Spicy Shadow Cabaret With Christina Morassi | Penetrate Radio, Episode 13

In Episode 13 of Penetrate Radio, Lucy Baldwin and Dani Granaroli speak with Christina Morassi, a coach, healer, former fashion photographer, embodiment practitioner, and creator of Sexy Shadow Cabaret.

Christina’s work brings together shadow work, Eros, polarity therapy, orgasmic meditation, expressive arts, improv, play, performance, and the dark feminine. Her approach is deliciously practical and wildly creative: instead of only talking about the shadow, she helps people embody it, dramatize it, move it, play with it, and find the turn-on inside it.

This conversation is about bringing more life force into shadow work. It is about the alchemy that becomes possible when darkness, play, erotic energy, witnessing, and the body all enter the room together.

Watch or listen to Episode 13 of Penetrate Radio here:

Key Takeaways

In this episode, Lucy, Dani, and Christina explore:

• Christina’s creation of Sexy Shadow Cabaret

• Eros as life force, not only sexual energy

• the dark feminine as deep yin, fertile soil, moon, womb, compost, and mystery

• why darkness is not bad, but necessary for life and power

• polarity therapy and the importance of both positive and negative poles

• orgasmic meditation, OneTaste, Morehouse, and “getting off on every stroke”

• how Sexy Shadow Cabaret brings play, improv, eroticism, and embodiment into shadow work

• why shadow work does not have to be heavy, solemn, or goal-oriented

• how play can function as energy medicine

• victimhood, unmet needs, and the sexy pleasure of being unsupported

• using turn-on to transform body image, aging, and self-consciousness

• the difference between Eros, sensuality, sexuality, and life force

Christina Morassi and the Birth of Sexy Shadow Cabaret

Christina Morassi’s work brings together several worlds that are often kept separate: healing arts, coaching, embodiment, polarity therapy, Eros, improv, performance, sexuality, and shadow work. She describes herself as a kind of mad scientist, gathering from many lineages and asking what is underneath them, how they fit together, and how they can become more alive in the body.

Sexy Shadow Cabaret emerged from that experimentation. Christina had already been working with expressive arts, ecstatic dance, ritual improv, body-based healing, and polarity principles. Then she wanted to go deeper and darker. Around Halloween, she invited participants to choose a shadow place and bring it into a playful, erotic, performative container.

The result was not a solemn shadow excavation. It was goofy, naughty, expressive, embodied, and transformative. People were invited to perform the shadow, find the turn-on around it, and be witnessed in the whole strange alchemy.

What Is the Dark Feminine?

Lucy asks Christina to define the dark feminine, and Christina offers a rich archetypal explanation.

For Christina, the dark feminine is not about gender. It is not women versus men, and it is not a personality type. It is an archetypal energy, much like yin and yang, night and day, positive and negative poles, or protons and electrons.

The dark feminine is deep yin. It is the womb. The moon. Compost. Rich fertile soil. The darkness where life begins, rests, decomposes, and regenerates.

In a culture that often associates darkness with evil, danger, depression, or failure, this is a powerful reframe. Darkness is not inherently bad. Darkness is part of how life works. If there were only day and never night, nothing could properly rest, grow, or regenerate.

Shadow Alchemy depends on this same recognition. The dark is not merely the place where bad things live. It is also the place where power, purpose, creativity, desire, and life force can be recovered.

Power Comes From Both Poles

Christina brings in a polarity therapy lens to explain why darkness matters.

A battery has a positive pole and a negative pole. The negative pole is not bad. It is simply one end of the polarity. Power arises because both poles are present, and electricity can arc between them.

This becomes a beautiful metaphor for shadow work. If we only identify with the positive, bright, acceptable, productive, pleasing, socially approved parts of ourselves, we lose access to the other pole. The system cannot generate the same force.

Power requires range.

The goal is not to glorify darkness or reject light. The goal is to regain access to both ends of the spectrum. The dark feminine, the shadow, the no, the taboo, the contraction, the victim, the rage, the hunger, and the pleasure all become part of the energetic field.

Eros as Life Force

One of the most important distinctions Christina makes is between Eros and sexuality.

Eros is related to sexuality, but it is not identical to it. Christina describes Eros as life force: the springtime energy bursting out of the soil, the force that wants more life, the vitality that animates creation.

Sexuality is one channel for Eros, but it is not the only one. Eros can move through art, purpose, movement, creativity, food, beauty, laughter, desire, work, prayer, performance, and the sheer feeling of being alive.

This distinction matters because many people have shut down their Eros, not only their sexuality. They have shut down their vitality, aliveness, appetite, play, and capacity to be moved by life. Sexy Shadow Cabaret is one way of bringing that current back into motion.

Sensuality, Sexuality, and the Body

Christina places Eros on a spectrum. Eros is life force. Sensuality is of the senses: taste, touch, smell, sound, sight, texture, temperature, breath, and presence in the body. Sexuality is one particular expression of that energy, but it does not need to own the entire field.

This is an important distinction because many people collapse all turn-on into sex. If they feel aliveness, heat, pleasure, beauty, attraction, or creative charge, they assume it must be sexual and therefore dangerous, inappropriate, embarrassing, or too much.

Christina wants to liberate Eros from that narrow channel. The erotic current can power life itself. It can fuel purpose, creativity, embodiment, transformation, and the courage to be more fully expressed.

This is not about denying sexuality. It is about restoring sexuality to a larger field of life force.

Orgasmic Meditation and Getting Off on Every Stroke

Christina’s work is also shaped by her time in the world of orgasmic meditation and OneTaste.

She explains some of the lineage behind the practice, including Morehouse, Nicole Daedone, the clitoral stroking practice, and the way orgasmic meditation became a structured container for sensation, attention, and feeling. In the practice, the goal was not climax. The goal was sensation. The practice was more like a meditation than a performance.

One phrase from that world becomes especially relevant: “get off on that stroke too.”

Sometimes a stroke does not feel good. Sometimes there is aversion, pain, discomfort, resistance, or neutrality. The invitation is not to fake enjoyment, but to learn how to be with the stroke that is actually happening.

That teaching overlaps beautifully with Existential Kink. Can you get off on this stroke of life too? Can you stop arguing with the reality of the moment long enough to feel what is here?

Loving What Is, Without Losing Your No

Lucy connects this to Byron Katie’s work and the practice of loving what is.

When something is already happening, arguing with its existence does not help. If it is happening, then at least at the level of immediate reality, it is what is. Fighting the fact of it creates additional suffering.

But that does not mean you lose your no.

This is an important nuance. Being in agreement with reality does not mean saying yes to everything forever. It means beginning with a yes to what is actually happening, so that you can respond from clarity rather than resistance.

You can accept that something is happening and still choose what to do next. You can stop fighting the fact of the moment and still set a boundary, leave, speak, act, or change direction.

Radical approval is not passivity. It is presence before response.

Sexy Shadow Cabaret as Embodied Alchemy

Sexy Shadow Cabaret takes these principles and makes them physical, theatrical, playful, and communal.

Instead of only journaling about a shadow pattern, participants move it. They improvise with it. They speak from it. They exaggerate it. They flirt with it. They perform it. They bring it into the body and let the room witness it.

Christina gives the example of working with victimhood. She invited participants to access a place where they felt like a victim and then turn it into a performative, erotic, playful piece.

Her own example was around feeling unsupported by the universe and not having her needs met. Instead of trying to heal it in a solemn way, she went into the pleasure of it:

How sexy it is to be starving for what I want. How delicious to live on crumbs. How much I love not having my needs met.

The point was not to endorse deprivation forever. The point was to bring attention, turn-on, humor, performance, and life force into a stuck shadow pattern.

Within three days, she found a beautiful place to live.

Play as Energy Medicine

Christina describes Sexy Shadow Cabaret as a kind of energy medicine.

This is such an important frame because shadow work can become heavy. People can start believing they have to excavate, process, confess, heal, and integrate in a very serious way. That seriousness may be useful sometimes, but it can also become another stuck identity.

Play changes the field.

