Lisa Marie Rankin:

Hello, beautiful souls. So very excited for today's episode where I am speaking with Marina Nabon. Not sure if I'm saying the last name quite correctly, but I just got a thumbs up. So perhaps I am. Marina is a somatic practitioner and an embodiment coach. I first came across Marina in Leila Martin's crystal egg pleasure program and if you don't know what that is, don't worry, we will go into that further in the episode. And Marina is the teacher and I was just so impressed with her authenticity, with her knowledge of sacred ancient traditions and really the way that she honored them and her approach to female pleasure. So thank you, Marina, for joining me on this podcast today.

Marina Nabao:

Thank you, Liz. I'm very excited to be here and to have this conversation with you.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Fantastic. So I have tons of questions for you. Even before we dive in, I would just love to hear from you. How how did you end up as a embodiment coach, somatic practitioner, teacher of jade eggs and ancient wisdom? If you could just tell us a little bit about your journey.

Marina Nabon:

Yes. Of course. I think that's what is the case for most people doing this kind of work. It started with my own journey of awakening to the potency, the power, and the sacredness of my sexuality. That started back in 2015, 2016 when I started joining women's circles and the womb blessings and things that led me to start connecting with my body, my menstrual cycle in a more intentional sacred way. There was a moment, a very important moment in I think it was early 2017 that I went to a tantra workshop in Brazil, a weekend workshop, and we did a lot of breath work there. I had what here in the west people would call a Kundalini awakening so I had a very psychedelic experience without any psychedelics. Well, apart from the breath, I had visions of many gods and goddesses.

Marina Nabon:

I had an embodied experience of what people call oneness and love. And that shifted everything. That shifted my way of going through my life, of perceiving my role in this lifetime, and I started transitioning. I was in corporate in Brazil. I was, like, traveling internationally, doing businesses and partnerships and contracts, so I had a very different lifestyle. I think I awoke to what I was meant to be doing with my life, at least this second part of my life here. By the by that time, I also found Leila Martin on YouTube, her funny YouTube videos, and I really connected with her style because she's joyful and playful, almost childlike at times. She has such depth at the same time.

Marina Nabon:

So that for me was a very good combination because I have some of that as part of my personality. When I started studying with her I really felt I want to serve others in this capacity. Most importantly there was a bigger calling for me to work with women or people with vaginas even if they identify differently and to work in the realms of healing and activating erotic pleasure. Because for me, there is a way that I really I adore I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner so I really enjoy navigating the realms of trauma because I have dealt with my own and because I feel deeply connected to the suffering of human beings when they have experienced trauma. I can meet people there and hold people in that. I love it and I love watching them blossom into a life of pleasure, of erotic aliveness, of reclaimed power, a life of liberation. So for me, I really enjoy playing on these two fields the depth of trauma healing and how meaningful and I would even say delicate that piece of work is. And then the magic, the power of erotic activation of crystal eggs and jade eggs, of breath work, of full body energetic orgasms and all of that.

Marina Nabon:

So for me, it was really a process of first lighting up the candle within myself and I think that Kundalini awakening was what really ignited everything and then going through my own processes with Leila's courses, other courses, other teachers that I have studied under and then transitioning into serving others. It has been a beautiful journey of my own reclamation of power, eroticism, my understanding that the erotic, the body, the sexuality are also pathways to our spirituality and how wonderful that has been for me and how when I'm in an altered state of consciousness through multiple orgasms, I do feel that I'm connected to the divine. I do feel the goddess. I do feel the love and the oneness the same way that I, experiencing that Kundalini awakening that I had. That's a little bit of how I ended up here. Does that answer your question?

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yes. Thank you so much. I actually got the kind of chills when you were telling me that story, and it's just so beautiful as far as your reclamation. I also was in the corporate world and kinda came back to the feminine, and it seems like that that's many women's path that somewhere in midlife, there's that sense that something is missing, that they want more, that they want to come back to their bodies. So it's really beautiful to hear your journey. Now you mentioned the term erotic activation. I'm not sure if all of my listeners know what that means exactly. Could you dive a little deeper with that?

