As women our bodies go through many changes in our lives with menstruation, pregnancy, weight loss, weight gain, and perimenopause and menopause. More than once, if not for decades of our lives, we’re left feeling like something is wrong with our body. That it’s not enough, doesn’t work well, is the reason for our challenges with health, intimacy, and confidence. Continuing to blame our bodies while shying away from facing intimacy and libido issues only perpetuates these issues. We continue to carry a dark cloud over our shoulders, flaring up whenever our partner makes advances, we begin to compare ourselves, or feel guilt for being the cause of our intimacy issues.

You don’t have to hold onto that dark cloud any longer.

You can have a thriving libido and passionate intimacy throughout perimenopause and after menopause.

You can reclaim your relationship with your body, your libido, and your partner.

In today’s episode, Reclaim Your Libido Through Peri/Menopause, I will discuss how you can change your relationship and your life by reclaiming your libido through peri/menopause with a shift in perspective and a few helpful tools. Get ready to feel passionate and connected in your body and with your intimacy.

Listen to the Episode

In This Episode

  • The Truth About Libido Loss

  • How Libido Loss Affects More Than the Bedroom

  • How Reclaiming Your Libido Transforms Your life

  • Rethinking Libido: A Shift in Perspective

  • Tools for Transformation

  • Your Next Step: Choosing Yourself

Links

Transcript

Welcome to the Unapologetic with Janine McKinnon podcast, your go to place for approachable conversations around sacred sexuality and conscious relationships. I’m your host, Janine McKinnon, certified trauma informed sex, love, and relationship coach, who’s on a mission to. Support 1 million women and couples to experience deeper connection and more expansive pleasure inside and outside the bedroom.

This is the space to go deep to die below surface level relationships and mess sex and explore the sacredness that sexuality and conscious relationships have to. Because deep connections, spiritual sexuality, full body orgasms, and transmuted sexual energy are available to everyone. And I’m here to serve the collective, to provide the knowledge, wisdom, and tools to access them.

Thank you so much for being here. I’m so grateful we’re able to connect in this way. And I can’t wait to dig into the contents of this episode with you. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

📍 Hello, and welcome back to another Tuesday transmission episode inside the unapologetic with Janine McKinnon podcast. And today I am showing up a little bit imperfectly. I have been having computer issues. And I am not able to record with my proper camera for whatever reason. Which is kind of funny because I mean, having microphone issues for the last week and that’s the piece that seems to be working.

Um, but that’s okay. We’re going to roll with it. It’s still really important to me that I get this message out to you guys this week on time as expected for first thing Tuesday morning for you. And so what we’re going to talk about today. Is all about reclaiming your libido through perimenopause menopause and beyond. And really this is just about reclaiming your libido no matter what stage of life you are in. And yes, there are some little bit of differences, but for my scope of working with women within this realm, it tends to be fairly similar throughout those different phases of life. Hormones, absolutely play a role as we will get into later. But there’s a lot more to it than just hormones.

So that’s what I’m going to be talking about. With you. This is actually from a presentation that I did on the weekend. I was at the Victoria health show with the booth all weekend long, had a great time. And I did a talk. On this exact topic. And I got feedback from a few women who said that it felt like I was speaking directly to them. That they really deeply resonated with the different parts of what I talked about.

And so that’s why I really want to bring it here to this platform. So more of you can hear it. I also felt like through different conversations I was having throughout the expo with different people coming up to my booth, as well as different vendors that were just unable to make the talk that this is such an important topic.

And that the perspective I have is. Is a lot different. Then the medical side, which is where a lot of women go to when they are having libido issues, think it’s hormones go to the doctor and they say, you’re fine. Or they say it is a hormonal thing. Here’s something you can do yet. They still have libido issue.

So that’s what we’re going to talk about. The nuances. With all of this, as well as a shift in perspective, when it comes to really boosting your libido and giving you some tools and takeaways. So you can begin to work on this for yourself.

I wasn’t going to get into my full story. Like I did at the expo. But now I’m thinking, you know what? We have a lot of new listeners to the podcast, so maybe I will share it for some of you. This is going to be repeated information. But I have a feeling that for a lot of you, it will be really refreshing to hear about my journey.

So I’m just going to share a little bit about what got me started within this realm of work. And when it comes to libido issues. And so it all really started when I was lost in motherhood. We have two kids a year and a half apart. It was, I think over four years of back to back pregnancies and breastfeeding and somewhat overlapping.

