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In this episode of Sex, Love and Leadership, host Aaron Kleinerman is joined by Simon Paul Sutton to explore the transformative power of cosmic laughter in heart-centered leadership. They discuss the importance of initiation, self-awareness, and embracing vulnerability in the journey to becoming an embodied leader.
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Welcome to the Love, Sex, and Leadership Podcast, where insightful dialogues and transformative teachings await. Join Aaron Kleinerman on a journey to explore the intersections of love, sexuality, and leadership. Through candid conversations with experts and live audio teachings, Aaron creates a safe space for self-discovery and empowerment. Embrace your true power, awaken your soul's wisdom, and live an inspired life as a natural, intuitive, and heart-centered leader. Dive into the mysteries of the universe and unlock the secrets to mastering the human experience. Tune in and embark on a path of profound transformation.
Welcome to the Sex, Love and Leadership podcast, where you can discover simple tantric teachings to embody your true power, awaken your soul's wisdom, and live an inspired life as a natural, intuitive, and heart-centered leader. So hello everyone, this is Aaron Kleinerman. This is Sex, Love and Leadership. Very excited to have my dear friend Simon Paul Sutton joining us today. For conversation around masculinity, brotherhood, initiation, and I'm sure a wide variety of other things. He's a man— we used to do some laughing meditations together, actually livestream laughing when we were living down the street together during COVID Dear friend and amazing facilitator, heart-centered brother, just making impact with how he shows up in service everywhere he goes. He's an incredible human. Very, very grateful to have you here. I'm just— as soon as I see you, I just want to start laughing. So I don't know how far we will get without just laughing. There'll probably be some laughter here. So if you enjoy laughter, you'll definitely enjoy this show. I must say, you may remember this, but for those listening, I have you in as Aaron Cosmic Laughter. That's the name in my phone. Whenever you pop up, it just says Aaron Cosmic Laughter. I love that. I love that. Yeah, probably from our days in COVID when coming together and we just have these big, what felt like a chuckle train with many people in the room and big groups of humans, just big laughing streams. So laughter is the best medicine, as we all know. I love that you have a Telegram, actually, channel of just people coming and doing 1 minute of laughter. Like, if you want the best Telegram channel ever, those that are listening, we'll put it in the comments, the thing. You literally go there and you just see people all over the world on a chuckle train. It's the best thing you can ever find. Yeah, it's so simple. I just came back from a festival, actually. I did a workshop there called The Cosmic Joke. And the potency and power of laughter leading us to our deep sorrow and grief as well, because it opens the channel of the of the tears, the physiology of the crying and the laughing is linked in the same place. That's why sometimes when we cry, we laugh, we laugh, we cry, right? We, that's the link. So, and I remember just, uh, you know, the small piece on this. I know it wasn't in the title, but I had no doubt we would talk about laughing, but, um, I remember meeting you and you being very, we didn't even plan it. You just started laughing. Actually, I think you came to my condo and And then you walked in and we said a few things and then you just had this like dangerous laughter. And I'm like, then we were just off. And then it all began. The friendship began. So thank you. Thank you for welcoming me here. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So for those who don't know you, you want to share a little bit about yourself? I know you have a book and you've been working and weaving in this field of consciousness and self-development and you have some amazing retreats you run. So just share a little bit about yourself and how you show up in the world. Yeah, it's beautiful. Somebody asked me that just recently, actually, a couple of days ago in this festival, as I mentioned. And I kind of, you know, you always respond slightly different depending on who asks. But I think the answer that keeps coming at the moment is simply I just have a kind of utopic dream. I'm a Piscean and I have a utopic dream that if everybody loves themselves and realizes they're miracles, the way that we interact and live in this plane would be very different. So I've been on a bit of a mission just to remind people that they are love and that they're miracles. You're a living, breathing miracle. Take that one home and let it land. And you know, the more, yeah, and the more I go out into the world and share like all the different maybe titles and so on, but at the root, it really is just this sense of living in the deep realization that we are a gift. Life is a gift. Life is a sacred, phenomenal, indescribable gift. And obviously, I meet you there, but it's just bringing people together to remember that. And for me, it's way more simple than the many different parts and the conditioning and the domestication will allow us at times. And so that's really what it is, whether it's called Naked, The Retreat, or Transparent Communication, or Cosmic Joke, or whatever, erotic self-expression. I love working with self-pleasure, and I love reframing masturbation to a self-pleasure meditation. It's another big piece for me around You know, everybody says they're looking for God, and often they're looking outside. And I say, well, you know, we came from the lingam, we came from the yoni. If you want to find God, you've got to go back into, you know, the lingam and the yoni verse. And, you know, that's where you will meet God. So I always say, God, God, everyone's looking for God, but God's been hidden in our pants. I don't know about how many governments would appreciate that answer, but I certainly like it. And you mentioned life is a gift. And of course, we can feel that and we can vibrate with that. But why do you feel like so many humans forget that or need to remember who they really are? What is this whole falling asleep thing in your perspective? Yeah, I've considered that myself because I would say that I was born into a state of ignorance or unconsciousness, you could say. So, you know, growing up on a council estate, growing up in an environment that was very harsh and domestic violence and, you know, the very fabric of the foundation, the environment with which I was born into was quite hostile and absent fathers and two absent fathers for myself. And many of the children I grew up with have had either an absent father or an absent mother. And if you follow the thread of each of the lineage, then each time that my father's father, father's father, all of them were at a different state of their own evolution. And then I think each time there's a little bit more awareness coming. Yeah. So I got what I got and learned from what I learned from. But the conditioning is what I put it down to, is with which we're born into. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that if you're born into rich and wealthy and so-called, let's say, more intellectual or even intelligent, that there's necessarily more wakeness. So, you know, for me, there's so many different theories. And, you know, there's so many different theories of why, you know, why we're so conditioned, like, well, you know, we're supposed to be, and then that's part of the journey. And so I haven't come up with the exact reason, but all I can say myself is the more that I became aware, more awareness of myself and more awareness through the experiences I had, then I started to see a clear distinction that there was this sense of fear And when we're in fear, the system shuts down. When the system shuts down, these parts are created. And these parts, which I call protector parts, or in the realms of IFS, it's called managers and firefighters. But just stay with me with this piece. These parts are basically created to keep us alive. This is like a trauma response from survivalism. So what I realized in myself is that many of my personalities and many of my actions were based from a deep state of fear. And the more that I realized that, when I realized that and realized that fear, you know, isn't who I am, you know, I can look at fear from a different perspective. And when I look at fear from a different perspective, I start to move into what I would call more of a loving state of awareness. So I can't give you the exact answer, but that's just been the way that it's unfolded for me. Yeah. And I feel like that loving state of awareness of remembering who we really are, everyone has different breaking points to come back to that point. And I know for yourself, there were certainly, you had a period of life where you were maybe living more the normal way of being and, you know, connected to drugs and alcohol and all those different pieces. What was your strong breaking point? Where was the breaking point that you realized, I can't do this anymore and I need to, you know, forge a new way, live a new thing? Like, where did your real point of awakening begin? Yeah, I often, I often reference that there's many choice points that unfold and you don't always notice them until you look back. But one key one was when I went to jail. So I was a criminal and a burglar and, and kind of for a 3 or 4 year period, I was, you know, drug dealing and, and, and doing crime and stealing from from people's houses and many, many other places, sheds and different places. And so through that period, I was convicted on two offenses, one with 9 ounces of marijuana, and then another one with stolen goods were in the back of my car when I was pulled over by the police. So those two criminal acts gave me a year probation and then a short sentence in a remand center. So I was in jail for, I got a 3-month sentence and luckily did about 9 and a half weeks in the end of that sentence. So in that time when I was locked up, that was a big choice point for me. And I didn't realize that at the time, but I made a decision when I was sat in the cell one day where I was like, right, I see a lot of friends coming in and out doing this, and I don't want to keep doing this. Yeah, I don't want to come back here. Of course, I'd seen some movies and different things. I understood crime. I understood jail. You know? And so that was the turning point, but that wasn't, I didn't realize that that was an awakening moment until very much, much later when I was 30 years old. So that was when I was 18. So 12 years later, I had a huge epiphany moment through meeting another woman. And in that moment, having like, you know, been exploring some books and so on, something cracked open. I had 15, up until that point, I had almost 12 years of taking, uh, MDMA. So I used to, my main drug was MDMA, cocaine and MDMA, but it was, it was MDMA was my drug of choice. My, my thing, alcohol and marijuana. But basically I had, uh, had this epiphany and hit some form of ecstasy and I hadn't taken any drug. I hadn't taken any MDMA, but I was, I was fully high, you know, for like a month. Yeah, it was like, you know, I was like, just, I mean, if you saw me, you said, dude, what are you doing? You're high. Stop taking all the drugs. Who's your dealer? Wow. So obviously, you know, ending up in jail and having a journey and to recognize that this isn't life for you and then to, you know, transition into that world, but then to have a point of realizing that you want something different. It's really what I'm hearing. And that's the point that kind of drove you more forward into what I would say being a beneficial presence on the planet and really showing up in that way. Do you feel— and this is a question I look at for a lot of male bodies, especially because I was just doing a chat with a friend this morning. We were talking about how often you know, men are quite stubborn and they're difficult and they're resistant to change and showing up and doing the work. And do you feel like every man really needs that, like, full breaking point, like hitting rock bottom in some way to actually, you know, quote, see the light? Or is there another way? Is there another path? Or is that just part of the journey that's required, like, one way, shape, or form, and not dying in order to, to to show up and recognize who they really are. Yeah, actually it brings me to the retreat that you offer and that we will be offering now, the Initiation Journey. And I love how you speak about initiation. One of the things I kind of like is that education is adding in, right? We're bringing information in. Initiation is letting go. Initiation is, you know, getting rid of. So for me, I feel that the initiations are vital and they can be created in a myriad of different ways. But ultimately, we've had a lot of pseudo-initiations as men, and they just don't take us to the point of really, let's say, seeing clearer. So for example, one pseudo-initiation for me was when a group of 5 lads, most of them older men who I hung out with, took me to Amsterdam in order to sleep with prostitutes so I could lose my virginity and I could become a man. And they all stood outside. Eventually, when I went in, they stood outside and waited for me to go through this initiation. And when I come out, they all hugged me and cheered me on and was like, yeah, you're a man now. Now, That's one version of an initiation. But that's what I would call a pseudo-initiation, which is, you know, they did, they did the best thing they could do back then. But we, you know, taking me to, you know, get high on drugs and sleep with a prostitute isn't necessarily the best initiations that we men need. But we do need father figures, we need elders, we need to be guided, and they were guiding me. However, you know, however that guidance was, they were guiding me where they they could only take themselves. So for me, I feel that men need guidance to see clearer. And that's what happened. I found my own way through a series of unconscious initiations. And I would say that men are very stubborn and very resistant. I mean, I talk from parts perspective, brother. So for me, I feel we all have a part inside of us. Which is strongly resistant and scared, and it's trying to protect us, right? It's trying to protect us from death. But when that protector can move out of the way, that stubbornness and that resistant part can move out of the way, we can actually access a more self-energy. We can