#370 How to reclaim your sexual power and expand your capacity for joy through pleasure, with Dr Fanny Leboulanger.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
___
Please note that while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.
___

Fanny Leboulanger  0:00  
Pleasure is our nature. If you consider the clitoris it has thousands of nerves and it has no other function than pleasure. So you know denying ourselves pleasure is literally denying ourselves, our nature.

Agi Keramidas  0:18  
You're listening to personal development mastery, the podcast that empowers you with the simple and consistent actions you need to master yourself and create a life of purpose and fulfilment. I'm your host, Agi Keramidas and this is episode 370. If you feel disconnected from your body and sexuality, you are not alone. Many of us have been conditioned by society and past experiences to deny our natural capacity for pleasure. In today's episode, you will learn how reconnecting with your senses, embracing pleasure and reclaiming your sexual empowerment can not only help you cope better with difficult emotions, but also to expand your capacity for joy and fulfilment in your life. And of course, throughout the episode, you will discover simple practices to reconnect with your sexual power and sensual pleasure. Let's dive right in. 

Agi Keramidas  1:30  
Today, I am delighted to speak with Dr. Fanny Leboulanger. Funny you have embarked on a unique journey from being a family doctor, practising Gen ecology to becoming a sex Coach and an advocate for self love and pleasure. Combining modern scientific concepts with ancient tantric traditions, you are passionate about helping women reclaim their sexual empowerment and live their best lives filled with pleasure and fulfilment. Fanny, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here with me today.

Fanny Leboulanger  2:09  
Thank you for having me, I'm so happy to thank you for everyone to listen to, to tune in as well.

Agi Keramidas  2:16  
I'm looking forward to this conversation finding and we will explore today self love sex, and how our capacity to feel pleasure is one of the greatest tools we have to create our life which is find this fascinating topic. And before we go there, I'd like to ask you to give us a bit more background about that transition in your career. So what was happening then and what triggered that shift?

Fanny Leboulanger  2:55  
The shift started a little bit before because I have like a really usual story of you don't want to listen to life until you get hit. So I got a diagnosis of epilepsy at age 26, which is kind of late. And I started to do a lot of self inquiry. And I did a tonne of self development. And I started to feel there was something wrong because I spent more and more time speaking to myself healing myself and felt not not as good as I thought I would be regarding the investment of time, money and everything I put there. So I started to have doubts. And then what happened is two things at the same time. First, I thought I realised that it wasn't normal, actually to only get orgasms from my partner. And I heard so many people around me saying that was the same. And in my medical practice, because I'm doing gynaecology on a daily basis, I started to see more and more women I had no answer to they had pain during sex, for example, all the exams were normal. And I was like, Okay, you're gonna see a sexologist, who has six month of waiting time. And it was becoming more and more frequent. And it was like, I can't send three quarters of my patients to a sexologist. And at the same time, one women one woman came and she said to me, Doctor, I think I'm broken because I've never had an orgasm. I and she was 34 and I was like, This is wrong. So I started to do to explore first for myself second for my patients the same time, discovered this beautiful world of sex coaching and sex positivity and the power of pleasure and sexual healing. And that's when I realised that's what I want to do. That's what I want my job to be. So I became Miss X coach.

Agi Keramidas  5:07  
I jerked listening to this the way you described your story, and I was not planning to take the conversation there in the beginning, but because you mentioned, I will go there, right at the very beginning, because you mentioned the orgasms. And, you know, there are misconceptions about the orgasms. And I suppose that those misconceptions were what led that lady to say that I'm broken. So can you share then what are some common misconceptions that or creases if you want to bomb orgasms? And how can a better understanding of this topic generally improve our life or sex life in particular, the first