When you let a shadow pattern become a character, a dance, an improv piece, or a ridiculous erotic monologue, something loosens. The pattern is no longer locked in its usual form. The body gets involved. The imagination wakes up. The room witnesses the energy moving differently.

Christina says that the session begins once the client leaves the room. In other words, the work rearranges the system, but the real alchemy continues as the rearranged system meets life.

That is a beautiful way to understand embodied shadow work. You do not always need to know exactly what shifted. Sometimes you give the stuck place some juice, and the body’s natural intelligence continues the work.

Shadow Work Does Not Have to Be Goal-Oriented

Dani names one of the reasons she loves Christina’s work: it is not overly goal-oriented.

In shadow work, becoming too focused on a specific result can actually interfere with the process. The conscious mind thinks it knows what should happen, how it should unfold, and what the correct outcome should be. But the unconscious is more creative than that.

When people enter Sexy Shadow Cabaret, they are not trying to force a specific resolution. They are entering the mystery through play, sensation, Eros, body, and performance. Something shifts, but it may not be the thing the conscious mind predicted.

That is part of the medicine.

The psyche has more options than the problem-solving mind can imagine. When the body, play, and unconscious creativity enter the process, life can rearrange itself in ways that feel surprising, nonlinear, and strangely precise.

Making Shadow Work Fun

Christina is very clear that she loves shadow work, but she also wants it to be more fun.

That does not make the work superficial. In fact, play may help people enter places they could not access through seriousness. The goofy, theatrical, naughty quality of Sexy Shadow Cabaret gives the shadow somewhere to move without being crushed by shame.

This is especially useful because many people put pressure on themselves to “do shadow work right.” They worry they are not finding enough turn-on, not processing correctly, not healing fast enough, or not accessing the right insight.

Play dissolves some of that pressure. You do not have to perform healing correctly. You can simply play with the material, let the body move, let the shadow become expressive, and see what happens.

That freedom is often where the alchemy begins.

Turn-On as the Real Beauty Practice

A major thread near the end of the episode is body image, aging, and feminine beauty.

Christina began her career as a fashion photographer in New York City, then later combined photography with healing work through transformational personal brand shoots. Over and over, she noticed something: when a woman was in her turn-on, the photos were amazing.

Body shape did not matter. Clothing did not matter. The exact face, size, wrinkles, or features did not matter. Life force mattered.

This became part of Christina’s philosophy of aging and embodiment. She is personally choosing not to alter her appearance as she ages, not as a judgment on anyone else’s choices, but as her own path of practicing turn-on, approval, and aliveness inside an aging body.

Her position is not moralistic. Everyone gets to choose their own path. But for Christina, the challenge is clear: if you are not feeling good about your face, get into more turn-on.

That is the practice.

Lucy’s Turn-On Walk

Lucy shares a related experience from her own life.

After having more children and not losing baby weight as quickly as usual, she had been feeling self-conscious about her body. Then, while walking in her neighborhood and listening to music that turned her on, something shifted. She went from covering herself up to feeling powerfully alive and sexy.

She realized that she felt hotter than ever, not because her body fit some external standard, but because she was more turned on in her life than she had ever been.

This is such a clean example of the episode’s teaching. Turn-on changes the body from the inside. It changes posture, energy, presence, expression, and self-perception. It does not necessarily erase insecurity forever, but it reveals another source of beauty and power that is not dependent on weight, age, or appearance.

Reclaiming Life Force From Conditioning

Dani names what many people will recognize: most of us have been trained to shut down our Eros, our life force, our turn-on, and our aliveness.

That shutdown may come through shame, religion, family expectations, gender conditioning, trauma, respectability politics, fear of being inappropriate, or the belief that erotic energy must be contained only inside sexuality.

Christina responds by emphasizing that Eros can be held in a pure, neutral way as life force. It does not need to be constantly directed into sex. It can power the whole life.

This matters because people often fear their own aliveness. They worry that if they open the channel, it will become too much, too sexual, too disruptive, too visible, or too dangerous. But when Eros is integrated, it becomes a source of purpose, embodiment, beauty, creativity, and power.

Bringing It Into Real Life

Christina is passionate about making these teachings usable in ordinary life.

Sexy Shadow Cabaret is not only a workshop format. It becomes a way to shift energy in real time. Christina mentions using it with the man in her life when they hit a tricky spot. Instead of staying stuck in conflict, they each do a little piece, bring the shadow into play, and the energy shifts.

This is one of the most exciting possibilities in Shadow Alchemy. The work does not have to stay in practice spaces. It can be brought into relationships, body image moments, creative blocks, victim patterns, unmet needs, conflict, and the ordinary places where life gets tight.

When shadow work becomes playful and embodied, it becomes more portable. You do not need the perfect setup. You can catch the stuck place and give it a stage.

The Real Gift of Spicy Shadow Cabaret

The real gift of this episode is the reminder that shadow work can be dark, deep, embodied, erotic, creative, silly, effective, and fun all at once.

You do not have to choose between depth and play.

You do not have to choose between spirituality and Eros.

You do not have to choose between darkness and life force.

You do not have to choose between being witnessed and being messy.

Christina’s work opens a door into shadow as performance, shadow as cabaret, shadow as improv, shadow as energy medicine, shadow as turn-on, shadow as communal alchemy.

Sometimes the part of you that feels most stuck does not need another explanation.

Sometimes it needs a spotlight.

• Full transcript for Episode 13 of Penetrate Radio

  Lucy Baldwin (00:01.708)

  Hello and welcome to Penetrate Radio. I'm Lucy Baldwin and today I have Dani Granrulli with me and Christina Morossi. Am I pronouncing your name correctly? Okay, great. And Christina is a really special guest. She, like the author of Existential Kink and Brenda Fredericks, who was on a few weeks ago, was also part of the OneTaste community.

  Christina Morassi (00:11.211)

  works.

  Lucy Baldwin (00:27.752)

  And I'm going to let Dani introduce her because Dani actually has done work with Christina and came to me and was like, we have to have this woman. She's so amazing. So I'm really excited to meet Christina today. I'm excited to introduce her to you. And I'm excited to let Dani tell us about, us, tell us why you love Christina's work so much.

  Dani (00:46.402)

  Thank you, Lucy. I'm just gonna share my personal experience with Christina and then I'm gonna hand it over to you, Christina, and you can fill in and use your words and describe for us how you understand the work that you do. But Christina lives closest to me over in, I think you're in Western Mass, I'm in Southern Vermont. And I first discovered Christina through an amazing class that you did about

  Christina Morassi (00:59.639)

  Thank

  Dani (01:16.576)

  embodying your inner Dom, I think it was called and it was just this concept of like energetically coming in and somatically coming into your sense and your place of power. And that was really beautiful and profound. And right after that, I discovered that you were teaching something that you call sexy shadow cabaret. And that month where you was using the book existential kink as the foundation as a principle and I was like, my god, what are the odds? This is absolutely

  synchronicity, I need to come to this class. And so I guess in short version, I will say what I discovered that Christina does in those classes is takes, has a way of helping people cultivate a sense of like, erotic arrows in their bodies, and then use that as a way to through

  creative movement. You could even you could say dance, but it's really like erotic creative movement to embody and some

  Christina Morassi (02:22.54)

  Mm.

  Dani (02:26.558)

  somatitize, is that even a word? You use the somatics of your body to like, engage with certain aspects of the shadow. And I just was like, everyone needs this because it is sexy. It is playful. It is creative. It Yeah, it's really, really exciting, beautiful work that I, I really love. So I'm so happy you're here.

  Christina Morassi (02:53.559)

  Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. I love it. Okay, so do want me to give a little more of a backstory of like where I come from? Because we were like, let's let the bio go. Let's let this be real, you know, and kind of flow in real time. So...

