Erica Leroye and Masturbation

In this episode, Michelle Renee talks with Erica Leroye, the founder of Creative Body Release, which is a multidisciplinary method, helping adult experiential learners become empowered advocates for their sexual health and their overall well-being. In this episode, we talk about the mechanics of the cock and how masturbation coaching can be a helpful tool for cock owners. Erica also shares her personal connection to Soft Cock Week.

To contact Erica, email erica@creativebodyrelease.com.

The host, Michelle Renee, is a surrogate partner, intimacy guide, and professional cuddler located in San Diego, CA. You can learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠meetmichellerenee.com⁠⁠⁠⁠.

For more information about Soft Cock Week, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠SoftCockWeek.com⁠⁠⁠⁠, which includes resources, events, and even soft cock love notes.

Notes from this show:

⁠Momentum Condoms and Lube

Rough Transcript:

Michelle Renee (she/her) (00:02.606)

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Soft Cock Week 2023. I don't know the order of these episodes and how they're going to come out, so I won't number it. But I'm so excited to be here with Erica Leroye, who is a colleague of mine, I guess for the last, we've known each other probably a year maybe, something like that. I don't know. I just know that you really came on my radar when I started to talk about Soft Cock Week.

And I just, this is a topic that you are either passionate about, or you just haven't run into it in your life yet is kind of how I've decided it falls on two sides, right? So we just happen to both be really passionate about this topic. And because we're both professionals in the same sphere, we connected and Erica has been so generous in helping support soft cock week this year.

erica leroye (she/her) (00:40.59)

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:01.338)

nothing else than just for my accountability buddy, but also just a anchor of just safety and grounding as I've kind of been like, what do I want to do with it this year? How do I honor my enthusiasm and honor my no and still provide something to the community that is so important to me? So thank you, Erica.

I can't say enough how much I appreciate you and how much I adore our connection. You know so many things that I just don't know anything about. I think that's why it works really well because it's a good balance. If we all knew the same things, it wouldn't be very fruitful. Yeah. So, could you let us know who you are, where you are, what you do?

erica leroye (she/her) (01:31.726)

Thank you.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:38.102)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:49.95)

Oh my gosh, all right.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:58.382)

Ooh, where am I? That's a great question. And right, that's a moving question. So my name is Erica Leroye. I am the founder of Creative Body Release, which is a multidisciplinary method helping adult experiential learners become empowered advocates for them, their sexual health and their overall wellbeing. I'm a human development specialist with a focus on body, mind, spirit.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (02:00.342)

Well, that's a moving question, right?

erica leroye (she/her) (02:29.042)

relationship, but in a very practical and not woo way. I've done the woo, I've done the science, and I consider myself to be like the grout between all of the disparate parts. I like to think of what I do almost like how you need the welding in the stained glass window for all the pieces to actually make a complete picture. That

Michelle Renee (she/her) (02:57.003)

Mmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (02:57.782)

my experience, you know, I've been in healthcare, I've been in education, I've been in mind-body, I've been in, you know, alternative wellness. I'm a mother, I'm a grandmother, you know, I'm a lover, I'm a friend. I've been there, I've been through the shit. I like to say that Creative Body Release, we focus on prevention, remediation, and reimagination.

and that my particular magic is turning life's oh fucks into fuck yes, because I've been there. I walk the talk of using what I call our erotic energy as the portal to actually do what is called holistic work. Because so many other people

are so afraid and avoid genitals that the work actually isn't holistic even if they're saying it's holistic and that it's really only those of us who are doing touch-based and mind-spirit work that I feel really can call ourselves holistic. So I interface with, so over the last number of years,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (03:58.871)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (04:14.156)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (04:18.496)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (04:24.766)

journey has really been to primarily be a referral source for pelvic floor physical therapists and urologists and oncologists because I'm curious about what's missing for people in the medical journey. But I also work however people find me. That's sort of the magic, right? Is if our paths cross, I'm that magical lady who might be able to do something. Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (04:52.786)

Right. We talked to Susie Gronke, who is a pelvic floor therapist, and we were talking about, urologists are wonderful and they do really great work. And there's a place where they stop their participation, right? They're not there for the full recovery process. They get their part taken care of. And then it's kind of like, here's a sheet of paper with some instructions on Kegels.

erica leroye (she/her) (04:58.933)

Oh yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (05:22.806)

And, you know, it's like, then we need the next step, right? And that's pelvic floor PT. It's hands-on workers like yourself that really can help take people more towards, I don't wanna call it a finish line because I don't think there's an end, but to the next, like into the next phases of their recovery.

erica leroye (she/her) (05:27.647)

Right.

erica leroye (she/her) (05:41.686)

Yeah. Well, and what I would say I've learned, that's absolutely true, and that's why I say sort of the grout work, right? Because what I've seen and what I've learned by interfacing in that pelvic floor PT realm is that the majority of people, that's a very special, pelvic floor PT is a very specialized part of PT.

And then inside of that, the majority of people work with people who have vulvas and uteruses. Right? It's a very small amount. And so even the PTs that I've met who do work with people who have a penis and a larger prostate, the way that they're trained, because it's more neuromuscular,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (06:11.914)

Yep, we talked about that too. Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (06:32.346)

stops where the muscles come to the shaft, right? And actually don't really have training on the fascia that goes around the rest of the penis and around, I mean, there's four different fascia systems that are in there. And they don't really have confidence and knowledge and training to go beyond the base.

So even that is where I saw that there was a, that was where I was like, oh, there's a gap because as a sexological body worker, I can do that, right? That is where I can go, where I like to go. And what I've been exploring for the last 12 years is what I call demystifying the international erectile epidemic because I really do see that this is an epidemic.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (07:11.849)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (07:29.134)

It's a healthcare epidemic and we don't have enough people who can go the full, like I said in the intro, just the full length. Right? Yes.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (07:39.57)

Yeah, yeah. There's so many puns around this topic. You get into soft penises and it's just length and hardness and yeah, they're just waiting for us to walk into them. And I love that. And that's for you and I have very different focuses in our work, right? I'm working on the relationship with self and with partners and that's my focus.

erica leroye (she/her) (07:48.73)

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (08:09.202)

it sounds like you are also able to bring in the physical body, right? And what's happening physiologically, where that is so not my specialty. Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (08:22.102)

Yeah. Well, my background began working with parent-child education and bringing in a sensory motor approach to how do we even come into our bodies in the first place, right? And helping to integrate through games and movement and touch the sensory, you know, the human being is designed

the sensory world to imprint and help us come into ourselves. And what I have seen, given that I've spent time with humans developing from prenatal, all the way through death and dying, is that there's this disservice that we do to people with a penis that starts very early on, right?

it's, there's two things I tend to think about. One is, and this is what I saw really working in preschool and kindergarten, is that really starting at around that age, we are so uncomfortable with the penis, right? We're so uncomfortable with it showing up that we ask young boys who really young, like four,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:37.963)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (09:48.91)

to stop allowing the sensory world to penetrate them. That I think of the penis as an antenna, right? It's like if we, you know, it's meant to be an antenna, right, but we, you know, no, don't let this show up, no, you know, not in the classroom, not in the locker room, not in the workplace, not in the da, maybe not at all, right? So then, exactly.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:57.322)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (10:12.53)

Maybe not at all, right? Don't touch that.

erica leroye (she/her) (10:18.142)

So there's also, so then from a deep neurological point, we have what I would call cock confusion. Am I allowed? Am I not allowed? Oh, there's this one little window where I'm, it's okay for me to show up, but like, but there's a pretty butterfly or there's a nice smell or there's a warm sweater or there's, you know, all of these things that we, who don't have the antenna.

we can penetrate, we can allow that to penetrate us. So I see that as a result of living that way for a long time, then there tends to be... Because the question I've entered into this work with is, why are the ED rates... Why are they... What is it? Come measure it with age. Why is it...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (10:51.207)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (11:16.419)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (11:17.794)

30% of men at 30, 40% of men at 40, 50% of men at 50, if there was any other body part where that was what we were talking about, there would be the equivalent of like a HIIT gym or a Pilates studio or a yoga center on every corner. I mean, it's just from a business point of view, right? That's literally a growth market.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (11:39.306)

Yeah. I mean, we have thrown all the money at the Viagras, right? We have solved, we have tried to solve it from a medical standpoint. What we're missing is this unraveling of the messages that we're receiving at such a young age. And then it's getting them back in touch because it's not too late, right? It's

We're very neuroplasticity. We have this proven, right? We can go back and that's what we're here for.

erica leroye (she/her) (12:19.354)

Exactly. Well, let me tell you a little bit about the Softcock Week listeners, and I'm so excited to be part of Softcock Week. It is really just some... When we met and I found out that this is something that you've been holding in the world, it just made me love you all the more, because it is something we really need to talk about. Yes.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (12:19.639)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (12:40.822)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (12:44.098)

We bond over this. Yeah, you and I, well, I have not had the experience that you've had around this personally, and I want you to talk about that. It certainly is a big part of my life in a personal way and how I interact with clients around this or partners around this. And so you showing up in my world and sharing your story just really...

put a big exclamation point on how important this is. This is not just about helping people have better sex. This is not about helping them have an expanded idea of sex. But you really reminded me of the importance of what we know, what we learn about ourselves because of this antenna, right? That we could be missing something that is really important. So I wanna shoot this back to you and say,

erica leroye (she/her) (13:32.462)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (13:39.89)

Erica, what's your story? What brings you to soft cock week?

erica leroye (she/her) (13:43.818)

Yeah. So in 2009, I fell in love. I had been divorced twice and I was 30 at that point. What? I was 40 that year. And I was on my like, I'm out in the world and I'm rediscovering myself.