And once I came out, the other end of that, I was so disconnected from my body. Like one, it was very functional and felt of service to my family. And also it. Functioned differently. It lucked differently. It just, it wasn’t the body I was used to having, and it, it didn’t feel like my own. I was very, very disconnected and disassociated from my body.

And therefore I was also very disconnected from myself disconnected and my marriage had a low libido and. It got to this kind of turning point where I just, I really wanted to reclaim who this new version of me was. Who am I in this new stage of life? And so that’s when I set out to really do this work for me. And it started with a weekly date night with myself, which if you do listen to the podcast, you know, I recommend this over and over and over again.

I do have a full podcast episode on what that looks like, but it is. A huge service you can do for yourself and prioritizing. That one night or that one period of time, if it’s during the day, maybe. Every single week. To pour into yourself on a deeper level than a lot of different self care things are talked about.

And so that’s what I started doing. It was a little bit of meditation and journaling to begin with. And then I opened up into the realm of sacred sexuality.

And once I opened into that and one through my journey. I came home to my body. And no longer felt. Like this different thing that wasn’t mine like, no, this is my body and this is my home I love and I get to connect with it. I get to feel through it. I get to live through it. And it also built just massive confidence within me when we are working within the realms of sacred sexuality and pleasure and orgasms, we are getting so many different. Happy hormones and chemicals flooding through our body.

We have serotonin dopamine, oxytocin and vasopressin, endorphins, so many great things. Just moving through our body, helping us experience life. And just this incredible juice top kind of way with oxytocin. That’s our love hormone. We feel connected. We feel loved. We feel safe. Dopamine, of course, that’s that happy? Hormone where we feel good and serotonin has been approven, it’s responsible for so many different things.

But what thing I find very interesting is research shows and the assists talked about the book, the confidence code by. Katty. Kay. And Claire Shipman.

That higher levels of serotonin. Greatly correspond with higher levels of confidence. And so yes, there is a lot of internal work going on with shadow work and different things, which I will get into in a bit. And also there’s something physiologically going on as well.

That really helps them build our confidence within ourselves, within our own our lives. And so with this, I became yes, connected to my body, confident, connected to myself and connected with my husband. Again, being able to have a passionate marriage again. We’re now 10 years together and we love being together.

We have fun with each other. We have that spark in our lives.

And so that with going through my own transformation, I knew this is what I’m meant to do. I’m meant to help other women. Create this for themselves and their lives. And that’s a lot of the work I do. It’s really shining the light on something. They already know something that’s already within themselves. So they’re able to rediscover it and embrace it on their own. And I’ve been so honored to help so many women, such a wide range with in these rounds.

There’s a lot of libido and then a lot of sacred sexuality and the, again, there’s different nuances, whether it’s. Women in their late twenties, just really wanting to let go of some of the shame and different challenges they’re having. So they can really call in their masculine partner and be able to touch that. Sacred site of sexuality, all the way to women in their fifties and sixties, who perhaps have been with their partner for 20 plus years.

And what used to be seemingly small challenges earlier on in their relationship are now very huge challenges and it is time. To face these to make a switch so they can enjoy pleasure and have passion in their lives. Again. As well as another dear client that has, I can really think of who. Is in her late forties or fifties divorced.

And she’s on this path of just really reclaiming her feminine rain hands for herself. And so all of this plays into our libido because as I will get into it is something for us or sexual energy fuels. Or feminine radiance and magnetism.

And so when it comes to libido loss, As I touched on a little bit in the beginning. Is it so much more than just hormones? As I said before over and over and over and over again and more. I see women who have lost their libido. Okay. It’s got to do with hormones. I’m getting older as a woman. It’s definitely hormones.

Go talk to a doctor. And it tends to go one of two ways, either your hormones are within the normal range, which is a very wide range by the way. And there can definitely be imbalances within that range as my opinion. Anyway. Um, and they’re told they’re fine. And so just carry on.

And then there’s the other camp that, okay.

There are some imbalances going on here, some supplements or different things you can do. And so. Whether or not, they are able to deal with their hormones, which is a very important piece. I highly recommend. Everyone who is dealing with libido loss to get their hormones checked? Yes, that’s very important. And whether that’s with a dietician nutritionist. Natural path, a family doctor, a hormone specialist. Yes.

