05: Journey with Racheal Charlie : Personal Transformations in Somatic Sex Education
Interview by Evelyne Chevry
This episode focuses on how my own personal and professional growth and learning have enabled me to assist others in their journeys of flourishing. Evelyne's perspective enriches our dialogue and helps in highlighting my journey, learnings and practice so you can have a deeper understanding of how I approach somatic sex education, sex work, and trauma healing.
Evelyne Chevry is a multifaceted identity who is professionally and personally active in various fields from science, through art and entrepreneurship. She publicly identifies as a futurist and activist as well as a queer, neurodivergent transwoman of colour, yet she is continuously discovering other parts of herself that are unfolding.
Her journey of flourishing and empowerment has led her to heal and learn on her own gender and sexual identity through therapies and tools in trauma healing, sexual therapy, embodiment, mindfulness, eroticism, relationship and art.
Through her entrepreneurship side, her commitment to diversity and inclusion is reflected in her activism and public stances. A spokesperson for causes such as neurodiversity, the support of LGBTQ2IA communities, feminism, BIPOC reality, sustainable development, and social innovation, Evelyne combines professionalism, innovation, art, and social commitment to contribute to a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable society.
You can find Evelyne Chevry on LinkedIn.
Transcript
00:00:00 Racheal Charlie
Welcome to Awakening the Body, conversations around sexuality, psychedelics, trauma, shame, acceptance, and loving self kindness. How can we bravely co-create safe enough spaces for our erotic and ecstatic selves to emerge and flourish, opening up to radical self love for our weird, wonderful, and full beingness?
I'm your host, Racheal Charlie, somatic sex educator living in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk Nation.
. Episode five is an introduction to me and my work this time, and I have the pleasure of welcoming Evelyne Chevry who is asking me some questions.
Evelyne Chevry is a multifaceted identity who is professionally and personally active in various fields from science, through art and entrepreneurship. She publicly identifies as a futurist and activist as well as a queer, neurodivergent transwoman of colour, yet she is continuously discovering other parts of herself that are unfolding.
Her journey of flourishing and empowerment has led her to heal and learn on her own gender and sexual identity through therapies and tools in trauma healing, sexual therapy, embodiment, mindfulness, eroticism, relationship and art.
Through her entrepreneurship side, her commitment to diversity and inclusion is reflected in her activism and public stances. A spokesperson for causes such as neurodiversity, the support of LGBTQ2IA communities, feminism, BIPOC reality, sustainable development, and social innovation, Evelyne combines professionalism, innovation, art, and social commitment to contribute to a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable society.
Evelyne's perspective enriches our dialogue and helps in highlighting my journey, learnings, and practice so you can have a deeper understanding of how I approach somatic sex education, sex work, and trauma healing. I hope that you enjoy this episode. And thank you for listening.
If you are interested in financially supporting this podcast, you can find a link. To buy me a coffee on the show notes. Thank you so much. Hey, Evelyne, it's so wonderful to have you here in my little apartment recording this podcast with you.
00:03:00 Evelyne Chevry
My pleasure. Thank you for the invite.
00:03:04 Racheal Charlie
So much for having the generosity to come and ask me some questions this time.
00:03:09 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah, it will be interesting to see what comes up.
00:03:13 Racheal Charlie
Yeah, I had a specific idea of what I wanted and it seems that it's turned into something else.
00:03:19 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah, hope that's good for you.
00:03:23 Racheal Charlie
So, yeah, you have a whole lot of questions.
00:03:26 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. I think what I noticed while listening to your podcast was, okay, I was listening to your interview with Elodie and other people and I was kind of, oh, we need to know who's Racheal and what's her work? Right. So that's why. So I think the first thing I wanted to ask is a bit of your story as a Somatic Sex Educator. When you started and how it evolved?
00:04:03 Racheal Charlie
Yeah. So the somatic sex education part is really recent. I've been working with people for, well, it's January 2024, and I started working with people, like, charging for it, three years ago. Exactly. So that's a pretty short time. And I was still completing my studies in somatic sex education, and I had started more than a year previous to that. So that's the somatic sex education part.
00:04:36 Evelyne Chevry
But if I understand well, you also have done some practice and some learning in other body work before.
00:04:45 Racheal Charlie
Right, I have. And it was always a kind of thread throughout my life. Most of my work was as a musician, in music, I would say, not even as a musician, but in music. But it was always threaded with, I guess, being an artist. Like a lot of other artists, there's all other work threaded in, and it seems that a lot of that other work was to do with bodies. In 1999, I completed a diploma in Shiatsu, and they called it oriental therapies, but it was traditional Chinese medicine, and that was two years full time. So I did that over four and a half years while, performing and being a musician.
00:05:29 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah, that's a lot at the same time.
00:05:32 Racheal Charlie
It was a lot at the same time. I just have this real fascination with bodies. Who are we? What are we? Who are we in our bodies? How do we move, like, in all the ways, and what is being in the body?
00:05:49 Evelyne Chevry
And I understand it was part of your family too..