And I fell in love with this wonderful, amazing man. And it was a meeting of the minds, it was a meeting of the body, it was a meeting of the spirit, we were work collaborators, we were, I mean, it was just one of those, the easiest flow I'd ever experienced. Except that in our sex life,

I noticed after about the first two months of being together that he very quickly would move towards wanting only to be in positions where he was pleasing me. So he was either orally pleasing me, pleasing me with a toy, pleasing me with a hand. And that was great. And I was poly I've been poly for, you know.

15 plus years. And so there was a part of me that was like, well, I don't necessarily need this, a lot of penetration from this person. I'm enjoying what we're having. I'm getting other needs met from other people. So this is okay. But as I started to fall more into, well, maybe this is it, this you are, maybe I want to just come into this a little bit more. Not.

monogamous, but just a little bit deeper. I just asked one day, hey, you know, what's going on because I'm a woman who really likes to fuck and I'm not, what is this for you? Right? And it wasn't accusatory, it was really curious. I was just curious. And then he shared with me his story, which was, you know, some of which I knew, but in a different way.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (15:49.251)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (15:59.926)

which was that he had gone through a very painful divorce, very painful divorce, in which his partner, the wife, had as part of the separation process, said some really degrading things about his penis. Not uncommon.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (16:21.642)

No. We shoot below the belt, right? Yeah. And that is an easy target.

erica leroye (she/her) (16:25.238)

We do, we do. And the penis withers, which makes sense. I mean, it just retracts and is like, ugh, right? And we also know for people who have performance anxiety that the adrenaline response of not knowing how am I gonna perform, is this person gonna like it, da da, that as soon as that kind of.

that type of adrenaline comes into the body, you're pretty much guaranteed that you're not going to be able to get and or maintain an erection, right? Because that chemical just doesn't work, right? When you're trying to be down-regulated. So, you know, he shared that with me and said, you know, and while I've been dating, so then he went on to say, you know, while I've been dating, I've just found it easier to.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:08.972)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (17:18.925)

come forward as I want to worship and please you, then to have to have these conversations because when I'm dating, what I found is a lot of women take it personally. And then it becomes all about their personal feelings of, you're not attracted to me, you don't like me, da, and he's like, I just, I don't want that energy. So I said, okay, well,

Thank you for letting me know, right? This is really helpful. And let's just play together. When we're together, how do we make this feel like sacred space, right? That if we are, can we commit to that the time that we have together that is, cause for me sex is...

it's the time where we get to share our bodies, right? I have plenty of friends where we don't share our bodies or we share it differently, but sex is this, it's a body to body intimate relationship. So I was like, let's just make that time, let's honor that time.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (18:25.304)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (18:32.206)

for discovery and play and keep an attitude of levity and curiosity and joy. And let's just see what happens. And why don't we do this, which is when you're hard enough, then we'll do something penetrative. And when that changes, because the words that he used, which I still use in my work with people is he talked about

that his penis had an ebb and flow, right? And I was like, well, great, I like to boogie board. So, you know, when there's a wave that we can catch, you know, stick it in, right? And if it changes, let's do something else. And we found two, you know, what are the things that turn us on? We discovered, you know, this really juicy relationship between us of

Michelle Renee (she/her) (19:03.138)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (19:15.638)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (19:28.246)

voyeur and camera play, right? That an exhibitionist that when things would subside, that rather than, okay, now we're done, would be, you know, maybe now we're using a toy or now he's watching me masturbate. So that we were filling the time and the space that we had with this connective energy. And lo and behold, you know, his penis would, you know, more and more and more over the course

you know, 18 months, more and more and more, we were finding, you know, just that this hardness was returning. And he was, and more that he was also really feeling in his body, a holistic sense of self, right? However, I was aware through all of the change that there was still something that for me was missing. And that was that he,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:14.21)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (20:28.61)

very, very rarely ejaculated. What he mostly had was more like what you see people trying for in tantra, right? Which would be lots and lots of orgasm, but not necessarily the ejaculation.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:32.119)

Hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:41.397)

Mm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:45.163)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:49.842)

And that was on, I mean, in Tantra, I think of it as this is on purpose. But what you're saying is with your partner, it was not on purpose. It wasn't that he was holding it back, just wasn't coming.

erica leroye (she/her) (20:57.366)

It was not on purpose. No, no, it just wasn't coming. And at the time, because it was before I did my training as a sexological body worker, I was working as an educator in the world. I was a social justice advocate. I didn't know. All I knew was that the orgasm that I have when someone ejaculates is a distinct orgasm that I was missing.

But because of his history, I didn't want to lay that out on him. And because I had another partner, I was like, okay, you know, again, I'm not going to, I want to just allow this, I don't want to be the person who has any complaints or any pressure on this beautiful cock that it has been shifting and growing and playing. And my, you know, it was very much like this play date time of my, he, you know, my pussy and his cock were just like.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (21:30.763)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (21:56.382)

our brains could just get out of the way and make space for their play, right? But then in 2011, he died in his sleep suddenly. And what we found out was that he had, he was 42, African-American man, and he died in his sleep of undiagnosed diabetes. And one of the biggest tells in men for diabetes,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:00.44)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (22:26.434)

is erectile flow and function. And for diabetes in particular, that not the ejaculation issue, that's a particular tell for diabetes. Yeah, I think it's called, you know, it's either retrograde ejaculation or anejaculation. Right? And so,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:45.298)

Interesting. Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:51.374)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (22:55.554)

Having been in, as a massage therapist, I do my Red Cross training every two years. I've, you know, taken, I've gone to classes and taken tests where things about diabetes have been in it, but it's never, that has never been something that's been brought up. Cause I really was like, how could I not have known this? Right? How could I not have known?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:12.682)

Yeah, I-

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:17.45)

I think of the erectile issue as being, I never thought of it as a sign for diabetes, but certainly a symptom, right? And so you're opening my eyes to the ejaculation component of it completely. And I'm gonna assume most of the people, because I consider myself pretty geeky, most of the people listening to this episode.

erica leroye (she/her) (23:25.506)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:43.518)

if they take anything else away from it, right, is this new information. My mother died of breast cancer, not from a typical form of breast cancer, but the one real rare, you know, there's always that real rare one that people, even the doctors don't know about, right? And we do our best in my family to educate people to look at things as any kind of change, go to your doctor.

erica leroye (she/her) (23:56.649)

Uh huh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:09.69)

and also come in with the information of, hey, I need to take this information about inflammatory breast cancer with me because the doctor may not know it. And I want this to be that space too, in the men's health world to say, hey, this is something that is on my radar for the first time, that ejaculation issues could also be one of these signs.

erica leroye (she/her) (24:23.938)

Hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (24:31.585)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:36.394)

of undiagnosed diabetes and how critical this is to have that information.

erica leroye (she/her) (24:44.062)

It's so important, you know, and we, I wanna go back to something that you said about the erectile piece as a symptom, because I even, you know, I have someone who I just saw the other day who said to me, you know, I really feel like you saved my life because I was telling him this particular story, right, about my partner, and he had this aha, because he was having

Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:06.466)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (25:12.586)

soft cock issues and had, like many men, attributed it to a challenging situation in the marriage and stress and that it wasn't health. What I see happening often with men and

erica leroye (she/her) (25:37.598)

soft cock is either they're thinking about it only medically and they're not looking at stress and all of the other social emotional components, or they're looking at it only as social emotional and not looking at it physically. I think our work in the world is to provide space where we can give an objective opinion.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:55.618)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (26:07.37)

because we're seeing it in action. It's so strange that there are not more opportunities for the penis to be assessed in its natural flow state. Yes, it's a symptom of diabetes, but often just like with heart disease, prostate cancer,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (26:21.934)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (26:36.834)

Like I know, you know, it can also be, you know, blood, anything that could be a blood issue, right? That often we see that the penis as a barometer of health, right, will show that something is going on years before it shows up on the tests and all these other things. So we really want to, I feel like a huge piece of what we're trying to do with soft cock week is also really...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (26:42.211)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (26:49.646)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (27:06.834)

encourage and acknowledge that listening to the body and not being in a place of something is wrong with my penis, but actually, oh, my penis is telling me that there are some things I should be paying attention to. And again, if we go back to the thing with the antenna and how we cut people off, I...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:18.67)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:24.778)

Yeah, something shifted.

erica leroye (she/her) (27:33.65)

There's something called proprioception and interoception, right? Those come from the sensory motor world, which is really the ability to, it is the ability to listen to and touch in with your body. And when we cut the body off at a young age, then those skills, their skill sets that are supposed to be developing throughout, you know, childhood and adolescence, those skills aren't really there.

