Dismantling Your Sexual Shame With Kimra Luna

 

There comes a time where you are called to not just let go of toxic things in your life, but also the good things, especially if they are out of alignment with where your soul wants to grow. Our guest’s story is an example of that. Today, Corin Grillo talks with cosmic sensuality coach Kimra Luna who is, by many accounts, a business and marketing legend. She’s here to give inspiration on how to reinvent yourself and dismantles the shame that so many of us feel around sex, love, and relationships so you can get the courage to make these unique changes that often the spirit is guiding you to take.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Dismantling Your Sexual Shame With Kimra Luna

If there’s one thing I learned and working with spirit over the years is, sometimes there comes a time where you’re called not to let go of toxic things in your life, but you’re also called to let go of the good things in life, especially if they’re out of alignment with where your soul wants to grow. This next story is going to be an example of that. We’re talking Kimra Luna, who is by many accounts, a business and marketing legend. This woman has done so much over the years and had incredible success, as in, built a business into millions. I wanted to invite her in. I’ve been following her for a while but she made a change in her business from the outside would seem fairly abrupt. I know she’s a deeply spiritual woman so I wanted to have her on and give you inspiration on how to reinvent yourself and get the courage to make the special changes that often spirit is guiding you to take.

She’s a fascinating person, a little punk rocker and a mom. She’s moved from doing digital marketing and helping people build amazing online businesses. Her shift is now talking about sensuality and sexuality. She calls herself a cosmic sensuality coach. It’s a super ballsy move. It’s awesome and inspiring to me. She’s got a podcast called Riot Doll podcast and she also is the Founder of The Cosmic Connection Coven, the ultimate resource community for all things sex, love, and relationships. I know that this woman, whatever she does, she does it with a lot of heart. I can’t wait for you to hear her story and her journey as she went from in earlier life being bullied and feeling unloved to slowly discovering this real entrepreneurial spirit that was driving her to move past her poverty into a different life and how she continues to expand and grow.

Kimra thinks of herself as a disrupter so she’s here to disrupt the status quo and to help people like you discover the pleasure you’ve always dreamed of while shedding your sexual shame so you can channel your inner creatrix and the life that you deserve. This is her new mission. We talk a lot about deconstructing the shame that so many of us feel. I love having her on this podcast because I feel like the whole sex and sensual conversation doesn’t happen nearly enough in spiritual circles and I’m deeply passionate about it. I hope you enjoy it. She talks about her past, family life, connection with her children and her awakened sense of purpose and mission to offer folk like you. Here comes Kimra.

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A big part of my business now is I’m going to be teaching techniques around sex, relationships, dating, and stuff like that but it’s all of the deeper level stuff. It’s working on all the shadow work. All of my courses and programs are going to be around the deep stuff and the forgiveness work. Everything else is going to be one-off things people can buy like a one-off $30 workshop on Sexting and Dirty Talk. It’s going to be things people could buy on the side but the deeper stuff to have real connections, better relationships, loving yourself and true real transformation. That’s what all of the rest of my paid programs are going to be.

I’m sitting here with Kimra Luna, who on many accounts is an epic entrepreneur. I’ve been following her for years now watching her different iterations and expansion and what she’s doing. Kimra has managed to grow businesses into the millions. The reason why we have her here is that she seems to be a master of reinvention. She’s the mistress of reinvention and because the soul journey or the spiritual journey is important. It’s not only important in, “I want to connect with God,” but it’s, “I want to connect with my life in a deeper way.” What I see you do is so inspiring.

I want to have this conversation with you because I know there are a lot of people out there on the edge of feeling some new direction coming their way, and they don’t know how to do it. They don’t know if they should. Can you tell us a little bit more about where all this started for you? You’re a kick-ass entrepreneur. It doesn’t seem to matter what you do, things tend to work out. Were you born that way? What’s the deal?

I wasn’t necessarily born that way. I was a person who didn’t even have confidence in myself. I was always a creative type of person naturally but a lot of my creativity was even diminished based on how I was raised. I was around a lot of people who didn’t treat me well. By the time I was about 9 or 10 years old I was already like, “Get me the hell out of here.” I was young. I was like, “I don’t belong to these people.” My immediate family, I would ask my friend’s parents to adopt me. I wanted to get out of my family situation.

How did you know so young? As spiritual folk, we have a sense of, “This is not my real family. This couldn’t be my real family.” What was it about your family that made you go, “This can’t be right?”