00:05:51 Racheal Charlie
In a way. My grandmother, my dad's mother, was a naturopath, an osteopath, dietitian and a chiropractor. And she had a practice. She was a single mum and ran a practice ,and a business with a health food shop attached to it. And I spent a lot of my years there with her and as a teenager, working in her shop in my holidays, and kind of being around somebody who's running a busy practice, working with bodies, hearing it, meeting all the people, and having my body worked on by her in those ways from a really young age, and then imitating that on her with other people in the family and with my friends at school.
00:06:43 Evelyne Chevry
So it's part of you.
00:06:47 Racheal Charlie
Yeah, it just felt like a natural part of my life.
00:06:50 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. And that kind of exploration from your young age to now, right. I guess there's a lot of learning. What would you say in all these years was the most revealing in term of knowing that it would be part of your practice or more active in more unexpected ways than that?.
00:07:13 Racheal Charlie
I've always had this. I say always. It's like I've had these yearnings towards things in my life, like sound and music is this really important part of my life, and this real thing I feel pulled into. And it's been a really significant part of my life. But along with that touch, body work, and sexuality has been a really thing that's pulled me into itself. And it's been like, what am I? I feel drawn to these three things, and then what is my place? How do I make a life around creativity, sexuality, and also, I think, like a lot of us, just a lot of trauma. And by trauma, I mean things that happen that don't get resolved and that …
00:08:10 Evelyne Chevry
Kind of stay in the body.
00:08:13 Racheal Charlie
Yes, stay in the body, stay inside me. Just inexplicable reactions to things that don't make sense and having a whole lot of emotions around things that don't make sense. And this whole cloud of stuff, like, where does that come from? What is healing? That's a big word. And what are ways to lean into for life to feel really rich and good and connected.
00:08:38 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. And that kind of feeling I recall as read or understood in conversation, that one of your ayahuasca sessions was revealing in some way.
00:08:52 Racheal Charlie
Okay, ayahuasca, let's get straight into it. So ayahuasca has been a beautiful thing for me. It's, as have many psychedelics, I think the first time I had ayahuasca, I turned 51. So that's four years ago now. And I think you're talking about my first experience with ayahuasca. I remembered something happening that happened over and over again. Like it was a long night. It was my first time. I drank, like, three or four cups. I was really surprised by the experience. It felt so familiar, the space, and so orgasmic in a way. In that particular setting, I didn't know anybody. I knew I was supposed to be quiet and stick to myself. So I let myself breathe deeply and move a little bit, but I was trying not to too much. I distinctly remember a lot of the night was spent where people would come to me. It might be people that I knew. It might be people I didn't know. They would come to me, and I would sit with them. So this is not literally. This is actually in the space. We would sit across from each other. We would look at each other. And in a way, it was this real acceptance of the human in front of me and each other. And then we would spiral together, like, through the air. And it was this spiraling and unraveling together of, I don't know what. I think it happened about a hundred times, over and over and over again with different people. And at the time, I didn't know what it was. But then a few years later, when I started leaning into this work that I'm doing now, it really fit in with what I was learning about somatic sex education as being not about fixing, but about being with another human fully and with love and care, and that we do this together - like none of us do this alone. It felt like this really unraveling of stuff. And that was really beautiful.
00:11:26 Evelyne Chevry
Two questions. One is, how would you describe your practice as the first question? And the second is, I understand that presence is part of your core, or maybe I'm interpreting, but part of your core practice is giving that presence in different ways.
00:11:55 Racheal Charlie
Wow. I wouldn't have thought of it that way. But that's good. That's, like, a really good idea. So there's all things that I try to do. So let's take my childhood and my grandmother. The work was really about fixing, right? A farmer comes in with a sore leg and he's been kicked by a cow. So she's there to fix, and she's the expert. I grew up with that mentality. And then if I went to a doctor or a massage therapist, I had things done to me, and she would do things to me. And so the ayahuasca was interesting because I didn't like that mentality, but it was inside me. And so it was the first experience of really, instead of coming from a place of fear and protection with people, really, with the question who is this human? How can I actually meet them? And intimacy was something that's been a really hard journey for me. To actually connect with another human still can be, like, one of the most challenging things. I've come a long way. I'm laughing. I think for me personally, the idea that I am an expert, which I'm not, I fully know that particularly, like, I'm young in this work. As a musician, I needed to be an expert. It felt safe and if I was the same kind of expert with bodies, the idea that I can fix somebody feels safe. It doesn't really feel safe, but it feels like I don't have to see this person, I can just do my work and I don't have to be involved, I don't have to be intimate, I don't have to love them, I don't even have to like them. It feels dead as well. Right. So having that experience on the ayahuasca was really beautiful for me because it was like I can look into people's eyes, I can connect, I can be with another human. And then doing the training in somatic sex education, it really was a lot about that. So it's a thing.
00:14:16 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah.
00:14:17 Racheal Charlie
So it's something I try to be, but I'm not perfect.
00:14:22 Evelyne Chevry
And how would you describe a session with you? What did it look like?