  Where to begin so I am deeply passionate about power and purpose like Ostensibly, I'm really like a purpose and business coach, but it's been interesting since I've been in Western Mass I'm originally from this area But then I've lived all over the world in California and been nomadic many times and lived lots of different places But I'm back ostensibly kind of in my hometown in a way about a half hour away in Western Mass And it's been very interesting that the area is asking me to teach a lot more Eros events

  like Inner Dom and a kink puja and the sexy shadow cabaret and it's been delightful and it's really kind of like a one aspect of my larger body of work but that's what's being asked for so I'm following the flow and really enjoying it because I certainly do love Eros to me. I like thinking of it as a kind of life force and it is a power so if I want to help people with their purpose I really believe that we all need to be in our Eros so that we can use that to hopefully like

  lead the movements that we're here to lead. And so just a quick like backstory, I was out in Los Angeles in the healing arts as a total like hippie healer for 10 years doing body work and kind of shamanic work and cranial sacral and polarity therapy. And then I crossed over into the coaching worlds and kind of ended up building a business very quickly and really helping people find what I call their ecstatic brand of how to bring all of their gifts together in order to

  like create a career that doesn't exist yet and stand out in the marketplace because if you bring all parts of you to your business you won't be like anyone else out there on the planet. And so in that aspect of my life I really kind of made created the dream of a successful coaching business where I was doing three-day live events at the W Hotel in Hollywood and had high-end masterminds and people would fly in from around the world and it was exciting because it felt like I was in my mission and reaching people

  Christina Morassi (05:09.587)

  around the world.

  but I was still the hippie healer and I had always kind of promised myself I was going to learn the rules and then I was going to smash them to smithereens. And so there was a moment where I felt like, okay, this something isn't feeling in alignment with my soul anymore after about four or five years in the industry. And I was like, something needs to change. And so I started to try and like offer different programs or I had this machine of a successful coaching business. And so was trying to turn the ship slowly of like, okay, how do I make this

  feel better, but it wasn't working. And so I had a kind of like come to Jesus moment one weekend where I was like hmm there's a lot of these puzzle pieces that aren't quite working. I think I need to do something more drastic. And so I ended up pulling the plug on that business and I sort of thought I would go into the unknown for like a couple of months. But it's about to be the 12 year anniversary of me pulling the plug. And so it's been this interesting journey since then that I could talk about for hours. But the the gist of

  is that I'm very deeply connected to like how do I live from my soul? How do I do business from my soul and be like fully expressed in everything I came here to do? And I'm not willing to do business until I know how to do that in alignment with my soul. And what that's meant is often I'm not doing much business. I've been more in my cave doing a lot of internal work and peeking my head out and doing like programs here and there but not having stepped out to create a successful

  successful business again until I know that I know how to do it differently. So it's been like an ego dismantling every which way from Sunday in that these last 12 years and and then along the way that's when I found the orgasmic meditation world and I took their coaching program back in 2015 because I was like there's something there's like there's magic behind this body of work and I want to understand it more and the organization unfortunately is problematic. There is no doubt about that.

  Christina Morassi (07:10.927)

  ever, the practice itself is stunning and there is something beautiful there. Having studied energy work in polarity therapy and how it moved, was like, wait, what's going on with arrows here and what's happening with this practice? so through that course of action, I ended up kind of creating this whole body of work that at the time was called the feminine operating system of like, you know, I had a friend call it like a PhD in vagina of, you know, like the owners and manual operator of like, how do we understand this power? you know, these days I prefer

  that it's for like all genders and it's really I think the closest I don't quite know how to describe it in all honesty but I would call it maybe like decoding the mysteries of creation through like all of the things that I've studied and so along that way I've been teaching about the dark feminine for the last 10 years and so and also like just like teaching about death power and all these things in the dark that I'm like incredibly passionate about because I really believe that most of our power is in the dark.

  and no one teaches us how to go there. Carolyn does, which is great, an existential kink in that body of work. But most of us don't know how to go there. And so I'm very passionate because again, I want the power and purpose for us all, and I believe that darkness is one aspect of doing that. And so that's part of what we were working with in Sexy Shadow Cabaret. So that's a little gist of like my backstory.

  Lucy Baldwin (08:34.121)

  I'm so curious, Christina, for our listeners, if you can, and for me too, I want to know, like, what do you mean when you say dark feminine? Like, what does that mean to you?

  Christina Morassi (08:43.457)

  Mm.

  I love that. So here's how I describe it. For me, like the darkness, have, I do see it as feminine because if you think of Chinese cosmology in the yin yang symbol, the dark side of the symbol is what they often call the yin and often called the feminine. And so the feminine is inherently dark. Now I think all of us have darkness inside us. And of course, when we're talking about the masculine and feminine archetypal energies, these are

  like energies of the universe. They are not about gender at all. We could just as well say protons and electrons. We could say like left brain and right brain. We could say day and night, yin and yang, right? So when I talk about the dark feminine, to me we're talking about like the deepest yin. And the way this shows up in the world is we could say the womb is dark, the moon.

  is dark, like compost, rich fertile soil of compost is dark. And these are all aspects of life that make life work. I mean, if we only had day and never had night, the world wouldn't work. If we only had like production and moving things out into the world without some rest, the world wouldn't work. so darkness for me is what, you know, I think is it's like dark is obviously has a connotation in our

  society, but it doesn't need to be. Because I studied something called polarity therapy, you know, I learned about like, if you think of a battery, right, like a battery has one end that is a positive pole and one end that is a negative pole. Negative doesn't need to mean bad. It's literally like electrons, right? But power comes from having access to both ends of the spectrum that creates an arc of electricity between the positive pole and the negative pole. That's

  Christina Morassi (10:38.687)

  power comes from. So for me, having been in the coaching industry for the last 16-17 years and heard so much talk about manifestation, that definitely makes my eyes roll a little bit, unfortunately, because I think it's missing so many pieces of the puzzle. Because often they'll say, like, you need to focus on the light, you need to think good thoughts. But if you come back to my analogy of a battery, that's like having a battery that only has a positive pull. And that means you literally have no power. So for me, I'm talking

  about like embracing the full spectrum of life and learning how to love all of it because that's when we get free and that's when we have access to all of our power.

  Lucy Baldwin (11:20.843)

  I love that so, much. and that feels so clear to me. And I'm curious, I'm wondering also just for people who are listening and, you know, everything you're saying is so in line with everything that we kind of talked about on this podcast. And I think it is interesting how there is such like a mirror in these philosophies of coming from, you know, different angles, but

  I want you to tell me about Eros, like specifically how it is related to sexuality. Like how is it different from but also related to sexuality?

  Christina Morassi (11:51.287)

  you

  Christina Morassi (12:02.281)

  I love that question because that's been coming up a lot in my workshops because I'm often saying I'm fascinated and more passionate about exploring Eros outside of sexuality and so then often people ask the question or what do you mean and what are all the differences so my favorite definition that I've seen of Eros comes from a book called on becoming an alchemist and she likens Eros to the energy in spring that just sort of like is bursting out of the soil that creates life and

  it's springtime here in the northeast and it was a long winter so it feels wonderful to have access to that energy again and everyone's in a good mood and you just feel like you have access to more life force. That's a way that that person, the author of that book, describes Eros and I really like that because I see it as just like life force that wants more life.

  And so I think that, you know, that's a pure energy that doesn't need to be connected to sexuality per se. And the spectrum I'm often looking at is I see arrows on one end of the spectrum, and then I would say sensuality comes next. And so the way I like to describe sensuality is like literally of the senses. You know, how are we being present and embodied? How are we feeling? How are we kind of just enjoying the sensations of being in huge?

  form and so that's what I would say where sensuality is and pleasure can certainly come in there but sensuality is not sexuality necessarily either right so that's sort of the in-between section and then for sexuality you know there's a lot of ways I could say this and it's it's a developing definition and so in my mind sexuality is often where the genitals come in and often when there's a direction and a goal usually in our

  traditional sexuality out there in the world. People are like, okay, let's like, what are we going to do to get to orgasm and climax? And so there's a direction which is a little different than sort of just allowing the life force of Eros to move through and being present and a little different than like, let me just be here in the moment with my sensuality and my feelings. And then sexuality is sort of where there's a direction. So that's kind of my working definition of like the spectrum from Eros.

  Christina Morassi (14:24.925)

  to sensuality to sexuality.

  Lucy Baldwin (14:29.139)

  makes total sense to me. Thank you so much for breaking that down for us. I love that. I love that. I'm also, so I'm also here in the Northeast. I'm in Connecticut. And it is beautiful. It's a beautiful time of year.