I could tell they didn’t love me. Based on what I saw through television, at other friends’ houses, and at church, I could see loving families and my own did not behave that way. I was like, “If these people don’t love me, why am I even around them?” I felt more love from other people. With other people’s parents, I felt loved more than my own mother did. There was so much abuse and violence in my home that by the time I was eleven years old, I never told my mother I loved her ever again since that day.

[bctt tweet=”When someone believes in you, that is all you really need.” via=”no”]

Is she still alive?

Yes. I have not spoken to her for a few years now. I do not even speak with my own birth mother. I do have a sister and a brother I speak to that I’m close with. I have a bunch of other siblings and family with zero connections. By the time I was a teenager, I already knew I wanted to create something for myself. After high school, I was already booking concerts. That’s what I fell into right away.

Meaning you were a promoter?

I was a promoter and a booker. I would reach out to bands and say, “Come to our town.” This was in Idaho so I’d say, “Come to Boise, Idaho. I have a venue you could play at,” and they would agree. I started booking concerts locally in Boise. I did that in Seattle and moved down to California. When I moved to California, I started traveling with punk bands. I was on the road all the time.

Let me stop you because the way you started this conversation was with a family that was full of abuse and you didn’t feel loved. What you’re describing now when you’re promoting and booking that takes an extraordinary amount of confidence to reach out. I’m curious about that piece. Was that something that you’ve always had and you have been resilient that way? You felt this, I’m going to call it, weird confidence because a lot of people who are getting smacked down at that age, they get the confidence smacked out of them.

I had a person in my junior year of high school who told me and the whole rest of the school that I was egotistical because I wanted to do something big in the world. I was like, “I want to be like Oprah and have orphanages all over.” I wanted to do something big. I was shut down and basically told that I was some egomaniac because I wanted to do something big. When you come from a small town, people don’t typically dream big and because I’ve always been such a big dreamer. By the time I was in high school, I was like, “I don’t care what any human thinks about me.” I was done caring. That’s how bad it was. I had already been bullied so much and treated badly. I was 15 or 16 and I don’t even care what people think about me anymore, whatever. You can go ahead and talk crap about me all you want, I don’t even care.

It got to the point where there was no point in caring anymore. It didn’t make sense for me to need other people necessarily, at least approval of those people. When I started getting more into the punk scene, that’s when people did believe in me. One of my close friends, Justin, he ended up passing away a few years later but he believed in me. He was someone who encouraged me to book the shows. He was a drummer in a band and he’s like, “You can do it.” After high school, I needed a place to go because I don’t want to live in Idaho anymore. They were moving to Seattle and I was like, “Can I hitch a ride with you?” I got into the U-Haul with my backpack. I had nothing. I was like, “See you later, Idaho. I’m moving to Seattle and I’m going to do big things.”

I moved up there with my friends, Justin and Lisa. They believed in me and that was all I needed. I needed someone to say, “You can do that.” That’s all I needed to hear and I was like, “I have permission. I’ll do it then.” After, I’m like, “How to make a MySpace account.” I would start contact bands through MySpace and I would use my old AOL email address to email. I would get the CDs or the records and I would flip them over and find the record label email address. I would email it and say, “Do you have any bands coming through? I’ll book the show.”

I made it up as I went along. I didn’t even know what a writer was or what contracts were or any of this stuff. I was already booking shows when I was seventeen years old. I was a young entrepreneur. I’m not good at being employed. I call myself psychologically unemployable because every boss I’ve ever had feels like I’m undermining them when I’m trying to make things better. I can’t help myself. If I see something that’s broken, I try to make it better which turns out to be an amazing trait for an entrepreneur. All we do is solve problems.

 

It took me years to figure that out. I tried to work for regular corporations for a while. One of the signs out there that you’re secretly an entrepreneur is that you always feel you’re the smartest one in the room and you want to tinker, change the policies, and change this around. You see the holes. That’s funny.

It did start at a young age. I was like, “I don’t know. This could be better or that could be better. Why aren’t we fixing that?” I was always questioning it, “That thing’s broken. Why is it not being fixed?” I didn’t quite understand that. Over time, I started creating all different types of businesses. I had my first son when I was 23. I was young when I had my first. That was when I had moved to California and met my soon to be ex-husband. We’ve been in the middle of a divorce for a few years. That’s been that’s a whole other thing. I was with him for twelve years and had three kids with him. I’ve had lots of various businesses, everything from Etsy shops to all different types of artwork things. I had a humanitarian blog for a long time. I’ve had health and wellness blogs and a vegan mommy/homeschooling blog. I’ve had every business you can think of.