00:14:29 Racheal Charlie
No two sessions look the same. It's hard to know what this work is. It's an emergent modality and with pretty widely cultural, probably not all cultures, but the ones that I'm in, mainly sexuality is a really tricky thing. Just talking about it. For some people, just seeing two people kiss is very, very difficult. And talking about it using clear language, like talking about a vulva, talking about a scrotum, rather than saying down there or the one that I hate the most. - lady parts. I'm wondering what kind of lady this is. What are these parts? I don't know. So just using language that, well, even with clients, the language can change, but language that is agreed upon to help with clarity. Right. And even for a lot of people. Can you touch my vulva? Can you touch my penis? Is very hard for people. And for some people it's easier. So I don't know what a normal client looks like. I'm just saying it's very wide, the things that people ask for and that they come in with intentions around.
00:15:44 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah.What do you see as a need when they come and what you discover with your clients and what's the commonality also?
00:16:01 Racheal Charlie
So it's a pretty big field and there's people that will come in with: I have erectile difficulties; I come really fast, or I think I do; I've never had an orgasm in my life; At least I think I haven't; I don't know how to be intimate with my partner;. I don't know how to receive pleasure; I don't know what pleasure is; I don't know what I want; I don't know how to ask what I want to; There's something wrong; I don't know what it is; I've been to a lot of doctors; There's something terribly wrong. And what else? Intimacy. And there's a lot of things people don't ask about because they might not realize that it's a thing that can be worked with, for example cuddling. A lot of people would think, oh, I don't need support with that. So somebody might come in saying that they have erectile difficulties. But once we start working together, if we keep working together, like, there's a bigger picture that emerges of working with, how do I really want to be touched? What am I not releasing in my body? Is my whole body a part of this? Can I allow shaking in that kind of release? Can I move more? Can I make more sound? Can I be more involved?
00:17:23 Evelyne Chevry
And what are the discoveries that you've made that were really joyful or that you really thought wow, okay. I found that the thing I love.
00:17:35 Racheal Charlie
I love how much I get to learn. Some of it's really difficult just realizing how much difficulty and pain and suffering there seems to be around sexuality. That's been a really hard thing. But also a joyful thing is just getting to know each person, finding their unique ways that they are in their bodies, is endlessly fascinating and joyful for me. And then once I feel comfortable with somebody just really troubleshooting and thinking, do you want to try this? What happens if we try this? What do you think? How do you feel? What are your ideas? Right. And keeping that within the container that we set. But there's so much room to explore. I think foundational to all of this is real self love and not just self acceptance, like a radical self love, which the words I've taken from a book: The Body is not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. And it's really about a shift in self love.
And the other thing that I'm finding becoming foundational to my work with people, and I still don't know how to bring it in in a way that people get it, but it's what is called a mindful erotic practice. And that's like setting aside time on a regular basis. That's time based, not orgasm based, of self touch and really getting to know your own body deeply and with the possibility of so many experiences with that and so much exploration that's unique to each person. So I don't know how to bring that in in a way that people get yet, but I'm kind of getting there. Some of the people that come to see me, they get it, and I'm just like, oh, my God. I'm working out a way to communicate about the importance of this in a way that's accessible.
00:19:43 Evelyne Chevry
And what does it look like as a session? The mindful erotic practice for the person.
00:19:52 Racheal Charlie
So it's really simple, and it's still as simple as the way that I learned it in my training. You set aside a time container. If you don't have much time, it can be five minutes. With music, it could just be dancing. Right? Or 20 minutes or 30 or 40 or an hour or two. Like, you choose, right? You find out something that's not too much or too little for yourself and fits in. And let's say it's a 30 minutes practice. You can have music. It makes a good time container, and it gives you ways of moving. And it's really anything you like. So it could be thematic, it could be. I mean, I'm not being very helpful. Anything, really, anything. It could be straight up masturbation, whatever that means to you. It could be just straight up timing it to have, like, a one off orgasm at the end of it, which is absolutely great. And it can be other things too.
00:20:55 Evelyne Chevry
It's really creativity and how the person want to explore and discover themselves, right?
00:21:03 Racheal Charlie
Yeah. And it's something that I did a lot while I was training in a group online. And doing these things with community is really important because we can get inspired by other people, what they say, or if we're actually with the people. Like, just by seeing. It's like, that's a good idea, or, holy shit, what is that? Yeah. Like, what is pleasure? What is the erotic? And it doesn't have to be pleasurable. It could be about exploring numbness, or it could be just about working with pain. It's how your body feels that day.
00:21:40 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. I understand part of your approach is slowness and how you're approaching client in a way that you're really taking the time. So could you tell me more about that?
00:21:57 Racheal Charlie
Yeah. It's been like, I'd really work with everybody differently, and it's going to be an ongoing learning for me for a long time. Like, clearly three years of just this. I have worked with sexuality in different ways in the past, which we can go into, but we don't have to. But I've always had a real curiosity about bodies and pleasure and what? And what? And what?