You want to have your hormones in your body, supporting you as much as possible. And if it were as simple as that you would have your hormones fixed and then you would be going back to things as normal. And that generally isn’t the case. If it is the case for you, that’s amazing. You have nothing to worry about within the severe

and if that were the case, you would have your supplements, have your hormones kind of back on track, feeling more balanced and things would go back to normal. You would have your libido back again. And yes, thankfully that is absolutely the case for some people, but more often than not, that doesn’t happen. And that really shows that there’s so much more to this then hormone.

A huge piece of this is support and connection with your partner. Outside of sex. As women, we tend to need an emotional connection to even open up for sexual connection. Where men tend to on the other side, receive emotional connection through sexual connection. And so there’s that mismatch there and it is a challenging. But once you understand that you can learn to work with each other.

And so learning to feel connected outside the bedroom. As I like to say, foreplay starts with coffee in the morning. It’s helping you feel loved. Having those different connection points throughout the day are going to make a big impact. And so that’s a big part of libido. Loss is not having that feeling like shifts traveling through the night, busy, caught up in the day-to-day lives, doing your own things and just not having that strong connection between you two, like you used to. Then there is the whole nervous system, subconscious belief side of things that layers on. And so if you have lost your libido, chances are, there’s been thoughts of something’s wrong with my body.

It’s not working right. Something’s wrong with me. My body looks different than it used to. Would he even like my body anymore? I don’t feel confident in my body sex. Isn’t pleasurable for me. So why would I do it? Sex maybe is painful. So you don’t want to do it. I feel guilty for not. Having this desire anymore. I just want to do good for my husband.

So all of these thoughts. There’s so many different things that are swirling around. And all of these are leaving imprints in your nervous system. Lowering your desire of every time. What again, as I touched on with that one particular client that I was thinking of where it was small challenges in the beginning of the relationship became very big ones.

That’s because when they were at the beginning, there are these small little frustrations or thoughts. But every time it repeats itself year after year after year. What is that small little thought becomes carved us this highway. That is embedded deep in your nervous system. Making you not have desire, not have a libido. And then of course, we’re going to have self-esteem issues, identity issues, again, there’s that. Guilt that lack of confidence, all of these things just add on top.

Do you desire more in your relationship and sexuality? Whether you’re excited to explore or feel held back by your challenges, I’m here to support you where you need it. I invite you to book a complimentary connection call through the link in the show notes. During our time together, you’ll share your desires and I’ll provide you with just the right resources to support you wherever you are in your journey.

Again, that is a complimentary connection call through the link in the show notes to spark a shift in your sexuality and relationships.   📍

So it’s so much more than hormones. And so just really wanting to help you understand all of the different layers. And then none of this is your fault. Nothing is wrong with you. It’s just learning this and then having the tools to work through it.

And just to help you feel not alone. I do have a stat from pub med that over 70% of women with low sexual desire report, personal and interpersonal difficulties. Including negative effects on body image. And self-confidence. Feeling less connected with our partners is a common concern. Over 70%. So this low libido affects so much more than the bedroom.

And that’s why a big part of what I do. It’s feeling that deep connection and expansive pleasure. Inside and outside the bedroom because they’re not completely separate and compartmentalize from each other. They affect each other. They work together. And when you’re having that low desire. Of course, you’re going to have that lack of self-confidence that lack of a positive body image. You’re going to feel less connected with yourself and with your partner.

And so just really letting you know, you are not alone in this. And that there is something that can be done. You can come out the other side and when you’re able to really reclaim your libido, it transforms your life. Because as I just said, What happens inside the bedroom affects outside the bedroom and vice versa. So, if you’re able to reclaim your libido, have that desire again, you’re going to have that increased.

Self-confidence that more positive? Body image. You’re going to feel better about yourself. You know, nothing’s wrong with you or your body. And so you can feel good. And at home in your body, again, like the journey I went through myself and again, having that serotonin, moving through your body on a regular basis, physiologically, you’re just going to increase your confidence. You’re going to feel more connected with yourself, with your partner.

Again, that oxytocin is going as well through that non-sexual physical touches. You will feel more connected. And because that’s what sparks your libido. And then with that deeper connection, with the more fun you are able to have inside and outside the bedroom, you’re going to have more passionate again. Bringing back that passion, pleasure and playfulness through all different areas of your life.

So to get there, I would like to just offer a few shifts in perspective that I feel is really helpful. That those, to those that are a little bit newer within this realm of things. So one is that your connection with your libido or hear desire is a very personal connection. Your connection with your sexual energy is for you first. And yes, we get to share it with our partner.