Fanny Leboulanger  5:56  
thing I like to remind every person I'm working with is that pleasure is our nature. If you consider the clitoris, it has 1000s of nerves, and it has no other function than pleasure. So you know, denying ourselves pleasure is literally denying ourselves our nature. And that being said, so orgasms shouldn't be hard. Not shouldn't. There, it's not written anywhere, or there is no physical, physiological explanations for orgasm to be so tricky for people. It became tricky because we live in a crazy situation with internalised sexism, patriarchy, and things like that, and people having opinions on what you should do with your sexual life and how, for example, if you consider orgasms, there is this thing about how you know to be Yeah, to be a real woman, you're supposed to come during penetration. Whereas the most pleasurable orgasm or again, orgasm organ isn't really inside. The clitoris isn't like, there is the g spot, of course. But I think the worst misconception is how we rate the types of orgasm. And also how we think orgasms are supposed to look a certain way. Because we tend to forget or not know that we have different, huh. Different types of pleasure, you can have a luscious pleasure, you can have a soft pleasure, you can have a passionate pleasure, you can have an angry pleasure as well. You can get anger, orgasms sad gasm when you work with your emotions, so that's a whole palette that is available. And when you combine this with the exploration of your body, this is an endless playground.

Agi Keramidas  8:13  
It certainly the way you describe it, it definitely sounds like it. Why do you think many people deny that to themselves then?

Fanny Leboulanger  8:24  
Because that's we have been trained for. And that's how things are. So it's more a question of what do we do now, instead of denying it has happened, we can, I also do want to specify that things are getting better, which is great. I would like I love to acknowledge where we came from. During a trip to Asia, we met a guide, who told us I want to have my wife so that I can stop wandering of anything at home. So we have a tonne of things to work on here. But we've come a long way.

Agi Keramidas  9:08  
That's great. Thank you. I'm going to go back to something I alluded to earlier in the in the introduction about the capacity to feel pleasure and you say that awakening or expanding our capacity to feel pleasure is one of the greatest tools one can have in you know, creating the life that they want and finding fulfilment. So I would like to hear your thoughts on that. It's something that it certainly makes sense when you hear it, but I wonder how many of us practice it so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Fanny Leboulanger  9:50  
I'd love to start this answer with has denying yourself pleasure worked before. Do you feel good when you DENY YOURSELF pleasure. And when you beat the beat yourself all day long to lose weight, do this do that have more orgasm, but too much and blah, blah, blah. First of all it hasn't. Then what I love about pleasure is how it helps us expand our safety zone in our nervous system, and how because it's our nature, we slowly reclaim what's ours, and how and how we actually deserve that. If you consider your nervous system, we have some kind of tolerance zone, where we feel comfortable, and we can manage them coming back at quote, unquote, normal state. That's, for example, why you are not yelling at your spouse when they are just, you know, a little bit late. And this Solomon stone can also be influenced by outside factors. If you, we all have been in a huge fight, and then notice we were hungry. And then when we ate, we were like, oh, oh is just hungry. So using pleasure, because it's our nature help us expand that. And when we expand that, we are also able to notice what is wrong about now it's not about us about us as a society. And able to do something with it to actually step out of the what I call the autopilot life. In this 50 Shades of Grey, not sexy way of how things are supposed quote unquote supposed to be. When you reclaim your pleasure, you reclaim your essence. And when you reclaim your essence, your tolerance to the bullshit that is not yours. Decrease. And when you decrease the tolerance to that you have more fulfilment or x orbs simply feeling truly you live is more accessible.

Agi Keramidas  12:21  
If you enjoy this episode, can you find one person you think would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it, it helps the show grow. And you'll also be adding value to people you care about. Thank you. And now let's get back to the episode. A you said reclaiming your essence. And that is in my years anyway, it sounds like a very spiritual thing to say all but so the way you were describing pleasure, it sounded to me like you know, a path to grow spiritually also, not only as personal development, but emotional understanding and all those things. But also spiritual. And I actually wanted to ask you because you combine the, the ancient tantric practices with the modern medicine and I wanted to ask you also about, you know, how, what is the? How does these different approaches complement each other in what you do?