That’s why I think you’re a queen of reinvention. People need to understand this process because it takes serious cojones especially in the position that you’re in where you bail from projects that are working and reinventing yourself. Lots of people can let go of toxic things or stuff that’s not working but it takes the next level of intuition and heart to know when it’s time to leave something. That’s awesome, but not awesome enough for you at a soul level.

My boyfriend had even asked me, “Why are you going to stop business coaching when you make a lot of money in business coaching?” He was like, “Why would you stop?”

To inform our readers, you’ve had a business coaching business for a long time and you’re making millions doing this stuff. He has to be like, “What the fuck? What are you doing?”

He was confused. Why do you want to get into this? I had already been working on some certification programs around the sex, love, and relationship niche. I was excited about that work. I could sit and talk about that stuff all day every day. It’s what I care about. I’ve only been diving deeper and deeper. I want to get into somatic therapy work. I’m doing a hypnosis certification and all these. I’m doing all of these certifications. I love mentoring my clients. It’s been so magical. I still have a few business coaching clients but once it hits August or September, it’s done. I’ve been weeding that out and cut my list. If anybody is on my email list or my following and they’re not a good fit. I’m blocking or removing people.

From many people’s perspective, that’s business suicide. You’re like, “I don’t even care anymore.” I’m curious about that and I love that you’re doing that. I know there are a lot of people reading that are doing this at such a smaller scale. Maybe it’s a job that they don’t feel good in it but they’re holding on to it because maybe they make $100,000 a year and that’s how they’re feeding their family and something on the inside is trying to drive them to change. This process that you’re talking about, imagine everyone what it’s to let go of something that’s successful that you know that has millions of dollars of potential. Imagine what it’s to walk away from that. Kimra, what happened? How did you get there?

Some of it was honestly forced upon me because with my divorce things were going to split. There was all this money and things going on with the separation. It didn’t even make sense for me to continue on the same business path. My separation was also the time when I was separating from my business. On my business coaching side, I had already lost a lot of passion for it. I enjoy my clients, the results that they get, and the transformations that happen in their business, but it’s not the same as the deeper work where I’m helping people work through their childhood traumas.

To me, that’s something that’s much more powerful work for me to do in the world and because I’ve already been through many of the things they have been through. I had someone who got on a call with me and typically one of the questions I was asked is, “Why me? Why would you want to work with someone like me?” They said, “Kimra, you’ve been through it all. Therefore, you’re not going to judge me.” I thought that that was interesting because I do share a lot of stories about myself, my childhood, my past being raised around attics, and all these sorts of things that I’ve struggled with, mental health, PTSD, depression and anxiety. I’m clinically diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I share these things publicly. That has attracted certain people to me that have also gone through those same things and because I’ve been able to make it through those things, I want to keep sharing my story. I want to keep it inspiring people and keep sharing that. Talking about business to me is not inspiring. I don’t feel inspired when I share my business story. It doesn’t inspire me.

[bctt tweet=”When you serve more people, you end up making more money.” via=”no”]

Not anymore but it used to.

Even then, it didn’t. I don’t even want to share that type of information.

Why not?

I even have my copywriter tone things down because I didn’t want it out there saying, “It’s a million-dollar business.” I didn’t want any of that public ever. I did not like any of that stuff. I do not like the bragging miss that ends up happening. What would end up happening is someone would interview me on a podcast and ask me, “You’ve got 1,500 new members and your program is $2,000.” They can do the math. It started becoming like that but even on my own sales pages or website, it’s never once said anything about having a seven-figure business.

You don’t need to because what I’ve noticed about your copy and offers, they’re about the people. It’s always been clear to me that it’s always been about how you’re going to serve other people. It’s never been about, “This is what I’m going to get.” That’s why I invited you here because I love the vibe that you put out which is authentic and it’s not about your bottom line, but you’re there to serve.

It’s never mattered to me. I want to serve more people. My desire to serve more people ended up making lots of money. That’s how it happens. If you serve more people, you make more money. It’s basic math there but it was never my desire to have some sort of post it. They’re basically clickbait posts that these people have made about me on Forbes and all these other platforms and stuff. I feel icky. When I was featured on Forbes, I was crying because I did not like the feature and the way it was spoken about me. I didn’t like how they used it as clickbait. It felt icky and disgusting to me.

