Embracing Pleasure and Desire With Brenda Fredericks | Penetrate Radio, Episode 10

In Episode 10 of Penetrate Radio, Lucy Baldwin speaks with Brenda Fredericks, a coach, podcaster, embodiment teacher, family constellations practitioner, and longtime spiritual seeker whose work brings women back to themselves through honesty, desire, pleasure, embodiment, and relational truth.

Brenda’s path moves through grief, yoga, the School of Womanly Arts, OneTaste, orgasmic meditation, motherhood, partnership, boundaries, desire, ritual, self-care, and the deeply practical art of knowing your yes and no.

This conversation is about learning how your body works, letting desire become a compass, receiving pleasure without apology, and building enough structure around your life that you can become more honest, more embodied, and more available to what you actually want.

Watch or listen to Episode 10 of Penetrate Radio here:

Key Takeaways

In this episode, Lucy and Brenda explore:

• Brenda’s spiritual path through grief, yoga, embodiment, desire, and pleasure

• the School of Womanly Arts and the roots of her pleasure practice

• learning to love the body instead of treating it as wrong or shameful

• how appreciating men softened Brenda’s critical perfectionist patterns

• OneTaste, orgasmic meditation, sensation, containment, and the true yes and no

• how sensation becomes more workable when we stop immediately writing stories about it

• why boundaries create safety, direction, and more freedom inside relationships

• asking for what you want in everyday life, sex, partnership, and help

• desire as a compass and daily devotional practice

• compensatory desire, true desire, and following the path without grasping

• Brenda’s morning rituals, self-care structures, and flexible devotion

• how small environmental supports can help the nervous system and family life

Brenda Fredericks and the Return to the True Self

Brenda describes her work as helping women become more honest with themselves, each other, and their relationships. Whether she is coaching, teaching movement, hosting her podcast, facilitating family constellations, or working with desire, the throughline is embodiment. Everything she does brings people back to their true self.

That phrase can sound simple, but the conversation reveals how much is contained inside it. Returning to the true self often means untangling from conditioning around the body, sex, desire, men, family roles, motherhood, marriage, productivity, spirituality, and what a “good woman” is supposed to want.

Brenda’s particular medicine is both Venusian and Virgoan. She brings beauty, pleasure, desire, care, and relational warmth, but also structure, practice, repetition, containers, ritual, and daily devotion. She is not speaking about desire as a vague inspirational idea. She is speaking about desire as something you can build a life around.

The Tap on the Shoulder

Brenda’s spiritual journey began in a more overt way after her father died, when she became curious about life after death, other dimensions, and the mysteries beyond ordinary material reality. But the deeper turning point came later, when she was married, raising children, living in the suburbs, teaching sixth grade, and apparently living the life she had wanted.

On paper, things were good. She loved her husband, her children, her house, her career, and her suburban life. And yet she felt what she describes as a tap on the shoulder: a visceral, persistent calling for more.

That “more” was confusing because it did not arrive through obvious misery. She was not simply trying to escape a bad life. Something in her was waking up sexually, spiritually, and existentially. She became curious about what else was possible, and that curiosity eventually led her into the School of Womanly Arts, where she began exploring pleasure, desire, embodiment, self-love, and the body.

This is an important kind of awakening. Sometimes the call does not come because everything is wrong. Sometimes it comes because the soul knows there is more life available.

Learning to Love the Body

One of the early pillars of Brenda’s work was learning to love her body.

Like many women, she had been conditioned to believe there was something wrong with her body. She speaks especially honestly about the shame and confusion she felt around her pussy, even though it had brought her pleasure and birthed her children. She had absorbed the idea that this part of her was ugly, strange, or difficult to understand.

Through the School of Womanly Arts, she began moving from disgust toward rapture. That transformation did not happen because she intellectually decided her body was fine. It happened through practice, pleasure, attention, and embodied reclamation.

This is central to Shadow Alchemy. The body parts, desires, sensations, and pleasures we are taught to reject often become portals. What begins as shame can become devotion. What begins as disgust can become reverence. The body is not an obstacle to spiritual life. It is one of the primary places where spiritual life becomes real.

Appreciating Men and Softening the Critical Pattern

Brenda also describes learning to appreciate men.

She had not been explicitly taught to criticize men, but she had absorbed a lineage of criticism. Like many women, she carried a perfectionist pattern: she could do things the best way, and nobody else could quite measure up, especially her husband.

This pattern is familiar. It can feel justified because the critical voice always has evidence. It says, “No, this is real. Look at what he is doing wrong.” Brenda describes the pattern as a mis-message in her own voice, which is exactly why these patterns can be so hard to unwind. They feel like truth because they sound like us.

Her work was not to deny discernment or pretend nothing ever needed to change. It was to learn how to relate differently to men, partnership, appreciation, criticism, and control. When the critical pattern becomes conscious, it does not disappear forever, but it becomes something she can work with instead of simply obeying.

Riding the Ups and Downs of Life

Another core teaching Brenda names is learning how to ride the ups and downs of life.

Before this work, many people relate to mood, emotion, and life circumstances as if everything is either great or terrible. There is a problem, and it must be fixed. There is a down, and it must be escaped. There is an up, and it must be maintained.

Brenda now relates to herself more seasonally. There is juice in the ups and juice in the downs. She knows how to take care of herself when she wants to go out and when she does not want to go out at all. She understands her body and her cycles well enough to ride them with more approval.

This is not passivity. It is literacy. When you know how you work, you stop making every inner weather pattern mean something has gone wrong.

Sensation Before Story

One of the clearest bridges between Brenda’s background and Existential Kink is the practice of experiencing sensation as sensation.

Through OneTaste and orgasmic meditation, Brenda learned to feel sensation at a more neutral level. Instead of instantly turning every sensation into a story, she learned to notice the raw material of experience. This translated far beyond the practice itself. When she stopped interpreting everything through a twist that made it more difficult, life itself became more workable.

Lucy connects this directly to Existential Kink. A foundational piece of EK is learning to feel sensation without immediately writing a story about it. The body may be feeling intensity, heat, pressure, contraction, sharpness, pleasure, discomfort, or charge. The mind wants to name it, explain it, defend against it, or build an identity around it.

But when sensation is allowed to be sensation, it becomes more spacious. It may even become pleasurable.

Getting Off on Every Stroke

Lucy and Brenda discuss the OneTaste phrase “getting off on every stroke,” which becomes a powerful bridge into Existential Kink.

Lucy describes this as the capacity to feel the raw sensation of life without immediately rejecting it, labeling it, or bracing against it. If the mental junk drops away, the sensation itself may have pleasure inside it, even when it is intense.

Lucy illustrates this through a vivid birth story. During her fourth labor, while trying to receive an epidural that took almost an hour to place, she had to remain curled up and perfectly still through the most intense phase of labor. Because there was no escape and no ability to move away from the sensation, she put her whole attention into it.

In that moment, she experienced the texture of the pain differently. The difficulty was not only the sensation itself, but the intensity of sensation. There was sharpness, pressure, and force, but also a kind of pure contact with the experience.

That is the kind of distinction Shadow Alchemy loves. When resistance falls away, even intensity becomes more complex than “bad.”

Containment Creates Expansion

Brenda responds to Lucy’s birth story by naming containment.

In that moment, Lucy’s body and situation created a container. She had to curl inward. She had limits. There was nowhere else for the energy to go. In that containment, she could go deeper into the sensation.

This is also part of what makes orgasmic meditation powerful. It is extremely specific and structured. The practice has clear roles, time limits, and steps. Within that container, a vast amount of sensation, emotion, expansion, and awareness can unfold.

Lucy compares this to a fractal. Within every inch, there is infinite space. Within every second, there are infinite moments. Limits do not necessarily reduce expansion. Sometimes they make expansion possible by giving it direction and safety.

This is true in practice, ritual, parenting, partnership, sex, creativity, and life.

Boundaries Make Relationships Safer

Containment leads naturally into boundaries.

Brenda names boundaries as one of the biggest lessons of her spiritual journey. Boundaries create limits around what you are available for. They help people feel safer because everyone has a clearer sense of the edges.

This is especially obvious in parenting. Lucy points out that if you give children boundaries but do not enforce them, they become confused. The rule stops being a rule. The child no longer knows what structure to trust.

Brenda agrees that boundaries can be hard to hold, especially when you are tired, depleted, or under-resourced. That is why nourishment matters. It is easier to hold loving boundaries when you are not running on empty.