Fanny Leboulanger  13:31  
centres that I love, and I heard for the first time is how sex is the active form of meditation?

Agi Keramidas  13:39  
I have read that somewhere. Yes, yes. Well, if you approach it, if you approach it in insight from such a frame of mind.

Fanny Leboulanger  13:51  
The combining of the ancient wisdom and the modern science is first to actually be aware of what is going on in your sexual system, how pleasure works, what type of organs do you have, literally sexy knowledge. And it's always helpful to know what's actually going on when you self pleasure or solo play when you are in a partnership. And all of these dynamics have been really well studied in modern science. And when you consider the ancient traditions, you can get all what's going on about the spiritual quote unquote, world about how we tend to live in an egotistical illusion, and trying to differentiate what is the illusion or the autopilot, and what is our true essence and also learn how to live with it. Some kind of spirits some spiritual traditions once want us to transcend our human condition. I'm much more a fan of using this traditions to help us be here and experience the whole spectrum of it. The whole spectrum of this human experience, that means you will get the greatest joys and love and also the most epic shit and pain and get the tools to face all of that.

Agi Keramidas  15:26  
You said, I agree with you wholeheartedly, you said about you know, how some traditions talk about transcending our human nature and thought, we all will eventually so we will transcend our human nature might as well, before we do that, really, as you said to make the most or explore I don't remember the phrase, you use the exactly of our physical existence and everything that it can offer, not only to us, but also that's how I see it anyway, that through through us to whoever else we, you know, is in our sphere of, you know, the ripple effect comes to mind. So,

Fanny Leboulanger  16:16  
my, a wise mentor of mine said, if you weren't supposed to be here, you wouldn't be here. And I was like, Huh. That's kind of

Agi Keramidas  16:32  
sounds like one of those Zen saints that it is so simple. And it's very difficult to actually get it. But when you I mean, it's, it's so simple to, but once you actually get it, it is a proper revelation. I wanted to ask a little bit more to explain a bit or go a bit further on that deeper connection between pleasure. And let's keep it enough to sexual pleasure so that we can also follow up later on in the conversation. So the connection, the deeper connection between the sexual pleasure and the life of fulfilment, you already mentioned some ailments. But I would like to hear some more thoughts on that, because as I told you, before we started recording, I find it very, I find utterly fascinating, because it's

Fanny Leboulanger  17:38  
I discovered a concept during my training, and I'm sure many people heard about that before. It's the body mind. So that's the intersection of what your body actually feels like I'm cold, I'm hard, my heart, my feet, or my arms are broken, or whatever. And the mind, so the emotions, the explanations, and there is this sweet intersection in between, where the mind can actually express but in subtle sensations, a tingling, a feeling of any sort, and how these pieces because they come from our mind, have some kind of consciousness, quote, unquote, consciousness, you can have a conversation with them, for example, you can get informations from them. And I'm going somewhere with this. When you have these conversations, when you realise why these pieces are here, then you get the clarity, and they can be all customised. And to have that, I mean, the simple example is noticing that if you have an inner child that wants to protect your heart for from, you know the pain, then until you feel the pain and help the inner child release that you will be stuck with this thing, literally all customising our traumas or conditioning, and helps the saying goes, you need to feel it to heal it. And I also love to say, to add to that you need to feel the sensations, not the story. And the good thing was pleasure, as I mentioned earlier, is how it helps our nervous system to tolerate that. So we're not overthrown from by the pain by the gills by we mix it, it becomes more tolerable. And when you use that to digest your conditioning to alchemize your traumas, you're actually coming closer to who you want to be, instead of who you have been conditioned to be.

Agi Keramidas  19:58  
I love this answer and you see Have you talked about that tolerance, which you mentioned earlier on in the conversation, but now I recently got it in a different way. Because the way I understood it tell me if that's what comes out what it came from me, but let me know if it is what you were saying that by expanding our tolerance by having more pleasure or different kinds of pleasure and all those things. At the same time, we're also expanding our capability to handle the other side of the spectrum, which is pain. And I suppose you You did not mean just physical pain, I suppose you also. So talk to me more about this.