Can you describe what clickbait is for our readers? Why was it so gross?

Clickbait is when they fabricate the story and make it much bigger than it is to try to get more people to click. They were putting Welfare to Millionaire. I wasn’t Welfare to Millionaire. There were processes in between there. We were on welfare and we got off of welfare. My husband was able to get a job. While I was a stay at home mom, I started blogging. They didn’t share what the process is. They went to Welfare to Millions. I was like, “That’s not who I am.” There was no depth to it. There was no, “Who is Kimra?” It was hurtful to get featured on some of these places in the way that they had said it. It made it so it was like, “We’re trying to get a lot of clicks.” That article, before I hadn’t even seen it, had already been shared all over. It went viral. I had to email them. They had to correct some stuff in the article itself to get it to where I was like, “Fine,” but I was not happy about that. There were some other people that featured me on stuff that did similar sorts of things. It’s made me hesitant about publicity, being on the podcast, and being interviewed because they do twist things. I’m not even a celebrity and they’re twisting these things.

Can you imagine?

 

At that level, how hard it must be for them to do publicity and now I understand why some celebrities won’t even do it at all. They’re quiet on social media and all the time. It is horrible when someone twists language so they can get more clicks and leave out the part that’s you. The articles didn’t have me in it. This article doesn’t feel like the essence of Kimra so what is the point of this being even on your website?

As you’re talking, I’m putting these little microdots together. Sometimes when the worst things happen in our lives, there’s usually a blessing in disguise there. I’m feeling into this separation that you had or this divorce and how somehow attached to that old business but in a way, it almost seemed like that business wanted to die. For you on the inside, it’s like, “Thank you. Someone had to do it because I didn’t know how to get out of that thing myself.”

It’s like the universe needed me to shut down everything like the separation with my ex and all of this stuff that was going on in the business that was feeling icky to me. It’s not in alignment whatsoever. It was time for it to shut down. A few years ago, I shut down everything in the company. For all the courses, I stopped selling them. I created a new monthly membership that was only $10 a month because I’m not someone that’s like, “I’m about the money.” I was like, “It’s $10 a month. Get it. Get your butt in here.” I created a membership and went to do one on one coaching. To me, that was the easiest route to go to keep bills paid, keep paying for my kids’ therapy and things like that. It was to keep everything maintained while I was going through my certification programs to become a sex, love, relationship, life coach, and those sorts of things that I wanted to become.

Before we get into that, I wanted to rewind a little bit about the kids and the therapy because I’ve seen from some of your posts that you have kids with some extra needs. We don’t want to diminish or lessen the fact that you’re a mom and doing all of this. You have kids with real needs and I can feel that you’re super dedicated to your kids. Can you talk to us a little bit more about some of your challenges as a mother and how you have been working your magic there?

Being a mom of three kids is definitely a lot of work when you’re an entrepreneur.

Three? I have two and that’s enough.

I’ve three kids. My youngest, he’s autistic, so he has all these extra expenses for therapies and things like that. All of that is covered with insurance and such so he’s quite an expensive child to take care of, for sure. Mainly a big piece of it as I’ve always been blessed with having good help like having nannies and things like that. People have shamed me for having nannies. I’m like, “If your kid goes to school all day, how is that any different than me having a nanny at my house?”

It’s like a free nanny.

It’s basically the school. I’ve been shamed for that. It’s almost like I didn’t spend enough time with my kids because I’m a working mom. I was like, “If I were a lawyer, I’d be working 60 to 80 hours a week so how am I the one that’s being judged because I work from home? I see my children all the time. They can come and see me whenever they need me for something.” It’s been interesting, but I’ve been blessed with being able to hire good help, support team, and having personal assistants. That stuff has been crucial. They always say, “It takes a village.” It does and it makes me sad that we live in a society where everybody’s separated from each other.

[bctt tweet=”We expect our kids to understand diversity and different groups of people when we have no community.” via=”no”]

Even in my own neighborhood, everyone’s in their own little house. Some of the neighbors might know each other, but most of them probably not at all. It’s different when I became a single mom. I started realizing how much more I needed to lean on help, support, and ask my friends for help. I’ve only lived back here in Idaho for a few years. I’ve been reestablishing friendships with people, doing trades, watching the kids and things like that. I feel that there needs to be a lot more of that.