00:22:23 Evelyne Chevry
Slowness.
00:22:25 Racheal Charlie
Oh, yes. So I find that as my work evolves, I always thought I was listening to myself, but I'm listening to myself more and more and I'm a slow person and I'm bringing in more slowness. Like now, basically, when I work with somebody, I'm going to welcome their genitals in in the first session, but I'm probably not going to touch them. When I think about the way I see a lot of people getting into relationships, and there's nothing wrong with this, or going into dating, it seems to be a pretty fast world. And personally, really experiencing expanded states of consciousness and orgasm, which isn't necessary either. Right. I'm just saying you can force an orgasm on a person, right. I don't know if you know what that feels like.
00:23:26 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah.
00:23:28 Racheal Charlie
Does it feel good if you've had an orgasm forced on you? Does it feel pleasurable?
00:23:34 Evelyne Chevry
Confusing?
00:23:36 Racheal Charlie
Yeah. So if somebody says they've never had an orgasm, you can kind of force it, but it kind of doesn't really work. So I think about my personal experiences with pleasure and watching other people, is if someone's feeling really settled and safe, that their pleasure is welcome, that they're safe with me. And that takes time. And it's like all sorts of things can happen, right? The pleasure feels different, it's safe and it can kind of blossom. That's when an orgasmic state is possible. That's when different kinds of orgasm are possible or not even orgasm. Expanded states of I don't know what the fuck this is, but it's really nice and I feel really relaxed and I feel good everywhere. And there's a kind of sexuality that feels good, but it's kind of rushed and it's kind of fast and it's kind of with people you don't know. So you've got all that excitement, but there's no feeling of safety. So what happens if we slow it down? What happens if you relax your breathing? What happens if we take our time in sessions building up a place where it's known that this is a safe place for you, that your pleasure is welcome, your numbness is welcome, your tears are welcome. Like everything is welcome?
00:25:15 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. So I see such a big gap between the freedom and safety of awesome pleasure and orgasm in that frame, versus a client that is coming with a lot of trauma. I understand different type of trauma on your day to day, you seems to have people coming with trauma that you're slowly unfolding. I don't know what's the approach in that sense, but it seems that the more the clients are coming, the less they're healing and discovering themselves through that process. But maybe you could tell me a bit more about that.
00:26:10 Racheal Charlie
This is a hard one because there's so much learning to do around trauma. I don't have specific training or papers in it. So when I work with someone with a lot of trauma, if I'm going to work specifically with that person, I need to know that they have support. So, so far, when I double check in with people, they'll have a therapist, they'll have this, they'll have that. I work with what's in the body and have develop a language with that person, asking them what they're feeling, noticing, telling them what I'm noticing in the body, asking them what they feel, if they feel it. Like if I feel some kind of shaking or movement, I'll ask them if they can feel it. And we might work with that. So it's a really gentle going in and out and anyway, with clients. But specifically, if I know there's some kind of trauma, I really find out what resources that person, so that if things come up that we can go in and out, we can go towards the resources as well. And it's kind of like the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglin, holding compassion and suffering together, but it's almost like the compassion is the container for suffering. Right?
00:27:34 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah.
00:27:35 Racheal Charlie
I find it endlessly fascinating. And because I've had a lot of support with my own trauma and tried to find my own ways through it as well, and learning, I really like that kind of work.
00:27:51 Evelyne Chevry
And I understand, as you mentioned, right. You need the client to have a support network or some practitioner that are therapists and other. How do you see currently your work compared to other people in the field? And how is the community? It seems that you have support from other people around and it seems to be really healthy.
00:28:19 Racheal Charlie
Yeah, that's really important. I've noticed when I look around that, particularly in somatic sex education, everyone does it differently. That's kind of the beauty of it. And I do have people that I'm in regular connection with just to talk about our work. We all do it differently. Some of the principles are the same.
00:28:39 Evelyne Chevry
I understand there's still some sharing in shared practice and experience and co-learning.
00:28:48 Racheal Charlie
We talk about any difficulties we might be having or really good things that are happening in our practices for us. And people have different levels of interest or ease in working with specific things. And some people that do somatic sex education don't touch. . So some of my clients I work with just online, so there's no touch. Some people, it might be just platonic touch and intimacy that way. Most people I work withwhole body touch.
00:29:54 Evelyne Chevry
You seem to know a lot about touch and the different kinds. And how do you navigate touch in a session? What is what? Right. What helps?
00:30:10 Racheal Charlie
Yeah, that's a really good question. That's really hard on many, many levels. So one of the important things is as much as possible, the session is client led. I really want the person to feel like they have autonomy. And so the wheel of consent is really important in the work and really gauging how much a person can actually ask for what they want and not just tolerate something, advocate for themselves, and actually know what kinds of touch they want. And that's really hard, I found for a lot of people. And there's somebody that I know that I've worked with for maybe three years now, actually. But it took two years before this person was like, now I get it. Now I know what it is to ask, oh, wow. And ever since then, that person has just been like, I want this. No, exactly this. Right. But it took two years to even think that it might be something desirable. And I think with body work, people think of old school massage, and I know a lot of massage therapists don't work like that anymore, of you lie down and you get fixed right by the professional who knows, who can feel your body knows what's going on. And I can feel stuff in people's body, but I'm feeling it. It's their body, so they are the expert. And just because I'm feeling something doesn't mean that it's a thing. Right.