access more, you know, a deeper loving self. But those parts, if you think about it, if they've been protecting us for a series of years, they don't often want to get out of the way very fast. Yeah, they're quite resistant. I'm tracking that resistance as we're about 2 days before I start the Bali retreat here for men, the same men's initiation we're running in Portugal. And just the conversations I have with guys who are what I call being well fucked by the fence. They're like, they're like, oh, they're in between and they're just in this like there's that resistance because there's such a strong pull to the way in which things have been. And to recognize that they're going to step into a deeper initiation that literally can rewire their nervous system, change the way they're showing up in life, it can be scary. It's like, it's scary. So in those moments for you, maybe you didn't have that when you had the initiation with the prostitute, but like, where's maybe some of those big moments that you had, especially on the self-development path, where you had the resistance, but you recognized a voice that was guiding you deeper? And like, what was some of the inner journey that you went through to kind of recognize, no, this is actually what I need to do? You know, as you just spoke, I had goosebumps all on my arms. They're still tingling a little bit when you said that there's a load of guys that you said are being fucked by the fence, right? Mm-hmm. So as you said that, like this call into sovereignty, into manhood, brotherhood, like I'm 49 years old, and I feel like I'm just starting to become a man. And, and, and like, the boy energy, which I know you speak about, and when we do work with the The Inner Woman that you do so beautifully, and we connect those pieces. There is an embodiment piece that you've written about and speak about that in order to be that embodied man, so many parts of who we've identified with can't function anymore. And because though— I get goosebumps again. Look at that. They're all on in. So when— when those parts can't function anymore, that's death. And what is the greatest fear? I think at number 1, I think it's the fear of death, fear of spiders, and fear of public speaking. I think they're coming at 3 of the biggest fears that we have as a species. Pretty close. Yeah. So basically why this path of sovereignty or transitioning into being an embodied man, if you will, is so challenging is because you— behaviors and personalities have to die. You can't function like that. So no wonder that fence feels so thick. Can't get off. What do I do? I want to go, but it keeps getting me. I mean, does that speak to that? I mean, I know you said like, what of mine? But I just kind of wanted to speak to that. I've had multiple moments even now, even now I'm connecting to a new relationship. And even now, with all that I do, all that I live, all that I stand for, all that I share, parts come up. It's like they come up and they don't want to go. And then it's like, okay, speak to them. I see you. I know you're scared. I know you want love. And if we do this, we're going to receive love. So it's that, again, I use this word self-energy of saying, hey, I know you're scared. But I'm here in the driver's seat now and all is well. Yeah. And what you're sharing requires a tremendous amount of awareness and attunement and consciousness to recognize that those parts are beginning to run the show and beginning to freak out. And the limiting beliefs are beginning to be the decision-making framework to how things are happening moving forward. And I think that's to me really where the importance of this work is. It's like we can do so much in a retreat space, but having a man or any being walk away from a retreat and recognize that they can start to track that decision-making awareness in those moments when those parts are coming up to begin to move and to give a softness, but then also to not be overwhelmed by it, to navigate more effectively. Into where they actually want to be. And I see this over and over. So many men are— they know where they want to go, but they're almost terrified of going there. Right. And isn't that— yeah. And isn't that like— don't you find that even with relationship and love? I find that same thing with love. It's like a deep longing to be consumed by that unconditional love, to receive that love. Right. And then a complete terror of It's going to take me. Because it's annihilation, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. And what a sweet annihilation. And it also requires in that annihilation a complete letting go of all the things that we've held on to. Yeah, I, I, I was just this morning, Natasha and I, who, you know, you know well, my partner, um, we're making love and I was reflecting afterwards just because all this stuff happening on social media to the CNN investigation with men drugging their, their wives and, and, you know, taking control of them. And I was thinking to myself like, oh, I, I don't even— would I even find enjoyment if she was unconscious? Like, I get so much pleasure out of making love with, with this woman when I hear her sounds and I hear her aliveness and I hear her breathing and like, it brings me so much joy. Like, well, it would be really boring if she was just like unconscious and knocked out. Like, I mean, it's a very like gruesome thing to think about, but like, and so I'm thinking like the consciousness for a man to get to that point to to realize the only way he thinks he can get, like, sex or love is to make his partner unconscious and then to fuck her. It's like, that's— it's so wrong. But what's interesting is just to track the consciousness of the man, that how he— how does he get there? Like, how does that man even get there? Yeah, that— I mean, I just picked up— I've been offline a lot recently. I just picked up on this this topic in the last, like, day and a half. I saw a few posts from, from Beings, and of course that's going, um, full on, and, and rightfully so. And there's a lot of men dropping in on comments and kind of justifying and so on. Like, we gotta look at it from a deep systemic distortion. Like, when we, when we look at parts and we look at the deep sense of fear and unconsciousness, and that they are in a massive extreme survival mechanism. They can't feel. Like, in that place, they have no empathy or understanding. This is just my hypothesis. It's not like the final answer. I'm sort of many different perspectives to this. But for me, it's shocking and absurd when I see the extreme violence that any man or woman, because women can do it too, but in this case, any man creates on another being. But then when I bring it back to self, because of course, the only work we can do is on ourselves. And I go, okay, so where, where have I violated my inner woman? Where have I violated my inner boy? Where have I violated through, you know, through going over my boundaries and going into these spaces? Like, like I can't imagine ever doing that. And then simultaneously I'm like, what part of not loving to the extreme where I grew up in quite harsh environments with a lot of violence, there's a lot of violence I grew up in. And what was driving that violence? And again, Aaron, I just arrived at the ones that were causing so much violence in my growing up were so scared. Right? They were so