I saw an article about these two moms who were best friends and they were both single moms. They moved into a house together because they were like, “It’s cheaper, the bills are less, and we can take turns watching the kids.” Society needs to go back to a little bit of that tribal community vibes, the village vibes for kids to have healthier upbringings. We’re so concerned about our kids not even understanding diversity. Think about it. They go to school and the second they come home, they’re literally secluded from the whole rest of the world. How can we expect our kids to understand diversity and understand different groups of people when we have no community? They call your neighborhood a community, but it isn’t because nobody even knows each other.

No one’s collaborating. I feel that as a marriage and family therapist myself. That’s one of the things that were at the beginning of my career. What I saw over and over again was the problem was never the couple. The problem was the system that we exist in. If we had the support and the multitude or more diversity of adults in our children’s lives it offset so much. I found that much of the pressure and the reason why marriages were failing was that they had zero support to run these families and often have a dual-income in all of those things. Not everybody can afford, unfortunately, to have a stay at home mom. Most people have to work to feed their children.

It’s common even in a group and people that I’m friends with. I’m like, “Why don’t you get a maid? Do something to give yourself some relief.” It’s worth it when you’re a mom and things are stressful. You’re trying to have a marriage, parenting, businesses on top of that, and clients I’m worried about. All this other stuff stacks up. I had one client who had four family members die in the whole year’s time we were working together. There’s also emotional stuff that’s going on by having clients too. It can be a lot. Finding that balance is important and creating a system that works for everyone, for the kids, for the parents.

It’s going to take a while, but I’m holding a vision for that to happen for all of us. There are a lot of relationships out there that feel failures because they think they somehow failed their family or failed their children. It’s the system that’s failing us from my perspective, it’s not us as individuals. We’re doing the best we can. Every person out there is busting balls trying to make it happen. Thank you for sharing about your family life and your struggles as a mother because it’s so important to know that you can have a business, a dream, and also have kids but there are sacrifices you make. Some of which are the judgment of other people. These people might judge you because you’re doing what you’re doing. Let’s fast forward, “I’m helping entrepreneurs build businesses,” and that starts collapsing because of the divorce. Also, I feel more prominently because it is not in alignment with you. You didn’t want to fight for it is what it sounds like.

No, I didn’t. I was like, “That could fall to the ground. I’ll explode it. Where’s the dynamite?” I’ll burn it down. I was happy to let go of my programs. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love everyone that was in them. I had such incredible students inside of my program. They’re amazing people changing the world. My heart was moving into another direction. I’m always going to go where my heart leads me. I moved across the country to be with the person I’m with. I moved all the way from New Jersey, across the country. I’m more of a follow my heart type of person. Whether that’ll turn out to be a mistake, time will tell.

It is a mistake years from now but for now, it’s great.

We’ll see what happens with it. Maybe it was a dumb idea, but maybe it was super epic. We’ll see.

That’s the problem that we all get into. This could be the wrong decision or the baton stick and they don’t do anything. They stay in stagnation.

 

I see many people.

That’s the worst thing you can do.

I’m like, “Pick something and do it already.”

Just do it, fail, who cares?

I saw a quote though that said something about failure. It was something along the lines of, “If you do nothing, you’re destined to fail because doing nothing is a failure.”

You’re not even doing anything.

It’s true.

I do so much work also trying to inspire the people that I work with. I’m like, “Get off of the bounce. Get on a track. It doesn’t even matter where you end up.” For most of our decisions, 10, 15, 20 years down the line, we’re going to change her mind anyway. You might as well do something fun that sounds juicy. Speaking of which, you go from being an entrepreneur and helping people with business matters into this activation for you, where you’re starting to embrace another part of you, which may be put on the sidelines. I don’t know if people understand that poverty is not always the biggest trap. Sometimes success is an even bigger trap. It’s hard to break out of success. When it’s working, to let it go is hard. Can you tell me, as you started rocking this new journey from your heart, what was the process there?

It was a lot of timing stuff. I was dabbling with different things. There was a lot of testing and a lot of, “I’ll send out an email to a small number of people and see what they think about this.” I did spend the past few years dabbling. I was putting my toes in different things and figuring out what people wanted. It turned out, after doing so much market research, the primary issue that everyone had that was a core thing was letting go of shame. Shedding the shame has become what a lot of my business is going to revolve around.