Marina Nabon:

Mhmm. Yeah. Well, I think first, it's interesting for us to reflect a little bit about the understanding of what erotic or eroticism is. Right? So when I use the erotic, I'm talking about life force energy. I'm talking about aliveness, vitality, playfulness, sassiness, sensuality, sexuality, kinks, all of that. So for me, erotic activation is really the process of lighting up that candle, to use the same term, within us so that we can access more of our aliveness, more of our vitality, more of our health, of our well-being and more of this aspect of ourselves, our psychics, our souls even if we look at it from a spiritual perspective that is ecstatic and blissful this part of ourselves that that are an experience or a reflection of the one divine goddess and therefore is meant for pleasure, is meant for beauty, is meant for manifestation, is meant for a life of miracles and wonders and excitement. The the whole process of erotic activation is a spiritual awakening. Awakening to what? To the fact that we are one with the divine and because we are one with the divine we have all the qualities that the divine has: The shadows and the light.

Marina Nabon:

Right? The trauma, the pain, the wounding, yes, this is part of the divine as well. But the bliss, the ecstasy, the joy, the the fun is also an expression. I I I like to perceive the erotic as 1, I don't think it's the only one to be honest. It is my chosen path and I think there are many other paths but it's one very powerful path to that realization that we are one with the divine. And it's one that also helps us reclaim a life of pleasure. Not just the mundane pleasure but the embodied experience of pleasure. Pleasure of being in this body. The pleasure of living this life with all its contradictions, right? With peace and war.

Marina Nabon:

With wealth and poverty. With other things. With patriarchy and the liberation of the feminine. All the things, in all the nuanced ways that we can look at things in between. So for me the erotic activation is a call back to a life of more depth, of more meaning, of more fulfillment that is also permeated by pleasure, permeated by bliss, permeated by ecstasy. Because I do think even if we look from a nervous system perspective, we do experience more of life also by allowing ourselves to increase our capacity for goodness, for pleasure, for joy, for fun. Right? The traumas, the sadness, this this is a given. Everybody will experience this in life for as long as we are alive.

Marina Nabon:

And so in the face of that being a given, what can I intentionally cultivate so I have a a balance? And when I have that balance, I actually have a much wider breadth of what I'm capable of experiencing in this life. Yeah. Does that make

Lisa Marie Rankin:

sense? Yeah. That does make sense. And I love how you talk about this erotic activation as being a means of awakening and linking it because I think sometimes when people think of spiritual practice, they can think of something very aesthetic. Like I will sit here and I will do my meditation and I will try to transcend my body. But really what we're doing with erotic activation is trying to come back into the body. Is that correct?

Marina Nabon:

Yes. It is. What I think is really beautiful in this path again, nothing wrong with more sitting, meditating, transcending. It's one path. But talking about the path that I understand well about. It's this beautiful, interchanging alchemy of earth and cosmos. That's how I like to look at it and that's how the Tao also explains it. So through my body, my incarnate body, my very earthy body, right, I can experience the powers of the cosmos.

Marina Nabon:

I can experience the bliss, the ecstasy of the divine. So it is through the sensations, the experiences of this body that I actually transcend while being embodied. Yeah? So for me, it's this beautiful alchemizing dance of earth and cosmos happening within us in a way.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So beautiful. Yeah. What a a beautiful visualization to even imagine as well. The other thing that you had just said that I want to go back to is you talk about trauma, and that's a way of life. I appreciate how you normalize that because I do believe that everybody has some form of trauma, but it sounds like what you're saying is we can have trauma, but we can still have the capacity for pleasure. We can still hold it. They're not mutually exclusive. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Marina Nabon:

Yes. I can. I will just start saying by the fact that we're alive will necessarily bring us to experience of pain. Like for some or for most the pain of being born physical, emotional and psychological. It starts with our first crying in life. Right? And I do think that there is a tendency nowadays in in the trauma universe to almost over emphasize the traumas that people have experienced almost as an excuse for the ways that a person may not be able to be present with their lives. And I do I want to be very mindful with my words here because yes there is a way that trauma, especially early trauma, developmental trauma, things that happened in the first 7 years of life, they do hijack our ability to be with life, our ability to connect with others, to love, to trust, our ability to experience heightened sensations that sometimes are associated with fun and excitement and enjoyment and happiness. Yes, that is a fact.