A boundary is not a punishment. It is part of the container that allows more trust, freedom, and play.

Knowing Your True Yes and No

One of the most important teachings Brenda received through OneTaste was learning her true yes and no.

This sounds simple, but it is enormous. Many women are trained to say yes when they mean no, to avoid bothering people, to make things easier, to keep the peace, to be nice, to be helpful, or to prevent disappointment.

In the orgasmic meditation context, someone might ask if you want to practice, and the truthful answer may be no. Learning to say that no can be sensational. It can reveal all the places in life where you have been abandoning yourself by saying yes.

Brenda began bringing this into her home with her children. Instead of manipulating them into wanting what she wanted, she started asking cleaner questions: “Grandma invited us over today. Do you want to go?” Then she respected their authentic yes or no.

That shift changed the atmosphere. When Brenda started respecting her own no, she could respect theirs too.

You Cannot Trust Your Yes Without Your No

Brenda says something crucial: unless you know your no, how can you possibly know or trust your yes?

If you say yes to everything, yes does not mean much. It may mean obligation, fear, guilt, politeness, avoidance, habit, or self-abandonment. But when no is available, yes becomes meaningful.

This applies everywhere: family, sex, partnership, money, work, friendship, parenting, and spiritual practice. A true yes has power because it is not coerced. It is backed by the possibility of no.

Shadow Alchemy is deeply interested in this because so much suffering comes from ignoring the body’s no and then resenting the world for the exhaustion that follows.

Asking for Honey in Your Coffee

Brenda gives a wonderfully simple example: if someone asks whether you want honey in your coffee, and you say no because you do not want to bother them, where else are you doing that?

She jokingly but sharply connects this to sex. If you cannot ask for honey in your coffee, you may not be asking for what you want in the bedroom either. Then, over time, you may become resentful of your partner for not giving you what you never actually asked for.

This is funny because it is true.

The small ask is never just the small ask. It is a doorway into your relationship with desire, imposition, receiving, guilt, sex, help, and worth. When you refuse to ask for small things, you train the body to believe wanting is dangerous or burdensome.

Asking for what you want is a spiritual practice.

Asking for What You Want in Sex

Lucy and Brenda linger on sex because the example matters.

Lucy notes that in her experience, it is deeply hot when a partner says clearly what they want. Being asked directly can amplify pleasure for everyone. If both people are turned on by each other’s pleasure, then asking is not an imposition. It is an invitation.

Brenda adds that you also might actually get what you want, which is vulnerable in its own way.

This is such a clean expression of Venusian desire. To ask is to let yourself be seen wanting. To receive is to let someone else have the pleasure of giving. When we refuse to ask, we deprive ourselves and often deprive the other person too.

Desire wants a channel. Words can become that channel.

Desire as a Compass

Brenda’s podcast, Desire as Medicine, began responsively. Her co-host Katherine asked if she wanted to talk about desire in public, and Brenda felt an immediate yes. That yes led to a Clubhouse show during the pandemic, then to more conversations, deeper friendship, and eventually a podcast.

This is exactly how desire often works. It calls, and if you follow it, a path begins to appear.

Brenda says her desires are a compass. She names them every day in prayer and again in a bedtime ritual with her partner. If she does not know what to do, she returns to desire.

This is not the same as grasping. She does not claim to control the exact form of fulfillment. Instead, she backs herself by following the desire and letting the path reveal itself. That is a very different relationship from trying to force life into a predetermined shape.

Having Is Evidence of Wanting

Lucy connects Brenda’s view of desire to one of the axioms of Existential Kink: having is evidence of wanting.

That teaching can be tricky because it does not mean we consciously wanted everything that happens. It points toward the deeper possibility that some part of the psyche, body, soul, or unconscious may be participating in what is here.

Brenda frames this through the path of following desire. If a desire calls you, and you say yes to following it, you are also saying yes to the journey that desire leads you through. The moment you are having may be part of the path, even if it is not the final destination you imagined.

This is why humility matters. We do not always know what fulfillment will look like on the other side. Desire may be real, but the path may be stranger than the mind expects.

Compensatory Desire and True Desire

Lucy brings in the idea of compensatory desire: desires we think we should have because of identity, belief, social conditioning, or internalized expectations.

For example, a mother might think she wants to throw an extravagant birthday party because that is what a good mother does, when in truth she does not want that at all. The desire is compensating for a belief about who she should be.

Brenda adds nuance by pointing out that sometimes we do have substitute desires along the way. If you deeply desire filet mignon but choose a burger, the burger may be delicious. If you want Puerto Rico but go to the local beach, sometimes the beach is enough, and sometimes it has diminishing returns because it is not the real thing.

The key is approval and information. Every experience teaches you something. If the substitute desire does not satisfy, that is not failure. It is data about what you truly want.

Self-Care as Devotional Structure

Lucy reflects that she has always seen Brenda as a pinnacle of self-care. During intense Mystery School immersions, Brenda had her practices and treated them as non-negotiable. That created a sense of solidity.

Brenda’s morning routine is extensive, but also flexible. Before she gets out of bed, she prays, gives gratitude, brags, and names desires. She puts her face in the sun, does lymphatic hops, drinks water, stretches, does yoga, dances, sometimes pulls goddess cards, waters her plants, makes breakfast, and takes a walk while doing a daily practice call with a friend.

This could become perfectionistic if handled rigidly, but Brenda emphasizes that the practices are changeable. Nothing bad happens if one piece is skipped. The point is not to become controlled by the routine. The point is to create a loving, flexible container that brings her back to herself.

That distinction is everything.

Ritual, Routine, and Virgo Magic

Brenda’s relationship with ritual has a very Virgo quality: daily repetition, careful tending, flexible structure, and devotional attention to the ordinary.

She has been practicing morning rituals in various forms for around two decades, and they have changed many times. The practices evolve with her life and what she wants.

This is a beautiful model for sustainable spiritual practice. A routine does not have to be a prison. It can be a living container. It can change as you change.

Ritual brings you closer to who you are. It taps you into intuition and desire. It creates a structure that supports life instead of another system to fail at.

Environmental Support and Nervous System Care

Lucy shares her own practical supports at home, especially as a sensitive person and mother of five.

She wears noise-canceling headphones in the house so she can stay present with her children without becoming overstimulated. She uses red lights in the evening to help transition the household toward sleep. She has used an internet timer to shut off the internet at night because otherwise she tends to stay up too late.

These may not sound like mystical practices, but they are deeply aligned with the episode’s themes. They are structures that help the nervous system. They create a container for the house. They reduce friction, remove repeated decisions, and make it easier to live in alignment with what is actually supportive.

Self-care is not only candles and baths. Sometimes it is headphones, red lights, and an internet timer.

Pleasure, Desire, and the Practical Body

One of the great strengths of this conversation is that pleasure and desire are never separated from practical life.

Brenda and Lucy talk about sex, yes, but also coffee, children, morning routines, face cream, castor oil, bedtime, parenting, light, noise, and breakfast. This is important because desire does not only live in grand life choices. It lives in the smallest bodily preferences.

Do you want honey in your coffee?

Do you want to go to grandma’s?

Do you want help?

Do you want that touch?

Do you want the red lights on?

Do you want to dance in your living room?

A life of desire is not only about chasing huge dreams. It is about learning to tell the truth at the level of the body, again and again.

The Real Medicine of Desire

The real medicine in this episode is the possibility that desire can become a way of knowing yourself.

Not a demand that life obey you. Not a grasping insistence that fulfillment arrive in a particular form. Not a compulsive replacement for self-trust.

Desire can be a compass. It can help you know where you are alive, where you are compromising, where you are hiding, where you are crossing your own boundaries, and where life is calling you into more.

To follow desire well, you need embodiment. You need your yes and no. You need boundaries. You need containment. You need enough self-care to hear yourself. You need the humility to let desire lead without forcing the outcome.

That is why desire is medicine. It brings you back to yourself.

• Full transcript for Episode 10 of Penetrate Radio

  Lucy Baldwin (00:01.442)

  Hello, welcome to another episode of Penetrate Radio. I am your host, Lucy Baldwin, and today I'm here with Brenda Fredericks, who is a dear friend of mine. She worked at... I met her working in the Sleepover Mystery School, Sleepover Mystery School. And she was like our Mystery School mom, Mystery School Venusian goddess. Yeah, just...

  Brenda Fredericks (00:28.726)

  I love that.