[bctt tweet=”If you do nothing, you’re destined to fail because doing nothing is failure.” via=”no”]

I was raised in a household where it was normal for people to shame you for basically anything. I was consistently shamed my whole life. Sexual shame was another big piece on top of that. Growing up from what I believed was that I was a lesbian, but I didn’t know what a lesbian was. I had no clue about that but I was told at church that you’re not supposed to do that. A girl is supposed to be with a boy type of thing. It was confusing and I was conflicted my whole life. I spent years probably to God that God would change me and make me normal. I thought I wasn’t normal and something was wrong with me.

When I became about 16 and 17, I did start liking a boy. It was funny because he was feminine. He wore eyeliner and everything. I liked a feminine boy. I was like, “God changed me,” but God hadn’t changed me because I still had crushes on girls too. I’m confused and I felt ashamed of being who I was at all that it made it difficult to tap into the true me because I knew if I were open about that, I would have been treated badly at church, at home and at school. I had to hide who I was.

It’s like being trapped in a cage. To me, that’s what shame is. Shame is when you’re trapped, in a cage, you can’t get out and you feel like it’s impossible to get out. Whether that’s sexual shame around, “You need to be a virgin until you’re married,” which is what I was told. If you even thought about having sex, you were going straight to hell. There was all that sexual shame. When I became an adult, there was even more sexual shame that ended up happening, which was after I had kids. Was I even supposed to be sexy? Was I supposed to have a sexual desire even?

All of this shame continually was layered on top of me, some of it self-inflicted, some of it my own thoughts and beliefs kept perpetuating it and others inflicted by from society. I had spent many years healing and working through all of this stuff, all the forgiveness work. The amount of hours of forgiveness work has been insane. It’s so much work. If I can get to the point where now I feel sexually free, I understand my sexuality. I’ve embraced it and I’m open about it. I can have the relationships and the styles that I want to have relationships in. Be completely okay with that, confident with that, and take a sexy selfie and posted on my Instagram. That was one of those horrifying things I did in my whole entire life.

I was terrified to do it but my best friend my whole life, Adrianna, I even got a tattoo on my wrist, she has my name on hers. She, my sister, and I got each other’s names on our bodies. She encouraged me. We were in Vegas at my sister’s bachelorette party and I showed her the picture and she’s like, “Kimra, why don’t you post it on Instagram?” I’m like, “I’m horrified.” It’s not that I was naked in the picture or anything either. It was some cute lingerie thing. She’s like, “Post it.” I’m like, “I’m terrified.” She took my phone and posted it. I was like, “I can’t believe it.” I had 16,000 followers on Instagram or something.

I had to start overcoming that too and I realized, “I still have shame around my body, even after being separated.” I’ve been married for twelve years and have been with someone for such a long time and I still have shame around my body. I’m like, “My goodness.” I had to keep dismantling. There are always more signs of something else you need to dismantle, break apart and crack it open so you can heal. That was definitely one of those moments where I was like, “I can’t believe how much shame I’m having on my own body.” I’m like, “Why am I having this?” It’s still something that I continue to work on. It’s still something many people continue to work on even when they’re in their 50s or 60s. Even with aging, there’s so much stuff that we ended up having all this guilt and shame around what our appearances are with our physical bodies. I’m like, “Our physical body is a vessel. We’re pure, beautiful, glorious, and magnificent. Our physical body is one piece of us.”

It sounds like much of the work that you’re doing now, the offering that you’re making to your community, and to support is based on so much of your own healing, work, and how that passion has superseded any other thing. It seems like, “This is how I want to help women.”

I can’t help it. What is the point of me even being here? What’s the point of me even breathing if I’m not helping people in this way?

I want to go back to something you said. You’ve said a lot but after you have kids, it puts you in a certain cultural mindfuck when you have any interest in anything other than your husband. Even if you get too weird or kinky, that could even be a weird thing. I’m wondering if you can address that. I’m super passionate about women as they get older to stay in their sensuality and sexuality. I speak mostly publicly about angels, but it is one of my hot button issues, the whole sex thing. I’m grateful that you’re here to talk about it for me.

 

It’s definitely one of those interesting things. After my first son was born, I had asked my husband if I could open up the marriage. I was probably in my twenties. I was around the age of 24 at that time. I wanted to explore having sex with women. I was like, “This is something I want to explore.” He was a much more conservative type. He was like, “What will my family think about this? I don’t feel comfortable with that.” I didn’t bother even asking again. I was like, “Nevermind.”