So a lot of the work that I do is actually around helping to get that particular part of the sensory motor system to turn back on. And part of the...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (28:10.446)

or I don't, I'm not an expert at this, but I do dabble in little things on Facebook, right? And one of the groups I'm in is on interospection and is that the right word? Yeah, seption. And that there is definitely a tie with neurodiversity in that too, right?

erica leroye (she/her) (28:13.771)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (28:20.694)

Uh-huh. Interoception.

erica leroye (she/her) (28:31.498)

Yes, so sensory motor integration, it came out of, is part of the world sometimes in the medical world of OTs, of occupational therapists, but it's also as an educator, it's part of the work that I've done in special ed and remedial education. And we're all neurodiverse. That's the nature of the human mammal, right? We're all individual.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (28:56.707)

What is the one pinpoint spot of not, right? It doesn't exist, right? We're a wide variety. Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (29:01.598)

It doesn't exist. Truly. My father was one of the first, I think, 11, he was in the first cohort of pediatric neurologists in the country. I'm 55. So I had the benefit of having somebody who actually understood something about the developing brain raise me. And I got to be in his office and learn a lot of things. So I feel like I'm really happy about

where we are in talking about neurodiversity. I also want to make sure, I think a lot of what we're trying to do in the work that we're doing is take it away from the jargon into the embodied, well, now what? Right, so now I know that I have this. So yes, interoception goes with neurodiversity, but neurodiversity also goes with birth, prenatal, birth trauma, how you...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (29:46.754)

rights.

erica leroye (she/her) (30:00.65)

you know, how you attach, what do you have, you know, what kinds of experiences do you have coming into your body in the first place? Is it something that was congenital? Right? In the old days, all neurodiversity was only looked at if it was clearly like a congenital something. Right now, we've expanded neurodiversity to all the things that we pick up. That's why I say we all are because that's again, that's how we're designed. We're designed to

Michelle Renee (she/her) (30:10.987)

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (30:18.158)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (30:28.962)

have a sensory experience. So when we, so a lot of the men that I work with are, and I say men because I don't work a lot in the trans community, right? So that's, it's not an area that has really come to me. I've done some study, I've done some training, but they're people who that is, they are better at doing that work than I am. So my particular niche

is with cis-gendered men. But a lot of the men that I work with, I mean, this is where you see, when you have an overriding question, right, my overriding question was, why do we have this epidemic? What are the common traits? What's going on? What's the big picture here? That I would say that the majority of men that I see do have some kind of neurodivergence that are often older.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:15.405)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (31:27.934)

So the language that we're using these days around all of this, it just wasn't around. They were pushed through systems. So maybe they don't really know how to read a room, or they don't really know how to be in their body. What they do know, what is common, is that there was a time in their life where the way their penis functioned was

Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:43.394)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (31:56.658)

something they didn't have to think about. I had a client who I thought he put it so beautifully. He said, being conscious is really hard work. There are so many things. There are so many things.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:59.51)

Yep.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (32:12.074)

Yeah, and it's such a shift. Yeah. I just I say this on every episode. And I just maybe this will be like, we should make a list of the themes, right of this week. But like, shifting this, this reeducation, sexual sexuality, reeducation that needs to happen. Let's assume that nothing else is really a major problem other than the fact that

erica leroye (she/her) (32:22.699)

Uh-huh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (32:37.77)

we have to understand that our desire changes, right? Maybe it's just as simple as learning about responsive desire and that this is not just a female thing, right? We've, I remember thinking it was like, women are responsive and men are spontaneous, right? But that's not fair because it's not ever always anything. Right? And I think that it's just part of this week of like,

erica leroye (she/her) (32:49.034)

Right, exact.

erica leroye (she/her) (33:00.542)

Exactly.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (33:04.21)

We didn't get this education growing up. If we got any sex education, we certainly didn't get the nuance of aging, what it's like to have sex in a long-term relationship. Like all these other, like these layers of how to have like the sex that you want to have, we just didn't have that kind of education. It was like, this is how you don't get pregnant.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (33:35.218)

And if you were born into a male body and you were cut off from the sensation of what your penis can tell you, you're told that you need to be secretive, you need to be quiet and quick, right? That is not the way that a great sexual partnered relationship works and your penis isn't trained for it.

erica leroye (she/her) (33:48.826)

Mm-hmm, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (34:00.511)

Yeah, right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (34:03.554)

It's like when they come in, it's like the first thing I'm like is, okay, let's talk about how you masturbate. Cause we're going to need to retrain some of that. Right.

erica leroye (she/her) (34:09.3)

Exactly.

And that's really the primary work that I do is in masturbation coaching, masturbation training, rethinking what masturbation is because there is so much of this, like there's a lot of guilt and shame and story around masturbation. But I've been a movement educator since early...

early adolescence. One of my first jobs was teaching aerobics at the local nautilus, right? I'm a dancer, I'm a choreographer, I'm a movement specialist. And to me, sexual activity is a movement activity. It's like when people say to me, well, porn isn't real. And I'm like, well, what their bodies are doing is real. That's like saying pro football isn't real, right?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (35:08.874)

Right? It's a shortened, I'm guilty of saying it all the time. So I'm like, it's a shortened, to say it's not real is just not nuanced enough, right? It's like, this is not what your sex is going to look like. And it's very curated and edited. And there's so much, it's not real enough, I guess maybe is the terminology.

erica leroye (she/her) (35:09.624)

Like.

erica leroye (she/her) (35:13.224)

Uh huh.

erica leroye (she/her) (35:32.198)

Maybe. I mean, I found for myself that, well, first of all, I started out in the realm of erotic ergonomics way back in the day. I used to read Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmo, because I liked that they listed all sorts of different positions and ideas. And so it was like, oh, I haven't tried this. Oh, I haven't tried that. So again, as a choreographer, as a movement-oriented educator,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (35:46.062)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

erica leroye (she/her) (36:00.818)

I can look at porn and say, oh, that's a position I'm curious about. What would that feel like? Let's try this out. So I'm using it to take, you can take ideas and then implement. Because what I see in my work is that most people have a very, very limited movement vocabulary in the realm of sexual activity.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (36:09.763)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (36:28.982)

Well, just like they have a limited emotional vocabulary. They have, it's just, if we haven't had the education around these areas, we don't have the words. It's hard for us to talk about them. And so like, absolutely. I think what comes up for me when I say porn isn't real is like experiences working with people with a delayed sexual debut.

erica leroye (she/her) (36:34.284)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (36:57.01)

where their focus or their concept of sex has really been around what they've watched on porn. And then we have that moment of I've had this literal thing happen with someone that says, oh, this is so not like porn. Like said those words out of their mouth where I'm like, oh, that's your only context for this. So I think it's very much like

erica leroye (she/her) (37:12.683)

right.

erica leroye (she/her) (37:18.926)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (37:21.982)

I can see you coming into it with a different eye of looking at it and saying, I do the same thing. Oh, that looks fun. You know, you don't know what you don't know and you see somebody do something, you're like, oh, I'd be down to try that. But I get the other side where a guy comes in and says, hey, so my dick isn't hard 100% of the time, something must be wrong. And I'm like, where do you get this concept that your penis should be hard 100% of the time? That's like the nuanced conversation around porn.

erica leroye (she/her) (37:29.174)

What?

erica leroye (she/her) (37:35.019)

Right.

erica leroye (she/her) (37:44.099)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (37:47.69)

Right. Well, that and that part for sure is real. I mean, the piece that we're talking about, you know, is that, and I hear this, I hear the same thing from men all the time, which is, you know, I'm supposed to be hard all the time. Where do you get that idea from? I get it from porn. And so the, it's not that porn isn't real.