  Lucy Baldwin (00:31.514)

  And yeah, you're a coach, you've been in the world of spiritual development forever. Brenda has her own podcast about desire, extremely aligned. is there what, what do you, what is your normal sort of introductory? Like what, would you say you do, Brenda? I'm not doing it justice.

  Brenda Fredericks (00:52.182)

  You're doing great. I love it. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It's such a joy to be here with you today, Lucy. my goodness. And it's so funny to be a guest instead of the host today. I do so many things. I'm a coach. I work with women. I basically help women be more honest with themselves and each other and their relationships. Like, how do you truly be yourself? I do family constellations. I have a podcast. I teach a movement practice once a month.

  I really just do a lot of things. I'm a manifesting generator in human design. But everything that I do, because I'm like, wow, I do so many things, everything that I do brings people back to themselves, back to their true self. And everything is rooted in embodiment.

  Lucy Baldwin (01:40.28)

  Brenda, am I correct in remembering that you have like a lot of Virgo in your chart?

  Brenda Fredericks (01:44.842)

  I am a very special Virgo. So I am Virgo sun, moon, rising. I have like eight houses in Virgo, in my first, eight planets in Virgo, all in my first house. I have multiple Virgo stelliums. I had an astrologer once tell me that there should be a chapter in a book about me.

  but nobody's written it yet. I did once meet somebody else who was a triple Virgo, Sun, Rising. We were both like, my God. And then we were like, we can never meet again because it's like too extreme.

  Lucy Baldwin (02:08.469)

  Let's get to work.

  Lucy Baldwin (02:22.946)

  Well, I just have a really soft spot in my heart for Virgos because I like to think of myself as an honorary Virgo because I have a big Leo stellium that is in my, is it sixth house? So it's like the house that is like Virgo, the Virgo house. So I just, feel like I have a lot, I always felt like I was a Virgo. Like I was always like, but why am I not a Virgo? I feel like I should be a Virgo.

  Brenda Fredericks (02:37.054)

  Maybe.

  Brenda Fredericks (02:45.717)

  Mm.

  Brenda Fredericks (02:49.653)

  Well, you can live vicariously through me. I have enough for both of us.

  Lucy Baldwin (02:53.902)

  Yeah. Well, I do have Venus in Virgo. So I do think it's interesting because I always see you as such a Venusian emanation. And so it makes sense because you're so Virgo in that my Virgo Venus sees you and is like, ah, yes, this is this is what is true for me. Yeah. So, Brenda, I'm really excited to I just I wasn't thinking about this when I asked you to be on this podcast with me.

  Brenda Fredericks (02:56.403)

  Mmm.

  Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (03:11.057)

  I love that. I love that. Thank you.

  Lucy Baldwin (03:21.614)

  But as we were just talking now, I was realizing that because we talked about existential King a lot on this podcast and But you were actually part of the sort of community that I would say was the precursor where the EK philosophy came out of And so I want you to talk to us about that But before that I actually want to hear about where you started on your spiritual journey

  Brenda Fredericks (03:43.198)

  Hmm, that's such a great question. my goodness I've been at this spiritual journey thing for quite a while like honestly going on two decades It started out honestly the first time I ever touched anything spiritual was right after my father died I started getting into other dimensions and life after death That was the very beginning and then I got into yoga and I started opening up my body But my real that was like the precursor that was like my pre spiritual journey

  But my real spiritual journey started when I was probably about 38. So I'm going to be 58 this year. So that's really going on 20 years ago. I just, was married. I had a beautiful house in the suburbs in New York. I had my two kids. I had a great career. We had cars and vacations, a couple of pets. Like we really had all the things on paper and I was happy. I loved him. We got married when I was very young. And I just felt this tap on my shoulder.

  All of sudden, I just felt this tap on my shoulder. Like, even when I talk about it, I can actually feel the tap. Like, it was so visceral. And I was like, what the hell is that? And I tried to ignore it, but it would not go away the way these persistent calls are. And I finally was like, just started investigating, what is this thing? And it was, of course, I had no idea what this was, but it was so real.

  It was a calling for more. It was like, there's something more for you in this life. And which was very confusing because I was very happy with my life. I had a career that I loved. I taught sixth grade in a middle school. I loved my life. I loved my suburban life. I loved putting my crock pots up in the morning and, you know, reading to my kids at night. So this calling for more and this like awakening in all the areas and this like.

  sexually desiring wake up and the spiritual wake up and this curiosity for life and what else is out there was very confusing for me. So I that's how I ended up at the School of Womanly Arts, Mama Gina, where I started exploring pleasure and desire and embodiment and what it means to love yourself and love your body, which was an unheard of.

  Brenda Fredericks (06:09.215)

  quality for me because I was kind of conditioned to believe, like so many women are, that there's something wrong with our bodies. And I thought my pussy was like complex and weird and like this weird thing, you know, even though she brought me pleasure and she birthed me the most amazing humans. Still, I was like, this thing is ugly. Like I did not understand what a man would be possibly interested in it for.

  Which was quite shocking, right? I look back and I'm like, wow. And I remember Mama Gina at the time, this was a long time ago, saying, you know, there are stages of learning to love your body. And you go from disgust through all of these stages that she talked about where you actually can get to rapture. And I got there. And now, I mean, now I work with women on this. I'm like,

  my God, this is like the portal to another universe. So I started studying that. And the other thing I started studying inside of that field, which brought me to other areas as well, is appreciating men. You know, I had been brought up, not purposely, nobody taught me to criticize men, but you you pick up from the women around you in your lineage and I was quite critical of men.

  Very critical, I had a strong perfectionist pattern.

  And so, of course, I could do it the best way, and nobody could even come close to doing it as good as me, especially my husband, what was wrong with him. And so, you know, there's so many dynamics that come out of that. So I learned to appreciate men, and I learned to stop criticizing and stop barking orders. And of course, this has spiraled over many years. It's not like my critical pattern never comes out now. You know, if you're talking about shadow, yeah, that comes out.

  Brenda Fredericks (08:03.517)

  It does, I'm like always kind of keeping that in check. So the other thing I started really learning about was how to ride the ups and downs of life. You know, because we're kind of oriented in our world that everything's a problem and you're either great or terrible. Like everything is these peak experiences. And I really didn't know how to be honest with myself and what was really happening for me.

  And what happens when I'm having feelings or going down and now I'm just like the seasons. I'm like always up and down and I know how to work with myself and take care of myself and all the locations when I'm up and feeling great and out. Or if I'm like down and don't want to go out at all, like there's juice in all of that for me now. And I just write it because I'm in approval of it, because I understand how my body actually works where I.

  had no idea of that before. So these are all the core pieces of my spiritual journey and all of these things are so cyclical. know, like everything that I talked about just now I probably learned in the first year but you know I revisited them every year. You know, you just revisit them and revisit them and every time you revisit something like this in the spiral you learn something new and you're

  you're at a different starting point. So you just keep going deeper. And I always thought, yeah, as soon as I take this course or work with this coach, I'm going to be done. I'm good. And I was like, There's always another door. There's always another layer to yourself. And it's quite exciting to understand. I had a teacher who said, my role and my excitement in this life is to understand how I tick.

  how I work. And so I think that's probably been the biggest gift in my journey is understanding how I actually work. And a little fun fact for listeners that I learned is knowing how I work is like the magic sauce for everything. Because then you can teach your partner about you and how you work. And then you can have more of what you want in your life. So that's just a little, that's the short version.

  Lucy Baldwin (10:24.093)

  Yeah, amazing. this is okay. I love this. And I love that you gave this this background. And I have a daughter in sixth grade. So I just Yeah, and I love her teacher, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, it is a really, it is a really, really sweet age. And then so you were you did them. So you came into one taste. Tell me about that. How did you discover one taste?

  Brenda Fredericks (10:36.245)

  Aww.

  It's such a great age. I loved it. Loved, loved, loved it.

  Brenda Fredericks (10:54.183)

  Mm-hmm. Great. So I was in School of Womenly Arts, which is Mama Gina. Those are used interchangeably. And I was in that for a few years. And there was a guest speaker once in one of the courses. We were in this big auditorium. And Nicole Day-Dome came, who was the founder of One Taste. And she spoke on stage. And I was honed in on her. my god. Because she talked about freedom.

  in sexuality in a way that I had never heard of before. And I was like, I don't know what this is that she's talking about, but I want that. That was still married at the time.

  and it was very clear that it wasn't the right time. This was 2012. This was the spring of 2012. I was very clear. I want that and now is not the time. So later in 2012 is when my marriage exploded. had Hurricane Sandy in New York. My house was one-third destroyed by that hurricane. And that was it. I went into a really huge down after that because my house was destroyed.

