LOVING YOUR BODY, SOMATIC HEALING, AND INTERSEX 101

What does it mean to love your body and embrace your unique story? This week on Pleasure Science, we’re joined by Lyss Ball—intersex advocate, somatic spaceholder, and trauma-informed embodiment expert. 

Lyss gets vulnerable on the pod and opens up about being intersex, redefining sexuality, and cultivating self-love through somatic healing. 

We dive into the powerful rituals that can help you connect to you bodies and deepen intimacy in all areas of life.

Tune in for a transformative conversation about empowerment, identity, and pleasure!

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Lyss: If you buy yourself flowers and you have those there and you're rubbing oil that has your favorite smell on your body after the shower. Even better if you're in the mirror and you're looking at yourself and you're connecting to yourself. It's just these little tiny things instead of rushing through your life that's going to allow you to invite that deeper connection and deeper relationship with your body and somebody else's body.

Nadège: Welcome to the Pleasure Science podcast, a podcast all about making you feel healthier and empowered in your sexuality. Today, we're going to talk about loving your body. And I'm so excited to get into this conversation because not only are we talking to someone who's an amazing friend, but just a profound expert on this area. We're going to dive into how to love your body, how to be present during sex, and a little bit more. 

So let me introduce Lyss Ball, who is an intersex advocate and a somatic space holder. Basically, she's someone who's trauma-informed on embodiment. Embodiment means all about connecting to your body and healing it. She's a somatic expert, but she's also an intersex educator. So, Lyss, welcome. I'm so excited for our conversation today. How are you doing?

Lyss: I am doing so well. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Nadège: So the way we always start off any conversation on Pleasure Science is asking the person who's joining, what is your definition of sex? So I would love to know, what is your definition of sex?

Lyss: This question is really difficult but also really fun, because I want to say that it's any activity, either alone or partnered, that involves playing in your body, you know, and that can really include so many different things. But to me, I love when sex is playful. So exploration, playfulness, and invitation deeper into relationship with the body, whether that's alone or with another person. 

Nadège: I love that. And I love the emphasis on whether it's alone or with another person, because I'm someone who always likes to refer to masturbation as solo sex to normalize that idea. Like, listen, you can be erotic with others. You could be erotic with yourself. And so, I mean, ah such a good definition. Always my favorite question, because I feel like I also grow when I hear what people say about this.

But now with your story and your experience as the somatic space holder, someone who's trauma informed about embodiment, a lot of people might be listening and think these are a lot of cool buzzwords, but what do they mean? And I feel like in order to understand that, we really need to know your story, because you have such a unique story when it comes to this work. And that's why I was so excited to have a body love conversation with you. So tell us a little bit about your story and your intersex experience as well.

Lyss: Yeah, okay. Well, this is a big one. My family found out that I was born intersex, which intersex is the term that they use to describe anything in between what is typical on the sex binary between male and female. These can be differences in physical attributes, internal or external genitalia, chromosomal, hormonal, all these differences, right? 

They found this out when I was a baby. And I found out during puberty, because I was going to have a different quote, different, puberty experience from say my peers, where I was going to have to get on hormone replacement therapy. I was going to have to use vaginal dilators. I was going to have to, you know, have these different conversations around not getting a period, not being able to have children. That really changed and shaped my relationship with my body, because I was terrified. I was ashamed. I was insecure and really worried about my body being different, which sent me down a very dark path with disordered eating and exercise addiction and abusing my body. But the common thread was always some form of movement, right? Like I always played sports, I did dance. Then I got into yoga when I was 18, and yoga became kind of my gateway drug into actually healing and building a loving relationship with my body.

So then fast forward, you know, countless yoga teacher trainings, started getting into trauma informed yoga and thinking about breathwork and meditation from a trauma informed lens. So then being able to support people and support myself, ultimately, of understanding the body's trauma cues when we're going into fight or flight or freeze, and trying to help people kind of get back into harmony and homeostasis with the breath and the body. Because so often, I think anybody can go to the gym or go on a run and not be synced up with their body, not really loving their body. And the same goes with sex, right? 

So then when I was, you know, early twenties, years behind my peers in terms of sexual interactions, because I was just really insecure and ashamed, I finally started to embark on that journey of sexual discovery and liberation, and of course had the quintessential hoe phase that I think many people do.

Nadège: We love the hoe phase. We can go in and out of the hoe phase our whole life.

Lyss: The rest of our lives. It’s so good. Yeah. And I, you know, through that experience was able to kind of uncover my relationship with queerness and my struggles with gender identity and not always understanding. 