Marina Nabon:

However, I do think that we also need to remember that throughout history humanity has proven to be incredibly resilient. We have proven to survive the unimaginable, right? When I look at the history of my own ancestors from the side of my family that was forced to migrate from Africa into South America as enslaved human beings, the pain, the trauma that they have experienced for me, honestly, Lisa, it's unimaginable. I cannot, like, I can sort of connect but not really, you know? Like, wow, how do you survive that? And yet, they have. Not only they have survived but they have thrived to the point that nowadays I exist because hadn't they thrived, I wouldn't be here. So there is a peace within the whole trauma and pain and wounds in conversation that is missing the strength, the resiliency, the adaptability of human beings. And if we look further and further in in our history, we see more and more examples of that. So when I talk about the fact that no matter how much trauma you have experienced, you are still first worthy and deserving of a life of beauty, of pleasure, of joy, of connection, meaningful connection because that's one of the things that trauma really impacts for folks. It doesn't mean that you have to heal 100% of your trauma as if that's something possible because I also don't believe that's possible.

Marina Nabon:

In order to experience that, you can experience that together. I have experienced sexual trauma. I always say I don't like sharing my personal story, but I also say hashtag me too. I have my ongoing pervasive story of racial trauma. Since I moved to the US, I brought with me a new trauma with which is immigrant trauma. There's so many and yet there is a lot of pain, a lot of wounding here within me and there is a lot of joy. There is an immense capacity for ecstasy, for bliss, for hope, for deep, meaningful, loving connection with other beings. So for me, it's not either or.

Marina Nabon:

It's yes and. That for me is what I was referring to before increasing our capacity to be with life. Because again, the pain, the wounding, we will have it. There's no escaping it. If we are in life we will have it. Now can we have that and also the very beautiful fun part of life? Then we learn to navigate and one helps the other one. When we are deep into the murkiness of our pain, can we resource into pleasure? Can we resource enjoy? Can we resource in love? So that our nervous system have a break as well and we remember why we are alive, why we are here, right? It's not only for suffering. Suffering is one piece and it will be a piece forever for as long as we are alive.

Marina Nabon:

Maybe it doesn't need to be the one that is the protagonist of our lives.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I love that perspective. That is so beautiful. And I feel like it's also very liberating because, yes, we can be very trauma focused and that's not to bypass the hardships, the difficulties that that brings. And we have the capacity for more. We have the capacity to hold more, and we can still have a full pleasure filled beautiful life like you mentioned. I think that's very liberating.

Marina Nabon:

Mhmm.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. Thank you. One of the things I really wanted to ask you and talk about to many of the women in my community, I would say they're in midlife, 40 plus, and moving towards pleasure or remembering to experience the world through our body, especially in our culture, almost seems foreign where we have such a to do mentality, or is there really a return on investment if I take the time to pleasure myself today when I could be sending an email or whatnot? Do you notice this with the women that you work with? And do you have a perspective that you could share on why it is so important to prioritize pleasure?

Marina Nabon:

Yeah. Yes. I do notice that. I do think that there are ways that different cultures relate differently to pleasure. So coming from Brazil and now seeing myself here in the US, most of my clients are in the northern so US, Canada, Europe, the majority of my clients are in this part of the world and I do notice how my culture, Brazilian culture, is much more permissive and inviting of at least moments of playfulness and joy and fun in a more relaxed way. I like to say that pleasure and especially erotic pleasure thrives in a relaxed body. In a culture such as the North American one where everything is go go go mode, of course, we all need to conquer the American dream and thrive in the American dream. There is a lot of rigidity and rigidity leaves very little room for the flow of pleasure, for the flow of erotic energy.

Marina Nabon:

I also think, Liz, that this is one very important piece, the cultural one. If we look from a little bit of a wider lens into patriarchy and the ways that female sexuality has been targeted by patriarchy for 1000 of years now. There are even historians that are now proving with facts what we already know for a long long time that has a major role in all of this. It is an intention of patriarchy that women do not harness much of their potency and power so that they can be submissive, so that they can conform to the ways that patriarchy has created cages for women. It has created cages for everyone: men as well, trans people, gender non conforming people, but I will talk about the experience that I know better of which is my lived experience but not to disregard the other, folks experiences. So in these cages, I can be much more submissive if I'm not so in touch with that inner flame that I was talking about. That actually reminds me of who I really am. Freedom, powerful, ecstatic, blissful.

Marina Nabon:

I am free. I am powerful. I am ecstatic. I am blissful. When I know that I am wise and when I know that it's very difficult to control me. It's very difficult to sustain a system that is based on controlling people, on controlling our impulses, our instincts, on controlling our wisdom. And I do think that this whole disconnection that so many women nowadays have from their pleasure stems from that. From 1000 of years of rapture, of forced rapture by all the ways that church, religion, families, capitalism, all of that has created these cages.

