Tips For Business And Writing Retreats | Facebook Walk With Reid And Allison
Reid: Hello Facebook! It’s Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/ and
Allison: Allison Moon
Reid: from http://girlsex101.com/
Allison: Yes, hello.
Reid: And we are at
Allison: [Inaudible 00:00:10]
Reid: Intimacy Fest
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: At the pool. Intimacy Fest just wrapped and Allison was on writing retreat and came on
Allison: And scooped him up
Reid: and came to scoop me up but we’re….we’re hanging out in the pool now that everything’s packed and we figured we’d Facebook live.
Allison: Yes, hello.
Reid: So, we are in we’re in is it Agungga? Agungga
Allison: Aguang….Aguanga I think.
Reid: Aguanga
Allison: Aguanga
Reid: We’re in California. Somewhere in California
Allison: Facebook living
Reid: So where are you today? Where are you listening in from and…and where were you on writing retreat?
Allison: I was in Sky Valley which is very close to Joshua Tree and Palm Desert and then on my way to get you, I swung around the Salton Sea which is a place that I’ve always wanted to visit and I never had before even after living it for ten years in Southern California.
Reid: Well
Allison: And so I…I took some extra hours to go see that extraordinary place.
Reid: Nice.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: And what….is it like is it actually a sea?
Allison: It is. So, there was the San…the San Andreas Fault and then
Reid: Yeah.Allison: I believe what happened was that they were…they were I think when they dammed the Colorado, it disrupted the groundwater I think. Anyway, it is a very….very highly salinated sea. For a long time it was like Salt Lake and then it got to become more and more salinity because there was no exit point.
Reid: Oh.
Allison: So the salt concentrated and concentrated and concentrated and now many of the very vibrant flora and fauna that lived there have died off because there’s too much salt and so I was walking around on many….many corpses of fish, many….many skeletons of fish, many….many skeletons of like shells, bird skeletons, there are some fish that lived there. So, there’s some really good tilapia fishing apparently
Reid: Wow.
Allison: But as it’s more and more salinated, there’s a question as to whether the sea will survive global warming and also if it does, will anything be able to survive in it?
Reid: Wow. Wow.
Allison: It’s….it was the fast [Inaudible 00:02:03]
Reid: There you have it. And how was your…your writing retreat like how was the actual writing? Tips
Allison: It was great.
Reid: Tips for writers.
Allison: Yeah, okay. So, so sex Ed retreats and writing retreats are very different things.
Reid: They are very different. They are very different.
Allison: So, I isolated myself in an Airstream in the desert for three and a half days and it was great because I forced myself to stay inside which turned out to be a really great thing because it was a hundred and thirteen degrees where I was staying. Which meant staying outside was nigh impossible.
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: So, even though I was in a very beautiful place, it was very uncomfortable to be outside which forced me in front of my keyboard. So really all I did was type…type…type, took a bath, type…type…type, took a bath,
Reid: Yeah
Allison: over and over again all I’m doing.
Reid: Oh, there was a bathtub outside?
Allison: There was a bathtub outside and it was a private little backyard so I was able to cool off ‘coz it was still very hot in the airstream even with air conditioning. So I would I would write until I couldn’t stand it anymore and then when I needed to take a break, I just filled up the tub and…and kind of funk and then I went back in to write and then at…in the evening time
Reid: Yeah
Allison: I could fill it with hot water
Reid: Oh
Allison: and so I stargazed and funk and listen to music and kind of tried to get all the extra stuff out of my head and for three days it was really effective. It did…it was a great job of cycling through writing and kind of meditation.
Reid: So it was like you got snowed in but lose because of the heat
Allison: Because of the heat
Reid: Yeah
Allison: Exactly.
Reid: So you had to get writing done
Allison: Yeah
Reid: And there was no place to hide because it was it was a tiny airstream.
Allison: Yeah, exactly. It was a tiny airstream and I know myself well enough to know that if I’m in a beautiful place, I’m going to want to go hiking, I’m going to go want to explore and the fact is choosing
Reid: Too hot to
Allison: June was the really great time to do it.
Reid: Oh, this is good.
Allison: Because it was to….so same thing with like winter route like taking…taking yourself somewhere where it’s really snowy get snowed in, get locked in because this isn’t about vacation, this wasn’t a relax….a relaxation
Reid: It’s about work.
Allison: this was work, this was
Reid: Work
Allison: this was put your ass in that chair and get those words on a page.
Reid: Okay, got it.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: I got it. For you know if you all want to say hi on Facebook live you have to cover your boobs.
Allison: And butts
Reid: There’s a lot of nudity going on here folks.
Allison: There’s a lot of nudity.
Reid: This is closing [Inaudible 00:04:11]
Allison: It’s facing us. Yeah, you…we’re not…we’re not touching you.
Reid: So
Allison: Are you just peeing right now? Okay, cool.
Reid: There you go. Nature, nature. So
Allison: I like holding hands. It’s so cute.