It's that we don't have people making porn that show the cock in all of its various states, that we still, from a cultural societal point of view, are putting pressure on the male body image. We've done a lot more work around naming that society is kind of fucked up around female body image.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (38:34.187)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (38:41.933)

Yes.

erica leroye (she/her) (38:42.674)

we don't talk enough about what we do for male body image. We're not seeing heavier set men. We're not seeing the penis, all the things. So if porn is how most people are getting their sex education, then part of the issue is how do we add into the mix more choices that reflect

Michelle Renee (she/her) (39:00.161)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (39:11.702)

this isn't real, right? That's part of, that's a piece of it, right? And so I often have to say, like, you know, this, let's explore all of the, you know, if we go back to Ebb and Flow, all of the in-between experiences, because if what you're used to is I see boobs and I get rigid, right? And now I see boobs and...

I am not rigid. My first question is, is there flow at all? Because sometimes what happens with the mind is, especially around this issue, is it's an all or nothing. And so a lot of the work is around, and this goes back to the interoception and proprioception, is learning how to identify and feel.

all of the feelings of arousal and pleasure and deliciousness that happens, wall flow is building as opposed to there it is, I must be turned on. Now I use the concept or the image of a garden hose. You're turning on the tap and you want to... That the mind has to...

you know, do the work of starting that trickle. And then what are these things learning? So much of masturbation coaching is learning anew what turns you on. Because sometimes part of this is also that the things as andropause comes on for those who are older, just like with menopause, the things that were your go-to may no longer be your go-to, right? And

Michelle Renee (she/her) (40:50.626)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (41:06.154)

So a lot of this is coming, a lot of this piece I find really helpful to think about from my undergraduate was from a Tibetan Buddhist university. And so really coming to this work in re-visioning and re-inhabiting masturbation from a place of beginner's mind. Because if we are not in beginner's mind with curiosity and like, what is there new for me to learn?

about myself, about my partner, about the world, then the anxious mind kicks in. And when the anxious mind kicks in, you're flooding the body with cortisol. And what we need in order, the penis needs the body to be down-regulated, right? In order for the penis to relax and have flow come in, whether that's to get fully hard or partially hard or just a feeling of warmth and flow,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (41:52.227)

Hmm?

erica leroye (she/her) (42:05.814)

then everything else in the nervous system has to be, it's such a funny line, Michelle. It's that line of, I am relaxed and I am anticipatory. I am relaxed and I am aroused. But if the I am relaxed isn't there, and especially if the penis has had any kind of physical trauma, pain,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (42:21.535)

Yes.

erica leroye (she/her) (42:35.554)

Right? That goes back to when we were talking about the PTs, what I see, often what happens is I'll work with men where they had a really, really wonderful physical therapist who helped them go from penile pain to neutral, but then that's where things stop. We got you to neutral. Right? And so then I get to pick up from neutral into pleasure and explore what that pleasure is. So yeah, that's not sure where we are.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (42:47.31)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (42:56.899)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (43:03.919)

Yeah. Well, I'm just thinking about that ruminating thought of anxiety because I had one event where my penis disappointed me, right? And now I'm going to ruminate on that, which is going to perpetuate that, right? And how to break that cycle, that's the work, right? That's the...

erica leroye (she/her) (43:17.194)

Uh huh, exactly.

erica leroye (she/her) (43:24.318)

Right, exactly.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (43:30.91)

part of the reeducation of what if we just were in the moment and worked with whatever showed up in the room and took all the pressure off the penis, right? Then we can get relaxed enough.

erica leroye (she/her) (43:47.274)

Yep. Well, that's where masturbation as a training activity really helps. So I think, again, there's a lot of cultural stuff, religious stuff, all this stuff around masturbation. But if we go back to this is a movement activity, this is an embodied movement activity, then what we know from sports psychology, from the world of athletics, from the world of dance, is

you need to train for the activity that you want to be good at. So one thing that I see is very, very common is that the masturbation habit body that a man has developed since often since they first started masturbating, right? So they have a pattern of masturbation that in no shape, manner or form looks like

Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:21.14)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (44:45.814)

penetrative sex with a partner.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:48.479)

Absolutely.

erica leroye (she/her) (44:50.302)

It's just, you know, it's completely different. You know, when I watch a lot of masturbation coaching is masturbation witnessing, right? And I'll watch how someone is stroking and then I'll say, okay, well, I can see how for an individual session that feels good for you to be able to have that sense of relief and release and build. But I can tell you as a woman, there's nothing that I just watched.

that translates over to your penis knowing, oh, now I'm in this situation, this is what we've been training for. And so that's like the way I always like to say it is, if you were training to be a gold medal high jumper, you wouldn't train by doing butterfly stroke in the pool.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (45:43.448)

Right.

erica leroye (she/her) (45:45.314)

Right, it's very simple in that sense. So the technique and the, you know, often where I start is looking at stroke pattern, making sure that there are times in a masturbation session where the whole of the body is moving into the hand rather than the hand stroking, thinking of, and really also the other piece that we know again

physical training, the physical training world is not only do you want to train for the activity that you want to be good at, but you want to visualize yourself being good at it. I'm not thinking about I'm going to miss the shot. If I want to make a three-pointer, I'm not imagining myself on the court missing.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (46:36.391)

No.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (46:43.146)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (46:43.278)

I'm imagining myself on the court, but with erections, with sex, what we often hear, I'm sure you get this too, is that again, the mind is so caught up in the fear and the anxiety that they're not able to visualize. So a lot of my work is teaching two things. One is really allowing people to go into...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (46:57.056)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (47:09.486)

fantasy that is not really fantasy, but it's actually the power of imagination. Let's imagine what this is. And also recalling memory of when you have had success. Because if you can recall the memory and actually hang out in that experience of remembering, oh, I remember being in the car when I was 19 and I remember how she put her hand in my lap.

And lo and behold, when they start to talk about things slowly and actually build up the sensory memory, then, oh, hold on, I haven't felt this in years. I'm feeling swelling. I'm feeling some bulge. I'm feeling something because the body has an incredible memory, but we don't practice remembering what's good. And then that stymies our ability to then...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:01.634)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (48:06.762)

visualize having that again. We get stuck. I see a lot of men get really stuck. And when we're stuck, when we're vacillating like that, then the penis is kind of off course, right? So, yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:22.87)

This is reminding me of in seventh grade, I went to, I was a, I played basketball and I went to this camp one summer. I think, I think it was seventh or eighth grade. And I look back at it now and I was like, it was so progressive for looking like at the time I didn't realize what I was in the middle of, but it was called Yes I Can Camp. And a lot of it was about visualizing like

It's not about we're not going to teach you how to do layups and we're going to teach you how to shoot free throws and whatever. It was things like taking down the basketball hoop and showing us physically around our bodies how big it was that we it was it was not this tiny hole that we were shooting for. It was quite large and giving us picture a picture of a hoop to put on our wall in our dorm rooms where we were staying on this campus.

erica leroye (she/her) (49:03.643)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (49:15.114)

And we were to do so many imaginary free throws laying in bed at night because you would hit 100% of them, right? And I'm just tying this together with this talk about masturbation coaching.

erica leroye (she/her) (49:24.27)

Totally, totally. That's exactly what is. Yep. So let's keep moving in that way. So when I work in masturbation coaching, we're thinking about all of the different positions in all the different planes of space. So what I generally have people do who are having trouble with their erections is I'll say, OK, let's take.

Two days a week you can do whatever you're used to doing and two days a week where it's training. So first of all, we're creating a mental container that isn't saying what you've done you can't do anymore. Right, it's saying, you know, that works in a context. Right, that's that, it's different. And then let's put in some training. So in the training sessions, we want to really be working on imagining how that

Position that we're in actually would be so and we'll and I generally will start with what's your usual position? So let's say someone says to me. I usually masturbate laying in bed, you know on my back All right. Great. So that's your position. So if you were laying in bed on your back and You have what would a partner? be doing Okay, so

Let's say you have a partner and they're riding you, or maybe it begins, maybe you begin soft, right? Maybe you are soft. And so the way it begins is maybe that partner is just, you're using, you're activating. I like to try to get people to activate one hand as the lover hand, right? So, this hand, and it's like drumming. Masturbation is definitely like drumming, right? It's a tricky act.

So, you know, maybe this is beginning with some touch, right? So let's go ahead and, you know, have that, you know, how turn yourself on the way you would like a lover to be touching you and turning yourself on. So let's explore first that, you know, all the ways, feel the difference in the quality of touch that you give to yourself and notice when it starts to feel like an arousing lover touch. Bring that in.

erica leroye (she/her) (51:48.53)

Then let's say you're laying on your back and I've moved from just stroking your legs and stroking around to maybe now it's a mouth, right? So imagining that mouth discovering your balls and discovering around you. I like to encourage people to use different fabrics, have different fabrics around because that can help with that. So a velvet or a velveteen has a similar texture to a tongue.