Marina Nabon:

So when someone that I'm working with says: Marina, I have such a hard time prioritizing my pleasure. I have such a hard time creating this space because I always have so much. There's my to do list. There's I think that's an invitation for us to actually reflect on how much we are giving in to the systems in place, to dominant culture. I do think that erotic liberation is a radical path for our freedom. So when I choose to stop everything that I'm doing so that I can go for my crystal egg pleasure practice for 1 hour in the middle of my day and no I'm not sending this email now, no I'm not washing the dishes, no I'm not whatever playing yet another game with my child. I'm playing with myself, with my pleasure. When I'm doing that I'm actually being radical, I'm actually being revolutionary, I'm actually saying no to the cage.

Marina Nabon:

Even if 90% of my day I stay within the cage, there are those 10% of the day that I'm out of the cage at least for a little bit so that I remember. And the more I remember, the more space I get to create to be free again. That's a process, that's a process that sometimes will take our whole lifetime. But that doesn't mean that we cannot perceive progress in this lifetime. I think that if we don't have the conversation around how am I conforming to a system that is actually harming me? It's very very hard to then shift the mindset.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I love that perspective.

Marina Nabon:

Hard to undo this embodied, this habituated behavior of go go go mode. Rigidity. Yeah?

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. Oh, I love that perspective. I think that will really resonate with, a lot of my listeners too, especially thinking of it as being almost revolutionary to prioritize yourself, to break out of the box. In my community, we do a lot of work with archetypes, and one of the things that I have been exploring lately is our culture's obsession with the maiden archetype. In a way, that's very much keeping in a box, because if we can never be the wild woman or the crone or the enchanter, we'd lose some of our power. The maiden has great qualities for sure. She's not powerful, and yet there's this obsession with staying young at all cost in our culture that also reminds me a little bit of what you were talking about as far as kind of keeping the sexuality in a box as well too.

Marina Nabon:

Oh, gosh. I love that you bring the archetypal conversation to this space because, yes, there is an obsession with the maiden. There is an obsession with always being young and ripe and fertile and all of that, right? But again, to whom is this serving? On a bigger scale, it's serving the interests of patriarchy and all the ways that patriarchy has to control us so that we stay put. We stay. We cross our legs like good girls do. So I also think that is a reflection and then a permission for us to embrace the wild, to embrace the wise woman, the crone, to embrace all phases because all phases are very important, right? Embrace with with a real sense of ownership. Because nowadays there is all the conversation around aging, ageism and all of that but still sometimes in a very performative way. What I mean here is not that.

Marina Nabon:

I'm talking about embodying. Embarding the understanding that no your body will not remain fertile forever because you're not meant to bear child forever. And what are the losses that you need to grieve when you transition? What are the gains? What is possible? What is opening up for you when you don't need to worry anymore about your menstrual cycle, about getting pregnant or avoiding pregnancy, these kind of things. What is this new field that you can explore when you transition from one archetype to the other? Right? And I see an an overemphasis on the pieces that people grieve and don't take me wrong, grief matters. It is part of the transition. We need to grieve the old ways of being so that we can welcome the new ways of being. It's an acknowledgment at least. What is the gift here? Right? And I think that if we were able to embody more of the gifts so that we can keep letting go of the old ways of being, I think that we would have an aging process that is much more graceful, 1st and foremost, and that can become an adventure.

Marina Nabon:

In the Taoist tradition, which is the tradition specifically in the sexual Tao which is within the Taoist tradition, so let me orient people correctly here. When we talk about menopause, we talk about it as the second spring. So the first spring is the monarch, the first menstruation, which is a massive transition. It's just that we were too young to really acknowledge it. Like you were a little girl, fine, all of a sudden you're bleeding every month and you have to deal with all of that and all the hormonal shifts and all the ways that also matures your psychic and all of that. The same way the second spring, the menopause, is a massive transition and it's a transition that according to the sexual doubt is when women should start moving towards the peak of their sexual pleasure. I will say that again menopause as the life transition in which women should start moving towards the peak of their sexual pleasure. Usually we refer to peak in our 20s.