We get to have these beautiful and connected experiences. And our connection with our desire, our sexual energy are sacred room space is the source. Our creativity, our radiance, our magnetism, our passion. And we’re able to really nourish our bodies. With this and bring more pleasure and joy into our life, through our connection with this part of ourself. And then another shift in perspective is around. Desire.

So there are two types of desire. Spontaneous and reactive. And spontaneous desire is what we see represented in most TV and movies. There might be that initial thing. And then. We get all hot and bothered, have some passionate kissing, rip off the clothes, grab a boob and boom inside intercourse. Orgasms.

Good. Done. And over, and it’s amazing. And that isn’t usually the case of what good, enjoyable sex and desire looks like. And so generally, and again, these are generalities, um, but men tend to have more of a spontaneous desire where there is a basic initial stimuli. And then. Desire stirred up and then come on, let’s get it.

And it can pop out of nowhere. Where most women tend to have a react of desire and unfortunately, too many women. Feel like something’s wrong with themselves. Because they don’t feel spontaneous desire. That may have happened in a kind of the honeymoon phase of your relationship, because there was this newness, this excitement, this novelty, but that’s going to inevitably wear off.

And so physiologically. Most of us have this reactive. Desire. We need that connection throughout the day. We need many contacts of stimuli in different ways to slowly stir us and pull out. That desire. And so if that is the camp you fallen and it most likely is just really giving you permission that that is exactly how you are designed to be.

And that is beautiful and amazing. And there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not too much work. It’s just a learning how to really be able to feed that reactive desire. And then you can begin to accelerate it once you learn more of the nuances. And that’s what I help clients with. Let’s look at your breaks and your accelerators.

Let’s a look at your pathways to pleasure. And really support you. To stir up this desire in the way that is the most supportive for you and letting go with those breaks that are really preventing you from getting there.

And then within the realms of connection. I just really want to spend some time here because it is so, so important. As I said, foreplay starts with coffee in the morning. We with our reactive desire, we need these different types of connection points. All throughout the day. And we need them without expectation placed on us because non-sexual physical connection is very important.

Again. That’s how we get that oxytocin going. And what trips us up a lot of the time is her partners will go to. Grab it us or do something. And then I’m immediately tied to sex. Oh, I want to get some of this. Oh, I want to do this to you. I can’t wait for this later or whatever it might be. And that immediately kills or desire. We want those touches. But we don’t want to expectation placed on it.

We want to be loved simply to be loved. Not because something is wanted from us. And so again, just giving you permission validation within that. Now the other types of connection that are also very important. Or emotional connection. Of course, we want to see. Heard felt seen, valued, understood all of these different things to help us. I open up and become more reactive with an or desire. Then there is also energetic. Intellectual. And spiritual connection.

These all play a role. And again, this is a part of the pleasure toolkit that I do in my upcoming group program. Ignite. As well as in my coaching sessions. Being able to look at all of these different pieces of the puzzle. And kind of create this, how to guide in a way for you to just eliminate those roadblocks. And know what works and give you that path to walk down and play within. To really be able to bring that desire and grease that libido and have those. Amazing. Wonderful intimate sexual experiences with your partner.

And so what are some tools, a little bit more tangible tools. That you can implement to help boost. Your libido. And so first and foremost, I will say. It requires a willingness to be open. And explore. We need to counteract what our nervous system is doing with the shutdown with that freeze fight or Fon. Response rate.

We need to just allow space for openness curiosity. And so one thing I like to offer clients. Rather than. I’m just not in the mood. I’m not into it. I’m too tired. I got too much going on. I’m too stressed out. This, that, and the other thing, all of these different excuses we have, which do hold some weight.

Absolutely. And what I invite you to consider to do next time is. Maybe, yes, I’m feeling tired or a bit stressed out. Can you help me want to. Can you help me relax? So I feel more in the mood. And again, taking that expectation off of it and being okay if perhaps it doesn’t turn into intercourse in penetration. That doesn’t mean you can’t feel nice and intimate and connected and have fun with each other. And so just being able to play with each other. Being open, being able to feed and explore with each other. Is very, very supportive. And I am will also say one. Really helpful tool for increasing your libido and your desire. Is actually to take sex off the table. In different ways. If there is so much pressure again, with the deuce different, what should be non-sexual physical connection.

And it always has that expectation, those comments as it relates to sex. And that’s what shutting you down. Take sex off the table for a period of time. And do you know what doing that is going to increase your desire so much faster? Than if it were on the table. Perhaps there’s different situations or different times of the day. Where certain things don’t end up working out and it gets frustrating.