Reid: So tips…tips for me around sex education and intimacy type retreats. So we do sex geek summer camp which is coming up at the end of July and there’s a lot of time for people to frolic and there’s a lot of time for people to learn and how I came up with the idea for sex geek summer camp which is a business retreat for sex educators, healers, workshop leaders, facilitators, people that are under the umbrella of sex positive entrepreneur, intimacy relationship coaching you know even if you’re cam girl or cam boy or whatever like if you work with people around intimacy and relationships and sexuality and you’re looking to figure out how to do business better and more powerfully and also network, then camp might be for you. But how camp came into being was….I realized the journey I had to go through to work on money issues, learn pricing and like just find my own self-worth around the work that I do. I had so much like I would freak out about things and like there’s naked people walking this way. I don’t know if you’re…if you’re
Allison: It’s okay. We’re facing this way.
Reid: Okay, we’re facing this way. I’m just….you can totally say hi.
Allison: Yeah, you can put your hands in yeah, just don’t poke your nipples in.
Reid: You can….it’s….it’s just wait there
Allison: It’s [Inaudible 00:05:34]. It’s still going to crotchless…watch your crotches
Reid: So here we go. I’m keeping us crotchless. And let’s talk, how was the Intimacy fest, everyone?
Girls: Wonderful. Amazing.
Reid: Okay, is that better? Is that working? I can’t tell if my penis is in the [Inaudible 00:05:51]. So I apologize Facebook. Please don’t cancel my…my account.
Allison: Penis. Don’t punish his penis.
Reid: but….so how was intimacy fest?
Girl 1: Powerful, centering, I had a few epiphanies about life.
Reid: Okay and what were like name….name one thing if you can that made the event work well for you because we’re giving tips on like business retreats and the tips on writing retreats.
Girl 2: Definitely.
Reid: So what was something for you as part…as participants?
Girl 3: Space and time to play.
Reid: Space and time to play.
Girl 2: Oh, that’s the good one.
Girl 1: Yeah that’s good.
Reid: Okay, so…so R & R is just as important as the work.
Girl 1: Very much, yeah. I think that the specific protocol of like someone asking you for something and you’re right to say no and then and they actually like thanking you and that was really validating.
Reid: So around consent like encouraging people who…who are super huggy
Girl 1: To express yourself
Reid: to ask for hugs and get a verbal yes
Girl 1: Yeah
Reid: before they hug anybody
Girl 1: And not because I fear the hug but just working out where you have issues around saying like I…I struggle saying no you know what I mean like ‘coz I’m like “Ah, they’ll going to hate me.” Is that…
Reid: Yeah that’s great, no I mean you can’t give a bad tip. I’m just…what else?
Girl 2: My tip
Girl 1: [Inaudible 00:07:06]
Girl 2: I have many tip…..
Reid: Yes and I want to have tips.
Girl 2: Speaking of tips, I have nothing to share right now.
Reid: Okay. Thanks, thanks for taking care of yourself.
Girl 1: Thank you for taking care of yourself mwah!
Girl 2: You’re welcome.
Reid: Alright, do you want to say goodbye?
Girls: Bye!
Reid: Bye.
Girl 1: We’ll let you finish.
Reid: Alright and so there was that I felt like that what was….that shot of all the models huddling that famous model shot of
Allison: Oh, it’s like spreads all through the cover?
Reid: Yeah like the family cam and everything like they’re all like I don’t know.
Allison: Yeah, yeahReid: Whatever that was. So the [Inaudible 00:07:36] for sex geek summer camp will be
Reid: So camp…camp is in 40 days as I’m recording this video.
Allison: It’s the last week of July
Reid: It’s the last week of July. It’s five days, four nights, there’s a bonus night and you can take the….the sex geek summer camp bus into camp from the Washington D.C. Airport. Go to sex geek or go to https://reidaboutsex.com/campFAQ and that’ll bring you right to the FAQ page but um but I was going through so much emotional growth and freaking out that I realized if we were going to help a bunch of people all go through a lot of emotional stuff around money, technology, business models and whatnot the idea that like oh my goodness like after we teach people and they have a freak out, they need to go hug a tree
Allison: Yeah
Reid: They need to go jump in a lake and it was like “oh my god like we can make it to summer camp, we can make it a goofy summer camp.”
Allison: And carrying downtime ‘coz I think there’s this….this need to and this is actually something that does have if we come to writing retreats, we have this notion that we have packed it all in, we have to give full for their money we have to teach them everything. The same thing with writing retreats, we feel like we have to write, write, write, write, write and if we don’t keep writing the entire time, can we fail. This is really hard because we have to build down time in and I don’t care if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, I don’t care if you need a lot of alone time or don’t you need to have time for your brain to settle and like digest things. It’s just like digestion food wise, you need to let your brain just like deal and so when people
Reid: And integration
Allison: Yeah, integrating exactly so when people get confronted with money stuff or they’re freaking out because they’ve never considered their mission statement and now here you are teaching them about that, it is essential that there is a there is a couple hours every day for them to digest, to process with friends, to hug a tree
Reid: To network to like to just socialize
Allison: Anything that isn’t sitting and working is really key.