So having a glove or having something that then stimulates because we're trying to trick the brain too, right? So bringing some of that in and then you're imagining that tongue and then you're imagining that warm mouth, making sure that you have good lube. I generally recommend all of my clients to use grapeseed oil. It just has a natural, it feels most like a natural.

lubricant that feels most like a warm mouth. Yeah. I mean, you can't use it if you're using certain toys or if you're using a condom, but if it's just skin-to-skin, and especially for masturbation, that has been a game changer. I've had people with post-prostectomy who have had trouble regaining erections that just switching to using grapeseed oil has

Michelle Renee (she/her) (52:48.062)

Oh good, cause that's what I use.

erica leroye (she/her) (53:14.838)

been the game changer for them. But we're imagining then, OK, now are we starting to, if you're not fully hard yet, maybe you can't get hard or you're only there. But then still, what would a partner be doing? So maybe now they're taking your penis and rubbing the frenulum on the lips of their vulva or something. So.

using one hand is that part of the body and really building up because the more you build up the imagination, and I think this goes back to the issue with porn, is that when I use porn for coaching, then I'll say again, use it sometimes as your dopamine hit, which is more about the hunting for something that makes your eyes go, ooh. But if you're actually using it for training, then we're looking at eye-hand coordination.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (54:05.612)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (54:09.87)

Can you match what you're doing? If you can't get a visual in your head yet on your own, then if you see, you know, there's a nice juicy ass and the vulvar lips are showing and someone is penetrating, then can you move, you know, can you match the movement so that there's something that's connective there to what the body is going to be doing? But let's going back to, if you're on your back, then the...

There are only certain things that can be happening. Someone can be between your legs doing something, or they can be on top of you, facing you, facing away from you, kind of towards the side, but that's a limited range of motion. So certain kind of stroking isn't going to do that. Now, the stroking that would work would be, okay, even if you're soft, you can grab around the shaft, so that the part of the...

coronal head maybe still has a little bit of fullness there. And then with your hand, you're imagining, okay, here's just my partner is just teasing the top by bouncing on it, right? And then, and just adding that will start, can start to get the blood flow in, or if you're standing, right? A lot of people who have erectile issues,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (55:20.908)

Right.

erica leroye (she/her) (55:34.194)

When I talk with them, they don't stand. Standing is the easiest in terms of blood. If it's a blood flow issue, that's a great position. Laying flat on your back, getting the blood to go from your heart horizontally and then push this whole mechanism up, that's one of the hardest positions. So yeah, if getting any sense of hardness is a challenge laying down, switch it up. Start with being on your knees or standing up.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (55:51.843)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (56:03.05)

And then where would you be? You would be on the side of the bed. You would be, maybe someone would be on a kitchen counter. Like, you know, and really, I like, it's like build, I've been thinking of it as sort of build your own Kama Sutra. Like, what is it, you know, I like to do home visits where I come and really look at, okay, in this chair, these are all the ways I would masturbate. In this area, this is how you could masturbate. And this, because we're very limited. We limit ourselves to.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (56:15.49)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (56:31.294)

I have to do it quickly in the shower, I have to hide it in the closet, or I have to do it like this, as opposed to really using the environment to imagine. So a lot of my clients, I'm like, okay, if you're gonna bring somebody home with you, what is the choreography of from the moment you walk in the door, all of the places where you can be building the arousal and feeling where...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (56:51.594)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (56:58.23)

that opportunity to connect body to body can be. Does that make sense? Uh-huh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:02.602)

I'm just, yeah, and I'm thinking about how unfortunate that we don't teach masturbation to our children, right? Cause they're figuring this out on their own. Like that the most, you know, I can hope for as a, as a mom with kids is like, mom, do you recommend lubricant? Oh yes. Let me tell you about lubricant. Right. Or, you know,

erica leroye (she/her) (57:23.278)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:24.918)

Baby, I was thinking when I used to sell sex toys, how great it would have been to hand out a masturbation sleeve to every boy with a bottle of lube and some instructions. Because it's like the first thing I do with clients is like, let's break the death grip. And one great way to do that is to separate your hand from your cock and use something in the middle, right? Something that's a little squishy and much more like a vagina.

erica leroye (she/her) (57:43.01)

Mm hmm. Right.

erica leroye (she/her) (57:50.902)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:54.366)

Right? Like these things that if we could have started our kids off right from the beginning with just some basics, you know, not the Jergens lotion, right? Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (58:02.806)

Not a sock.

erica leroye (she/her) (58:07.738)

Right, exactly. Not the Vaseline and a sock, right? Things that just aren't good for... That's another thing I see is that sometimes, you know, part of why... Because really what we're talking about in this soft cock week, you know, container is, you know, first of all, that it's absolutely okay, right? I love hanging out with a cock that doesn't get hard. You know, there are so many different textures. There's so many different ways.

to engage with it that are lovely and with the whole body. And playing with the whole body and then coming back, bringing it all connected together. A lot of what I see is that we have, the body has this interesting messaging where like 97% of the time, the genitals are having to be non-inclusive to the whole of self.

And then in partnered activity or solo activity, masturbation or sex, then it's almost like it's only about the genitals and the rest of the body. So when, this is really, Michelle, I think for me, working past, you know, sexological body work for me is a tool that I added to my toolkit, you know, in this work that I've been doing for 30.

I just realized next year it'll be 33 years of doing creative body release. And the thing I'm most curious about is when do we create opportunity in our adult lives to be 100% embodied self? Having spent so much time in the world of infant and toddler development.

What we see is we come in that way. We are whole. My grandkids watch TV with their hands down their pants. I mean, when we're potty training, there's all of this nakedness and embodiedness, and then it just cuts off. And when we are, you were saying how what you do is more relational, and everything that I do is relational.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:00:32.674)

But what I have really come to is that all of the other work that I did prior to sexological body work added into the toolbox was still not hitting this place where true reconnection to the whole being and the whole self can happen. And the rewiring the neuroplasticity that you're talking about, you know.

If we're not doing that as part of the way that we see our masturbation practice, then we're missing something because to have erectile function is this complicated system of the nerves, the blood, the hormones, the neurotransmitters, the fascia. I see so many of the… There are a couple of things I can say. One of the things that I see is a really common trait.

men who come to me and are really having trouble getting the cock to grow and fill is that their legs are super tight, right? All the way down. The tension, that there's tension in the calves and there's tension in the hamstrings and the quads. And so there's so much tightness in the leg. And if you think about the way anatomy is and the fascia that goes under the testicles and the fascia that goes around.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:01:37.891)

Mm-hmm. The tension, right? Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:01:57.506)

the cavernosa and spongiosa, right? That if the fascia is pulling tight away into the leg, then you need there to be suppleness in the fascia in order for there to be engorgement, right? So I always, you know, I'm working on the legs, working on the shoulders, the neck, you know, all of the whole body. So we really wanna get everything. And that's why...

In masturbation, I'll also encourage people to make a music playlist and get them to dance, to move, to be able to move their body, get freedom in the pelvis so that it's not locked as one unit, but that they start to think about that the leg comes up and over and that the sacrum is part of the torso and drops.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:02:31.31)

Mm-hmm. Move their body.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:02:54.39)

that the penis, one of the things I really like to help men with thinking about is that, that the penis is like a fish hook or a J of the spine, that the tip of the penis is actually like the end of the spine, right? And that as you're stroking, if you're stroking in a way that is holding that image, that also helps the tension in the back to relax so that you can get some more fill.

as part of that.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:03:27.45)

It reminds me of being in Betty Dotson's masturbation workshop as a woman. And one of the things she said was like, quit doing what they do in porn. Don't arch your back. Right. You're cutting off that blood flow through your spine, that energy through your spine and to curve instead like the other direction to like go more into like a sea rather than the.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:03:44.034)

Mm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:03:47.647)

Yeah. Yep.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:03:52.31)

the arched woman who throws her head back and is taken by ecstasy, right? Like to actually do quite the opposite, right? And I'm assuming a lot of this translates over to penis owners.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:03:53.983)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:03:59.178)

Uh-huh.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:04:03.626)

It does. You're making me, you're making me, so one of the things that, so going back to when I did the sexological bodywork training, it was the year after my partner died, and I was really in bad shape, you know? And so a lot of my own grief work has really been in my own masturbation practice as well. So again, you know, so much of what I'm sharing and teaching is from my own practice and embodied practice. And

I started filming myself masturbating around that time, well before that, but really actively for the last 14 plus years. Every time I masturbated, I would put it on, I would film it. So you're making me think that I need to look at that because I think I arch my back a lot, but it's about a certain kind of, that there's a place where that naturally comes in. Right?

versus this is what I think I'm supposed to be doing. Right? Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:05:05.526)

I'm sure that's the nuance of it, right? But it did make me very conscious of that. And I really pay attention to, it's the locking of the body. I can find myself running into being more intention and masturbation rather than letting all that flow.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:05:24.586)

Yeah. And I think that also brings up for me the...

erica leroye (she/her) (01:05:32.994)

