Combining Holistic Health and Social Justice in the East Bay?
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Dr. Liz Powell from SexPositivePsych.com
Reid: If you want to work on like a holistic health kind of thing but you’re really geeky about social justice, where would you go if you were just happen to be in the East Bay? My name is Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and this is Dr. Liz from?
Liz: SexPositivePsych.com
Reid: And you know where people should go.
Liz: So in San Francisco, I’m part of the Embodiment Arts Collective and we are a variety of different practitioners coming everything from massage therapy and chiropractic hair to therapy coaching and even stuff like sexological bodywork and secret intimates who are looking at fully embodied wellness for all people. We have a sex positive radical approach to things and we’re excited to help people find wellness in all their different parts.
Reid: And what was the website for that?
Liz: It’s EmbodiedSF.com
Reid: EmbodiedSF.com? And then you were there as well?
Liz: I do, I’m a psychologist and coach. I’m one of the founding members of the collective. We are so excited that we have such a healthy thriving collective these days and we’re able to offer the things like yoga classes 3 days a week, we have wonderful events every 3 months that are open houses where people from the community can come in, see what we do, experience some of our services, try it out, all of our different practitioners are starting to offer classes at the collective on things from Tantra to spinal care, all sorts of different things are available.
Reid: Now of course like in San Francisco in the East Bay, people tend to be a little bit more out of the box. So for the people that might be watching who are in this area or who are visiting, who feel like, “I’m kind of vanilla”, are you vanilla friendly?
Liz: Yeah. Absolutely we’re vanilla friendly. In fact, one of our practitioners really specializes in working with people who have very little sexual experience or are virgins and are looking to start exploring sexuality or working with things like sexual shame, we are friendly to people all across the spectrum of sexuality, from people who are totally vanilla, brand new starting out, to people who are kinky, poly, super awesome magic people.
Reid: Okay. So the only reason I’m dropping that in, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot and especially for those of you who are super sex positive, realize that there like some of us gets so excited about all the cool out of the box things that we’re into that people like my brother and sister-in-law who are a little bit more like “mainstream” feel kind of othered and so I love all the diversity that you’re all doing in the social justice work and that you’re truly being as inclusive as you can which means like “inside the box” folks are welcome to.
Liz: Absolutely. Even with the classes that I have coming up which are talking about structuring relationships, I come from a polyamorous perspective myself but it is completely monogamous vanilla person friendly. Everything that we’re talking about at the same kind of skills you would use in any relationship, even a friendship. There’s nothing about the work that we’re doing that is exclusive to people on one end spectrum.
Reid: Yeah, got it. Awesome. Well, thank you for creating a space like that and being a part of that.
Liz: Absolutely.
Reid: And for those of you who were like, “Why is he keep using word vanilla?” I haven’t come up with a better word for that yet and “normies” doesn’t sound right either.
Liz: Muggles?
Reid: Muggles is good but in some Harry Potter people think that that’s not a good idea but…
Liz: Yeah
Reid: So leave your comments. Is there a better word for vanilla? Check out the website and it’s…
Liz: EmbodiedSF.com
Reid: And then your website?
Liz: My website is SexPositivePsych.com
Reid: And I love it that you spell it so just spell it.
Liz: Of course I spell it. S-E-X-P-O-S-I-T-I-V-E-P-S-Y-C-H dot com. No one knows how to spell psych, it’s one of those weird words.
Reid: It’s true, it’s good.
Liz: Silent Ps, who invented those?
Reid: Leave a comment. Bye.