Reid: And…and so with a camp and again like this that this applies to your own retreats if you’re running a workshop or a retreat or seminar at camp you know part of part of camp is self-care so and I tried to price camp really as cheap as I can for it to pay for itself but like I encourage people to skip class, I encourage people to go to sleep in or go for a walk in the woods because if I’ve…if I’ve done my job right and I’m helping everybody with their business, there’s a good chance you can afford to come to camp again and then you know or buy the videos or whatever so that you can watch or attend again the pieces that you skipped the year before because some like I needed to learn and hear things several times for it to really land.
Allison: Yes, absolutely. I mean I’ve been twice at three years and I definitely…it took a year off in the middle and I learned something new even though it’s the same material, stuff landed in the different ways, I was at the different place of my career
Reid: Or I’m teaching it differently
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: I can find a better way to…to…to say it
Allison: or somebody else is teaching the same material on a different way.
Reid: Yeah and because it’s somebody else you hear it differently. So that’s about camp but the ideas of how do you design in time and space for people to integrate to get their needs met like that stuff is woven into camp even though it’s a business camp for sex educators, the same principles probably apply for you teaching a you know intimacy couples retreat or even like the yoga teachers retreat or you know survivors of assault or something like that you know a retreat or you’re…write and leading a writing group it’s you know how do you get savvy to design events in ways where people have time to actually be people
Allison: And permission too
Reid: And permission rather than just students 24/7. I know there are super learners out there who want to….to dive deep and stay down for sixteen hours at a time but that’s not everybody’s learning style and if you’re calibrating only for super learners then all the normal people feel broken because they can’t keep up with everybody. So
Allison: And there are ways for super learners and deep divers to do that on their own, I mean you can certainly be studying in the off time, you can do homework
Reid: Well, you….you can do deep dive and stay down, just give people time to go put on their scuba gear and just play like you don’t have the stay in lab but in the submerged you know
Allison: Pressurized
Reid: pressurized laboratory doing science work the whole time.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: Like…like where is the play as a form of self-care and giving people time to…to think, to…to write, to journal to do all of that stuff.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: Okay so anything else?
Allison: So yeah I think in terms of…yeah to recap I think scheduling time for processing just like your brain needs to sleep, to dream, to clean out all the extra sheet that’s built up in your brain and just like your body needs time to digest food, you need time to digest new concepts so build that into your schedule if you’re solo, if you’re in a group, if you’re leading a group, build that into the schedule otherwise people won’t give themselves permission to do it and then they’ll be burnt out and they’ll actually feel depleted and they won’t absorb it.
Reid: And they’ll…they’ll learn less and then their depletion and not accomplishing learning they may make that mean that your events aren’t well like aren’t good events
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: because of their lack of progress and their hanging over, some people apply that they….they start to resist your events because they remember the hangover. It’s like it’s like tasty version
Allison: Right.
Reid: in a weird way or progress, didn’t make enough progress version, I don’t know what that means.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: I make some low voice.
Allison: I mean like in terms also like if you’re working on a screen, if your lap topping or using taking notes on a screen, your downtime should not involve a screen. That’s just
Reid: Yeah
Allison: serious and also I’d like to think of it not involving words at all. So, for instance, my first evening at retreat after working all day and being just totally tapped out I filled up the tub, I got underneath the stars, got naked, smoked a little weed, turned down some music and just let my mind drift and really didn’t try and make sense of anything
Reid: Yeah
Allison: didn’t even take my journal with me, even if great ideas came up out of that relaxation, I wasn’t going to write them down.
Reid: Oh wow, that’s hard for me to do that.
Allison: I know and I think that’s really and I think that’s a little important to try.
Reid: Last night I went on the water tower, the thing we were standing on. I laid out there under the stars
Allison: That’s nice
Reid: and…and I listened to everybody else having sex in their tents which is really fun because I was sleeping down the hill in the barn and….and I realized like I didn’t hear any of the night sounds so it was really fun to just listen everybody frolicking
Allison: That’s sweet. I also see a lot of insects fucking.
Reid: No, yeah. Well
Allison: Lot of bugs were fucking where I was.
Reid: Yeah, that’s
Allison: Nobody else just bugs.
Reid: That’s a crick out
Allison: Oh
Reid: Crickets
Allison: What I did discover that the hose in the tub it was really a great stress reliever.
Reid: Oh my goodness
Allison: Oh my god it’s so…
Reid: Alright, there you have it Facebook. Hit some emoticons if you’re up for Alli’s idea about the oh, oh yeah and thank you for being a part of all these Facebook lives and for those of you asking how my…my cut is healing
Allison: Oh, baby.
Reid: It is now being called my Harry Potter scar
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: and yeah I cracked that wide open on the…the waterslide. Alright, let’s go swimming and then we have to drive
Allison: We’re driving to Los Angeles.
Reid: thank you, everybody. Bye and here’s the sound of….of….of one-man cannonball. Oh, it’s kinda hurt. Bye, everyone.
Allison: Bye.