Marina Nabon:

Oh when I was 20 it was so easy. I was always wet, I was always ready, I was uh-uh According to this tradition because after menopause first you don't need to deal with your menstrual cycle anymore. You don't need to worry if you're gonna get pregnant or not should you have sex, right? So you remove that. All that energy from an energetic perspective when you are a maiden, when you are a mature woman, there's a lot of energy that is put outward towards caring for your children if you have children, towards caring for your career, your project, your your job, whatever it is. You're building things and there's it takes a lot of energy. When you are postmenopausal the understanding is, and of course these are ancient teachings so there's a gray area here for us to consider, but just repeating what I've learned. The understanding is that all that energy that was devoted outwards can be now brought back inwards. Usually your children are older at this stage so they don't need you as much.

Marina Nabon:

Your career is more stable at this stage so you don't need to put that much energy. If we look back at 50, 50 many people used to be retired. It's not the case anymore but it was in the past. That means that all this energy that you used to direct outwards can now come inward and actually support you, thrive in your spiritual life. And also because the sexual Dao is talking about achieving spiritual awakening through your body and through your sexual energy, you bring all this energy inwards so that you experience it in your body. That's why they say it's the moments that you would have peak pleasure because there's much more energy available for you because you're not so focused on other aspects of your life. And when there's so much more energy focused on you, you can you have much more space to expand that energy and to feel what that energy has to show you. Yeah?

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I love that perspective. I think it's that's so beautiful. And it makes a lot of sense if you think about it where the first part of life is so much energy as you were saying, just being expended outward, building your career, your family, your relationships, that then you get to keep the energy. Now I know many of the women in my audience will say, but why don't I feel sexy? Why do I have no libido? Why it doesn't feel like I have this vital life force within me?

Marina Nabon:

Yeah. Well, probably because you're not engaging with that energy. It's like going to the gym. If you don't work out, your muscles will lose tone. Your sexual energy will lose tone as well if you don't work it out. That's why there is this whole body of knowledge and practices which is the sexual doubt that actually teaches us to engage with our sexual energy intentionally, regularly. Sometimes through the jade or crystal egg, most of the time through qigong, taishi shuan, yeah? And qigong with a focus on sexual energy. So there are some qigong teachers who know these teachings and focus their classes on this.

Marina Nabon:

So if you don't work with the energy, it will become, let's say, flaccid just like us. Your body will become flaccid if you don't work it out. So the fact that people are not experiencing pleasure one of the main complaints of menopause is dry vagina. Well, and and the hot flashes. Dry vagina and hot flashes. 1 of my my teachers, Minka Davos, she used to say that usually it's because we are keeping too much energy upwards and not enough energy downwards in our sexual organs. So through the practices of moving, circling energy, things that you learned with us in crystal pleasure, you're actually giving your body the opportunity to bring balance to your energy centers so that there is warmth, there is movement in your womb or your womb area if you don't have the physical organ, in your vagina, in your vulva, in your anus. You're keeping energy movements there so it's warmer and when it's warmer you feel more of what is there and you also feel more lubrication because there is more activity, there is more blood flowing there because you're more aware, you're more engaged with it.

Marina Nabon:

The same thing with the hot flashes. They say that hot flashes are is too much energy built up not having a space to go to and then it's like a pressure pan. So through energetic practices such as Qigong, you're actually relieving that pressure. You're actually giving space for the energy for the chi, the life force to flow through through you and and find more balance so that you don't suffer so much with hot flashes.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

It's so interesting that you just mentioned that because in my as I was preparing for our talk today, I had a question for you where it was just my hypothesis that I wanted to get your take on that when we prioritize, like, self love, pleasure, orgasms, that we're gonna have an easier transition through menopause. And that's just something I inherently believe. I'm 49. I actually don't have almost any symptoms. And for me, I'm like, I think if we keep the spark, if we keep the sexual energy active and alive, we're gonna see a much easier transition. But I wanted to ask you just to see because this was just by hypothesis.

Marina Nabon:

Yeah. I think your hypothesis is right. I'm not in menopause yet. I just had a baby. So I'm a little late for my pregnancy. But that's what the Dao teaches us. That if we are connected with this sexual energy then we won't suffer as much, right? The same way as we age, if you have arthritis and you work out it will be probably a little softer than somebody who doesn't work out, who doesn't do any sort of exercise and doesn't have a body that is prepared for that. It makes all the sense.