scared. They were in so much fear that the only way to protect themselves was to create more violence on others, to create a false sense of security. So, you know, I'm not, I'm not— so when I think of like, why would anybody— and maybe, okay, it's a fetish, or we just want to abuse— why does anybody want to abuse another soul? That's where I kind of go with it. Yeah. And to me, that's deep down underneath, very similar to what you said. It's like there's just a place of brokenness inside, and it's a feeling of I'm not enoughness. So let me take that I'm not enoughness and either physically abuse someone or bring violence, etc. And I also think it's such a strong cultural piece as well. I mean, sexuality, just as you said, we come from yoni and lingam meeting, and yet as soon as we're out of the womb, it's like, Oh no, no, no, I can't look at that anymore because that's dirty and gross and vulgar. And sexuality in and of itself is such a terrible education for us. And I know you're initially from England and come from that part of the world where definitely there's some challenges with sexuality. Like, especially around sexuality in your own journey, what's been some of the biggest, you could say, learnings or re-education pieces you've had to be able to have such a healthy relationship with it now, as well as to really teach people around healthy sexuality? Yeah, it's a beautiful segue. And I just want to say, because you call this shadow hunting, I want to, I want to speak a very tiny piece that you know, just that extreme topic that you just brought up, and you said it lovely that there's a not enoughness, but at the same time, I know this is not easy to see, somehow, Aaron, in that violence, deep inside, there's that little boy or little girl that wants love and things. Because I think often about pedophilia, right? And I think to myself, like, they have— many of them have been shown that in order to get love, that's how you do it. The distortions of how you get love is so warped. It's so warped. And that kind of— so I just wanted to point that into as I weave into the piece on sexuality. Does it make sense? For sure. For sure. Well, and that's, I feel like, very connected in sexuality as well, is that little boy that no longer feels like he's getting the love from mom, essentially. We were just, uh, my partner who's 7 and a half months pregnant and breastfeeding and, uh, talking about the fetish that men have with breasts. It's like, this is where you came from. I would love what you were just saying right before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so my, my, I mean, my distortions with sexuality, you know, are also, so for example, I didn't masturbate and I, I did masturbate, but so temporarily because I didn't realize until I was 40 years old when I started the Sexological Bodywork training and going deeper into sexuality. I didn't realize that I had a false belief that masturbation was not only dirty, but if I masturbate, it meant back then that I couldn't get a woman. Mm. But if you masturbated, you, you couldn't get a woman because you had to, clearly you had to go and play with yourself so you couldn't, you couldn't pull a woman. What, what a, what a, what a, what a wild thought. And I don't even know where that came from. But as I follow the thread through the process I've been on now with sexuality, what I started to realize is that, um, Jack Morin speaks about something in the, uh, Core Erotic Mind, um, No, sorry. In The Erotic Mind is the name of the book. And the, the, the process he talks about is core erotic theme. So the core erotic theme is the early sexual encounters that you've had that shape you into your sexuality. Right? And that, that those sexual encounters could be how you maybe saw your mom and dad making love. It could be the first time you touched yourself, um, and so on. So mine, Mine were built on, mine were built on the basis of adrenaline and fear because, you know, in my early ones, they were a lot of cheating involved, betrayal, multiple sexual partners, and very kind of one-night stands and so on like that. And so from the age of 16, from the age of 16 to 21, 16 to 21, I slept with 100 women, but, and 55 of those I paid for, some prostitutes in Amsterdam and in Thailand. And, and the quest was me and a friend had a bet, who can sleep with 100 women first? Right? And based on that, that distortion was basically, of course, what happened. We just saw women as sex. Yeah. You know, objective. And how can I— it's not that I didn't have lovely, some lovely experiences, but mostly it was like, okay, how am I going to pull another woman? You know, it's just like this very disconnected from any sort of emotional understanding of what happens when we go into intimacy. You know? And then the other piece I want to share with you is that I had massive amount of fear. And premature ejaculation because I wasn't playing with myself and I didn't have much of a relationship with my sexuality. So therefore, what did I do, brother? Drugs, alcohol. And you wouldn't believe this. It's so crazy. And I'm sure some people may have done this, but I bought this numbing gel, one, one I found in Thailand. And in Europe, I found something called stud spray. And we would, I would put that on my, the end of my corona, on my bell end, right? Think about this, think of the craziness. To numb my lingam, to numb my lingam, because if I numb my lingam, I don't feel, which means I would last longer. Wow. Wow. Hmm. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had such a, a big conversation with premature ejaculation, with erectile dysfunction, you know, the— and, and so many men. I've recently done some posts more around sexuality. I've been working with sexuality for a long time, and I don't always post in that way. And it's been interesting because in putting myself out there I, instead of actually comments on a lot of the posts, I'm getting a lot of men just messaging me privately because they have so much shame about ED, about, you know, erectile dysfunction around premature ejaculation. And it's like they wouldn't even begin to admit it in any type of public forum. But, you know, and even to send a message is a huge step. So I'm always like, thank you. Like, thank you for your, like, stepping forth and just taking a place here. Most often it will come with just like, you know, it takes me a little while to recognize that that's the issue there. But it's this like deep layered shame. Yes. That if my cock doesn't get up, then I'm somehow broken, or if I can't last long, then I'm not a good man. And yes, this is— we do in the initiation journey, one will be holding in Portugal, you know, We do a really strong piece with shame. And I love just like in this piece when men are beginning to share and beginning to open up, it's like the layers and the masks just begin to come off more and more and more. And then you watch, it's like the physiology in men change because they're like, oh, I actually have a place where I can share that story that I've been holding on to for so long. And that is just incredibly liberating. So my question to you in that is you mentioned having premature ejaculation. What's been your journey with that? How have you navigated it? I'm sure it's a big open one, but share as you wish. Yeah, just thank you for bringing this question because I