  We separated during the hurricane. I mean, it was really madness. was just like crazy inner patterns madness is what it was. So we split up that winter. And then that next spring is when I got into OneTaste and started learning the practice of orgasmic meditation, which really took me to the next level. And I got super involved in that community. And it just took everything that I learned with Mama Gina and just

  brought it to a little, a new place and different perspectives. And I got to work with this stew that's inside of me and have a lot of fun. I had a great time.

  Lucy Baldwin (12:41.422)

  Yeah. So this might be kind of a lofty question, like a hard ask. But I'm wondering if there's any way, just for our listeners who aren't super familiar with One Taste, but just in general, if you could distill down some of the key teachings of One Taste to just like, maybe it's like one or three of the kind of core teachings, what was it really about?

  Brenda Fredericks (12:47.236)

  hehe

  Brenda Fredericks (13:02.485)

  Hmm.

  Brenda Fredericks (13:05.885)

  Yeah, that's a great question. mean, there's books written on this, books and podcasts and blogs and all of that. But one of the big things I learned about from One Taste is embodiment and being in my body. I remember one time hearing this teaching about pain, that pain, physical pain in your body is just a sensation.

  And one of the things that you do in the practice of orgasmic meditation at the very end is you give a frame to your partner that you're owned with. It's a partnered practice. And so what I learned was all these sensations in my body, that we put value judgments on them.

  and we say, we're nervous, we're anxious. Everyone's anxious these days, my goodness, right? So I was nervous before this podcast, but what I learned through orgasmic meditation was instead of interpreting the sensations, can we just name them at the physical level? And that was a game changer for me because once I started doing that and looking at things at more of a value neutral level, then it actually translated into my life. I started...

  I stopped, I should say, interpreting everything and putting a twist on it that made it actually more difficult for me. So that's a huge piece is just understanding sensation, which is very primal and very beautiful. So that was a huge thing. And that's just a huge game changer. Another huge thing that I learned through Ohm was learning my true yes and no. I mean, this is huge.

  And this is what I work with so many of my clients on, because as women, we do not know how to say no. And one of the things in the own practice, very basic level, somebody asks you, do you want to own? And you want to say no. You don't want to own with this person, right? But it's very hard for women to say no. So just learning how to actually say no is extremely sensational.

  Brenda Fredericks (15:10.233)

  Because we start noticing all the times that we've said yes to all the things that we don't want to do, which was actually a huge problem for me in my marriage, in my life. That's why I was exhausted and drained and overwhelmed. Probably the something more for me was being more honest with myself about what is it that I want to do in my life and what do I and not.

  because otherwise we're just constantly saying yes to ourselves and then feeling exhausted and drained. I mean, you just hear that with women all the time. So unless you know your no, how can you possibly know or trust your yes? And that was a game changer for me. So I started bringing that into my home. So at the time, my husband had left at the time, so was me and my kids at home.

  And I had gone from being kind of control-y. I wasn't like a super helicopter mom, but I was also just kind of control-y and perfectionistic. And I started changing the way I spoke to my kids at home. Instead of saying, for example, we're going to grandma's today.

  We're going to grandma's today and it's going to be great. And this is for all the reasons that it's going to be great. And grandma's going to give you dessert. She'll probably give you 20 bucks. Instead of like manipulating them into wanting to go to grandma's, I started saying things like, grandma invited us over today. Do you want to go? Like super pristine and clean. And then at first they were like, what's going on here?

  You know, teenagers, they're suspicious of everything and they started saying yes or no and I started accepting their authentic yes or no. So if they said no, I don't want to go, I said, okay, great.

  Brenda Fredericks (17:04.473)

  I started respecting their no because I started respecting my own no. So it kind of it just like melted away any tension in the house. They were like we don't know what's happening to mom but this is going really great which actually made them want to go to grandma's with me. So these are just some of the things that I learned in one taste and I mean from all of these things learning my true yes and no.

  Lucy Baldwin (17:15.214)

  Thank

  Lucy Baldwin (17:20.023)

  Yep.

  Brenda Fredericks (17:28.295)

  It rippled into my finances. It rippled into my sexuality. It rippled into my relationships and my family. It's been beautiful. lessons have been so forthcoming. And I learned so much that now I have my own podcast on desire. So the gifts have been plenty.

  Lucy Baldwin (17:47.181)

  was.

  Yeah, I was just thinking to ask you about your podcast, about desire, because that was so you totally read my mind there. And also, I just want to say that, you can see how, you know, this, especially the first thing that you talked about, you know, sensation as sensation and not having to label it. The language I use around that is like make a story, write a story about it, right?

  Brenda Fredericks (18:13.937)

  Exactly.

  Lucy Baldwin (18:15.63)

  And you can see how like EK, I mean, and there were more pieces of, of that EK came out of, but you can see how that is like a foundational piece of like the existential kink philosophy and the existential kink practice. And another thing that I know was part of that I just want to mention is this idea of like getting off on every stroke, like finding pleasure. Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (18:35.753)

  That is the best. my God. Yeah, that's the best. I mean, that's a whole podcast in itself. What does that mean to you? I'm so curious.

  Lucy Baldwin (18:41.87)

  You

  Lucy Baldwin (18:46.958)

  Well, it means it means.

  I mean, it really is like taking that concept of experiencing the sensation as it is and not having to write a story about it, but then allowing yourself to enjoy it, being able to get off on it, finding pleasure in whatever the raw sensation is. And so if you can, if you can really like let go, shed all the mental junk, it's like,

  Brenda Fredericks (19:04.533)

  Mmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (19:20.618)

  the sensation oftentimes can feel really good. I had a really profound experience with this in labor, which I'll just tell the story quickly. And then we can get back to you. it was my fourth baby. I had done three natural births.

  Brenda Fredericks (19:27.837)

  Hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (19:44.046)

  Actually, the first one wasn't technically natural because they induced me. So I don't think that counts as natural, but I didn't have any pain help. And then I had two home births. So I had done birth without any like pain help. And for my fourth birth, but my third baby was 10, over 10 pounds. And after that birth, I was like, you know, I really don't need to do this to myself anymore. I'm going to get an epidural. So fourth baby, I was at Yale.

  I decided to get an epidural. They had a really hard time giving me the epidural. Yale is a teaching hospital. So they had like a student giving me the epidural and they couldn't get it in. So I was, and my labor was happening relatively fast because it was my fourth baby. I still, it still took hours, but it was, you know, relatively fast. So when you're getting the epidural, you're like, curl, you have to like curl up and you're pregnant.

  And I was in that transition, like late stage labor at this point. We didn't really know. Like I started that, I was maybe like five or six centimeters dilated and it took them almost an hour to get the epidural in. So by the time they got it in, I was literally ready to deliver the baby like right then. And so I got from, I was like nine and a half centimeters. So I went through the whole labor like transition period, like the hardest part of labor.

  curled up in a ball and without the epidural, like it was a total waste. But in that experience, because they were like, you have to hold still, you know, it was like my spine was on the line. So I was like really committed to holding still in this position while I was in this transition phase of labor. it was, I mean, it was late stage labor. And so when the contractions,

  Brenda Fredericks (21:15.591)

  Hahaha

  Lucy Baldwin (21:40.772)

  So in my previous labor, I had tried really hard to surrender and kind of do this. I had done, I was in the really deep in the EK world at this time and just like trying to feel it as pleasure, trying to get off on like the labor and whatever. You know, you hear about these like ecstatic labors that people have and it ended up being like really, really horrible because I...

  was just, yeah, I wasn't doing it right. Whatever it was that I was trying to convince myself to enjoy it. wasn't, that was not the way. But in this situation, I really just went so deep into the feeling. Like just, put my whole attention into that sensation. And it was so intense. I mean, it is like the most intense sensation in the world, maybe. And...

  It did, I had that click of it's the intensity that it makes it so hard. It's not the sensation, it's the intent. In that moment, it was like I could feel the texture of the sharpness was just the pure intensity of sensation. Anyway, so that's kind of how my framework for it is like what it means to me.

  Brenda Fredericks (22:57.013)

  I love that. That's a great story. I think you illustrated it perfectly. I could really feel it when you said like the intensity and all the textured layers. I was like, I know what you mean. And yeah, just like getting off on the stroke and being an approval.