  Christina Morassi (14:31.735)

  Mm.

  Christina Morassi (14:36.8)

  okay.

  Christina Morassi (14:40.545)

  Yes, yes, yes, Eros, life force. It's a kind of crackling electricity that we could call it turn on too, but it's that place where we feel access to more electricity and aliveness to me is what I would call Eros.

  Lucy Baldwin (15:00.469)

  Yeah.

  Dani (15:06.68)

  So Christina, you've talked with me a little bit about your origin and the connection with One Taste. And Brenda touched on this in another podcast as well a little bit. And I'd kind of really love to hear, I guess, how the origins of some of the concepts of One Taste are similar to the EK perspective. basically you said that

  that has been a really beautiful foundation. You've seen different individuals take it in these really broad, beautiful ways. And so I'm curious about kind of how you've seen others take it and for you to talk more about your specific direction. You have a little bit with the polarity and the embodied and that sort of stuff, but if you'd like to flush that a little bit more.

  Christina Morassi (15:52.128)

  news.

  Sure.

  Yeah, I think it's fascinating because we can all learn different traditions and lineages and practices and then we all kind of take them into our bodies a little bit differently. And of course we all have a different history that we can apply to that whole practice. And so I think it is kind of fun. I love sort of seeing how this all works. So when I was in the orgasmic meditation world, I was fascinated too about like, did this come from? And so I'm not going to say I'm the world's foremost expert on this. So forgive me if this isn't exactly right.

  but I'm pretty sure these facts are close to correct. So I believe what happened is in the 70s, it all originated in a community called Morehouse Lafayette, which was out in California, and someone created the clitoral stroking practice, where it was a partnered practice where a woman's clitoris was stroked in a slow, methodical fashion with no other goal but to feel. It wasn't about reaching climax. There was no goal of any kind. It was really like a meditation, like mindfulness.

  practice. And so Morehouse, then there was a lot of offshoots that kind of came out of that Morehouse time. And so Nicole de Donne was one of the people who was part of Morehouse Lafayette at some point. And she took the stroking practice and decided she wanted to disseminate it through like the world and realized it might be good if we package this in a way that has like really strong boundaries so that if you do an omen one city it's the same as if you do it in another city, which there was a certain brilliance to

  Christina Morassi (17:26.059)

  that, of course. And so she created this clitoral stroking practice and turned it into orgasmic meditation. But I've heard of other traditions that have offshot out of that. There's something called the Pleasure Course in California that is an offshoot of Morehouse. There's, I believe, the book written by

  Steve Bodansky, which is called Massive Extended Orgasm, is also an offshoot of that. Mama Gina, if you're familiar of the Womenly School of Arts, she is an offshoot of the Steve Bodansky world. so it's just all these fascinating offshoots that I think are really interesting. So my foray into the world was through orgasmic meditation. And so when I was there, I'm a little bit of a mad scientist. I feel like I've been studying things for the last 25 years, and I'm always taking bits and

  pieces and being like, wait, now how does this all go together? And so when I got into the orgasmic meditation world, I was like, there's energy flowing. I like this Eros idea. This is different than just like Chi or Prana, right? And so, but what's really happening and then how do we have access to this? you know, when I saw my first demo and witnessed how much power comes out of a woman's vulva.

  It literally blew my hair back. I mean, I was like, my...

  God, this was during the time I found it right as I pulled the plug in my business, which is fascinating. So it was like this real kind of dove. I dove into that world because I had time and space. And what I found was like, okay, there's a power here. And I, you know, I'm coming out of the coaching world with all my friends and their seven figure businesses who are all in the verge of adrenal fatigue and burnout. So we're missing something if all that power.

  Lucy Baldwin (18:58.859)

  Thank

  Christina Morassi (19:14.339)

  coming out of a woman's vulva. Why aren't we tapping into that to use in our businesses? And then for anyone who's read the seminal book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, you know, there's a chapter 11 called sex transmutation. And this I'm talking, this is now like 2015 we're talking and nobody talked about chapter 11. Nobody. It was like, you know, these coaches would talk ad nauseam about Napoleon Hill and Think and Grow Rich, but skip over chapter 11. And I was like, and then if you read chapter 11, it's not very clear.

  Like it really doesn't tell you how or what exactly but there's something there this book apparently was written in 1930s So someone was talking about the power and sex like back then right? So I was like I'm gonna figure it out How are we gonna do this? And so the next iteration of my body of work was like how do I show women how to tap into that power in their vulva to use for their missions and so I was calling it pleasure CEO at the time so

  In that coming through this orgasmic meditation world, there's beautiful practices that come from, think, if you trace it all the way back to Morehouse. And one of them we were taught was how to get off on every stroke. And that...

  is such a fascinating concept when you first hear it because sometimes when you're doing the practice of orgasm meditation, sometimes it doesn't feel good or it doesn't, like it hurts or maybe you feel a little aversion to the person you're doing it with. So there's times when it's not pure pleasure for sure. And we were taught, get off on that stroke too, which was the way that they phrased it, of course. And so that was a like practice that really kind of got, you know, like got in deep for me. And then

  Also, one taste would talk about like getting into agreement with reality, like not kind of resisting it, but learning how to be a yes to it. And so these are beautiful traditions that I think, you know, I took and then applied to my background in polarity therapy and the healing arts, and then also in embodiment work and was like, how do I use those to bring in play and bring in ritual and bring in like the body to that? And from my understanding,

  Christina Morassi (21:28.169)

  I've been on Carolyn's list for many years and I love her writing and what she shares and I love the book Existential King. She took that same concept and added in her hermeticism background, if I have that correctly, and turned it into Existential King, which is brilliant. And it's amazing that it has disseminated into the world and so many people are aware of it. And so that's why when I was doing the Sexy Shadow Cabaret and so many people in our area have read the book and I was like,

  Okay, often when I tried to explain sexy shadow cabaret to people, they'd be like, like Existential Kink. And I would say, yes, ish, know, like the concepts, yes, we both come out of the same world. And I'm kind of giving it my own spin in the ways that I teach and like my specialty is the body and play. And so that's kind of the way that I've worked with it. So we were inspired by Existential Kink in that series. And I think it's really like it's a powerful.

  concept and the last thing I'll share if I was handed over is being this mad scientist that's gathering from all these different places, I've seen this teaching in many places. So in polarity therapy, we were taught that, know, all like when you resist something, when you're a no to something, it literally stops energy from moving. It's almost like it winds into kind of like a stuck place. But if you learn how to be present and

  witness and be with that thing, your attention and your presence brings some energy to the stuck place and it can start to like energy is naturally intelligent when it can move. So because you're bringing some attention to it, it can start to unwind and find its way back to health. So that's similar to being in agreement, right? And kind of getting off on what's true. And then I've done some work with Gay and Katie Hendrix and they would also teach they had a

  I can't really do it justice, but they had a way of explaining like when you're a no to something, obviously things can't move. And if you can love a thing exactly as it is, that's when it will transform.

  Christina Morassi (23:40.511)

  So they had their own way of teaching that. And then when I was in the Mama Gina world and I got to do all of her work in 2016 and 2017, she had a practice that she called yesing. So she would have women get connected to the thing that they don't like, that they're really struggling with and just be like, yes, I'm so glad this thing is happening. Yes, I love that my life is falling apart. And you could see the change that could happen for a person. so it's sort of this beautiful universal

  truth and lesson, I think, that comes through so many different traditions and Carolyn has done amazingly by turning it into existential kink and helping people to understand it more.

  Lucy Baldwin (24:22.855)

  Yeah, it's so interesting. So another person that I'm thinking about as you're talking about this is Byron Katie. I know she's not part of this lineage because she just had her own like crazy awakening experience. you know, her whole philosophy is stop, just stop arguing with reality, right? Loving what is is the name of her book. And it's like, loving what is not trying to, you know, it's like,

  Christina Morassi (24:30.548)

  Christina Morassi (24:35.852)

  Yeah.

  Christina Morassi (24:41.161)

  Yes, loving what it is. Right.