So intersex is the term used to describe biological sex, right? Because there's male, female and intersex. We just always leave intersex out for some reason. I don't, but the masses. Then we have sexuality, which that's when people get into the gay, bi, lesbian, pansexual, all those different labels. Then we have gender. So then there's so much more around that. So here I am in my 20s just kind of like ripping all of this apart, trying to understand labels, and now finally surrendering to the fluidity of my expression and how that relates to embodiment. So then when we're in the body and we can really make peace with how fluid this whole experience is, related to sex, related to love and relationships and all of that, it's really just been the most fun little life, honestly.

Nadège: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's such an important thing to first off understand the difference between intersex and transgender and then sexuality. I mean, going through it personally, I can feel how confusing that must have been. And you know it's interesting when I as an educator will ever bring up intersex people, one of the first questions is exactly what you just talked about. Oh, well, so if they're intersex, are they trans? Are they gay? You know, it's almost as if, if you're in the LGBTQIA in some way, then does that mean you're all of it? Are you just some of it? And people, you know, when we're thinking of loving our body and when we're thinking of embodiment, identity plays such a big part of it because of the culture we currently live in. And I just love your experience of coming to body love, because we're all going to be tackling with our identity, how people see us, what other people's seeing is supposed to mean for us. Right? And then finding our fluidity and our love in that process.

So when you started going through your hoe phase did you realize you were queer, or did you kind of assume like most people, oh I'm straight because I'm alive and that's what everyone tells me to be, so... 

Lyss: Yeah… I never once thought I was straight in my life. I started feeling attracted to women around 12, 13 years old. All of high school was very closeted and confused with how that would look, because I was raised religious, but not really. And I was raised to, luckily, by a religious mom who also told me that being gay was okay.

But I spent most of high school getting drunk and kissing girls and thinking that that was kind of like my, you know, safety and way to explore things. And then as the hoe phase developed, I realized what it actually was, was compulsory heterosexuality or heteronormativity of like, wow, it's so easy for me as a pretty femme presenting body with big boobs to get male validation very easily. So I often interpreted male attention as me being attracted, but it was just attention and I didn't have attention. So I interpreted that. So that was the whole other thread with my sexuality was like, what am I truly attracted to? What really gets me going? And what am I, what stories am I playing into even around submission or dominance, and being perceived by other people, does that mean that I'm attracted to them simply for existing and being perceived by them? That's a whole…

Nadège: No, but it's a big part of, again, going back to body love and embodiment, because I feel like something I heard from your story is the realization that there's all this noise around. For you, a big part of that noise was discovering that you were intersex. But then coming back to the breath, coming back to the body, made you realize that you could be whatever, people could label you, it could be a doctor, it could be the guy or girl in the grocery store, the cute non-binary person you're flirting with, right? It could be anyone. But embodiment and your practice of becoming this expert in somatics is just like deeply rooted to, again, self-confidence, that internal love for your own skin where things will influence, but you can always go back to what matters. And I think that's why somatic healing, and again, you know… well, how would you define the word somatic? For anyone who's not familiar with that. 

Lyss: Yeah. And it's crazy, because like you said, it really has become such a buzzword. To me, it's the feeling and learning to kind of bring people into the actual body experience and feeling into the body and feeling into the senses is one of my favorite practices to just kind of help people reconnect with self.

And I was listening to a really interesting podcast, as podcasters do, about attraction and our attachment style. So our attachment obviously is never going to be right if we're coming from a fight or flight place. So of course, if you're dysregulated through your nervous system, you're going to be attracted to probably the worst people ever for you. And I think my teens and early twenties were the perfect testament to that experience where I was just attracted to literally anyone and everything that gave me attention and love and validation because I was dysregulated and I didn't know how to regulate within myself that I needed another person. 

So when we start to heal our relationship with the body and we step into embodying our authentic expression and learning to actually breathe and be at ease and be okay with some silence and okay within our solo sex practice, then we can start to maybe, if that's what you're into, have healthy partnership or partnerships that are going to be able to support that and sustain that. But if the body is not regulated and the nervous system is all over the place, of course, so is the sexuality and attachment style, you know.

Nadège: Absolutely. And that's such a good point, you know. And I think that's why you're so good at what you do, because you can really root that there's this universal pain point here where wherever someone comes from, if your body, again, like your nervous system has that fight or flight mode, and sex usually activates that part of your nervous system instead of the part that feels secure and soothed, right? And then we start having behaviors that might be erratic because we're feeling too vulnerable. Maybe it's triggering just to be naked. I mean, I have friends who are in beautiful marriages, long-term marriages, but, you know, they've been together for a long time. People have gained weight. They don't want to be naked in front of each other anymore, you know? And that causes the fight or flight mode. There's so many different reasons why you're going to disassociate from your body as a form of protection or safety. What are some just baby steps and tips you would give to anyone listening who is sort of like, man, that's me. 