Two more kids later after my third son was born, I had lost all desire for my husband completely. He’s a nice guy, but that was it. I didn’t have any other desire besides, “You’re a cool friend.” We co-parent great. We have all the same beliefs on parenting. It was a good match when it comes to parenting but my desire was gone. That was a big part of why the relationship ended up having to end. I needed to embrace my sexuality. Plus, it wasn’t fair to him either. It wasn’t fair to both of us for me to have this strong desire to do something. He still had a desire for me completely. He hadn’t lost that but I had. It didn’t make sense for us to stick around and something like that and have a sexless life. I didn’t want to have that as my existence.

Kimra, that’s what a lot of people do. That’s mostly what we have been shown as role models.

When I see someone that says that they were together with their person for fifteen years and now they’re divorced, I’m sitting there cheering them on. That means that you have finally made a decision to love yourself, start embracing your sexuality, and being true to who you truly are and your own passions and desires. Seeking pleasure is important. Humans seek pleasure. Why do you think there are many drug addicts in the world? It’s because humans seek pleasure. We want pleasure. That’s why we crave ice cream.

We have all these things we do as humans because we crave pleasure but then when it’s our actual physical pleasure, people shut that off completely like you’re not even supposed to have it. It’s embarrassing if you even have sexual desires or if you’re like, “I want my boyfriend to blindfold me.” Saying those things aren’t even way out there and people will think, “Something’s wrong with you for wanting that.” Sometimes we think that ourselves. Sometimes it’s us thinking that about ourselves. It is our own lack of self-confidence or insecurities thinking that about ourselves or, “What’s my partner going to think if I asked this?” The big piece of it is to be gentle with yourself. Have compassion with yourself and take it one day at a time. It doesn’t mean you have to be this orgasm goddess all of a sudden in one day and magically you’re gushing all over everything. That doesn’t happen that way.

That would be awful. Unfortunately, it takes time. You have to build yourself up to it. After I separated from my husband, I started a self-pleasure practice as if I was going to start a yoga practice. I made sure that I had scheduled in time to feel pleasure. I didn’t mean that I’m going to get a vibrator out and try to have an orgasm or something. It was more like, “What does it feel to touch my thighs? What does it feel to caress my shoulders? What does it feel to touch my ears?” It’s feeling things, tapping into my body, and my own sensations. Sometimes, yes, it was about having an orgasm but other times it wasn’t at all. It was more discovering and looking at my body.

For a lot of people, it’s to open up the neural pathways even to be able to feel pleasure. Those get shut down with all the responsibilities and the pressure that we’re under or any world crisis that we may or may not be in the middle of now.

It’s everything from past childhood traumas to one time your husband looked at you the wrong way to all sorts of things.

It’s shut down.

[bctt tweet=”Being true to who you truly are and your own passions and the desires you’re seeking pleasure is important.” via=”no”]

All the doors are closed. You’ve got to start opening and touching your own body even if it’s in the shower, you smell your body wash and you’re like, “This body wash smells good,” and you’re rubbing it on your body slowly. It’s being slow and more intentional with the movement. That alone can start getting you back into your body. Our nervous system is shut and closed up. You need to start touching yourself and embracing yourself. After Coronavirus, get some massages.

Get touched. As you’re describing some of these practices, I see the unending barrel. You keep discovering and uncovering. There’s always more and more. I found when I was working, because I worked a lot with new mothers and mothers, I used to know when a mommy zombie walked into my office. I’m like, “She’s suffering from mommy zombie.” It’s like The Walking Dead. They’re cut off from pleasure and this simple question would blow their mind, “What makes you happy?” They would have a hard time with that one or anything around, “What brings you joy? What do you do for fun?” If you don’t know how to answer, “What do you do for fun? What brings you joy? What makes you happy?” You need these simple pleasure practices to reopen these. Slow down and let your body feel again.

It is part of the reason why stretching and exercising those things are important. Yet we, especially as mothers, it turns out that everybody else’s stuff matters more than ours. We always put ourselves last. Therefore, we don’t even know how to express the type of pleasure we want to our partner because we have no clue. We haven’t even been exploring our own bodies ourselves. We haven’t even given ourselves that much time for even 3 or 4 minutes a day. I’ve told people before when they say they don’t have time I say, “When you brush your teeth, in the end, set a 30 seconds timer and breathe for 30 seconds.” That’s it. If you can’t commit 30 seconds to yourself, what’s the point in even trying to grow personal growth? Start with 30 seconds. Start breathing. It doesn’t have to be an overly complicated thing. It could be going to a dance class. It can be something simple. It doesn’t have to be an overly complicated thing, your body again.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s something you have to work on manifesting again, especially if you’re out of touch with it. Some people are born blatant. They’re here to play and they’re good at it. There are others of us who are ultra-responsible, loyal, and thinking about everyone else. They’re out of contact with their own body because we’re full of stress. I love the work that you’re starting to do because from my own history personally and also from the work that I did as a therapist with mothers, there’s nothing better. Can you tell me, Kimra, with the work that you are promoting now and working to impact lives with, what is the benefit? What is the ultimate ending benefit of being in touch with their sensuality, sexuality, and starting to reclaim that part back?