  Lucy Baldwin (24:48.841)

  should this be happening? Well, if it's happening, then it should be happening. And she as a genuinely just like fully enlightened person is so fucking like just listening to her is such medicine and is so powerful. I think it's hard if you haven't. I think some people I know that some people hear her and they're just like super triggered because it's a lot to take on if you're not already sort of initiated in this way of thinking. I feel like people hear her and they're like.

  Christina Morassi (25:16.62)

  Right.

  Dani (25:16.782)

  Listening to her is also kind of like a psychedelic trip. Like I listened to the book and there were moments that I was just like, you know, I felt like my concept of reality was literally in flux. So it can be very intense. Yeah, she's kind of like graduate level sort of.

  Lucy Baldwin (25:17.365)

  She sounds like a psycho.

  Christina Morassi (25:19.031)

  You

  Christina Morassi (25:33.911)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (25:40.138)

  Yeah, no, I mean, I had the same experience, Danny, listening to her. literally, shifted my, it shifted my consciousness. And it is like people say sometimes being in the presence of these people, like it literally raises your consciousness or shifts your consciousness. And I feel like that does happen with Byron Katie, but you have to be open and willing. Cause even when I first came across like the work of Byron Katie, her process, I hated it. I was like, I don't get it. This is stupid.

  Christina Morassi (26:05.472)

  Mm.

  Lucy Baldwin (26:08.179)

  I'm just lying to my, you know what I mean? Like the turnarounds and stuff. I was like, I'm just bullshitting. It didn't feel like I couldn't feel it. You know, if you're doing it up here, it doesn't work. You have to kind of like really allow it to integrate. But that's another person that I'm thinking about. And then I don't know, something that you really like, you were talking about how the no creates that constriction and something that Layla and I have discovered that we've been sort of like talking about and teaching for a while now that I think is is sort of interesting about that.

  Christina Morassi (26:13.013)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (26:38.535)

  is actually like, because sometimes we do have no's, you know? And so we talk about and teach a lot about like, getting off on your no, just like being in a yes to your no, because especially like where we are in society today, like, some of us really need that empowered no, you know, it's like we're kind of in a cultural place where we need to have the ability to like, say no.

  Christina Morassi (26:53.623)

  Yeah, I love that.

  Christina Morassi (27:01.047)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (27:08.227)

  And but how do we do that in a way that like keeps the energy flowing, you know? And I do so anyways, I was just thinking about that as you were talking, like getting off on the no and just allowing that to be the current of yes around the truth that is a no.

  Christina Morassi (27:25.143)

  Well, let me just add to that because I don't think this universal truth is ever saying that we're not supposed to ever say no

  But we all know that difference. Resistance is a different type of no. Resistance is sort of a push against. There's energy that you're using to stop something. Whereas I think a clear no is just simple, neutral, not using energy to resist something. So absolutely there's room for a no, for sure. And I love that you're learning how to get off on your no. So I just want to make sure that that's clear. We do need our nos.

  because if a no is our truth, then we're saying yes to our truth, right? So it's really more about that, like not saying yes to everything in life, but saying yes to life as it is. mean, even if we're gonna say a no, it might be good to start with a yes to what's actually happening in real time, to like get present with it, to then get your clarity if you are a yes or a no, right? So they all kind of work together, I would say.

  Lucy Baldwin (28:29.299)

  Yeah, yeah, and I think this is actually a really important distinction and nuance because if something is already happening in the moment, it is. That is what is real. And so there is no benefit at that point of being in resistance to it. But we can choose what we want to do moving forward and how we want to meet that moment. And so we can meet it. The resistance is like...

  Christina Morassi (28:41.345)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (28:57.471)

  the arguing with reality, right? The resistance is like the pushing away the truth or being mad, you know, trying to control things that we have no control over and then setting ourselves up for frustration and suffering when it turns out that we can't control those things, but we can always control, you know, how we respond to the moment.

  Christina Morassi (29:10.931)

  Mm-hmm. Right.

  Christina Morassi (29:17.995)

  Yes, exactly. Beautiful.

  Lucy Baldwin (29:23.179)

  Yeah. Yeah, it is so interesting how different people have sort of taken this. And my understanding is that the Morehouse, is that what it's called? It still exists.

  Christina Morassi (29:32.115)

  Yes. It might. I actually am not totally sure about that. But I know its leader has long deceased is my understanding. But perhaps other people have continued it. I don't know that for sure.

  Lucy Baldwin (29:49.11)

  Yeah, I'm not really sure about it either. But I know that One Taste and Nicole DeDone has been publishing books and putting out, and they're having events now. So they still exist and their teachings are very aligned, obviously, with everything that we talk about on this podcast.

  Christina Morassi (29:55.916)

  Yes.

  Christina Morassi (29:59.755)

  Mm-hmm. They do.

  Christina Morassi (30:07.351)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah, and I think because I'm so passionate about purpose and I have often worked with people who may be trained in certain lineages and modalities and practices and they often feel a little like limited or stuck like they can't do their own version of it. They do it the way it was taught and I personally am a big fan of like mmm-mmm take it all and like take it all apart and understand like what's underneath it and what you're passionate about and then

  in all of your own flavors and then make it yours because Carolyn is an incredible example of that and it helped the work get out wider which like this is a powerful universal truth that the world needs I think to get free and so thank you to Carolyn for you know being the one who was out there in the world I've been in my cave for various reasons that's felt like the right place for me but someday I will have my own books out in the world it's not time yet but I'm so grateful to Carolyn because it helps

  you know, I've been teaching about the dark feminine, but in a much smaller way, but then people are more open to it because other people are out there, you know, putting it into the world. So I wanted to just kind of be a lesson to people too of like, you can make this yours too, right? Like add in all of your other flavors and all of your other passions and see like what you add to the conversation because I add, you know, play, I add like the body.

  And I haven't seen that out there in any of those other modalities or traditions that I've spoken about, right? So for me, the way I see it, you we talked about how when we're no to something and it like winds in and it gets stuck and it's like, okay, well, the first thing to do is to get present with it, right? Like get into agreement with it. And then that's going to start to bring some energy to allow it to unravel.

  Christina Morassi (32:00.321)

  But then if you play with this, like the thing that's stuck and what I mean by that is like you could do some improv. You could do some like, you know, turn it into a character. It's very silly, like goofy work. But what I found is it's incredibly strategic. Like it's my mad scientist bringing out the goof because I'm like, listen, that playful energy has a lot of life force to and a lot of levity. And so that's going to get that to move even more. And then if you pour on the

  turn on on top of it. It's just like charizam, you know, it's like a whole different alchemy as possible. So that's what I bring to the table and what I've been playing with with Sexy Shadow Cabaret. Because this is, it's the basis of that body of work was something I created 20 years ago still as a hippie healer because I was doing one-on-one work on a massage table as most healers do. And I was like, you know, I'm learning and seeing like how powerful the expressive arts are. Like I was found ecstatic dance and I was like, wow,

  so transformative. And then I found kind of what I might call like a performance art improv. And I was like, wow, that's so transformative. And I found this like method writing class. And I was like, the expressive arts are incredibly transformative. How do I weave this in instead of doing one on one work on a massage table? So I started creating these workshops where I brought in like deep excavations, but brought in play using their polarity principles. And then like all this alchemy was happening. It was like,

  sort of like communal performance art alchemy, if you will. And so then I kind of let that go while I was the fancy pants business coach for a while. There were pieces of it that were always woven in, especially to my live events or my retreats. But when I was back here in Western Mass, I was like, I want more improv. Like I miss it. Like I want to feel more fully expressed. And so it started, I called it ritual improv. But then as it was going, we did a few rounds of it. I was like,

  I want to go deeper. I want to go darker. And so it was Halloween last year and I was like, let's choose a shadow place that we're going to go into. And I'm going to, I'm just going to call it sexy shadow cabaret. And it's similar to ritual improv, but we're adding in now the turn on and the darkness to what we were doing before. And so it's been really fun. Like, so for instance, that first one we did on Halloween, I invited everyone to go into a place where they felt like they were a victim. They could access some of their victimhood.