Lyss: Yeah. So a very personal practice for me is just sitting in front of a very big mirror and I sit in front of my mirror naked almost every day, and like loving self-massage with oil or just being able to look at your body and watch the voices, like the negative stories that we tell ourselves around our body and just try your best, I know they can be loud, but try your best not to play into those stories, you know, and to just maybe close your eyes and breathe and bring your hands around your body and feel your skin, feel what your skin feels like. Notice the temperature, notice the texture, notice your breath, see if you can breathe a little bit deeper. And doing that and having that more slow body practice for me is like before foreplay. Like actually leading up to that, like after the shower and being able to hopefully at first tolerate yourself naked, but then eventually maybe really like yourself naked. 

Because that's a whole journey. You know what I mean? Our bodies are always changing and we gain weight, we lose weight, and we're always navigating that. But that is my, I guess, little remedy for anything related to not feeling comfortable naked. I've also been to a lot of naked beaches in my life. 

Nadège: Yes, they're amazing. Way more penises than I thought. Older gentlemanly penises than I would have anticipated.

Lyss: Yeah. I mean I've seen a lot of, you know, feminine bodies at the naked beaches, too. And I lived in Maui for three years. So I definitely frequented naked beaches there, and being able to see some 70 year old titties hanging nice and low really helped me realize like, wow, that's where I'm going. Might as well enjoy them wherever they're sitting right now. I'm not going to try to like, you know, not feel comfortable and secure in this body now, because 10 years from now, 30 years from now, it doesn't matter. We all have bodies. Those few bodies that we see in the media or portrayed in pornography, that's such a narrow view of just some of the bodies on this planet. So being able to kind of broaden your horizons and see other kinds of bodies and maybe even try to consciously consume different kinds of pornography that's going to include different kinds of bodies that have better representation of the kinds of bodies that exist. So that's like another thing. 

Nadège: Yeah, no, that's definitely a somatic practice. And something else you've touched on several times that I feel like I'd love to go deeper to is you've talked about the breath going back to the breath, you know, like, you can, you know, love yourself naked in the mirror. I love that exercise. Listening to you talk I'm like, I need to do that more. I haven't done that in a minute. But you've mentioned breath several times. And so first off, why is breathing so profound and important? I feel like it's so easy to kind of scoff it off as like, oh, you know, we're always breathing. But why is that such a profound somatic practice? 

Lyss: Well, when we think about when anytime you're stressed or going through something, what is the first thing somebody says? Take a deep breath. And we took a deep breath right before we hit record on this podcast.

Nadège: Yes we did.

Lyss: Because it's the way that our lungs are in our body, our nervous system, we have that whole vagus nerve moving through the body all the way from up here all the way down. So we're going to stimulate that when we breathe all the way deep down into the diaphragm. So I always have people bring both of their hands onto their belly and I say inhale through the nose and keep breathing in until you fill up the belly like you ate a whole watermelon, big pregnant breath, and then exhale back out the nose, because that's going to help get the vagus nerve. And the more we do that, along with singing, along with humming, and just letting out those big sighs, I mean, it makes sense for me, and my most profound sexual experiences when I was able to use my voice and able to be loud and able to make the noises that I needed to make, because this is your body actually allowing you to go into the rest and digest instead of fight or flight. And personally, I don't think that I could actually reach an orgasm in fight or flight. I need to be chill.

Nadège: Yeah. Oh, same, 100% same. And for anyone who doesn't know that language, we've said fight or flight a few times. Like we said, your nervous system has two different modes, fight or flight, which is you're anxious, rest and digest, which is you feel soothed and secure. And 100%, there's so many studies that literally prove you need a calm and rest and digest nervous system in order to receive pleasure. In order to orgasm, in order to heighten your pleasure, heighten connection. 

And going back to the breath, I mean, I love everything that you said, because it's such a simple thing, but it's something, everyone listening, you can do that right now in this moment. You know, breathing is such a good way to just get back into your body. And ultimately, we have these fancy words, embodiment, somatic, na, na, na. It's just about being with your body, acknowledging your body. Do you ever talk to your body? I feel like you're someone who probably does. 

Lyss: Constantly. Constantly.

Nadège: Yeah, what does that sound like? What do you talk about when you talk to your body? 

Lyss: So for me, I guess like multiple times a day, I'm constantly checking in with my body and I'll bring my hands onto a different part of my body, usually on my chest or my belly and I'm like, take a really deep breath, and I just wait and like, what do I need? And I'll take a breath. And I’ll be like, it's not another cup of coffee. It's actually a snack. You know what I mean? Or maybe I need some solo sexual self-exploration instead of reaching for my phone or reaching for, you know, external validation or whatever that's going to look like. And I'm constantly like, take a couple of deep breaths. Do I need to exercise or do I need to rest? Do I need to eat a big meaty, hearty dinner or should I probably eat a vegetable today? Do I need to… I'm constantly checking in with those kinds of things. And even like what would make myself more comfortable right now? I need to take off my fucking bra. I don't want to be wearing a bra. I need to change these underwear. Oh my God, they're really uncomfortable. All those things all day of really checking in with my body and being like, how can I make myself just a little bit more comfortable, because that comfort is going to be regulating to the nervous system and to the body.