When I'm talking with men about who are concerned, right, that they're not going to be able to, maybe they can get an erection, but they can't maintain it, right, or they can get some fill enough to penetrate, but then they're afraid that they can't maintain it, that there's a fear, like there's a fear that if they stop and reposition, right, then they won't be able to get it again.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:05:58.115)

Hmm?

erica leroye (she/her) (01:06:03.454)

So they'll just sort of push through and maybe have an orgasm or maybe still be able to ejaculate, but it's unsatisfying or maybe they can't. And one of the things that we want to do that's part of masturbation training and also partner work training is to be okay, again, with the ebb and flow. That

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:06:14.113)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:06:21.454)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:06:27.858)

If you've come into this position, I mean, this part of what I learned with my partner, right, if we're in this position and it's feeling really good, but then something has changed, don't push through, switch, right? Now move to something else, do something differently, and keep expanding the, you know, the window of tolerance, right? Like keep expanding that, oh, I can be in this position and then I can take a break.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:06:38.102)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:06:54.942)

and move and do something else. And then yes, there might be some rebuild. I might lose something, but then it's going to build back up again and then I can switch. And it's all really about getting the mind to get out of the way. I like to say sex is about cock and pussy rule the room. Cock and pussy are dom to mind. Right? Just shut the fuck up.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:07:11.979)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:07:22.133)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And follow the pleasure.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:07:24.81)

and let us play, you know, and follow the pleasure.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:07:30.038)

Right, like it's, I'm thinking, I'm thinking A, I'm sure there's some tools we could share to keep that flow going. Like I'm thinking about, okay, what if I'm having sex where I need to use condoms, right? And sometimes condoms are the barrier to either keeping the erection or I've lost the erection, do I need to put a new condom on and these kinds of questions that pop up. So I kind of want to like,

shift a little bit to hit some, like, here's some really take home things, like pro tips thing.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:07:59.79)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:08:04.874)

Yeah, I think a lot of people are not, they actually just really are not skilled enough with their hands. So again, that goes back to, you know, working a little bit differently with the way that people are masturbating, because if you have a soft penis and you are trying to put a condom on, that is going to be challenging, right? So what I generally do is,

I'm doing a lot of hand work to fill the blood up. And this is something I actually wanted to make sure I said, so I'm glad this is coming up. One of the things that I see is very common is that we think of the penis only as the external part of the penis, right? So that it's what's there hanging in the front. And many men, again, because we have such shitty...

sex education and anatomy and physiology even are like an AP class and not what everybody is learning. So many people, men and their partners, don't understand that there is such, you know, I think I've read that the equivalent of what's on the outside is on the inside. So if you think about a lever system, then yeah.

If you're only stroking what's on the outside, then what is that standing on? I have clients where they will tell you, I can't get hard. Then they get hard because I'm feeling, I'm visualizing, I've looked at tons of anatomical pictures so I can hold it in my head.

Filling the corpus cavernosa, the two primary tubes, from all the way at the back, from all the way in the perineum, and building that up. So that you're building it, you're building it, you're building it, you're building it, so that when you get to the point where the external penis is, it has something holding it up.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:10:11.95)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:10:24.926)

So we're talking about for the people that don't have the visual here. We're talking behind the testicles, right? Yeah

erica leroye (she/her) (01:10:28.67)

Yes. Behind the testicles, right. Behind the testicles and all the way through, right, where you can move the testicles a little bit and then kind of keep going. Right. So you can feel it. Yes. Unless you have a very, very tight perineum, right? If your pelvic muscles are tight, then that's going to be compressing that cavernosa. So that's part of why you want to do massage, why you want to do a warm compress, why you want to have, you know,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:10:36.779)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:10:40.426)

Yeah, you'll feel it. It'll get rigid, yep.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:10:58.306)

hot warm breath. A lot of times, you know, just breathing on the area with your warm breath can start to let that relax. I mean, not you, if you're apart, if you're doing that to a partner, it's gonna be pretty hard to do your warm breath on yourself.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:11:12.91)

If you can do that, I want pictures. Please send them to me. Not pictures, I want videos. I want video. Yeah. I know.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:11:17.639)

I want videos, exactly. Watch it, you're going to get something. First of all, we want to build that up because going back to the question of how to put a condom on, if there isn't that internal structure, then you're screwed and not in the way you want to be.

really playing. A lot of times we're having foreplay or outer course, we're in our outer course zone. And then it's like, okay, it feels like it's time. And just taking that break, then the penis will subside. And then we're trying to put a condom on something that isn't. So I like to grip the base of the penis. I like to build from the bottom. And then when I feel like it's hit that place right at the pelvic bone,

then grip around it somewhat tight so that I'm now taking the blood that's there and pushing the blood that's there and pushing it more forward. Then, you know, so like a cock ring, but with my hand, then playing some more, juicing that cavernosa up. We think about the image I have of the cavernosa is like a kitchen sponge. You know, those kitchen sponges you can buy that are flat and then you put them in water and they plump up.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:12:39.234)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:12:41.034)

So our erotic energy, the way that we touch, the way that we talk, all of these different things are the water that's plumping up that spongy tissue. So now we get that little bit plumper. If it's not plump enough, then don't put a condom on yet because then it isn't really ready to penetrate. So keep playing, keep enjoying, keep building that eye contact, whatever it is that turns you on, and then put the condom on.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:12:51.041)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:13:09.706)

And then when the condom is on, take out your lube, not your grape seed oil, but your condom happy lube, and continue to stroke and build and just adore and give the penis this happy continued time that is about it being receiving, not just like, oh, what we're trying to do is get in.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:13:15.5)

Yes.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:13:38.925)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:13:39.03)

That to me is what I have seen work.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:13:43.606)

Do you recommend people practice with condoms during masturbation? Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:13:47.21)

Absolutely. I think if you're going, because of what we know about the way the mind body works and muscle memory works, if you are going to be having partnered sex using a condom, then it is very wise to practice masturbating with a condom. Because again, what we're trying to avoid is cock confusion.

If the cock is confused, its natural state of confusion is, I don't know if I'm supposed to be here. I don't know what I'm doing. Is this okay? Is this not okay? Wait a minute. Hold on. When we do this at home, I don't have this thing over me, and now you're putting this thing over me, which changes how I feel. It changes my neurocapacity. If we have negative thoughts about condoms, exactly.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:14:36.558)

Mm-hmm. Especially if we have negative thoughts about condoms, right? Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:14:45.518)

positive thoughts about condoms. Okay, I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing and I'm okay with it because I'm sex positive and I like to have sex with lots of different people. But if I've been practicing without one, then on the cellular level, on the sensory level, the body is now going, wait, this doesn't match, right? This is confusion. So it is, you know,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:15:09.719)

This is different.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:15:14.642)

It is helpful. I know for myself, like I'll use a condom on toys, you know, partially because it's easier to clean them. Right. And also because when I'm doing my own practice sessions where, you know, I want to be able to ride for 15 minutes, let's say, you know, I know I have to practice doing that. Otherwise, I'm going to give out in three.

You know, my thighs are gonna burn or my butt's gonna hurt or my knees are gonna give out. So, you know, if I'm gonna be with partners where, you know, same thing, getting used to that sensation, especially if you're used to being fluid bonded. So putting that condiment is helpful.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:15:55.022)

Yeah. I wanna also remind people that internal condoms are a thing, right?

erica leroye (she/her) (01:16:01.418)

Internal condoms, have you used them? Uh-huh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:16:04.062)

I have. What I always say with clients when I introduce the idea as an option is that for me personally, I feel like they take a lot of trust from the penis owner to be very mindful if they're ones to pull out and reinsert, that it would be really easy to bypass the internal condom. But otherwise, I love the idea of being able to have it in.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:16:27.864)

Mmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:16:33.234)

And then if that opportunity hits, it's already there, right? It's something that if you're ready for penetration, we don't have to make that pause to get the condom and apply it. That it's already there. I prefer sex without either with, you know, I'm in a fluid bonded relationship. It is simpler in so many ways. And also, that's not how the real world works.

for most, I mean, most people are gonna need to have some kind of protection. Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:17:09.374)

Yeah. And that goes back to what we were talking about porn, too. Like I just had an experience recently where I was watching something and I was very turned on and then the scene was that the cock owner took his cock out of this woman's ass and it was a two-girl, one-guy clip. And then he...

put it in the other girl's mouth. And I immediately was like, that is such a turnoff for me because of everything that I know about like hygiene and cleanliness and STI and da da, that it's just, I was like, nope, this is now a no go. Like I can't get past this. So I think we need to also see, we need to encourage people who make porn, whether it's their home stuff that they're uploading or it's professional studios to have more scenes

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:17:50.242)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:18:06.226)

where condoms, both the internal and the external condoms are being used because we just don't see that enough. And so again, if that's what we're looking for, and that's what the mind has taken in as this is the way, then that can be problematic as well. Yeah. I've only used... I've only used... I only have recently tried... First of all, I mean, I have a whole story around this because it's been really hard to get.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:18:10.978)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:18:23.15)