Fanny Leboulanger  20:49  
What I like to share is, you know, when you work on your money, beliefs, for example, you can tell yourself I love Money, Money loves me, if somewhere in your system you have integrated, that having money is not safe. Because someone took and said something mean, while you were a kid or whatever, you can tell your system money's safe. Inside it will be integrated as no money equals danger. So you're going to stay away unconsciously from money. So self sabotaging and things like that. And that goes in our sexuality, too, when we've been trained and told as women, how owning our sexuality, owning our desire is unsafe, because of rage, rape culture, because of judgement, because of things like that there is such work to do there, it is so important. And when you reclaim that safety zone, you can now customise everything, because you digest the physical sensations and not their core emotions, or just physical sensations given meaning by your brain. At the very basic, you can have a quick heart rate because you're angry, but also because you're seeing your lover, or because, yeah, let's put it that way. And also, you can be angry with a small and steady heartbeat, with a cold anger, for example. So at the end of the day, this is just sensations, and the beauty with sensations, it's just that it is that allowing them space to proceed without getting attached to the story helps them get released. And when they get released, you don't hold on to them anymore, because they lose the power. How many of us are afraid to get angry because all the anger we have is going to just blow up into the face of the person in front of us. And so that's why it's literally the intersection of physical pain and yeah, psychological pain.

Agi Keramidas  23:13  
This is great. I love what you were saying earlier that the emotions are real physical sensations when the mind creates a story about them. And that's also in our power to reframe that story. As you're saying the faster Heart, heart rate can mean all sorts of different things, or it can be caused by all sorts of different sensations. But it is up to us to name that story. The story's not even though we'll have default stories that we'll come back to. But we have the power to choose the story. And the example I see sometimes is you know, when you have the butterflies in the stomach, when you are failing, you can say that I'm stressed and terrified, or you can say I'm very excited. Both of them will create that. So just that didn't do what you were saying about the the motion. You mentioned reclaiming the powers. I think that was a phrase you used and owning the sexuality. That was another phrase that you use. So I would like to ask specifically for the women listening, what role does that play or sexual power or the owning our sexuality? I don't know if I think they are related in some way if I'm not, if I'm correct, so what role does that play for a woman towards creating the life that They won't. And even more importantly, how can they start to change the relationship with it or start, you know, progressing with it?

Fanny Leboulanger  25:12  
Regarding the progression, it starts simple. So many of us think that to heal our sexuality, we need to have orgasms lasting for hours and where we yell, yes, yes, like a bad porn movie. Whereas true healing starts small. If you have been numb, if you have been disconnected for your body forever, or for decades, or even for years and a month, if you start self pleasuring, and you don't want it, this is not gonna heal you if you want to please go forward. But So first there is this reconnection to your senses. And that can start small, tasting a piece of chocolate, using central oil, let's mail amazing to give yourself massage. I always like to offer my coaches to start with breast massage, because our press stores so much emotions. And it's also an quote unquote, easy way to start the release. Some people are terrified from by their genitals, or disgusted, or anything like that. And I think the most important part here is to really honour the pace and not force yourself. And looking for pleasure moment to moment, pleasure can just be a sensual touch on your shoulders at first. And if that's the only thing that's pleasurable stay with that. And then when you expand your pleasure capacity, so you notice pleasure is safe, then you will want something else. And that's, yeah, the reintegrating that pleasure is safe, that you are allowed to do that is really, it goes into fulfilment, in my opinion, because when you do that, you become more and more whole. And that's an opinion of mine, of course, take it or leave it, you cannot truly feel alive 100% experiencing all of it, if you're not hold, we cannot selectively numb if we are afraid of our grief, if we are afraid of our sadness, if we are afraid of our anger, especially because we have the right to be angry, sad and mad at society and the mess that is going on around us. It can be so overwhelming, so we can be so afraid of that. And because it's so terrifying, we suppress it. And then it's a question. It's just a matter of time, how, when you suppress one, the others are becoming more and more grey. And you end up numb. And you end up what I call the the autopilot. That is the opposite of fulfilment and pleasure helps you step out of that.