  Christina Morassi (34:27.381)

  And then I helped everyone get free and connected to their bodies and be able to like find some sensual movement. And then we all did these like simple, nothing too crazy, but improv pieces. And we used like the sentence stem. is something I think maybe I got through the Mama Gina world of like, you know, I love that or it's so sexy that. And so like a quick little example was, you know, for me, I was looking at like feeling like my needs weren't being met or not feeling supported by the universe. And so I just went into it like,

  I love...

  not having my needs met. my God, it's so sexy to just be living on crumbs and be starving for what I want. And it was wild. Like it was so fun and like so freeing and so like, you know, almost like naughty in a way to like love that so much and to do it in a sexy way and be witnessed in it, by the way. And what happened was I was house sitting at the time because I was not sure I wanted to be in this area. And

  Within three days of talking about my victimhood around not feeling supported by the universe Through a course of events. I all of a sudden had a beautiful place to live Three days like so that's what I'm passionate about is the alchemy, know Like how do we use all of these things to learn how to work with life to ideally become our own like creators of you know reality of like how can we

  bring in play. like as we keep doing sexy shadow cabaret, like it feels like I have access to using it in real time. Like I've used it with the man in my life. You know, when we hit a tricky spot, I'm like sexy shadow cabaret. We're both doing pieces and it shifts the energy completely. So this is part of like what I'm passionate about is like, how do we, and I know existential kink is very similar. You can use it in real time. And so I think for me, I, I, I'm a big fan of play. Like can't we just all

  Christina Morassi (36:29.033)

  a little bit more fun, you know, with our shadow work. it's kind of that's like my, you know, offering onto the planet of like with shadow work. I love shadow work, but like I want to have fun and I want it to be creative and embodied. And so that's where I've been locating and sharing. but I love, you know, I love that all these people are passionate about the shadow and that you all are creating this beautiful community. And Carolyn is out there doing her work in the world. And I think all of us want to keep learning how to get free and to love our dark too.

  Thank

  Lucy Baldwin (37:00.459)

  Yeah, I love this so much for a multitude of reasons. Just based on what you just shared, want to say like there's a couple things. Like one, I will say that for me, like my EK turn on is almost always like 98 % of the times I've ever had a turn on from EK, it was laughter. Just like full body laughter.

  Christina Morassi (37:22.785)

  phone.

  Lucy Baldwin (37:25.481)

  bubbling laughter, just humor. Like I still think of situations I've EK'd and I just, I wanna laugh because I've like fully like got into that place with those things. so it's not, and we're always telling people on this podcast, like it's not necessarily, the turn on is not necessarily going to be sexual or in your genitals at all. And I think a lot of people, like that's what they're seeking. And so then they can kind of miss the,

  Christina Morassi (37:25.569)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (37:33.589)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (37:55.167)

  Mmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (37:55.532)

  I miss the boat, like miss the boat. And so I love the sort of openness. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like there's such an openness in what you're doing. That's just like, you're just, you're just embody, you're just like letting yourself embody it. And it's almost to me, it sounds like parts work, like you're just embodying that part and you're letting it express.

  Dani (37:59.864)

  The potential full spectrum. They're missing the potential full spectrum of sensation they go into.

  Christina Morassi (38:04.727)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (38:19.575)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (38:21.867)

  And I love also the openness of it because something else, you know, I've been in this EK world for a really long time, coached like hundreds of people around EK, been on like hundreds of calls, like in the like different memberships and whatever across like so many courses and programs and everything where people struggle to get to the turn on. Like they're like, but how do I get to the turn on? You know, I can't, they can't find it. They can't feel the turn on. Like they're not.

  Christina Morassi (38:44.151)

  Mmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (38:51.915)

  because you kind of have to like roll over into it. But it's actually kind of challenging because it's kind of like, you know, we have this idea of like enlightenment. And when you're like seeking enlightenment, you can't get to enlightenment that way, right? You can't get there by like, just like chasing after it and like nailing it. You can't like pin it down that way. And so there has to be kind of this surrender and opening into it that some people just really struggle to like, to roll over into it, right?

  Christina Morassi (39:04.225)

  Yeah.

  Christina Morassi (39:11.543)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (39:20.555)

  Okay.

  Lucy Baldwin (39:21.067)

  And especially in the beginning, seems like over time, somehow it seems like more and more people are able to access the turn-on. Like I think that there's something in the collective consciousness where more people have access to it now or something, because enough people have done it. But for some people, it's really hard. there becomes kind of like this pressure of like, I'm not doing it right. There's something wrong with me. don't get, you know, I'm not good enough. I'm like, you know, people start.

  Christina Morassi (39:32.043)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (39:43.765)

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (39:48.822)

  can go into those places. And so what I love about this practice is that it's like, there's no, there's no like thing that has to happen to tell you that you got it, you know, it's just, it's open, you're just like doing a thing. And so I think that this is actually

  I don't know, I'm just really digging it. I'm really digging it and I'm excited about it and I'm excited to learn more about it. And I'm so glad that you're... And so for anybody who's watching, if you're in our membership Dominion, Christina is doing a call this month in doing this in Dominion. yeah, so I'm really excited about that too. And if you're not in Dominion and you want to participate in this, you can join.

  Christina Morassi (40:14.007)

  Mm.

  Christina Morassi (40:31.319)

  Please join us. I love that because I think I call it often like it's a kind of energy medicine, know, when I come like I was a healer, I was working with energy. So I'm now just sort of I've taken it all apart like what I was trained in and be like, okay, how do I do this energy medicine? So in the playing with the thing, you may not access like the perfect amount of turn on in that moment, but

  One of my teachers used to say to me, who taught me healing. was like, the session begins once your client leaves the room.

  which I thought was a bold statement because like you're doing work in the room, but like it's a whole other thing when you take that rearrange system out into the world and it meets things, right? So that's sort of the way I see it is like, let's play with it. And I know that as I'm playing with it, something's happening and the energy inside me, even if it's a little stuck is naturally intelligent. It can find its way back to health. If I like give it a little juice to find its way. So the play is kind of like an energy medicine that's doing that in the moment. And then I think we take it.

  with us and it keeps unfolding in that time. So yeah, it's fun to play with. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly it.

  Dani (41:38.733)

  Anyway.

  Lucy Baldwin (41:39.221)

  Yeah, it's like you're loosening something up and kind of letting it out of its cage so that it can find its way home.

  Dani (41:46.998)

  Christina, I love this because we talk about in shadow work, know, it's not, you can't be goal oriented in shadow work. you're goal oriented in shadow work, then you're losing the entire concept of shadow work. And so I think that was one thing that I loved about going and doing stuff in person with you is, and you had so many different

  different little techniques of getting into our body, of into play, of into some concept of what a turn on or eroticism or eros really means in our bodies, that it was really just about the experience. So I love what you're saying. Like you were in the mystery, you you're helping people feel into their body that erotic approval of pleasure and play with mystery.

  And then just that is, it allows them to stay in that place of not trying to have a focus, a direction of a, I'm doing this for this specific reason and desired outcome. you know, and something shifts. And that's the beauty about shadow work is something shifts, undoubtedly something shifts, but we never know what that shift is going to be like when we take it then out into the world.

  Christina Morassi (42:54.817)

  Mm-hmm.

  Mm-hmm.

  Dani (43:08.666)

  and from doing the two classes and seeing little shifts that were happening for me and also not even little, there was one that was quite big, but also getting to go twice and seeing a handful of people who are coming back and hearing from them even just a little bit. I know they had an online chat where I'm sure even more was revealed, but yeah, here are the way things had...

  Christina Morassi (43:33.055)

  It was.

  Dani (43:38.246)

  just mysteriously beautifully unfolded for them to, know, whereas the conscious mind has these concepts of this is what I want, this is exactly how it should be. And I have this linear concept of how I get from A to B. it's very, it's adorable how limited our concept of that is, like our creativity to imagine the direction, the possibility.

  Christina Morassi (43:41.887)

  Hmm.

  Christina Morassi (43:58.7)

  Mm-hmm.