Yeah. Have you used internal condoms? Did you have like a different experience or?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:18:36.056)

Yes.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:18:36.626)

Yeah, they're really hard to get. I tried to get some from our local Planned Parenthood, and they were charging $16 per.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:18:48.266)

Oh, wow. I mean, I knew there were a lot more expensive than external condoms. I was fortunate that one of my friends was able to get some from the local Planned Parenthood or wherever she was going for her STI testing. And she brought me a few. So.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:19:02.622)

Yeah. They used to give them free. You could get three free at a time from our local county health department, and they've changed that. So finally, I found, I mean, I couldn't find, like that was the lowest price. And then I finally found some on Amazon that were lower. So I've tried, I've only tried them once. And what I.

experienced. It was really good to do that because what I experienced for the first time was, oh, this is why people with a penis say, I don't like to wear it because I don't have full sensation. Because I definitely noticed, oh, even the difference between my internal tissue and a condom over a penis,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:19:44.398)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:19:57.914)

I still, I'm still, my nerves are still getting touched in the same way. Right. But with the internal, I was like, oh, there's definitely a dampening of sensation. And it wasn't like I never want to use it again, but it was very clear, like, oh, this is, it's a beginner's mind. It was like, oh, okay, beginner's mind. I have to try this again. Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:20:03.714)

Gotcha. Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:20:09.837)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

There's, yeah. Well, and there's always trade-offs, right? It's kind of figuring out what works for you. Just like, I really want people to find the condom that works for them. Not just size, but the materials. There's so many things. I have a friend who has a spreadsheet of all the, he's gone through and like very geekified this.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:20:28.654)

Condom that works for them.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:20:39.905)

Ha ha.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:20:40.086)

determining condoms thing. And it's really for him. Like you can't take that spreadsheet and translate it to you per se, although he's working on a few ideas. I'm going to have him on my other podcast to talk about his spreadsheet and his quest to find his ideal condom because I think it's something that's admirable. And if you're going to be in the world of safer sex practices with multiple partners, you need to know what is your condom.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:21:09.578)

Yep.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:21:09.77)

Right? It's just, you just don't, you don't necessarily buy off the rack. You need to have what is the best thing for you. And then I think he was talking about getting a partner that would go through and then also do her own testing on her experience with different partner or different condoms to see what would be the best match for them, not just for him.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:21:28.206)

different. Yep.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:21:32.694)

Yep, exactly. And that goes back to also how to include that in your masturbation practice. So I recently ended a long fluid bonded relationship. So condoms and lube have come back into my life. And I have a whole bunch of different ones that I put on my toys to feel, what does this feel like? Do I have a reaction to it?

how does it work with this lube? I mean, I've definitely been on a quest. I can say that I have finally found something that I like that works. Because I also was noticing, like with some of my partners who maybe are more, have more length, that the condom was falling, was slipping off, you know, especially when you have more rigorous activity, more rigorous movement.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:22:21.314)

Mm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:22:26.765)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:22:27.054)

So I was really looking for what's the one that will stay on. And I like, I'll just do a plug here. I'm not an affiliate or anything, but I like the Momentum Condom. The Momentum Condom was created by an African American doctor, and really with the idea of there's some problem solving to do. And I like their lube, and I like their condoms, and they stay on, and they're good.

They're a good one.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:22:58.614)

When you say they're lubed, do you mean for the lubricated condoms or do they sell a lube also? Oh, okay.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:23:02.046)

I'm saying they sell lube also. They sell a lube that I like. Yeah. I want to, before we completely end, I wanted to just share my feeling about cock, right, in terms of soft cock and soft cock week. And yeah. Uh-huh. Oh, yes. One more technical. Yes, absolutely.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:23:08.238)

Cool, I'm gonna look them up.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:23:12.896)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:23:21.806)

Mm-hmm.

Can I pause you for a second and ask for one more technicality thing? Yeah, I just want to clear up a myth that was very strong last year. Can you masturbate with a soft penis?

erica leroye (she/her) (01:23:38.588)

Ah, yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:23:40.714)

And do you have any tips on masturbation with a soft penis?

erica leroye (she/her) (01:23:43.722)

Yes, so absolutely you can masturbate with a soft penis. I masturbate with a soft penis, right? You masturbate with a soft penis. I mean, you know, the homologous tissue is there. I feel like having a soft penis actually gives you more access. So if we think about, right, you can have an erection and not have an orgasm or an ejaculation.

Right? You can have an orgasm and not have an erection or an ejaculation. Right? You can have, what didn't I say? An orgasm or an ejaculation. You could have an ejaculation without an orgasm, right? Or an erection. Right? So all of these, we have three different systems that all exist around our sexuality. Right? Masturbation is our opportunity.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:24:29.729)

or x. Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:24:42.05)

to explore and discover and feel and find each of those three opportunities. Sometimes they all happen at once. One of the things that is the biggest standout that I experience in talking with men is that they don't understand that they are what is called biphasic, meaning that the orgasm and the ejaculation are two separate systems. Right?

Because for most people who get hard, what their experience is, is that the orgasm and the ejaculation are happening concurrently. What I love, I mean, part of the way that I've learned about all of this is that for the beginning of my work as a sexological body worker, I had the privilege of working with a lot of men who had gone through prostate cancer or diabetes, or one of these medical conditions

getting hard actually is completely off the table. And because they were coming to me, they hadn't given up. So there's a men who go through things and they're like, you know what, I actually would prefer to golf. I don't need sex anymore, I'm good. That's okay. And then there are people who are like, okay, this piece is gone, but what else is there for me? I believe that there's something else, but nobody has given me a roadmap. Or maybe...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:25:49.518)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:26:08.85)

I have found in my masturbation that there's something here, but my partner no longer is sexual or my partner isn't interested in this. And so I'm looking for someone who can help me amplify this or experience this. So that is the larger umbrella to your question, which is if we reframe masturbation not as a goal-oriented activity.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:26:25.07)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:26:37.39)

towards, you know, I'm trying to get to this, then what happens when you have soft cock and you're masturbating is that you can explore more the richness of turning on the nerves. So what generally happens when the penis is in a focused hardness is that it's really about...

more about the blood than it is about the nerves. Especially if you're in a condom situation. So you're building, it's more about that building, that feeling of everything in the body is moving towards the penis. There's this energy. So it's about blood and energy. All this energy is building, and then you get this, ah, release. When that isn't happening, then it's more like,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:27:11.682)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:27:25.165)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:27:29.747)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:27:35.814)

More like what happens for those of us who have a vulva, right, and a clitoris and a vagina, which is that to really get turned on and to get the arousal system going, what we're needing to do is pay more attention to all... So all of your nerves, all your superficial nerves are called afferent nerves. And afferent nerves generally are designed to just be on or off. And what we know is that there's hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.

constantly remapping nerve endings in the pelvis, in the pelvic floor, in the genital tissue. So when you have a soft penis, the opportunity in a touch experience is to play with what other nerves are off that can come on. Oh, so...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:28:29.163)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:28:31.162)

I'm stroking this way and I'm feeling something and allowing myself to touch and feel the nerve open to pleasure. To feel, again, going back to what I said about the J shape, that it's all interconnected. Oh, if I touch here in this spot, I feel something connected to the nerve at the bottom of my neck. If I touch this spot, I'm noticing something tingling.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:28:38.507)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:28:58.45)

or awakening down in my leg, right? The plexuses are there. So being able to have orgasm and ejaculation without getting hard is absolutely possible. Absolutely possible. Yeah. I'm, thank you.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:29:14.542)

Great. Yeah. Thank you for that. You're so smart. I'm so glad that we're talking about this. You have so much information. I want to get this wrapped up. So lastly, let's go back to before I interrupted you. You wanted to talk about.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:29:24.801)

Uh-huh.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:29:28.607)

Ha ha.