Agi Keramidas  28:27  
That's a wonderful answer. Finally, thank you very much. It's actually been a really fascinating conversation and a, there are, I will start to wrap it up in a moment. And I do have some final quick questions to ask you. Before I do. Will you share with the listeners that has absolutely been intrigued by what you're saying? And where can they find out more about you and connect?

Fanny Leboulanger  29:00  
The best way to figure out who I am and what I do is to listen to my podcast which is called your sexified life. Keep the why at sexified because I'm French I didn't know how to write that but so it's called your sexified life you can find it everywhere. You can also send me an email at Hello at your sexified life.com And I could give you my Instagram for DMS because I don't use it but if you want this Jen send me a DM there it's at with Dr. Funny but you're aware it's not really sexy, because I'm not really an Instagram girl

Agi Keramidas  29:44  
that's great. Funny I

Fanny Leboulanger  29:46  
forgot I'm sorry. Well, instead of talking about Instagram I should have talked about the ebook I wrote a free ebook which is called Essence is Awaken Your sexes, their sexes. Oh, interesting essence awakening your senses to reclaim the pleasure to be alive. It's available for free, it comes with my regular love letters. And I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Agi Keramidas  30:14  
Thank you, I think that is really valuable for someone that has resonated with the conversation today. So it's, it's going to be in the show notes to, to go there and download it and read it. And finally, I have a couple of last quickfire questions that I always ask my guests. And the first one is What does personal development mean to you?

Fanny Leboulanger  30:40  
It's a great way to do some self inquiry, just not forget to actually stay here and do the real work that is way less sexy than going into amazing practices. Bringing the embodiment is key. And we need to be aware of that, because that's how it works for real.

Agi Keramidas  31:05  
That's great. And hypothetically speaking, if you could go back in time and meet your say, 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give her? Don't

Fanny Leboulanger  31:16  
go to med school. Don't go to med school, you're just gonna waste 10 years. And yes, you will get a title but turns out, it's not really that necessary, and how true healing comes beyond that. I'm really happy I did it. It brings me some qualities that other people have not. But also there was a way to do things differently now that I see. And also your normal. Stop wondering if there's something wrong with you. You're normal.

Agi Keramidas  31:56  
That's great. Finally, I want to thank you very much this I enjoyed this conversation so much and I believe there were some important messages there and there is more awareness now about some things that more than it was before we started this conversation. So I believe I really believe that we that intention is fulfilled. I want to wish you all the very best with keeping on changing the lives of women and the people in their environment as a result of that because it expands. Before we conclude today, what I like to leave my listeners with some parting actionable wisdom. So what's one piece of advice one simple practice you would recommend our listeners to, to incorporate into their life and you know, begin their journey towards better sex? Let's let's leave it to that question.

Fanny Leboulanger  33:06  
reconnect to your senses, even before going to sex, reconnect to your senses. Use central oil that smell amazing to caress your body. If you want to go with your genitals fine, but it just started above if you need, eat that piece of chocolate or strawberry or anything that feels amazing. And get yourself some movement. Start dancing for five minutes a day. Just because you need some movement to have your body functioning well. Because that also optimises your traumas. Let's be honest. So send awakening the senses and movement so that you can find space to then explore what's more sexual.

Agi Keramidas  33:57  
And before I end today's episode, an open invitation to you listening right now. I invite you to find me on social media and send me a direct message about anything you prefer. You can tell me who your favourite guest has been so far, or who you would like me to interview next, or what topic you would like to hear on the podcast. So drop me a line and I look forward to chatting with you. Until next time, stand out don't fit in!