think so much— again, I'm using just what you said about shadow hunting, right? Because the thing is, I also didn't realize until I went further into the sexuality, I didn't really even realize I had so much shame, Aaron, about this. It wasn't until I looked back and reflected and was like, but you know what happened one time? I just want to tell you this fun, fun. It's not even a fun story, fun story at the time, but you know, fun now. I attracted this phenomenal, you know, young woman. I was driving. I pulled her over in the car. We had this whole thing. I was super excited. She stopped in the layby. We started chatting. Ultimate man challenge. She finds a woman in a sexy car on the side of the street, one all the men are dreaming about. Yeah. And then I'm driving, I'm following her a little, you know, and I'm seeing her in the mirror and she pulled over and I pulled over and I went to speak to her. And then later she said, well, you can come meet up later, you know. Well, then we meet later. And I was like, okay, cool. You know, I said, I went away excited that evening, you know. Anyway, I went to meet her. She was at a friend's house. She opened the door and that was just like, I was just all this attraction, this buildup, you know, this anticipation. Started kissing her at the door and ejaculated, right? Just kissing in the door. So guess what I did? Run away. Wow. I run away, bro. Uh-huh. I couldn't even stay there. I just left. Wow. Wow. Man, I get goosebumps. It's crazy. Like, I just left that amount of shame. I didn't even realize that I had that amount of shame until I reflected on that story many years later and was like, and also what she must have felt, you know? Why did this guy leave? We were just kissing and he's out. You know? What did I do? Yeah. What, yeah. What did I do? Did I, was my, was my breath bad? You know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. But, but the piece why I tell you this story is that level of the part that took over that felt so much shame that the only way to protect itself from that shame was to get away as quick as possible. Cuz that is wrong. Whereas now, even if I did premature ejaculate or if I have a wet dream, I used to have so many wet dreams. If I have a wet dream now, or I have a soft lingam or anything, It's just perfect. It's perfect. Who cares, right? Who cares? Oh, I got so excited that I got overwhelmed and I ejaculated. Great. Beautiful. Amazing. You know? Amazing. So yeah, I don't know. I know you said, so there's one little piece that you said, like, how has it changed? Well, one thing for certain is I get men to celebrate their ejaculation. I celebrate it, meaning that if you ejaculate, we celebrate. We don't— how many times, Aaron, I ejaculated and instantly I felt I come too soon? I messed up. It's too early. Yeah, she hasn't orgasmed yet. I've done something wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, literally most of my, you know, my lovemaking. Oh, well, you know, and And do you feel like with the celebration that, like, do you feel like there's been through time in the celebration of that, like some capacity to rewire this relationship with premature ejaculation? Like what is your— Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Let me, yeah, good. Keep me on track. So basically what I did, I learned how to self-pleasure and make love to myself. And so what happened at 40 years old, I realized that I was loving myself. I'd been talking about self-love for a long time. I was touching myself. I was in a long-term relationship with the woman you met as well, Dara. So we were making love in different ways and learning to breathe and doing different things. But still, during that time, I was noticing I had these threads of this kind of shame. And then when I, when I learned this technique that I now share, which is, was originally called Orgasmic Yoga, and we learned how to breathe, sound and move and touch, and that the hands that we touch with hold the heart or hold our heart. So when we become the greatest lover of ourselves and we learn to breathe and move and sound and move energy, then all of a sudden I started to realize that I can touch myself and pleasure myself and that the sexual center isn't the only place that is called the Lingam for me. The whole body is a lingam. The whole body is a pleasure instrument. So now, if somebody is touching my arm and I'm receiving pleasure through my arm, it's the same as me receiving pleasure into my lingam. And then over time, through soft touch and sensuality, I resensitized my lingam. So I didn't have this numb, numb sensations. And I learned how to touch myself and be with myself. And in doing that, I learned how to communicate more. With how I want to be loved, how I want to be touched. And then I learned how to become a good lover to myself. And in that deep acceptance came deep understanding, a deep release of, of the shame. And actually, you know what, brother, seeing the innocence in my whole journey of sexuality, you know? Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. So what I, what I hear in that is the journey of, of refalling in love with your body temple and actually learning how to, to pleasure it in a, in a way that feels good and brings you alive and brings you joy, which to me, I feel, is such an ultimate initiation that most men never even begin to contemplate. And it's a funny thing that men have. There's almost this expectation, you know, to find a woman who's going to pleasure him and to make him feel good, but he doesn't even know how to do that for himself. Yeah. And it's always like this, this lonje. I mean, that was a big part of my journey, was always projecting my own inner feminine onto the partner I was with until finally, like, I, you know, I collapsed on the floor and I had to come back. And, you know, it led to a big journey of finding the self-pleasure and finding my own frequency. Frequency. And, you know, as a sailor working out at the sea and having, you know, lovers in every port and lots of pornography on board, though, there was, you know, there's a lot of that. And to actually sit down and to touch myself without agenda, without destination, without trying to get anywhere— I remember I was so confused at first. Exactly. What do I do here? This is, this is awkward. This is strange. Give me something to look at. I need something to put my mind to, you know. Exactly. Yeah. Can I say one thing to that? Because now it's beautiful that you bring in porn. So I didn't, thankfully, or whatever, this is no judgment to anyone, I didn't get deep into porn because I had this— when I look back now, I'm like, oh, this belief was actually quite good because on some level, because I didn't want to masturbate, I also had this resistance to porn. And now I work with men who have got a 20-year porn addiction, 15-year porn addiction. 