  And like, it kind of reminds me of when you have a really good cry and it just feels so good. Like it just feels so good. Or you like let out your anger and it's like, and it just feels so good. Because we have this idea that these things are quote bad or we shouldn't feel them. But they just, when you let them out or you're in approval of it, right, it just feels so good.

  Lucy Baldwin (23:39.236)

  Yeah, I think like in that experience, and I think this is kind of speaks to what you're saying, is like, because I had to be curled up in a ball, there was this kind of like containment. There was no escape. Like, because, you know, my other labors, it's like, you're all like loose and kind of like trying to shake it. I don't know, just like move or do something or just like...

  Brenda Fredericks (23:51.896)

  Lucy Baldwin (24:05.337)

  there's this looseness to it, which is good. You want to be loose, like the energy is really kind of going everywhere. And because I had to curl up into a ball, I had no fucking choice but to like just feel it all the way. just, was like, there was no other way. It was like, I had to just dive into it. It was like right there.

  Brenda Fredericks (24:17.941)

  Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (24:22.315)

  I feel it.

  Brenda Fredericks (24:30.017)

  Mm. That's gorgeous. And that's another big teaching from OM in One Taste as well is containment. And how much the feminine really needs containment. We actually want containment. And your body actually provided it for you, or the situation provided it for you in that moment. We want to feel contained. It actually feels good to have feel limits, you know, so we can kind of go to the edges of those limits with all of our chaos and beauty and wildness.

  Lucy Baldwin (24:59.223)

  Yeah, exactly.

  Brenda Fredericks (25:00.659)

  Yeah, I love containers. know, Virgos, of course we love containers as well.

  Lucy Baldwin (25:05.281)

  Yeah, and that's kind of what OM is, right? It's like you have such specific confines within the practice. It's like very contained. And within that, there's so much expansion.

  Brenda Fredericks (25:07.605)

  Mm-hmm.

  Mm-hmm.

  Brenda Fredericks (25:18.171)

  Exactly. Do you want me to say what OM is for anyone listening who might not know what we're talking about? Yeah, I mean just for the context of our conversation. So it's a partner practice where one person strokes the clitoris of another person's pussy for 15 minutes. And I say one person or the other person instead of man and woman. But really the practice is a clitoris stroking practice. So it's for 15 minutes and there's very specific steps that you go through. So.

  Lucy Baldwin (25:21.549)

  Yeah. Yeah, please.

  Brenda Fredericks (25:47.185)

  It's, you know, it's very structured. Yeah.

  Lucy Baldwin (25:50.276)

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. so within that there, it's just, but you know, this is kind of like what it reminds me of the idea of a fractal, you know, like within every inch there's infinite space, you know, if you just like keep going in and in and in deeper and, the same thing with time. It's like within a second, there are infinite moments, you know, with any amount of time, there's just infinity within it. And so it is this containment creates

  Brenda Fredericks (25:59.976)

  Mmm.

  Brenda Fredericks (26:04.563)

  Yes.

  Brenda Fredericks (26:13.301)

  Totally.

  Lucy Baldwin (26:20.015)

  the potential for expanding just in different directions, but it almost makes it, in a sense, easier to expand because the limits give you, I don't know the word. I'm having a hard time articulating, it's like...

  Brenda Fredericks (26:33.233)

  Safe day. I think they give a safe day. Is that what you were thinking of? For me it is.

  Lucy Baldwin (26:37.921)

  safety and also like maybe direction because it's like this is where you can go with this you know

  Brenda Fredericks (26:41.757)

  Yeah, maybe all, maybe both of those.

  Exactly, exactly. And really, ultimately, which is another huge thing I learned in my spiritual journey is boundaries, right? Like creating your own limits of what you're available for, which is tremendous. And, you know, if we're talking about like I was talking about our kids before, learning to have boundaries and putting boundaries in place at home, where it's not like I never had any boundaries, but not really. They were very loosey goosey. Actually just makes children feel safer, makes yourself feel safer. feel better.

  inside of a relationship if you know what the other person's limits are and then you can have more fun inside of that container.

  Lucy Baldwin (27:23.949)

  Yeah, this is something, yeah, I mean, this is so true. Something I've learned as a parent is like, if you give your kids boundaries, but then you don't enforce them, they get confused. It actually doesn't serve them for you to be like, that rule, well, you can break it this time. Because then they're like, wait, so can, is it a rule? Like they just, they need you to structure and hold the boundaries.

  Brenda Fredericks (27:34.718)

  Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (27:48.992)

  Totally, and it's hard. That's a hard thing to do. When you're, you know, you might be tired or whatever your reasons are to not uphold the boundary, it's, they get confused. So it's really important to be nourished and be well-resourced so you can show it for your kids in that way. And look, we're human. It doesn't always work out that way. Believe me, I know.

  Lucy Baldwin (28:12.079)

  So true. So true. But that, you know, the boundaries thing really goes back to what you were saying about the yes, knowing your yeses and nos too.

  Brenda Fredericks (28:20.009)

  Huge. It's so huge. Catherine and I, my co-host, we talk about that all the time. I feel like so many of our episodes come back to knowing your true yes and no. Like, you could just spend years just working on that and noticing where you cross your own boundary. my god. Because if you're doing it with somebody just saying, would you like?

  sweetener in your coffee, you want some honey in your coffee, and you say no because you don't want to bother them to get the honey, well, where else in your life are you doing that? I can pretty much say that if you're not asking for honey in your coffee, you are not asking for what you want in sex, and then you hate your husband. So whose fault is that?

  Lucy Baldwin (29:07.887)

  I love how you jumped right. I thought you were going to say like in bigger ways in your life, but then you went right to sex.

  Brenda Fredericks (29:14.107)

  Yeah, well, it's just, yeah. Yeah, well, because it's

  Lucy Baldwin (29:18.253)

  Yeah, yeah, that is so funny. Now I'm gonna so My husband has a real hard time imposing on people He hates imposing on people. It's like it's like pathological And I mean he's been working on like because I've been calling it out we've been together for ten years and so I'm definitely like You gotta just get over it like even like his pair. He has no problem imposing on me like at all, you know, he

  Brenda Fredericks (29:27.285)

  Mm.

  Brenda Fredericks (29:32.531)

  Hmm, that's so funny.

  Brenda Fredericks (29:40.202)

  Hehehe.

  Brenda Fredericks (29:45.993)

  Great.

  Lucy Baldwin (29:46.857)

  He doesn't apply to me, obviously. I mean, our marriage wouldn't work if it applied to me. But like, you know, with his parents, they want, it's like, dude, they want to help. They really want to help you. Like, let them have the pleasure and the joy of helping you.

  Brenda Fredericks (29:48.725)

  Aww. Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (30:01.391)

  I know, I know. It's really true when we don't give, we don't receive. We're really denying somebody else the pleasure of giving. And it's so great to give. But you know, those things are so deeply seeded and we all have them in our own way. Like we all have, or like I mentioned, my critical pattern, you know, like it's so hard. Like these things that are just...

  that come from their hours, they live in our body, but they're also not hours, meaning they're in your lineage, they're in your cells, they're in your body. So these are things that are passed down, not only like literally in your cells, but through the environment that you grew up in, and they're just such, can I curse? They're such motherfuckers to work with, because they feel so true. It's like, my God, I don't wanna put somebody out.

  Like when I hear the voices of criticism in my head for my partner, for men, that sounds real. I can explain to you why these things are real. No, no, this is real. This is what he's doing wrong. But it's like, it's very skewed. know, it's like a miss message, I don't know if I have the word, in my own voice. So it's like, I believe it, but now I know better.

  Lucy Baldwin (31:06.222)

  Lucy Baldwin (31:15.44)

  Mm-hmm.

  Brenda Fredericks (31:15.741)

  So I feel for your husband, and if he's working on it, then that's amazing because that's the best that we could do is work on things. Yeah. Hi Gunther.

  Lucy Baldwin (31:24.216)

  Yeah, he is, is.

  Yeah, luckily it doesn't apply to me, I'm going back to the sex thing though, because I think this is actually important because in my experience, when somebody that I'm in a sexual relationship with hypothetically, if they're like, dude, this is what I want. Nothing turns me on more than like somebody being like, this is what I want, like do this for me.

  Brenda Fredericks (31:32.765)

  Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (31:50.655)

  Totally.

  Brenda Fredericks (31:56.349)

  It's so hot.