00:31:56 Evelyne Chevry
So a lot of the practice and the work is listening to what's coming and guiding the client.
00:32:05 Racheal Charlie
Some people are amazing at it. And they really practiced it and they actually need to do that. And some people really fight it, and it's really hard to work with because if I'm just doing something to a passive person, it feels abusive almost for me to do that, especially because I'm working with sexuality. So some people come with specific sexual trauma that they will talk to me about. But I think there's so much sexual trauma in the cultures that a lot of us live in that even if it's not named, it's kind of often there. Right. Like, not being able to ask for what you want, being in relationships where you think you're doing for something for somebody else, you're never getting what you really want. You don't know how to ask, oh my God, am I going to be, like, slighted because I want a finger in my asshole? Right. It's bringing in the idea of clear language. Oh my God, I love the idea of a finger in my anus. Would you like to do that for me while we're doing this? Right, yeah. And experiencing not being rejected for that. Like, even if I say no to that, it would be like, wow, thanks for asking. That's awesome. No, but thanks for asking. Right.
00:33:30 Evelyne Chevry
So does your work with client is, in a way, being there? There's a physical practice, but I understand there's also kind of guidance or unfolding of teaching and education about the tools of communication, the tools of containers, the tools of mindful practice. What's the ratio of physical work versus the kind of more education work, if it’s quantifiable?
00:33:57 Racheal Charlie
For practices like for home play, often people will ask me, so we'll talk about that at the end of the session. I might do a follow up email with stuff written to be supportive or books or something. Like, I might think of something that's interesting for somebody that asks me for more information. It all has to unfold as a part of what that person is, where they're at, what they're asking for. And I find that difficult. I get excited and I just kind of want to bring stuff in, but it's just a hard balance to find a way to navigate it. Like it's always in development. I see so much, I have so many ideas, but it needs to come from the person and I can just nudge. But do you know what I mean?
00:34:53 Evelyne Chevry
I just had a flashback of me in a therapy session with my sex therapist, and I was seeing that she saw something more that I should be knowing or discovering, and I was seeing your excitement, but I was not there. But I was just there enough to see that she was seeing something, and it was kind of, I want to know, but I had to discover it by myself.
00:35:20 Racheal Charlie
Right.
00:35:20 Evelyne Chevry
And that's part of the challenge.
00:35:23 Racheal Charlie
And that's like, so the things that I lack the most are being a therapist because that's where I don't have training. And so that's really hard for me. I did one year (out of three) of somatic experiencing training. . And I would have liked to have complete that, but I did it for the trauma training, and I also did it for, how do I be with another person? How do I allow them to bring things in without me getting all excited and wanting to say stuff? Because blurting stuff out and giving people, like, a whole book to read, is not necessarily useful, especially with a practice in the body. It really is about the body. It really is about, who are you in your body? What are you not feeling a lot of the time?
00:36:21 Evelyne Chevry
I understand you discover a lot of numbness and disconnection in the body.
00:36:27 Racheal Charlie
Yeah, well, that's what it feels like. But I have to ask, and I really learned to be very much in my body when I'm working with people and feeling what I feel and trusting myself. So I'm all full of me in my body. So I can clearly distinguish what's me, what's the other person. And then if I have certain feelings, sometimes it'll be like, oh, I'm not feeling anything. Maybe it's another part of the body. If I feel uncertain about what I'm touching, I will ask a person, like, I'll say, oh, you asked me to touch you here. Does it feel complete here? Is there something else you want? And then often they'll say, actually, yeah, I'm feeling, like, here. I'll give options, and sometimes they won't know, or I'll touch somewhere else. Then there's other ways to bring it in. It's about discovering ways to support people, to find residency and safety in the body. Often there's really good reasons why people don't want to feel things. So you kind of want to trust their body's wisdom. And sometimes I'll just say, can you feel my hands here. Can you breathe into that? And does that help?
00:37:45 Evelyne Chevry
So I see that you're working with touch, breathing, movement, and with sound.
00:37:54 Racheal Charlie
Some people just do that just, like, naturally. It's kind of like, oh, cool, this is fun. And some people might do that with an intimate partner, but not a stranger. So then it's like, how do we bring that in? I think without pushing things on people, like just inviting them. Can you make a noise when you do this?Do you feel like moving? Does your leg want to move?
00:38:26 Evelyne Chevry
So do you bring playfulness and ease? How do you bring that in? Do you embody playfulness yourself, or you let the person discover that?
