whole room was having that intense orgasm. You think about the potential of that energy resonating into the universe and words can’t really describe that it’s in a sense something we already know. And then when you experience it, it’s like you’re coming home to it.
Wendy: What would you like other women to know about your experience?
Deborah: I think what I would like other women to know is that there’s this revolutionary concept that all of the attention can be on you and there’s nothing shameful or bad about that. It’s actually this really positive way to walk in the world for yourself and in your relationships with men. It’s a win/win for both. That’s profound and worth taking a look at. And that it’s okay to talk about sex. It’s okay to talk about wanting things. It’s ok to talk about your orgasm. It’s ok to talk about wanting your partnership to be better than it already is and it’s okay to look for experiences that are better than you are already having.
Wendy: What would you tell other women regarding the 3 Day Sensuality Retreat?
Deborah: What I would tell other women about the Sensuality Retreat is that it’s a lot of information and to just go with it, to try it, go with an open mind, don’t try to understand everything, let me say again, don’t try to integrate everything, just take the information in and ask a lot of questions. Ask every question you can think of because every time I asked a question, I got way more back from the answer than just the answer I was seeking. So that’s really important and then allow yourself time to integrate the information, not just the information but the experience. The experience needs time to integrate so take a day off from work after the workshop.
Wendy: Thank you