  Lucy Baldwin (31:57.847)

  Right. So it's like just ask, like by not asking for what you want, especially in the bedroom, like that is the most poignant example. Like you're truly depriving somebody of the pleasure, like the pleasure of getting to give that to you because yeah, yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (32:07.284)

  Yeah.

  Yeah, totally. And yourself!

  Brenda Fredericks (32:17.045)

  because you might actually get it. Which is so vulnerable.

  Lucy Baldwin (32:19.448)

  Yeah. And I know it is, but like in those, I mean, in my experience, in my sexual relationships, it's like, we're turned on by each other's pleasure. So of course, like you asking for what you want and then me giving it to you, it's like, you're just amplifying the pleasure that everybody gets to have.

  Brenda Fredericks (32:42.229)

  Totally. It's so great. And it's such a deep practice in asking for what you want in the coffee shop or the bedroom or in relationship or asking for help. That's another really big one, right? Just asking for help. People want to help us. But we deny ourselves a lot. Yeah.

  Lucy Baldwin (33:01.742)

  Yeah, yeah. And so I do think this is a good segue, maybe a good segue into if you so tell me why you started a podcast about desire.

  Brenda Fredericks (33:11.797)

  Mmm. Oh, this is such a great question. So this was this is responsive desire. So my co-host Katherine She one day we were friends. I knew her for what through one taste and she once one day asked me

  Do you want to talk about desire with me in public? And I was like, what? But I felt an immediate yes. So this was back in the pandemic. This was in 2020 when we had Clubhouse. Clubhouse was new. I don't know. It was like a radio app, right? There was no recording at the time. I think you can record now on Clubhouse. So we were like, OK, great. This Monday, we picked a day. Monday at 3 o'clock, we went on and we had a little radio show. We called it Desire Hour.

  And we had such a good time that I was like, let's do it again. Let's do it next Monday at 3. So that just kind of started us talking about desire. And we had people on, and we had followers listening, and it was so much fun. And then one day, Katherine said to me, now we had been developing our sisterhood and our friendship during this time too, which was really a beautiful gift. She said to me, the world is missing out.

  And I was like, my god, I know what you're talking about. Because we had these two guests on this one particular day, and it was so gorgeous. We just got so into the desire. You know those moments where it feels like soft honey in the room, and you're like, my god, everyone needs to know this.

  But it wasn't recorded. So we were like, wow, people are missing out. I think that we need to actually turn this into a recorded podcast. So we were like, great. So we stopped our radio show and we started creating what is now the Desire is Medicine podcast. But then there was a hurricane that happened. I moved. Like, life happened. But throughout that whole time, we had been meeting every Wednesday.

  Brenda Fredericks (35:07.689)

  to just talk on the phone, ideally to talk about the podcast, but sometimes we were just crying or laughing or.

  getting to know each other. But it turned out that year, which that turned out to be like a full year, like we just couldn't get it started, was actually really beautiful and a really strong foundation for the podcast because it's, you know, based on relationships, like a lot of the things that we're talking about. So we started out and we actually just dropped episode 137. We're in our third season and we drop every week because she's a Capricorn.

  Lucy Baldwin (35:41.904)

  And you're a Virgo. That's a power theme.

  Brenda Fredericks (35:41.942)

  I'm a Virgo. I'm a Virgo. It really is. It really is. I'm very, very feminine. So I would be like, you know, let's, you know, skip a week or, maybe we'll do every other. She's a Capricorn. I actually love that. It holds me to a really high standard. And, you know, the premise of our podcast is desire.

  Lucy Baldwin (35:48.816)

  Bye.

  Brenda Fredericks (36:05.081)

  And so desire isn't only about manifestation. It's about the journey that it takes you on when you follow a desire, which is a winding wild path, right? And in that wild winding path, you...

  actually change and you transform and evolve into someone who on that path, like kind of learns all these skills and you open this door and you learn that, you go down this rabbit hole and you learn this, to actually end up being the person who could have this thing that you said you wanted, right? And sometimes you don't even end up having it.

  You know, and you know, we talk about that a lot. I do believe that about desire, that it's not always about the manifestation. It's actually if we get too attached to having the desire, like I must have this desire, it actually blocks you from maybe something even better than you could possibly imagine. So, yeah, that's the one to one desire. It's a fun path.

  Lucy Baldwin (37:03.812)

  Yes.

  Lucy Baldwin (37:07.952)

  Yeah. Yeah, this is something that Leila and I teach on a lot actually in our programs where we do it. It's a little like, I like to think of it as a big and switch because that makes me feel naughty. But it is sort of like, here's the thing that you want. But like, is it really the thing that you want? Or is it the feeling? it the is that what's what's the underlying like state that you're seeking? It's an internal state that you're seeking. And you think that that thing is going to get you to that internal state.

  Brenda Fredericks (37:29.147)

  Exactly. Exactly.

  Lucy Baldwin (37:37.54)

  But it's not about the thing.

  Brenda Fredericks (37:39.208)

  it's really not about the thing. But yet the thing coming to you is like an intuitive, magical, know, carrot that pulls you to this thing that you want to become that person, to have that feeling. And you do grow along the way. And it's pretty amazing.

  Lucy Baldwin (37:59.66)

  this reminds me actually, I'm so glad you're here, Brenda, because, so I know like a lot of people came out of one taste and one of them, another person who I follow besides Carolyn, obviously, is Perry Chase. And I've heard her talk about desire and I think this came out of one taste, so I wanna ask you about it, as like the fulfillment of, like, okay.

  Brenda Fredericks (38:02.257)

  Hahaha

  Brenda Fredericks (38:15.465)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (38:28.399)

  I'm not even sure, I'm not gonna do justice to how she explains it, but it's something like that whatever's happening in the moment is desire. Like that is our desire.

  Brenda Fredericks (38:39.965)

  Interesting. I don't know. don't know. I don't know how Perry talks about it. I love Perry and I've worked with her for a while. She's wonderful. I mean, the only thing I would say about that is that if a desire calls you, you're and you're following it, then whether you know it or not, you're kind of a yes to the journey of following that desire. And so in the moment is the desire that you're having, the experience you're having on the path to the desire. That's the only thing that I think of.

  when you say that. I don't know if that answers it, but I don't know how she talks about it in that way.

  Lucy Baldwin (39:11.449)

  Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I guess I've always seen it as a parallel way of saying what is one of the axioms of EK, which is having is evidence of wanting. So like, you know, the fact that it's here means that there is desire.

  Brenda Fredericks (39:26.91)

  Yes.

  Brenda Fredericks (39:31.896)

  I see what you mean. Totally. Totally. And that's a tricky teaching, right? Having is evidence of wanting, because we're also saying that it's not about the having, right? But sometimes it is. Sometimes it is. And that's where we really can't get too involved as humans.

  Lucy Baldwin (39:43.803)

  Yeah. Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (39:51.03)

  because then we get our clutchy little graspy fingers on it. And we don't know. And this is where I personally just believe in a higher power and that guides me along and that I'm not in control of everything. As a former CEO of the universe and control freak and perfectionistic, if you get really attached to having it this way or having it that way, it's so much better. I've just...

  released so much control and grasping to say, I really want this thing. And there's big things in my life that I want right now. And I don't know what it's going to look like on the other side. And I don't know if I'm going to ever have this thing, but I'm going to keep following it because it's such a deep calling inside of me. And it's kind of that to me is self-love. Like when you're

  backing yourself in that way and you're going to follow this thing and like get out of your own way to have the thing that you want.

  Lucy Baldwin (40:54.137)

  Yeah, yeah, because desire is, you know, it's an amazing, I don't know, guide system. It's an amazing way to orient oneself. It's like, you don't know what to do, follow your desire.

  Brenda Fredericks (41:03.976)

  It is.

  Totally.

  Brenda Fredericks (41:11.249)

  Absolutely. And I say my desires every day. Like literally before I get out of bed, I do a hundred things in the morning. That's why I have to get up at 630 these days because I have so much to do in the morning. And one of things I do is I pray in the morning before I even get out of bed and I say my desires. You know, a couple of them. And so I'm always tuning into my desires. And then actually I have a ritual with my partner where we have a little...

  closing out bedtime routine, and we both say our desires then in addition to some other things. And so I'm just like so tapped into my desire because it's my compass. So if I ever don't know what I want to do, I just go back to my desires. It's actually much simpler. It's actually just a simpler way to live. It's like a container. It's like, I have the container of my life based on my desires. I know what I'm doing with my life.