The benefit is being able to create the life of your dreams. When you’re able to tap into your own pleasure, it makes pleasure exude from you. Therefore, everybody around you starts feeling better. It affects everyone. People would think, “Taking all that time for ourselves to experience pleasure is a selfish thing to do.” It’s the most unselfish thing because as you explore those things, everyone around you notices. Everyone can feel the difference when you walk into a room if you had experienced some form of pleasure that day versus when you have not. It changes everything around you and you’re able to start bringing and calling in those things that are important to you, whether it’s better relationships.

Starting a self-pleasure practice can make you realize, “I probably should kick this person to the curb. I’m not going to tolerate that stuff anymore because the way they’re talking to me is not bringing me joy or pleasure. It’s bringing me misery. Why am I keeping this person around?” It can help you gain clarity around the things that you desire. You can’t go for what you desire if you don’t have any clarity around it. Exploring yourself, touching your body, and tapping into pleasure. Even eating more slowly. If you’re going to buy a bar of bar chocolate, eat that thing as slow as you can. Savor everything even if you’re watching a movie, don’t look at your phone. Watch the movie. Enjoy the movie and notice the nuances. I watched that show Ozark and I watched it again but watched it, “I missed all of these things for the first time.”

You’re preaching to the choir.

Even when we’re watching TV we’re tapped out. If you’re going to enjoy a show and spend that time enjoying the show, enjoy the show. Don’t feel guilty for wanting to binge something on Netflix. We all want to binge something on Netflix. If you’re going to watch it, actually watch it.

Absorb it into your body.

 

“That’s crazy. I didn’t notice that before.” “I love that line that person said.”

That’s great advice. Not enough people are talking about pleasure, sensuality, and sexuality. Especially in the spiritual community, it is an underrepresented topic. I’m grateful that you’re here to talk to our community about the importance of this and sharing your own sensual and sexual journey and discovering who you are and claiming who you are all of you sexually. You’re someone to admire, for me and for many people who are living a little out of the box and honoring who they are and willing to strike camp. I hope that whoever’s reading this gets that inspiration that they need to reinvent themselves when they need to and to align their lives with their pleasure, sensuality, and sexuality. Kimra, I’m digging what you’re doing. If people want to find you and see what you’re up to what’s the best place they can go to do that?

The best place would be my website, which is my name, KimraLuna.com. There you can find access to my podcast, my new community called The Cosmic Connection Coven, where we talk all things sex and relationships. We also have a book club there as well that’s completely free. We are starting the book, Attached. It’s a super awesome relationship book if you haven’t read it already. We love to work through stuff like that and answer any of your sex-related questions. Also, the community has moderators who are also sex therapists, sex practitioners, and such so we have a lot of great resources there. Instagram is the best place to hit me up if anyone has direct questions for me. My Instagram is my name, @KimraLuna. I’m always there. I don’t have a gatekeeper there so you can always slide into my DMs and hit me up if you’re interested in having a chat with me.

Thank you, Kimra. You’re such an inspiration. I cannot wait to see more of this work from you so I’m looking forward to watching and participating even.

Thank you for having me.

Important Links:

• Kimra Luna
• Attached
• @KimraLuna – Instagram
• KimraLuna.com

About Kimra Luna

Kimra Luna is a Cosmic Sensuality coach, pleasure activist, host of Riot Doll™️ podcast, and founder of the Cosmic Connection Coven™️… the ultimate resource community for all things sex, love, and relationships.

Kimra is here to disrupt the status quo to help you discover pleasure you’ve always dreamed of while shedding your sexual shame so you can channel your inner creatrix and live the life you deserve. Kimra devoted to supporting you in designing rituals that lead you to more fulfilling relationships. You can find her works at kimraluna.com or on Instagram at kimraluna

 

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