10-year masturbating 3 to 5 times a day. Some of them can't get off it, right? And I'm working with them and giving them like a healthy porn choreography and teaching them, like you just said, how to touch their body and learn how to move out of just fantasy-driven outside projected visuals in order to get stimulation. And you said it so beautifully. You said you felt awkward and weird. So when I do workshops or I'm doing sessions and I say, First of all, I say, Aaron, I say, right, today we're going to touch the whole body as a lingam. And that means we're going to, you're not going to touch the lingam as you normally touch the lingam. And we're going to, you know, touch the whole body. And it's so interesting sometimes, bless my brothers, but you know, they can't go to touching the whole body. It's just like, you know, what do I do? This thing. It's like, touch the face. And they're like, Wow, touch the face. What's going on with the face? And I'm not making fun. Any brothers listening to you, I'm not making fun of you. It's not making fun. It's just to notice how mechanical pleasure has become. That my teacher said to me, the penis, the lingam as we're calling it, it's what I like to call it, is the most touched organ by a man, of course, in the least creative way. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It reminds me in the practitioner training I teach where we're doing both psychotherapy work as well as hands-on tantric body work, it's teaching people how to do really powerful, deep Tantric massage and being able to facilitate all those strokes on a lingam for a male body, whether you're a male body or female body. And there's a 21-stroke Taoist massage that we teach inside of that. Right. And this is the piece I want to bring in because I feel like there's multiple layers in the world of men's work and brotherhood and and all of that. And I feel often a lot of the men's work that's quite strong in the world, which is great. It's great that men come together. I call it like belly up, you know, belly up, maybe. Yeah. Like, you know, it's dealing maybe a little bit with emotions, but like, it's not really dealing with the core roots of around our sexuality, which I understand because often I find the guys who are even holding those spaces haven't done the sexual shadow work that they need to do. Right. To be able to do that. So you can't expect them to do something they haven't done. But like this super deep, almost societal fear and conditioning around homophobia, around male bodies, you know, and it's— I always think of it when I'm in India and you see like a lot of men holding their hands in the streets and there's just, there's a lot of touch and connection between men and what I observe in a very healthy way. I know there's also a very unhealthy piece that happens behind the scenes with all that. So I'm curious where your journey is with that piece, because that's a— it's a strong piece of like, how can we relate as brothers? It doesn't mean like I need to be sexually attracted to you. I'm a very heterosexual man and I attraction to female bodies, but I've also leaned into the edges in my sexuality with male bodies to know what it is I want. But so many men are terrified of that because of what that might mean and because of what's coming up with that. So I'm curious your take on this piece of the conversation. I feel like it's such an important piece for the depth of brotherhood. Yeah, I love— I mean, it's one of the things I love about you anyway, of course, as brothers, but I mean, you and I are affectionate with each other and I love how I can be in your presence and maybe lay on your chest or receive touch from you or feel close to you. And you're one of the brothers that I've been like that. And I was just talking at a men's workshop I did in Copenhagen. And at the end, Aaron, I know you know this, you're in these spaces, but when all the brothers are there and we're laying on each other and we're close and we're holding each other and there's this this holding. Oh, I get goosebumps as I said that. You know, I said to them, I said at the beginning, I said, I always ask if there's any, you know, anyone, any brothers in the room that are exploring from a different space, like LGBTQ+, you know, anyone, anyone in these realms. And also, I like to demystify this whole thing about the macho man that doesn't touch another man, you know, and I'm like, Just so you know, I have never been held as beautifully by anybody than a man. A man and men. And in relationship, often we hear that we go into relationship and women say, oh, I want to be able to hold you. And I'm like, that's beautiful. And sometimes you don't know how to hold me because I need a man to hold me because a man knows how to hold a man. Yeah. Right. So what I bring, what I bring is this idea of the gentle man, the idea of like how how do we soften into our deeper intimacy to move beyond the, as you said, the cultural conditioning of homophobia. If I'm holding hands with you, I mean, I love hugging, cuddling, kissing men, stroking men, being with men, you know, and I've had experiences where men have penetrated me with their finger, with their dildo through the process. Of me softening and opening my body, you know. And I'm also now saying to a lot of men that I support, if you haven't been penetrated in your anus, if you haven't been penetrated in your body in a way— You don't have to do that with another man, but you can do it with your, with a woman. Sex. Exploration of feeling what it's like to be penetrated. Yeah. Right. That deep feeling of what it's like to be penetrated, the way that softens the pelvis and brings you into a deep sense of vulnerability. And then how you can show up with the opposite genders. I'm gonna say genders in a deep knowing, right? With the way that we then penetrate our partners and penetrate life is completely different. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely agree. Yeah. Yeah. It, it's, uh, built in this place of men that, that we love to penetrate, but are often terrified of being penetrated. Yes. And the deep fear that resides inside of all of that and all that, you know, deep relaxation. I mean, I remember the first time for myself, I received like a sacred spot massage, which is more, you know, not necessarily a prostate, but a place that it opens up kind of that place of deeper relaxation in the body. And I had a strong yoga practice at the time. I remember I was doing my handstands the following day and I just felt like I was floating. My whole body just— and I felt energetically alive. And I realized, wow, I've been holding a lot of tension in my body. And if you look at men, one of the number one killers is prostate cancer. And that's right there at the core is inevitably broken in many ways. So yeah, I love that we can speak into that. Yeah, well, and I want to say one thing because there may be many brothers listening. I use something called the AINURUS and it's a prostate massager. And I just want to do that as a— I'm not getting any commissions from AINURUS, but just so you know. AINURUS. AINURUS. But there's other brands, but this particular one and what What it does for me is exactly what you just said, Aaron. It brought deep relaxation into my being, into my pelvis. And you put it in and you leave it there and it gently, with little squeezing, it massages the prostate. Yeah, beautiful. I mean, there's a company I'm connected to, Tachyon, and I've, in my own self-pleasure practice now for years, generally probably couple of times a month, I'll use that. And I found, like, my father and my family hereditary gave me the gift of hemorrhoids. And I find that actually by using that, then the hemorrhoids go away. So it's been amazing for that. And I say that to men all the time. And it's so funny because I imagine even