  Lucy Baldwin (42:05.155)

  Yeah, I do think you are particularly in touch with your, mean, yeah, you've been doing this work for 20 years, you're really in touch with sort of knowing what you desire. And I think there is a piece where a lot of people struggle to even know what they want. And I also think there's a lot of what I call compensatory desire, where it's like, we think that we should want that.

  Brenda Fredericks (42:14.749)

  You

  Brenda Fredericks (42:22.857)

  Yeah.

  Lucy Baldwin (42:32.793)

  And so we actually convince ourselves that it is what we want, but really it's that desire is a product of something that's actually out of line, you know, out of tune within ourselves. It's like a belief that we have, you know, we can have a compensatory desire that's stems from some belief about what we should be doing and what our identities should look like. You know, as a mom, I should do X, Y and Z. So I,

  Brenda Fredericks (42:44.479)

  Totally.

  Lucy Baldwin (43:00.389)

  think I want to throw my child like an extravagant birthday party, like, I don't want to throw my child, you know what I mean? And so that's just a random example, but yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (43:07.221)

  It's a great example.

  Totally, exactly. And sometimes we do have our compensatory desire along the way. Like if you want, you're like, I want a filet mignon. I want to go to the fanciest restaurant in town and have the best steak ever known to man, right? But you don't have the money for it. So, okay, you go to the burger joint and you get a burger. And that's a pretty good burger. If you can enjoy that burger, you're, but you hold on to that filet mignon desire, right? So it's not bad. It's just.

  Sometimes we can't have the filet mignon. Like you said, you won't give it to yourself. You don't want to spend that money, or you don't want to go through the trouble of asking for it, whatever the thing is. So sometimes we do have our compensatory desires along the way. And that burger can be really delicious. And it also can have diminishing returns. Like, I really wanted to go to.

  I really wanted to go to Puerto Rico for a vacation, but I just went to the beach that's a mile away. And then it just kind of sucks. It's like, you really wanted that thing and you could have given it to yourself, but you didn't, and it doesn't hit. But if we're in approval of all of our experiences, then everything is a learning experience, and you just gather information from it, and then hopefully apply it to next time.

  Lucy Baldwin (44:34.873)

  Yeah. So Brenda, love that you mentioned how there's a couple of things that you mentioned that remind me of this. You mentioned how you have a whole long list of things that you do every day. And I can attest to and I've always seen you as this like pinnacle of like self care because when we were doing, you know, we were doing the mystery school, putting on these immersions, you were like,

  Brenda Fredericks (44:43.509)

  I do.

  You

  Lucy Baldwin (44:57.009)

  I have these things that I do every day and it's non-negotiable and I don't give a shit if I'm putting on a mystery school today because I'm doing my things. And I just felt like, wow, Brenda is so baller and just like so solid. I don't know, I was always really impressed by that. And I'm curious if you'd be willing to share with us what those things are that you do.

  Brenda Fredericks (45:18.949)

  my god. Okay, I just dropped a reel about me having to get up at 630 in the morning because I have so much to do, but like the thing I'm doing is just like dancing in my living room, but it's true. So I...

  First of all, thank you. I receive that. it's really like a beautiful evolution in my own life to receive that reflection, because it wasn't always that way. But I've just found that I wake up, sometimes you wake up crunchy, right? I don't want to just go into my life. I need like 12 hours to get ready for my day. But I've condensed it into a few. So the first thing I do in the morning, well, before I even get out of bed, I am praying. I do a brag.

  a brag of gratitude and a desire. I get out of bed, I put my clothes on, I get my face in the sun. So I didn't even leave my bedroom yet. And I'm like outside, and I'm doing my lymphatic hops. So I'm doing my lymphatic hops, my face is in the sun, I'm breathing in the fresh air. And then I go in the kitchen, I get my water, I drink my water.

  And I do some little stretches. And then depending on how I feel, I will wash vegetables for green juice, depending on how bad I have to pee. I'll wash vegetables for green juice because my partner juices every morning. And then I'll go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and all the bathroom business. And then I do yoga. So I have this beautiful playlist. And I do yoga every morning.

  And it used to be like a whole thing and it was 20 minutes and I'm like, okay, I'm done with that. It's had many cycles. I've been doing this for two decades every morning and it's changed many times. It just changes to be more resonant with where I am in my life and what I want.

  Brenda Fredericks (47:05.685)

  And it's flexible. All of these things that I'm saying are extremely flexible. It's not like if I don't put my face in the sun, nothing bad happens. It's really OK because we can take our perfectionistic patterns and our controlling and just put it into spiritual language. And it's still a perfectionistic pattern running us. It's a tricky one. So everything that I'm saying is flexible and changeable.

  So I'll drink my water, I'll do my yoga, and then once I do the yoga, I love my playlist and a song will come on and I'll just start dancing. I recently hurt my knee, so now I have physical therapy to do. So now I'm doing like physical therapy exercises in the morning. Yeah, what else do I do? Sometimes I'll pull goddess cards.

  I love watering my plants. and I go up for, I make myself a gorgeous breakfast every morning. So I make Spencer and I a beautiful breakfast and we usually like sit and talk. And then I go for a walk. So I have a scheduled call every morning. It's so funny. Is your pod, how long is this podcast? so I have a scheduled call with a friend every weekday and we do a tool together called spring cleaning. So we basically hold space for each other, for each other to like kind of get out whatever's happening.

  for us while I take a walk and then I come home and shower and start my day.

  Lucy Baldwin (48:30.481)

  Wow.

  Brenda Fredericks (48:30.931)

  I probably forgot some things, to be honest. It sounds like madness, but it's so flexible and changeable, and that's kind of the beauty of it. I have like a big toolbox of morning practices.

  Lucy Baldwin (48:45.252)

  Yeah, that so that call that you do every morning is it with the same person every day?

  Brenda Fredericks (48:50.517)

  It's with the same person. We started doing that in the pandemic. So it's been going on six years of this call every morning. And even that's changeable. Like it used to be at 9.15 every day. Now we worked it out. We check in the night before, set up a time. And sometimes we don't do it for whatever reason. And maybe I'll go on a walk that day on my own, or maybe I'll just skip the whole thing. Yeah.

  Lucy Baldwin (48:57.638)

  Wow.

  Lucy Baldwin (49:17.938)

  Wow. Yeah, because we used to be, did, remember we did, we had a writing group for a little while where we were writing most mornings. I want to do that again.

  Brenda Fredericks (49:24.739)

  yes. That was amazing. Yeah. That was so great. You know...

  Ritual is so beautiful. Like routine and ritual is so beautiful and it is something I guess Virgos are really good at. And I think that it just brings you back closer to who you are and it taps you into your intuition and your desire. And that's a beautiful thing, right? So maybe do it in the afternoon, maybe do it in the morning or at night, whatever works for you. But I love the writing. And that's another thing. I've also done writing practices in the morning.

  We didn't even talk about face creams, but that's another one.

  Lucy Baldwin (50:03.89)

  I'm always

  Lucy Baldwin (50:09.178)

  my gosh, can I for a minute? Because I have chronically, like I'm a dry type. So my face always, I was struggling with like my face always feeling dry and my skin feeling like tight and just like, I was putting castor, I was lathering castor oil on my skin multiple times a day until recently. I, and I was trying, I tried so many different, I mean, for years I just put like body lotion, like thick.

  body lotion on my face. But I'm having to put it on multiple times a day because I'm actually just uncomfortable. And I've seen a lot of buzz about Talo. And I was like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. don't like, I don't like to, I don't, there's always some new trendy product. And I was like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to bite. But then I finally was like, but what if that's the thing? And I got the Talo and it works.

  Brenda Fredericks (50:50.325)

  Hmm.

  Brenda Fredericks (50:58.609)

  There is.

  Lucy Baldwin (51:08.402)

  it's actually working. Yeah, wait, I put on at night and then when I wake up in the morning, I don't even, yeah, it's not because it, yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (51:15.262)

  I love that.

  Is that why you look so glowy today?