Maybe at night, you’re both too tired and you’re just disconnected and your bodies are tired and stressed and those intimate experience just don’t really work out and might be unpleasurable or awkward. And so that’s not helping and makes you more nervous to approach each other. So, you know what? Take night sex off the table. It doesn’t happen.

We’re not going to go there. We’re only going to have those enjoyable sexual encounters and also enjoyable non-sexual encounters. And so that all happens. But having that willingness to be open and explore and play around within these realms. Now, secondly, nervous system regulation is huge. We need to feel regulated within our system. We need to feel calm and open because if we’re not or fight or flight or freeze or fawn response is going to kick up.

And often as I talked about and touched on already is perhaps these certain responses. Are carved at very deeply after years, if not decades of the same situations happening over and over and over again. And so our nervous system is hardwired to shut down, to push away, to react in a certain way. And so we need to do some regulating to be able to open up the nervous system, to be able to reprogram the types of responses we have.

And that’s why it’s a huge. Peace. In the work I do, and yes, doing things like meditating and breath work and finding ways you can really relax. And there’s so many different modalities available. And it’s also very helpful to have one slot applied directly. To intimacy and sexuality. And so again, that’s why I do a lot of inner child healing and shadow work with that guilt or shame or frustration or embarrassment or all of these different feelings that can come up with low libido. And these frustrations and challenges within our relationships. Let’s go and look at those. Let’s see what those parts of our body and our Soma need. And then reprogram the nervous system when it’s time to feel more open. And empowered. And then thirdly, that more tangible thing that you can work on to boost your design, your libido. Is mindfulness and sensual practices.

I actually encourage you to think about sex as a mindfulness practice. Because that’s really what it is. Having those really pleasurable, connected sexual experiences requires you to be out of your head and into your body. You need to feel the sensations, the emotions, the energy, the connection within yourself and with your partner. That requires a lot of mindfulness. And this is a muscle that we can exercise on our own, whether that is. Again, with some simple meditations or maybe even with gardening, feeling the dirt in your hands. Smelling the flower has a nature looking at the textures of the plants. Or you can weave in some more sensual practices, like my free honeypot meditation. Which is available to everyone.

I will leave some information in the show notes for that.

Do you desire to feel confident in your body and empowered in your sexuality? The Honeypot Meditation is a potent 12 minute visualization to support you in connecting with your sexuality and rewiring your subconscious with the confident, radiant energy you’d love to embody. Download completely free through the link in the show notes and get ready to immerse yourself in a visceral experience as you connect with your sensual, radiant essence.

📍 And so what that particular meditation, as well as all of the practices inside the unapologetic practices collection is geared towards. Is. Again, exercising that mindfulness muscle and getting you out of your head and into your body. And then also rewiring your nervous system to feel that love safety and belonging in your body, within your sexuality, to feel safe, to open yourselves up to pleasure and really building the mind body connection. With your sexual organs with these pieces of yourself.

So you can be present with them rather than shutting down or numbing out. And so that will be really helpful for you and increasing. The pleasurable experience you have and therefore increasing your desire to have more, because once you have a bunch of great pleasurable experiences in an orgasm, It’s only natural to want more of them.

And what I would just like to leave you with. Is that it is never too late to reclaim your sensuality. Over and over and over again. And Gaia said this so beautifully. In the episode we had with using BDSM as a tool to heal trauma. But it’s that those who do this work and I’ve seen it with so many different clients, once they come out the other side, And I began to really feel empowered in their sexuality, anchored within their relationships feel connected and all of the good things. There is a period of grief.

Grief for how long they continued. To have things go the way had hat. How long they continued to have things spiral downward and downward. Making it harder and harder to reconnect. And so I just urge you. It is never too late. And if you have those desires or those curiosities too. Work on this and one way or another, please do so. It’s never too late.

There’s no better time than now. To reclaim your libido, to feel empowered in your sexuality and to feel connected and passionate. And playful within your relationships. So I just want to send you off with that. Thank you so much for listening. It has been a pleasure. And just wishing you a love and pleasure filled week.

Thank you for joining us inside the Unapologetic with Janine McKinnon podcast. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you feel called, I would so appreciate it. If you left us a review to help us reach more women and couples so they can experience deeper connection and more expansive pleasure inside and outside the bedroom too.

Until next time, embrace your desire and experience your magic.