00:38:41 Racheal Charlie
Sometimes I'm just accidentally playful. I don't know. It's different. Every person brings out something different. One thing I have noticed is that lately, specifically, I've noticed this connection to joy. We've talked about this, like a soft joy, and I've noticed that I can feel that and it doesn't interfere with somebody else's state if there's other emotions going on for them. But I've also found that this kind of connection in my body to soft joy has really been. .. I think it's…. I don't know what it is, has been changing my connection and relationship with the people I work with. It just makes it feel more easeful, like we really are working together in a session. It's just for them. It's about them, their body. What do they feel? What do they want to explore?
00:39:44 Evelyne Chevry
So I see a lot of care, a lot of kindness in your approach. Some playfulness, some learning and some exploration, plus the tools. The way I see it is that it's a routine that you bring in. There's a lot of you in the approach. I understand you're constantly reading and a client come with something. You'll dive in and do some research to make some discovery. Sometimes it relate to your own experience. I think what I see so far is that we can connect with you, and that's the important thing, I think. And that kind of deep dive that you're doing in knowledge, I understand you're doing it with people and in your practice. So what are the really precious findings that you've made in that? Right. And the more core element, I think.
00:40:45 Racheal Charlie
The most precious thing to me has been finding something in each person that they're really good at or different, or discovering something new through each person. Like everybody is in their body differently? I find that people are very different to me. I find people to be vastly unique. I really find that once a person opens up, particularly around the body and particularly around sexuality, because for so many of it is such a big secret, I find this really something. I'm always looking for something. And if I find something that a person does that I think is, and this is just me, but I see that is unique to them and beautiful, If it's appropriate, like, I'll ask, I will share with them what I see.
00:41:53 Evelyne Chevry
So do you think it kind of bring other things than just the healing of the sexual aspect? Do you think it goes beyond the sexuality, but other part of the person when you're helping them beyond just the sexual?
00:42:11 Racheal Charlie
Just the sexual, yeah. Well, when something is so hidden, so difficult for people to talk about and be clear about, it impacts our lives. Right. Just the fact that I feel so comfortable sitting in front of most people and just resting my hand on my genitals, I never used to feel like that, but I have this ease in my body. I don't have a fear that my sexuality is going to overcome me and make me do bad things. Right, or make me do things I might regret or make me do anything. I feel like it's a beautiful energy that flows through me. And I think a lot of people seem to have fears around that. And really a lot of the body work around the genitals is really about accepting them as a part of the body so they get touched. It's astounding that for so many people, the only touch they've had on their genitals is a doctor, medically. So it's just kind of like, do to me, do to me fast, just get around and done with, and with a partner where it's seeking a particular result of pleasure. Right. So when do our genitals get cared for in all the other ways that our shoulders might get cared for? By touch, by therapeutic touch, different kinds of touch that can be incredibly pleasurable and safe to feel pleasure in the shoulders, painful. It can be all sorts of things. It's like touching the genitals with empty hands. I have no expectations of any sensation. It's just like an empty hand not moving. That's new for a lot of people. Or even I could be working on the butt muscles of the outside cheeks of the butt. But one of the beauties of the work is that because there's the possibility of touching everywhere. If a client is comfortable with this, I can use the external anus and the line of that to balance my hand as I'm working with the muscles and include the whole butt when working with it. And that can be pleasurable, but it can also mean that it's possible to get into different muscles. Just like working internally anally, you can also get really deep access to muscles and tissue from there and the outside at the same time, and the same working inside a vagina, you can. There's all these possibilities of ways of working that a lot of body workers don't get to use. A lot of osteopaths are trained in internal work, pelvic floor therapists, different people, but a lot of them might be trained in it, like osteopaths, but they don't necessarily do it as a part of their practice.
00:45:16 Evelyne Chevry
And you can. Depending on the client.
00:45:19 Racheal Charlie
Yeah, depending on the client.
00:45:20 Evelyne Chevry
Depending what we're working with, depending what they want.
00:45:22 Racheal Charlie
Yeah.
00:45:24 Evelyne Chevry
And these clients. I know from previous conversation, how diverse is your pool of clients? Can you just give an idea of the diversity?
00:45:39 Racheal Charlie
I work with all genders, I work with from the age of 21 to, I think, maybe 87, oldest so far. Any other kinds of diversity you want to know about?
00:45:53 Evelyne Chevry
Body shapes.
00:45:54 Racheal Charlie
Yeah. Different body, different cultures, different ethnicities.
00:46:04 Evelyne Chevry
So I think you have that kind of openness that give a safe space for a lot of your clients. That's the way I understand it. Your openness, but also the safety about the container and the approach seems to help a lot of people in that sense.
00:46:22 Racheal Charlie
I would like to think that that's true. However, I will also add that I'm a cis white woman, so clearly I have unacknowledged biases and ways of looking at things. I don't think that I'm perfectly open about stuff. Like I love different bodies. I love that. But I think it's really useful for people to choose a therapist or somebody to work with them that they do feel they're safe with. It's really important to sometimes have some of their experience. So I don't have all of those experiences.
00:47:00 Evelyne Chevry
Right.
00:47:01 Racheal Charlie
I have my experiences, yeah.