  Dani (44:05.654)

  is quite limited in the conscious. And the reason I love doing so much of this unconscious play is so much more creativity happens, like so many more options. So the world really expands in a way that you can't conceptualize.

  Christina Morassi (44:08.033)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (44:22.291)

  I love that. I want to just add to that for a second because it makes me think, know, so the end of the day, I'm all about power and purpose. And I'm also about like, how do we get access to like the energy to flow? Like just so that everyone has access to all of their power. So I'm always looking for like, where's the thing stuck? And then how do we get it to move again? And so I bring in a lot of play and some of it's really silly and really goofy. And there's certain people that are like,

  you know, maybe not into it, but what I'm doing is so strategic because we all have these facades in these like veneers that we've, you know, put on to look like a nice normal upstanding member of society and or I'm cool as fuck. you know, and like we, have these identities and those identities usually like stop up a lot of our power. So what I'm doing is trying to trick people out of their like veneers and their egos with the playfulness.

  because we do exercises where I'm like, be as ugly as you possibly can. And I walk us in like very gently, like it's not just diving people, putting people in the deep end. But I'm looking for ways to loosen up that like the gunk of our facade so that we're actually in like pure life force and creativity because I think that's when we're all gonna.

  feel better. But it takes a little doing, right? Like, so we have to get out of our, we definitely got to get out of our heads and get down into our bodies. But we also sometimes need to trick ourselves in the play is often what I'm doing with that.

  Dani (45:56.814)

  That's beautiful. Thank you for pulling the curtain back on that for us.

  Lucy Baldwin (45:57.374)

  Yes.

  Lucy Baldwin (46:01.128)

  Yeah, I love that so much. And I think that is so important. And gosh, this is so like petty and stupid. you know, I had I did like a lot of years of work in the ayahuasca world. And I remember having this like, moment where I realized like, this is so embarrassing to say, but like I had, I was in my 20s. And I just had this moment where I realized like,

  I don't have to try to look as skinny as possible in every single moment. I can just sit here and release my stomach and just let it hang. And I was fucking skinny. I had just had two babies, so I was a little bigger than I had been. And so, yeah, I felt like I was always trying to suck in. And then I was just like, I don't have to do that.

  Christina Morassi (46:36.021)

  Yes, yes, yes.

  Christina Morassi (46:45.174)

  No.

  Mm-hmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (46:55.069)

  ever again. And certainly not like every moment of the fucking day, you know? And it was this big kind of epiphany for me. But it's exactly like what you're saying is like, look as ugly as possible. Like literally fuck it. Just let it go. Just take off the mask.

  Christina Morassi (46:56.074)

  Yes!

  Christina Morassi (47:00.171)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (47:10.359)

  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah. There's another layer to that though that you bring as you bring that up. It makes me think about so, so I'm aging, right? Like I'm 55 and I really don't think much about my age at all, but I just like the last couple of months it's starting to hit a little more, but I'm very passionate. Like I know that if I access my turn on in my arrows, nothing is going to matter.

  Nothing. So a little backstory. I actually started out in New York City as a fashion photographer in my twenties. And then when I started out and then when I let it go and I became the hippie healer in LA. And then when I first stepped into the coaching world, I was doing personal brand photography for people. So it was like transformational photography. I was bringing together my gifts of healing arts and photography. So I watched like I did all, I did lots of silly stuff to trick people out of like their veneer so I could get the good shot of

  photos and then they'd get these incredible like headshots that just had so much life force and vibrancy. And so what I saw over and over again in doing these photo shoots was that when I could get a woman into her turn-on, the photos were amazing.

  Dani (48:25.026)

  Yeah.

  Christina Morassi (48:25.259)

  No body shape mattered in the slightest. The clothing didn't matter in the slightest. Nothing mattered in the slightest, but the turn on and the life force. And then I got to see that being in the mom and Gina world. She's very much about that too. And so I keep challenging myself, you know, like I'm personally deciding not to do anything, you know, to alter my appearance as I age. I don't want to say for forever, but I don't think I will because I'm like, listen, if you're not feeling good about your face,

  you know, into some more goddamn turn on. Like that is your aging, you know, practice. And so I'm not able to do it all the time, but this is part of the same conversation of like, how can I be with, like be in agreement with an age as an aging woman in this society, but how can I like find approval? How can I like also love it? How can I find the turn on and celebrate it? And I know my size, my face, my wrinkles, my bags, whatever, none of that matters.

  So I just think that like all of these concepts have applications in real time. And that's where I'm very passionate is like, okay, I want to do all this work, like in workshops and such, but like, want to weave this right into our lives in real time as well.

  Lucy Baldwin (49:41.046)

  Dude, I feel you so much on this, so, so much. I've been having this same, I've been having this like really deep, really, process around this also lately just in my life because I had more kids, because I just keep having kids. And I haven't lost my baby weight from my last baby that I had, which to me is slower than usual on the weight, like losing the weight. And so I was feeling a little like self-conscious about my weight.

  Dani (49:41.326)

  Mmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (50:09.727)

  And I was out, but I know this intellectually, but I was out walking and I started listening to some music that was really kind of turning me on. And then I was just like, and I was walking around just in my neighborhood, but I felt myself go from this place of covering myself up to just like, like, yes, I've turned on. And I feel the sexiest I have ever felt in my entire fucking life. And just.

  Christina Morassi (50:30.849)

  Mm-hmm.

  Christina Morassi (50:35.211)

  Yes! That's it! Yes!

  Lucy Baldwin (50:38.249)

  really like tapping into that and I could feel the power there. And like, yeah, it was literally like, I was just like, I am hotter now than I have ever been at any weight. And it's all about the turn on and I'm more turned on in my life now than I ever have been. And like, that's the direction that I want to move as I get older, you know, every, that's always the direction I'm trying to go. And not even just sexually turned on, I, but that too, but like,

  Christina Morassi (50:42.327)

  Mmm.

  Lucy Baldwin (51:07.941)

  very much because it's, something that we actually learn. For me, it's like a process of learning to allow the turn on to like build the capacity to be turned on, to let things turn me on because there's so many things that turn me on in different ways and different sort of levels of like eroticism and sensuality and sexuality and all of that. like, I've repressed so much of that my whole life.

  Christina Morassi (51:17.355)

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Christina Morassi (51:34.667)

  Mm.

  Dani (51:36.95)

  Lucy, I love what you're saying. And I feel like this takes it back around to that whole conversation around eros and sexuality and turn on an eroticism. And I absolutely really I can't imagine I hope there are people out there who are absolutely like, I can't relate to that at no point in my life have I ever was I ever, you know,

  Christina Morassi (51:48.556)

  Hmm.

  Dani (52:01.582)

  trained into shutting down my life force and my arrows and just like my, yeah, life force, I guess. It would be so, I hope that's the case. I assume that's not, I assume that we are the more, more on the side of the norm. And I just absolutely love, yeah, love what you are saying about that. And I can absolutely relate to, oh, wow, actually.

  Christina Morassi (52:09.173)

  be nice.

  Dani (52:30.206)

  you know, even in at times in your class, Christina, there were moments where, I was feeling so much turn on and then we'd have a break. And I had this moment where I was like, is it appropriate for me to feel this turned on right now? Like, is this okay? Should I shut it off? Because like we're not in the, it's not the appropriate container of this is when you can't do it versus can't do it. Yeah, and that was just that moment was so...

  Christina Morassi (52:49.76)

  Right.

  Mm-hmm.

  Dani (52:58.424)

  potent for me to start to sit with of, when do I allow myself to be really excited and feel alive in my life? And when am I like, it's not appropriate for me to feel alive in my life? You know, I mean, another great example is when I'm feeling content and happy in my life and someone in my life does not feel that way.

  Christina Morassi (52:59.831)

  Yeah.

  Christina Morassi (53:26.198)

  Mm.

  Dani (53:26.422)

  Is there a way that I can still hold that excitement for my own life and not feel like it's inappropriate for me to feel that way because someone else is not having the exact same experience I'm having?

  Christina Morassi (53:42.807)

  Ugh.