men who might be listening to this are like, how can I How can these guys even talk about things like, you know, I imagine even there might be some tight asses that are listening to this right now who are both curious as well as like intrigued as well as terrified. So just a question to the listeners, is your asshole tight in this moment? That's checking on you. Well, it's so funny you say it because I got a bit red as well. I blush a little bit when you say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah, because actually, let's just speak briefly to that. Like, there's a vulnerability in sharing this, um, in this space. I feel I don't just do it from that kind of arrogance, like one, I love you and trust you fully and I can share everything with you. And I mean, it's nice to share some of these things with you cuz we haven't actually shared some of this stuff before. For sure. Um, and the other piece is that, you know, we've got to a certain place through embodiment, through doing the work that we can feel safe and confident to share this this level of vulnerability now. And that's what we want to— that's what we want to offer, uh, men in general, so that we can all soften our assholes a bit and, uh, and, and feel connected to each other, you know? Yeah, yeah. And it's, uh, you know, I want to speak into the framework around, you know, initiation and, and what that means. And I feel like that in a space can have so many like the training that, you know, I'll be doing and leading in a couple of days as well as be doing in Portugal. I remember the first time I took this similar training, it was with a mentor, Bruce Lyon, you know, back in 2017. At the end of that training, basically said like, I don't want to do this anymore. Who would like to bring this into the world? So I brought, you know, a few other pieces and, you know, another training I had done down in New Zealand called Te Ata. And just kind of wove together all these things. And the, you know, the fear that comes up in people— I remember a brother called me, like, after the training, and he had heard all these pieces. He's like, did he, like, make you guys do things together? Or what did he make you do? And I'm like, bro, you teach in the field of tantra, right? You realize you're asking me if a teacher forced us to do things with one another. I'm like, no, there was none of that. Like, there was actually a deep journey into the consent of our own body. So I also want to say, because I feel like— and I'd love to hear your thoughts of this as well— like, in this field of embodiment and tantra and sacred sexuality, like, to be a male body teaching and facilitating these spaces takes a lot of fucking courage. One, like, I want to give hats off to you because I, I I feel it inside of me and I know what it means to show up in these spaces. But when it comes to the projections and the blame and the shame and the things that can come on, even sometimes before we've done anything, because of so many male bodies that have misused these spaces and not asked for consent. And consent is such a huge piece of the work that we're bringing in. It's actually helping people to find sovereignty and consent inside themselves. So What are some of your thoughts, especially when it comes to both the misuse of power that people almost just presume is going to happen in a space that they can deem as being Tantric? It's like, oh, it's a Tantric space, there's going to be some fucked up shit going on where you're going to be forced to do things. Like, I almost think that's like a prerequisite people have in their brain about these things. Yeah. Yeah, wow, this is a, this is a big topic now of, of power over and, and the, you know, the ego, if you want to use that, I use that word lightly, because there's nothing wrong with the ego, I would say it's more the parts in us using the parts reference again, the parts in us that then misuse are the ones that are actually again in fear and being taken over by these protectors, because they've probably been overpowered in themselves in some way. And at the same time, you know, we are white, cis male, you know, privileged going into these spaces. And, you know, we're going to get a load of projection of us, not only the father, projections, but also men projecting onto us their whatever gurus and leaders and so on. I mean, I just want to say from my side, thankfully, so far in the last decade of creating these spaces, for me, it's really like, what am I holding as my container of intention. And, you know, I've often had people come up to me and say, thank you so much, because I can feel the cleanness and the clarity in the spaces that you hold. I mean, I'm holding naked retreats for the last decade where everyone's coming and taking their clothes off and we're all nude in the space. You know, people are thinking that we're just doing some sort of, you know, naked brothel of orgy or something, you know. There's never been an orgy. Never been an orgy on any, any retreat that I've been involved in, you know. And even if there was, I'm not even saying there's a problem with an orgy because that all depends on context. But in terms of when we're dealing with sexuality, there's a real sensitivity and we have to create a space of consent. And I know there's talk at the moment about safety. There's no safe place. There's safe spaces and we can't control the safety of somebody else. And these are brave spaces. They are, they are brave spaces. And we have to have a level of understanding around what's going to go on in people emotionally. I mean, I went into this field not really knowing so much about nervous system, not knowing much about trauma, not knowing much about these fields, and learned through the process of what was happening to people when we come into these spaces. And at the same time, if your intentions are clear and you're showing up, you're also putting yourself in a very vulnerable, unpredictable place with a group of beings in the room that you don't know. Right? Like, you can't cover every base. But the question is, are you as an individual me, for me, am I able to take full responsibility for what, what is going to happen in these spaces before I even start them? And I don't, I don't think anyone, including myself, really knows what we're dealing with when we go into these, when we go into these fields, right? Because, you know, somebody comes in and they've got a trauma of, you know, abuse, of rape, of You know, we just don't know what's going to come up. So the last piece I would say on it is, if we don't have a space of consent, where literally people can, can feel in themselves that the nervous system is relaxed, and that they are making a decision what they want to do, right? Then, you know, the problem that happens after is the after stories become the problem. Because, you know, the dramas and the after stories come later. Yeah. Yeah. So I hear in that it's really, you know, knowing and supporting someone to come inside of the consent of their own body and to really find that no. And the challenge is, of course, as you know, it's like so many people's decision-making centers have been taken away because of the trauma they've gone through. So it requires such a fine-tunement to really recognize the depth of the spaces we're going into. I mean, I definitely feel that a lot in these