00:47:04 Evelyne Chevry
And I understand there's a part of your work that is also, in a way, a form of activism. Right. Or a form of support to a field that is really marginalized. Right.
00:47:20 Racheal Charlie
There's so many ways to talk about that because also the way I work has a lot of privilege. I'm not a full service sex worker. Right. Which has a lot of legal implications, a lot of safety implications, a whole lot of stuff attached to it, and very little support, and can be a really marginalized way to work. So I have the privilege of doing a kind of sex work without that, although it still is in a kind of gray zone, because I do touch people. So when you look at different kinds of psychotherapy historically around touch, it's been very like, I think even Freud started off working with touch more, but it became dangerous to combine this for so many good and bad reasons and just reasons. Touch is so important for working with trauma. Touch is so important for working with sexuality. If someone comes and says that they have premature ejaculation, depending on the client, I get to work exactly with that and see exactly what they mean. And unless you can see it, you really don't know. You can ask a lot of questions, but does the person themselves actually understand and know? But when you see it and feel it in your hands and feel the response, and sometimes when somebody says that they have this problem with it, like at the end of the session, I'll be like, well, can you tell me what the problem is? Right. So that's a really beautiful thing. Yes. So touch is really important. It's also, I come from a very traumatized, sexually traumatized culture. Our skin is the largest organ of our body. And a lot of touch is really important for our health and well being. I mean, touch every day, nearly all the time as a form of communication, but it's been weaponized in our cultures, and it's dangerous. And then there's this whole thing that creates less touch, but it's also important in this work. And I think working with sexuality, having people that work with touch of all kinds of sex work are so important. And it's so important to have it be safe work. It's so important to have it. There's so much pleasure and healing and stuff to be done in that.
00:50:05 Evelyne Chevry
So in a way, that's my own perception. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I feel it's a way to one person at a time. There's a ripple effect of healing communities and healing society in a way, in a broad sense, right. That often when you speak about the work you're doing, I see how much it's almost needed for everyone and just exaggerating.
00:50:41 Racheal Charlie
Like chocolate Is needed for everybody?
00:50:47 Evelyne Chevry
Like, it's like the amount of people I know that have trauma, it's easier to say: who do I know that does not have sexual trauma? Or a confused background about their sexuality, or learned behaviours that are based on social pressure, social constructs, and other elements. Right? And all these behaviours are a lot of unlearning, and a lot of learning about ourself. And I feel you're helping people to find themselves in that.
00:51:26 Racheal Charlie
So there's a couple of things to say about that. I'll go on to the positive, more evangelical side first, and then I'll go to a different perspective. But on a positive note, I love it when the people that I work with tell me that they've brought some of this into their lives, when they tell me that this has supported their relationships, any of their relationships, when it helps them bring more intimacy into their intimate relationships, when it helps them develop their own community. And I'll often say, this is your work. This is the work that you have to do, is to ask for what you want and to bring this into your life outside of this container. And for me, that's a beautiful thing, right? And it's like, oh, wow, this is amazing. Look what this person has done. Look at the changes this person has brought into their life. Right? The other thing is, okay, there's a couple of ways to do this. The beautiful thing about the training of somatic sex education and why I think it's such a powerful modality is the emphasis that it's client led, the emphasis on learnings like the will of consent. The emphasis on just those two things alone is really important because there's so much trauma around touch and sexuality that it's so easy to create more harm. Right. And the other thing is just looking at the ways things are taught, the way even the medical system works. Like, as much as you want to go conspiracy theories about the medical system, some of the amazing things about it are, that the knowledge can be held by anybody. There are trainings, there are boards. It's very strict, but there's a lot of safety in that. Like, there's actual real research to do as little harm as possible, no matter what your belief system is, no matter how much you want to think that big pharma is out to get you. And yeah, for sure. But there's so much goodness in large on mass learning with a lot of teachers and continual growth. And the problem with small things, and this is small and this is new, is that where is the safety? Where is the continuous checking in with Community? The beauty of that is that there's a lot of room to do things, but there's also a lot of room to create harm. And then who holds that accountable? So, of course, for me personally, my idea is to do as little harm as possible and try. Like, I'm trying to work with the idea of people coming to me for a reason and me being supportive. That's not always going to be the case. No matter who I am as an individual, no matter who anybody is. Just even going to a doctor. There's so much misinformation and confusion and so much wrong with the system that's not supportive to people despite the good things I said. So, yeah, it's a great modality and I think there is so much need for this kind of thing. And it's kind of like psychedelics. Yeah. Great. And they're all tools, right. So I do my best, but I'm new at this and I'm growing, but I'm just. Racheal.
00:55:10 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. And you're new at this. It's a new field also in a way, right. At least in some aspect, yeah. I see other topics that we should cover in other sessions, but what's next for you?
00:55:30 Racheal Charlie
Oh, what's next?
00:55:31 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. Where you are now and what's next? Right.