  Lucy Baldwin (51:20.57)

  Maybe my towel is working. Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (51:22.417)

  I love that. You reminded me also, first of all, I love that story. Second of all, you reminded me that I also have a nighttime ritual that I love. Now I do not do this every day, but you reminded me when you said castor oil. So I heard that you could put castor oil in your belly button at night. Right. So I, I, don't always do this, but I did go through a time period where I was doing it every night and it's really good for digestion. Like you'll have a really good poop in the morning if you put castor oil in your belly button. And like I'll rub like coconut oil on my

  body and I'll put a candle on and do like a yoga nidra or listen to some soft Billy Joel playlist just something to like chill out at night it's just so lovely instead of going from life to bed like I like the transition

  Lucy Baldwin (52:10.97)

  Yeah, I feel you. I'm always trying to find the right magical routine that is both sustainable and the right amount supportive for me. And I really try with the routines. But I do have so in my house, I'm a very sensitive type person, just sensitive to noise and light and a lot of stuff. And you know, I have five kids, I wear noise canceling headphones around my house most of the time.

  like a lot of the time, especially when my kids are getting crazy. I can still hear, like you can still just talk to me when I'm wearing them, but it just lowers the volume so that I'm not just like needing, cause otherwise, yeah, I get overstimulated just being around my kids.

  Brenda Fredericks (52:55.131)

  Dude, that is so genius. That is like, you could have a whole business selling headphones for moms. That is so, I've never heard of that. I am so impressed.

  Lucy Baldwin (53:01.786)

  I know.

  Lucy Baldwin (53:06.192)

  Well, it's such a game changer for me as a parent because I used to like not be able to hang, you know, because obviously I would be fine if I'm if we're all doing something organized. But with five kids, if everybody's just kind of I love that, like being in the house and it's like the evenings and everybody's kind of doing their own thing and, the toddlers running through like, I don't know. And the kids are playing and I but I would get overstimulated. And so with the noise cancellation, I can.

  I can hang. Like I can hang in my own house. Yeah. Well, so we started doing this thing too, because I struggle with going to sleep at night. Not like falling asleep. I have no problem falling asleep. I have a really hard time letting myself go to sleep. Like I'll just stay up and just like for some reason resist going to sleep. It's very weird. But one thing that helps me that I've been doing, which I love, is I set up red lights in my house.

  Brenda Fredericks (53:36.469)

  Mm, that is so gorgeous. I really love that.

  Lucy Baldwin (54:04.57)

  So after dinner, we switch over to red lights only. So it's like dark and like low lighting.

  Brenda Fredericks (54:12.541)

  God. I'm so turned on by that. That when I have my next home, because right now we're just subletting, I so want to do that. I want to have everything. My daughter has this. Everything switches over to red light at a certain time. Do you have it on a timer?

  Lucy Baldwin (54:29.058)

  No, we don't have any like sophisticated. My mom had this in her house. She had like all these fancy bulbs that like change lights. I just have like one red light in my office. We have a string of red light. They're like red Christmas lights in our kitchen. And then we have like one red light lamp in the lit. Like we just have a few key located. And then like in the bathroom, we always had a red nightlight in there anyway. But in the basement where my kids bedrooms are, we just like run.

  Brenda Fredericks (54:31.79)

  okay.

  Brenda Fredericks (54:41.481)

  Lucy Baldwin (54:56.562)

  Christmas lights all the way down through the hallway into the bathroom. it's just, and we leave it on all the time so they have light like if they wake up at night and stuff. So it's actually pretty easy. It's just like three light or four light or whatever. I just go around the house and turn them on. Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (55:09.545)

  That's so cool. Yeah, that's great. I just got the blue blocker glasses for a night. So it's great. It's fun to try out all of these things and like you see what works for you. But it's all really loving and kind to yourself. And what a better mother you could be if you have these headphones on and you're not overstimulated. my God, it's so genius.

  Lucy Baldwin (55:16.306)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (55:32.624)

  Yeah.

  Yeah, well, I have to like do these things to help myself. Like we have a timer that turns our internet off.

  Brenda Fredericks (55:42.445)

  yes, that's another great one. Love it.

  Lucy Baldwin (55:44.528)

  Yeah, because if I don't turn my internet off, I'll just be up on my computer until like one in the morning. You know, I just like totally get sucked in. But the timer, just, it'll just turn off on me now. Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (55:55.06)

  I love it. It's great. Amen. That's beautiful.

  Lucy Baldwin (55:59.493)

  Yeah. So those are some of my, they're not really like routines, but little tricks.

  Brenda Fredericks (56:05.077)

  Yeah, well, it feels like they're structures that you implemented into your life to set the container of your house so everyone knows, like, oh, it's evening. It's nighttime. And then you don't have to think about turning off your internet. I know people who turn it off every night. But then it's another thing to do. This is great. You're really setting yourself up to win. It just goes off. You don't have to think about it. Yeah.

  Lucy Baldwin (56:28.944)

  Yeah, well, it actually started because I was worried about the EMF, just being exposed to it all night. But then I realized, I should turn it off earlier, like at eight.

  Brenda Fredericks (56:35.187)

  Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (56:42.567)

  Yes. Is that what you do?

  Lucy Baldwin (56:47.93)

  So we had it at eight for a while. And then I convinced my husband, I'm like really annoying. Like, you know, one night I was like having a rough day or whatever and I was like, just turn it off. I want to watch it. I want to like binge something, you know? And then he turned it off. then I was like, turned off the timer, like disconnected the timer. And then I was just staying up later and later every night. And then we, when we reinstated it, now it's like 9.15.

  Brenda Fredericks (57:12.213)

  Beautiful. I love it. Thereby showing that everything is changeable and adjustable. The only thing we can really count on is change. And it's good if we change with life. Yeah.

  Lucy Baldwin (57:23.908)

  Yeah, exactly. Well, so Brenda, you obviously have your podcast Desire as Medicine. Are there other ways? What other ways can people work with you?

  Brenda Fredericks (57:30.035)

  Mm-hmm.

  Brenda Fredericks (57:34.389)

  So great. Thank you for asking. So I have my podcast that's on all the directories. I have my website, brendafreddix.com. I'm on Instagram. I'm on all the socials. I have my deepest work. My one-on-one is Legacy of Love. I do family constellation sessions, which are beautiful turning point sessions. I lead my monthly Coya movement practice, which is so fun. If you check out my Instagram, you'll see like a bunch of videos of me dancing because I just have the best time. I'm practicing right now, letting out the quirkier,

  sillier, playful side of me that's like, she just loves to dance in front of a camera and so I love to dance. That's another gift of my spiritual journey. So I lead that every month. So these are all the ways that people can work with me and I love it. I'm just really grateful to be able to take everything that I've learned on my spiritual journey and my teaching career and like change that into this career and just help people. Be of service.

  Lucy Baldwin (58:32.146)

  Yeah. Wonderful. Well, I will put the links in the description, some links so our dear listeners can find you. Yeah, this was such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

  Brenda Fredericks (58:34.483)

  Yeah.

  Brenda Fredericks (58:45.289)

  Thank you so much.

  It was such a joy. Thank you for having me.

  Lucy Baldwin (58:51.568)

  I'm so glad. I was like, I feel like Brenda.

  Brenda Fredericks (58:54.645)

  Aww, thank you.

  Lucy Baldwin (58:57.459)

  All right.

New to Lucy’s work?

Start with Lucy Baldwin’s complete overview of Shadow Alchemy here:

Lucy Baldwin’s Shadow Alchemy Hub

Penetrate Radio explores shadow work, desire, magic, embodiment, self-honesty, radical approval, Existential Kink, and the hidden patterns that shape our lives from underneath.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is desire work?

Desire work is the practice of becoming honest about what you truly want, learning to distinguish real desire from obligation or conditioning, and allowing desire to guide your choices, relationships, and spiritual growth.

Why is knowing your no important?

Knowing your no makes your yes trustworthy. If you cannot say no, your yes may come from guilt, fear, obligation, or self-abandonment rather than true desire.

How does pleasure relate to Shadow Alchemy?

Pleasure can reveal exiled parts of the self, hidden desire, body shame, receiving wounds, and resistance to aliveness. Shadow Alchemy invites pleasure back into the field of transformation.

What does sensation before story mean?

Sensation before story means noticing the raw physical experience in the body before immediately turning it into an interpretation, identity, or emotional drama.

Why are routines and rituals helpful for desire?

Routines and rituals create supportive containers. When they are flexible rather than perfectionistic, they can help regulate the nervous system, reconnect you with the body, and make desire easier to hear.

Next Steps

If this episode resonated with you, the next step is DOMINION: A Field of Radical Approval.

DOMINION is Lucy Baldwin’s space for practicing radical approval, shadow integration, desire work, pleasure, embodiment, and the deeper transformation at the heart of Shadow Alchemy.

Explore DOMINION here

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