Marina Nabon:

It's very actually counterintuitive to think oh I don't self pleasure, I don't have sex, I hardly have erotic thoughts, I hardly ever feel turned on, I wonder why I'm dry, I have no libido, I have no desire. Well you're not engaging with this aspect of yourself. So I do think that in this whole conversation, Lisa, there is also a a culture responsibility. What is my responsibility? Don't we have responsibility taking care of our bodies, right? Exercising, eating healthily, taking medicine when we need, seeing the doctor when we need all the things. Why not with our sexual energy? Why not with our erotic energy? Why not with our desire, our libido? It's such a cultural thing that we are not raised to actually learn. Like, imagine, I could only imagine if my grandmother were a sex witch and if I grew up seeing her practicing, doing her erotic energy cultivation regularly, if I saw her being fully orgasmic in her seventies, in her 80s. Imagine what that would do to me in terms of feeling responsible to also cultivate my connection with my sexuality. Right? But with very few people, I I certainly don't have that model, unfortunately, And I I would I really want one though.

Marina Nabon:

A grandma. Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

The grandma sex witch sounds fantastic. Like, what?

Marina Nabon:

I wanna become that grandma. I wanna be the sex witch grandma since I couldn't have one for myself. But I think that then it is a process of like, okay, this is not gonna solve itself as miracle. I have responsibility here. And a fun responsibility because let's face it, having orgasms is kind of fun. So why not? Right? Yeah.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I mean, it beats doing your taxes. Right? Like, in person, so why not? You know,

Marina Nabon:

like Exactly.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Weird when women so for women listening to this now, and they're like, okay. I'm going to take responsibility. I haven't really taken responsibility to date. Like, where do I start? What would you say?

Marina Nabon:

Well, it starts with the very basic. I like to start with things that are very small and doable. It starts first by scanning your body and noticing what you're feeling moment to moment in your body, everywhere in your body. I think that is the beginning of the fragmentation. Most people are going through the day without noticing. Oh, there's pain here, there is relaxation there, there is softness here, there's contraction there. Simple. Scan your body for the everyday sensations.

Marina Nabon:

Then, when you feel more familiar with this, start directing that to your erogenous zones. Scan your breasts, your chest, your nipples for sensations very often during the day. Right now, you're listening. What's going on in your nipple? Take a moment and feel it. Do the same with your pussy, with your anus, the same with your ass, moment to moment. Can you stay connected? Because if we don't do that, it's almost like our brains, just like muscles, they also get placid in terms of not recognizing what's going on. And we first need to recognize, we first need to come back home to our bodies. And there are many many ways that we are so distracted nowadays, whether it's because of work or smartphones, social media scrolling, news feeds scrolling, whatever is your your cocaine of the day.

Marina Nabon:

Right? There are many, many ways that we are disembodied and that we are disconnected. Of course, trauma is another one that creates that disconnection. So the first step is coming back home. Scan, feel, name. Name your sensations. Locate them. Oh, I feel this in my left knee right now. I feel that in my feet.

Marina Nabon:

After you get very familiar to do that, then start seeking pleasure. And pleasure is a very big word because it doesn't necessarily need to be sexual pleasure. You're in sexual pleasure 247. There are so many ways that we experience pleasure. For me, for example, my morning coffee is a big source of pleasure. Paring my coffee, smelling it, then tasting it, then feeling the warmth of it come into my body. It is a deeply pleasurable experience. But if I am crawling my instagram while I'm preparing and drink, I'm not in it.

Marina Nabon:

So there is a way that we need to learn to be more present with what is right now. And when we are more present we need to start engaging our senses because we experience life and of course we experience pleasure through our senses. So grow that. Start with the pleasures of what you like to eat, to drink, to smell, to touch, and then you come to pleasures that feel a little bit more sensual, more erotic for you. And then learn to stay with that, not to escape it, not to run away from it. Give yourself permission. Can you spend, I don't know, 10 minutes in your hot bath enjoying the touch of the warm water on your skin. Just enjoying it without thinking oh I have the grocery, oh I have to pick up the kids, oh I have just enjoying it.