men's containers as well, especially just for the depth of pain and agony. I feel like men, especially men who have had sexual abuse from other men and have had difficulty and challenge in that way, Often like that's a part in society that's so hidden behind it all. And it's not to say, you know, women haven't been abused and all that's happening all the time. And yet that piece for men who have been abused, it's almost— there's not really even any place to speak about it in a healthy way because everything's just, you know, driven in the opposite direction. So when I can witness men having the freedom and the comfortability to meet some of those parts that have been shied away for so long, then there's that coming back into sovereignty, as you say. Into— Yeah. Yeah. But there's a very important piece of this. I think this is such an interesting topic when we talk about it, because there's many different perspectives of how it should be and what people should know and shouldn't know is that this piece about intention, like, like, I don't know, like there's something in the primal, and maybe people can't connect to this, but like, I don't know about you, Aaron, but when I go to an event or somebody's facilitating, I can taste if they're full of shit. I can taste, I can taste, I can, I can taste if they are bullshit. I can, I can smell them. You know? And so what I often feel is that where people, I think, which I'm not saying everybody can do this, and this is why it can become very volatile and dangerous at times, is that when your body is, you know, it's such an interesting piece when we work with nervous system and so on, because we've got the whole fawning response, we've got the whole people pleasing, we've got the whole going over our boundaries and not realizing until later. But the question is, are the facilitators holding a point that you can just feel? I don't know, it's hard to— maybe you can help me with this. I'm saying you can feel safety or not, you know? You can feel, you know, like, that you know in your body. But of course, this is a very subtle topic because clearly gurus and peers and they are violating, right? They're doing it. So they are manipulating and they are using their skills in order to fulfill their leaking, um, sexual energy. So it is, so it is happening and people are falling prey to that. So I don't want to sit here in a kind of moral superior and go, well, you should just know about it because people are getting violated. But for me, I go into these spaces and I can smell it. I can taste it. Yeah. And my sense is, obviously, in knowing you, you can smell and taste that because you also have cultivated a sense of your own inner safety and you know how to move in the world. And this is where I feel like this conversation really should always go with people around safety, is rather than having it be needing to find safety on the outside, of course, a facilitator, a group, an organization to do their best to hold a container in a way that supports, you know, the safe framework of that. But ultimately, it's remembering and coming back into knowing the safety inside of ourselves. And from that place, then actually the world can open a bit more. So. Hmm. Hmm. Well, this is a big topic. I know we're coming to a close. It's such a big topic. And maybe even, you know, there has to— there may have to be new new frameworks of inquiry to support people because some people are coming into these spaces and there's certain questions maybe that they need to get clear on in themselves before they even enter into some of these spaces. For sure, for sure. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Absolutely. Amazing, brother. Well, thank you for who you are in the world, for the laughing burglar, comedian, epic human that I, I love and appreciate. And, uh, yeah, it's a joy to have you as a friend in my life and to teach alongside you. And very excited about our upcoming, uh, the men's initiation happening in Portugal, and looking forward to see you coming in and teaching this work as well. And I know you're already doing a lot of that, but this, you know, kind of version and variation of this initiation, um, and yeah, we'll be there in Portugal for the first week of June. So if you're a brother listening to this and you're feeling that then definitely come, come join us, and there'll be more and more information around that. Anything you'd like to share to the audience about how to find you, anything you'd like to offer, things that are coming up for you? No, but I noticed, I noticed from this topic that you just brought up that I can feel in my belly like a subtle tension. And, and if you're listening to this and you're hearing just this small part of what Aaron and I are touching on here, it's not the whole piece because it's a vast— this is a vast spectrum that we're dealing with in these spaces and in this society right now around violation for men and women. And I know that Aaron and myself and many others out there our intention is to face this and to create spaces where we can all heal this together and work as a team so that nobody— I mean, my dream is nobody is being violated. But until we understand how we're violating ourselves day to day, until we understand the amount of violence that's playing out just in our internal parts, you know, we're going to have to keep walking and learning as we go. And this is what these spaces are for me. They're not just a, you know, they're not like Aaron said earlier, a quick 5, 7 days and at the end you're initiated and you're healed and everything's solved. This is a lifelong quest of rewiring our subconscious and taking responsibility for who we are so we can create a new culture. And that's what I stand for. That's what I live for. And I know that's what Aaron lives for. And I get goosebumps because, you know, if we're going to create a new civilization and I say this to the brothers as well, there is work that we have to do day to day and we've got to do it on our own and we've got to do it with each other. And when we come together in these spaces, we hold each other. You know, I'm not— you think I'm dedicating my life just to come together to violate some men in an environment? Fuck that. Am I? Yeah. You know, I'm coming together so that there is no violation because I've been violated. My mum's been violated. And many other beings in my life have been violated and abused. And this work is so that that ends for our children's children, because Aaron's child is my child. It's not just Aaron's had a child now, it's our child, our next generation. So I just want to just voice that is my intention and what gets me out of bed in the morning. Thank you for bringing that clarity. I appreciate it, brother. Yeah. I love you. Love you. And, uh, thank you all for, for tuning in. If you want to find out more about the Initiation Journey, you can go to theinitiationjourney.com. I think it's simonpaulsutton.com. Is that the— yeah, you can find all the info on Simon. And if you're just tuning in to Sex, Love and Leadership, please like or subscribe or comment and share. And if there's any particular topic around this that was challenging or difficult for you, you're welcome to ask us any questions. We're happy to support you on your journey. So have a beautiful day. Thank you for your time, and, uh, see you next time.