I just want to say that I think that imagination is a really, really important part of this process. I think of penis as sort of that anatomical part of the body, and cock is an energy. I like to think of, so you can see, well, I guess the people if we're... The peacock is an incredible male species.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:29:46.925)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:30:00.982)

that takes its time. I used to live in a place populated by peacocks. And the thing about it is like, if there's a peacock that wants to take up space, you just have to let it take up space and enjoy it, right? And I feel like as somebody who loves the cock, I love to watch it, you know, just be in its soft place and then see what might unfold if I create the space that is inviting and seeing that regalness that is there.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:30:12.823)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:30:29.919)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:30:30.546)

I also think about the crowing cock in the barnyard, right? Who, you know, whose job it is to say, we, it's time to wake up, we made it. A new day is here. And I think a lot of men, they lose their connection to cock energy, to feeling proud, to feeling vital, to feeling joy and levity, right? That's that.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:30:36.77)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:30:43.33)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:30:59.758)

Sometimes just bringing levity back into, we feel so serious and we feel the gravity of the loss of our hardness. And finding the place where we can bring levity, we need that force actually for there to be levity again, to be able to get that. Sometimes I see that in men who can fill but don't have the lift, right? So to me, using cock, I like that.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:31:09.069)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:31:29.41)

because I feel like it allows us also to connect to mammal or bird or amphibian to that, which is more universal too. That it's an energy. I like the idea, I like to use the word pussy in relationship to cock because I like the image of that, the fowl, the peacock or the cock and the...

kitty cat, the pussy cat coming in with her tail and kind of, hey, wanna, you know, let's stretch and let's play. And it's like to me, sex, it creates an opportunity for sex to be like a children's picture book. Right?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:32:12.826)

Ah, as someone with aphantasia who does not visualize very well, I do have an idea of what you're saying. Yeah, it's like something popped up in my head. It's not a clear picture. But yes, I get that child's child storybook.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:32:20.661)

haha

erica leroye (she/her) (01:32:24.066)

But something, right? Yeah, that it's a child's... Right, and that our time together, going back to what I said about what I learned with my partner, that if we're taking... If we're marking this time as play, as... I think of sex as a time for play, it's time for recreation, a time for respite care, a time for rejuvenation, relaxation.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:32:39.499)

Yes.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:32:48.683)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:32:52.766)

you know, if we expand what sex is, and we move that more into, hey, we're comfortable enough with each other to provide some things that are really good for the body. Right, I mean, this is where we get. And I guess, let me, maybe really the way I wanna end is saying this, cause I wouldn't be me if I didn't say it, which is, you know, I am a really, in terms of as a masturbation coach.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:33:08.001)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:33:20.446)

I just lost a child to the opioid epidemic. I'm touched by so many of the things that are out there. And what I know from working with young children and families all the way again through death and dying is that the fact that we have as a replenishable free resource oxytocin, and that we don't, this goes back to you saying that we don't teach this.

The fact that we don't teach human mammals that there is this bonding, loving, trusting hormone that gets elicited when we have soothing voice, warm contact, touch. And what we know, maybe, what we know, according to some science, is that for at least they've tracked it in men,

that your oxytocin levels can increase between 40 and 380% above baseline in the first 10 minutes after orgasm. So even if you don't get heart, if you can explore your body, no matter who you are, if you can explore your body and give yourself permission to

have a buildup of oxytocin that then leads to an orgasm. And then rather than either fall asleep, right? Or get up and take a shower and be done, but use that 10 minutes as medicine, because that's what it is to be able and in masturbation, knowing that oxytocin is the

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:35:02.542)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:35:14.386)

energy and bring it back to yourself. I trust my journey. I trust myself. I've got this. Oxytocin just says, I'm okay. I got this. And I can trust the world today.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:35:21.07)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:35:29.02)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:35:32.338)

And that could be with your partner, it could be with yourself. And both are important. Both are important.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:35:34.858)

And it could be with your partner. Yep. Exactly. And I think what we do is we tend to focus the oxytocin loop on the partner when we're in partner sex and we don't really harness it. So I'm really interested in how to teach people what these hormones are, how to activate them, to maximize them in our sexual experience. And then more importantly, how do we harness it?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:35:47.117)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:36:04.414)

And how do we use it so that our bodies are getting, you know, the benefit of our naturally occurring pain medicine, uplifting upper thought medicine, that there's, I think that's going to be the next wave. And that's why I said, it wouldn't be me if I didn't plug this. So that this is why decriminalization of sex work is so important. Because if we can decriminalize sex work.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:36:27.918)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:36:33.93)

and be able to have open conversations about how healthy the arousal system is and provide more and more opportunities for people who are having trouble with their arousal system to have experiences like what we offer, which is to have it observed in naturally occurring arousal states and get feedback on that and training on that. And then-

be able to say, you know, this is, it is in the declaration of independence, we have the right to pursue happiness, right? And that happiness is those chemicals. So the more that we're encouraging people to orgasm and masturbate and have great sex and have great pleasure, then our mindset will be more towards we got this and we can move forward as a human

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:37:17.08)

Yes.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:37:26.507)

Mm-hmm.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:37:33.01)

mammal population and not annihilate ourselves. So, you know, I'm very pro understanding the science so that we can language better why decriminalization of sex work is a health equity issue.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:37:52.654)

Mm-hmm, absolutely. Yeah, that's a whole nother episode. It's a whole nother episode. We'll take that to the other podcast and pick this conversation back up. I would love to have that conversation. Erica, thank you so much.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:37:56.611)

Yeah.

Yes. Ha ha ha.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:38:03.498)

Yeah. Yeah, great.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity, Michelle. I'm so excited. I'm excited to be a resource to anyone who is listening. If anyone wants to get in contact with me, the best way, I don't currently have a website up. The best way is just to email me at erica at creativebodyrelease.com. And it's a wonderful, you know.

What you're doing what we're doing what everyone who's contributing to this is doing is it's really beautiful work in the world because we don't as a mother of Boys as a grandmother of boys as a lover of men as a widow of men There's a lot of stuff around

Don't talk about this. Don't talk about this, it's not real. The number of times I hear it's women's sexual health is so far behind, but really where we are with men's sexual health, I feel like, is where we were with women's sexual health in the 60s. We're just starting to really have real conversations, so I appreciate it. Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:38:57.91)

Yeah. Yup.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:39:15.661)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:39:18.986)

It's interesting where we put our money, right? When we talk about sexual health in general, it's really interesting, no matter what gender, what our priorities are. And it's like, we're skipping steps, we're leapfrogging and not working on foundational building blocks that we just wanna cut to the problem, right? And throw a pill at it or what have you, so yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:39:44.198)

Right. And I think, you know, I'm guessing that the people who come to you are similar to the people who come to me, which is they are the people for whom the pill doesn't work. Whether it doesn't work functionally or it doesn't work because they have side effects that are intolerable or it doesn't work because they have other health conditions in which this is not an option for them or it doesn't work because they're making a choice in their life.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:39:59.2)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:40:13.73)

to not rely on a medicine. So for the people for whom it works, it works. But we have to have good options for the people where if it isn't there, there's something.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:40:26.442)

What I wish would change, and we had a guest on one of these episodes named Kyle, who talked about his story. And when he was asking his doctor in his early 20s about erectile issues, the response wasn't, well, let's take a look at this. It was, I can write you a prescription. And that's what I want to expand is we have to talk about the whole system.

and not just throwing a pill at it because that's not the education component is really missing.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:40:55.478)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:40:59.214)

But that's where the decriminalization is really key, because right now, what I see when I interface with the medical providers is they just don't even know that we exist. They either don't know that we exist at all, that there's an option for hands-on care, or maybe they know that we exist, but there's concerns around.

referring to us.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:41:30.402)

Well, yeah, Sesta Foster really did a number on that one, right? Again, another topic for another day. Oh.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:41:35.462)

Yeah. Right. So we need more people to go back to their providers and be willing to say, I had an experience and this is something that I want to encourage you to do. Or also just be able to have more opportunities to talk with the profession so that they know there's something other than a pill. Because what I find is...

In an ideal situation, what we're doing also is just increasing the odds. If I have a client who wants to take the pill or wants to get one of the treatments or wants to try, what is it? Is it PRP, the platelet-rich plasma? There's all of the new things that are out there. Then teaching people how to masturbate is only going to increase the odds of success.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:42:15.508)

Oh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:42:20.343)

Uh-huh.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:42:30.594)

who have tried these other things and aren't having success haven't shifted the way that they masturbate or have sex. And so they're still relying on something to change from the outside or something, they want something that happens to them rather than change what they're doing. And then whatever it is that they're using as an enhancement is the enhancement. But the body needs to, we're meant to move, we're meant to invigorate.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:42:38.987)

Yeah.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:43:01.018)

And we just need to include that more in the way that we talk about sex education and sex in general. It's just physical fitness. Right?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:43:08.818)

Yes. Yeah. And it's our whole like, we are just not these little parts, right? We are an entire system and we can't ignore the entire system. We have to, or we can't ignore little parts. We have to, to embrace the entire system.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:43:25.35)

Exactly, which is again, that image of, you know, the whole stained glass, right? That's what you and I do. That's what we do is we take all of these different systems and pull them together so that there's a beautiful picture to behold. Yeah. You're welcome, Michelle. Thank you. Okay. Great.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:43:30.282)

Yes. Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:43:35.403)

Uh huh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:43:40.47)

I love that image. Thank you, Erica. I will have all your information in the show notes and let's keep working together.

erica leroye (she/her) (01:43:49.798)

Yes, I'm so excited. All right.