Marina Nabon:

And from there you start playing with programs like the crystal pleasure, you start studying with some people who will show you the path, who will show you a whole new world because that was what was introduced to me after my Kundalini awakening. Oh, there's a whole world of sexuality here, of eroticism, I had no idea of practices, what? You put an egg where? Why? Right? So I think that if we come back home to the body, if we bring more presence, if we start engaging the senses and slowly increasing the time that we spend with pleasure, then the next step is to dive right into something that calls your attention. For me, the jade egg, I do think it's something that I did in a past lifetime because I feel so deeply connected to it. It's so like I know this from other times, you know? But maybe that's not what it is for other people listening here. Other people will go through the path of breath work, other people with dildos, other people with play parties and swing parties and things like that. So find your jam. But before you go seek out elsewhere, come home to your body, bring more pleasure to your day, bring more presence to your to your pleasure, engage more of your senses, increase the amount of time that you spend in goodness, in relaxation, in softness, in pleasurable sensations. Because if you if you skip this step you can go to retreats everywhere in the world, you can do all kinds of things, you will still be fairly disconnected.

Marina Nabon:

Because first you need to be here in this body that the goddess gave you, this divine, blissful, ecstatic body.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Beautiful. Do you mind just I think many of my listeners know about jade eggs, but I know we've talked about jade egg and crystal egg. Could you just give, like, a brief summary for those who are like, why do they keep talking about an egg? And they want me to put an egg where?

Marina Nabon:

Yes. In your vaginal canal. Just to be very, very clear, never in your anus. The Jade egg is so within the sexual DAO that I was talking about. So I'm talking about a body of work that came to the West, through Master Mantak Chiyo. He's a Thai master who studied with sages in China and then he came to the U. S. And started teaching people Qigong and then the sexual aspect.

Marina Nabon:

Qigong, so working intentionally with sexual energy. And within this body of work, he also taught women about the jade egg. Jade is the name of a gemstone that is very popular in China. So you can find eggs made of jade, you can find eggs made of other gemstones and of, nowadays, of glass which is the crystal egg. And the idea is that you use the jade egg inside of your vaginal canal to do a certain set of practices, of exercises, that will activate the chi, the life force energy, in your sexual center and then you will move it through your body. You move it inwards and upwards and then you will circle it. The whole argument is that through these practices, with consistency, with repetition, regularity, right? It's not once in a lifetime. You start bringing your body to a better sense of well-being, of vitality, of health.

Marina Nabon:

You actually nurture all of your organs with this energy that you're working with and you're also awakening for deeper layers of your spiritual self. So it's both the physical and the spiritual. In the program where you met me we are teaching how to use the crystal egg based on the teachings of Master Mantaksha, but with a lot of space for creativity as well. Right? With a lot of space, Leila is the creatrix of that program. So with a lot of space for her take on this. And one of the things that I really love about Leila's, creation is that she emphasizes a lot of pleasure in this practice. And if you learn straight like from Massimo Tantakshiya, you don't self pleasure when you're using the jadeg. You're just doing the exercises.

Marina Nabon:

You're contracting, releasing, moving the energy here, circling there, which is enough for you to experience a lot of things. But one of the things that Leila really believes in is that we need to learn to increase our capacity to feel pleasure, to expand pleasure. And because pleasure is such a potent medicine for the nervous system, it also enables us to see or experience or witness the layers of trauma, of pain, of wounding that will inevitably come up when we're working intentionally with our sexuality. If there is no pleasure, if there is not that sense of goodness creating a cushion in our nervous systems, it becomes very rough to meet the the wounding, to meet the trauma. Right? So, yeah, that's what the JRAG is.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Oh, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And I love Leila's approach about inviting the pleasure in as well too. I think that's really beautiful and nourishing, so I think that's great. Well, I know we are almost at time, so I just wanna thank you so much for all of your beautiful wisdom this afternoon. It's very inspiring, and I am sure people are going to wanna learn more. So how can people learn more about you or work with you?

Marina Nabon:

Yes. I invite folks to come to my website. That's where I keep all the information about working with me, my offerings. I'm also a teacher inside of VITA. So if you want to experience me in those teachings, that's through Vita and Leila Martin. And we can also hang out on Instagram. So I think you were going to link all of that.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yeah. I will have all of that in the show notes. Yeah. So I will Yeah.

Marina Nabon:

But my website is marinanabongdot com. My Instagram handle is marinanabaughn. So you find me as marinanabaughn.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Yes. And all of that will be in the show notes for easy access. So thank you so much. It was lovely connecting. And, yeah, I appreciate all of your wisdom.

Marina Nabon:

Thanks, Lisa.