00:55:34 Racheal Charlie
I'm actually enjoying this work more than I ever have. I feel really excited about it. I'm really enjoying my clients, the people that come to me like more than ever before. So I really enjoy the one-on-one aspect of the work. I really actually enjoy working online with people as well as the touch work. I really enjoy my interactions and conversations with clients. I find it really nourishing. And I'm looking at working more also in groups of people working with the idea of having online mindful, erotic practices that are supportive and really safe spaces. So doing something like that in a group container and opening check in, then 40 minutes, say with music, with camera and sound off, so it's really private and safe and then coming back and checking in. So it's like de-stigmatizing, self touch, masturbating, and self touch for pleasure. That's something I really want to work with in person as well. Once I have more of the mindful erotic practices online and have a group of people that I think would be safe to work together and that it would be fun and learning experience for all of us.
And there's one more thing that I have in mind that we've had a conversation around. I really want to do an audiobook based around meditation embodiment guided exercises. But when I say meditation and embodiment, not necessarily being still, some of that as well, that's centered around a series of exercises, but is really about psychedelics and sexual embodiment because that has been my biggest learning and the best tools that I bring to clients. Like any of my embodied knowledge of different kinds of states of being has actually mainly come from psychedelics. So I want it to be a kind of audiobook that talks about using psychedelics, different kinds from microdosing to macro dosing, and how they can be used as friends for embodiment. And who am I? What is my body? And erotic embodiment specifically, and also for people that don't have community around that, or even community at all. And through these practice and just knowing, you can start to do this alone. And then as you grow in that, you can reach out and make your own community. So it's not really associated with my actual work work, but it's more like just a guide and kind of like some of the things that I've learned in the years that I've spent in those spaces.
00:58:53 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. So there's some learning there and the link between the body and the psychedelics. It would be interesting to see if you have other podcasts on that topic or if it all goes in the audiobook.
00:59:11 Racheal Charlie
I don't know. I'm just really excited about the idea because it's something really important to me. I feel like it's really important to me as who I am, who Racheal is. Like, this is something that shaped me. This is something I've been embroiled in for a long time. And I feel like I've silenced myself in that. Because when people talk about psychedelics and the erotic and trauma and sexuality, it's a very no, it's a no go place. And specifically doing it alone with or a trusted person, this way is kind of like a way into it, because people are talking about this is also a big no in terms of the way psychedelics are going. It feels like the whole idea of touch, therapeutic touch in psychedelics has a lot of dodginess associated with it. But it's like people that work in sexuality have a lot to offer these spaces. And if you're going to take a psychedelic and have an erotic experience and the person sitting, or you're in like a medical place and you have to shut it down, then that's traumatizing. So how do we use the knowledge of people that work in sexuality? Kind of like there's a tradition of sex workers working as trip sitters. And it makes absolute sense because who else is going to sit with you while you get snot all down your face, while you throw up, while you cry your eyes out, while you masturbate, while you take off your clothes and grunt and groan? Right? Who else is going to sit there without feeling embarrassed?
01:01:00 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. And I think these tools are like, if I related to my own experience with my gender transition, psychedelics were really a part of the process, not at the questioning phase, but at the conscious transition phase. And it really helped me to unfold so many challenges I had and then find what is gender for. Yeah. Find what is pleasure in my new body and things like that. Right. And I feel that kind of level of experience with psychedelics when done properly. I was guided with my sex therapist, with my doctor, and I had support. Right. And it really helped to have that much support. I could ask questions and they will give me some readings and things to know what I was doing. And I think looking at all the research you're doing and you have really curiosity but also kind of pragmatic approach of learning that I think will translate well that kind of link between body work and sex work in psychedelics.
01:02:23 Racheal Charlie
Yeah, there's definitely a power to it. There's definitely a lot there. And it is also dangerous just in terms of the power of it and how it has been abused. And it's like, how do we do that? Definitely there's a podcast with you and your gender transition because the things that I know already, it's just such a beautiful thing to hear about.
I just want to tell everyone the bits I've heard about it are just such a beautiful experience.
01:03:12 Evelyne Chevry
Yeah. I was privileged in many ways in my transition. There's a few things that you'll be covering in your next few podcasts. It seems you have more people coming in, I understand.
01:03:28 Racheal Charlie
Yeah. And also learning about your experience. You actually helped me at a time when I was looking at hormones to just kind of your understanding of it was quite deep and really supportive. And not just supportive in terms of safety, profile, longevity, all the things around that was also in different ways of taking them, the practical things. Yeah. But I won't go into it now. Just a little teaser, like, this is going to be a really cool episode. I want to ask you all these questions.
01:04:04 Evelyne Chevry
It will be fun.
01:04:06 Racheal Charlie
Yeah. So thanks so much for doing this with me today.
01:04:11 Evelyne Chevry
It was a pleasure.
01:04:32 Racheal Charlie
You can find my services for individual, both online and in person at my. Website in the show notes. And if you want to support my podcast, you can click on buy me a coffee. That link is also in the show notes. And thank you so much for listening to the fifth episode of Awakening the. Body with your host, Racheal Charlie.