  So many good pieces in there. It makes me think about, as I've been doing more Eros events in New England, of all places, know, puritanical, it's fascinating. Some people are up for it, and some people are coming up against their edges, totally understand, with like, wait, no, my Eros is private, and it's in a bedroom, and it's kind of compartmentalized. And so I am a big fan of like, I wanna be in Eros more often.

  with people like, are we, like it has such a life force to it, why are we keeping it sequestered? Now obviously there's a place to learn how to hold it, when I might call it a clean way that it's not leaking and it's not like looking for things unconsciously, like that can get complex for sure. But if we keep going to the Eros gym and working out our muscles to learn how to hold it in a very clean and clear way, we can, it doesn't need to be inappropriate, because I have all those same things too. You know and for instance like for

  my birthday I hired someone to come teach my friends and I lap dance and it was so freaking fun I've done this before I brought in like lap dance teachers to work with my clients and when I was out in California and so I knew that like

  Giving a lap dance is so powerful. Receiving a lap dance is incredibly powerful. And so I invite, I had like 20 people in the room and most of them were kind of up for it. Some of it was like they were a little freaked out, but it was so much fun. And inevitably some people were like, you can do arrows with friends? And I was like, yes, you can do arrows with friends. know, like a lap dance, it's not going anywhere. It doesn't mean like you want to sleep with them. Like if we can hold it in this pure

  Dani (55:13.439)

  Hahaha

  Christina Morassi (55:27.669)

  Like we can have access to more life force to use in other ways and not instead of just like always Directing it down that channel of sexuality which can just be so limiting in my you know opinion So I love I think but we all are bump up against like, you know our

  conditioning that says this is appropriate. I've certainly had that feeling too. So thank you for sharing that Danny, but I want all of us ideally to keep learning how to like hold it in this very pure neutral way where it's life force that powers our lives, you know, like, yeah.

  Dani (56:01.262)

  Thank you.

  Lucy Baldwin (56:02.771)

  Yeah, so good. So good. I love this conversation so much.

  Dani (56:06.946)

  I'm feeling very turned on right now.

  Christina Morassi (56:08.961)

  good. Excellent.

  Excellent. I wanted to circle back for a moment because I know I shared that I'm personally deciding not to alter my appearance in any way But I obviously like want to make room for everyone gets to make that own decision for themselves Like I know it's a very personal decision and so much goes into that So I just want to make make room like there's room for your decisions and there's room for my decisions But you know, I think we're all trying to figure out in this culture how to do aging in, feminine bodies and obviously the masculine bodies too, but I just want to like

  make room for all of that and like this is the stand that is right for me and so I'm challenging myself in that way it's not always easy but I am you know that's my journey but I want to make room for all journeys.

  Lucy Baldwin (56:54.325)

  I love that and I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, cause it's like no judgment. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

  Dani (57:02.274)

  Right, because I mean, do I go down this rabbit hole? I'm going to hold that back. I'm not going there.

  Lucy Baldwin (57:07.711)

  Yes. Okay.

  Lucy Baldwin (57:15.945)

  Yeah. Christina, so of course Christina is going to be doing a this cabaret, sexy cabaret in Dominion. Sexy shadow cabaret. Thank you. In Dominion later this month. And so if you're in the membership, definitely you'll get an email about that or maybe you already have.

  Dani (57:29.09)

  Sexy Shadow Cabaret

  Lucy Baldwin (57:43.109)

  and if you're not in Dominion, you should join Dominion and also just, you know, throw that out there, but also Christina, would you let our listeners know where they can find you?

  Christina Morassi (57:55.446)

  Hmm.

  Sure, I love to. I'd love to stay connected because I think, you know, we are all figuring this out together. You know, like I'm always very happy to say, listen, I don't have this all figured out, but I'm going to keep creating opportunities where we get to figure this out together. You know, I think that's where we need to open source as, you know, sisterhoods, brotherhoods, all the hoods, like to, you know, figure out how we get free and how we change this world for the better. one way to find me is my website at ChristinaMirazzi.com. But I also, put together a free gift.

  I wanted to share with everyone because I was like, okay, I want to how do I want to convey the power in bringing play to shadow work and also like the body into shadow work because I don't see that out there quite as much and so I put together a free free gift called hot shadow play and so it's a PDF that you can download nice and simple but it takes you through a process of like Working with something like a part of yourself that maybe you don't love and then finding a

  way to play with it, bring it into the body and start to look for the turn on around it. So we'll put the link into the show notes, but it is also bit.ly forward slash hot shadow play. So you can find it that way as well. And it'd be in the show notes. So I would love if you want to kind of start to see if this is something that speaks to you like it speaks to me, then I would love to share that experience with you.

  Lucy Baldwin (59:24.043)

  Thank you so much. That sounds amazing.

  Dani (59:27.544)

  Can I just plug this a little bit harder? So, yeah, if you are watching this, on May 28th at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Christina is going to be teaching this two-hour workshop in our community. The price for a monthly membership is absolutely worth just this one workshop.

  And I will tell you that this workshop is limited to only 12 participants. So if we have enough, so sign up, or if you're in the membership already, come early because only the first 12 people are going to be allowed in or let in just because we want to give enough space for this play, for this growth, and for the sharing of witnessing that happens. And that happens just really, we want to keep it potent.

  And if there is enough interest, this will be happening in other months. So show us that you are interested in this by signing up and coming.

  Lucy Baldwin (01:00:36.703)

  Yeah, and we will if you guys are like, we want this every month.

  then we will deliver. We will deliver on what you want. I love giving people what they want when they ask me for what they want. So nothing turns me on more than people demand, like asking me for what they want, you know.

  Christina Morassi (01:00:45.032)

  Hehehehehe

  Christina Morassi (01:00:50.679)

  That's hot. can I tell you a fun story? I was leading a kink puja recently and we were going to one of the stations was we were going to have do begging as like one of the activities. And so someone spontaneously begged me for something and I was like.

  I have been missing begging in my life. This is so hot when someone like just begs me for something. So I hear you Lucy. So yeah, more begging, more asking for what we want. I love it. And maybe we'll deliver. Video service.

  Lucy Baldwin (01:01:23.775)

  Yes, yes. Yeah. Exactly. And dear listener, we want you to join Dominion and come and hang out with us and do cool shadow work with us. So we can see you.

  Christina Morassi (01:01:36.535)

  Cool shadow work for the win. Mmm, I love it.

  Dani (01:01:41.484)

  And we can play.

  Lucy Baldwin (01:01:42.973)

  Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so, so much, Christina, for sharing your story with us and your wisdom. And thank you, Danny. Yes. This was so...

  Christina Morassi (01:01:43.669)

  I love it.

  Christina Morassi (01:01:47.467)

  Mmm. So fun.

  Thanks Danny for like putting this into motion and like calling me in and it was so nice to get to meet you Lucy and I look forward to meeting everyone who comes to Sexy Shadow Cavalry at the end of the month.

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 Sexy Shadow Cabaret?

Sexy Shadow Cabaret is Christina Morassi’s embodied shadow work practice that combines Eros, play, improv, creative movement, performance, witnessing, and the turn-on inside dark or taboo material.

How is Eros different from sexuality?

Eros is life force, vitality, creative energy, and the force that wants more life. Sexuality is one possible expression of Eros, but Eros can also move through art, purpose, movement, pleasure, beauty, play, and embodiment.

What is the dark feminine?

The dark feminine is deep yin: womb, moon, night, compost, fertile soil, rest, mystery, and the dark generative force that makes life possible. It is archetypal energy, not gender.

How does play help shadow work?

Play loosens stuck patterns, reduces pressure, activates creativity, and lets the body and unconscious participate. It can help shadow material move without making the process overly heavy or perfectionistic.

What does turn-on have to do with body image?

Turn-on brings life force into the body. When someone is connected to aliveness, Eros, pleasure, and presence, their beauty becomes less dependent on weight, age, face, wrinkles, clothing, or external standards.

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, embodied play, and the deeper transformation at the heart of Shadow Alchemy.

Explore DOMINION here

You can also continue exploring Lucy’s current offerings, free practices, podcast links, and other work here:

Lucy Baldwin’s Linktree