Nadège: Yeah, and it's so crazy how much we normalize the feeling of not being comfortable to the point where we seek it out, right? Because this is why somatic, it's like you do these small things, like I'm talking to my body, I'm breathing. And then over time, you'll see, oh, all those toxic people that I was attracting or even looking for, I'm not finding them anymore, or they're not sticking around, you know, the bad lover. And when I say bad lover, I mean someone who's disrespectful, because there's no such thing as a bad kisser, someone who's bad at sex, just PSA. Right?

Lyss: Yeah.

Nadège: But all of these things. Right? When we work on having a soothed nervous system, it's sort of like making sure the foundation of the home is good. So there could be earthquakes, but the house is still standing. We're going to be OK. You know?

Lyss: Anytime that I've done a more intense breathwork practice to actually try to bring some stuff up in the body, so like faster paced breaths. So the faster we breathe, that's actually going to bring you into that fight or flight, like you said, so the more sympathetic, which can be really activating, but maybe it's going to help you move the energy through the body if you're going to kind of come back through with the parasympathetic and be able to rest. But anytime I really build that relationship with my breath first, or I dance in the mirror first, and then the solo self sexual exploration kind of comes forward, oh my god, it is so much better. If you take the time to kind of actually get into the body and be in the body instead of like, oh, let me just try to come as fast as I can so that I can get this over with. 

But practice with yourself first, then you build that with stability to initiate that inter-partnered play. It's just going to be all the more better because you have it within yourself. You have those practices within yourself of like, oh, I meditate first, then I dance, then I do some breath, then I'm allowed to start touching myself because then you're in your body. You're not just touching your body just to touch your body. And I think that that's a really, it's a really important practice for anybody that especially has had any sort of negative sexual experiences that if you're somebody that initially starts when there's any sort of sexual touching to dissociate and you feel like you're watching yourself from above the bed have this experience, you're not there. You're not in it. You're not enjoying it. So that's what comes back to the, how can I make this more comfortable? How can I make this more connected? Do I need to have music? No music. Should I look at myself in the mirror while I do this and try to build that relationship? People probably think I'm crazy how often I like to incorporate mirrors into my solo sex experiences, but that's the physical seeing yourself and connecting to your body and being able to be okay with your body, present with your body.

Nadège: Oh, absolutely. Honestly, you're inspiring me to… the next time I self pleasure to dance and breathe. And I especially loved what you were saying about the breath work of you can take yourself with those quick heightened breaths into the fight or flight mode, but you're driving the car in this experience.I feel like usually why fight or flight mode is such a difficult place to be erotically or just in your life is because you're triggered so you're no longer driving the car of your emotions and your experience. 

But with breath work, you can do the slow deep breaths and then do quicker breaths, activate fight or flight mode in a way that you have control over, move some feeling out of your body and through your body, and then have a great masturbation experience, because that's the thing about solo sex or sex with a lover or lovers. Sex that I think is confusing on a bodily level because it does activate very arousing, almost ambitious emotions, emotions that feel similar to anxiety, emotions that feel similar to anger, and in fact, there's studies that show that your body, when you're aroused, your body has the same response, whether it's anxiety or sexual, you're going to have heightened focus, your heart rate's going to increase, right? 

And so what you just said about the breath work, again, it's so profound because you're showing your body, hey, when I'm aroused, I can drive this car. So we're no longer going to conflate arousal with anxiety, arousal with anger, arousal with giving more than I'm getting, with feeling small, you know, because sex and nudity, because of how we're raised with it, just like you said, it doesn't matter where someone comes from. We do want that validation. You know, there's so many people, myself included, where my beginning experience with sex was this is a transaction. You get my body. I get love or validation. Right? And just like you, somatic body based healing stopped that practice, stopped those thoughts, because you can't, these two things can't exist in the same body. The transaction of sex for love can't exist in the same body where you love and check in with your body. 

Lyss: I agree. Yeah. Because when you actually do love and check in with the body and you can hold that space for yourself, you're not gonna reach for your phone and reach out to the ex or, you know, whatever toxic person that the last time you hooked up with you felt disrespected and kind of gross after, and you're like, wow, they didn't call me for a week after, you know. We all have either done that or have that friend that has done that, but when you learn to self-regulate and really be able to be in your body with ease, I am not going to tolerate any of that shit from somebody because it doesn't feel good. That's totally different radio station here where I, you know, have built a cozy little nest. 

If I'm going to invite a partner into this space, it's somebody that it's from a place of me being grounded in who I am, that loves and accepts me for who I am, that knows, you know, because I've definitely had those moments too where I wouldn't tell partners that I was intersex and that I would lie and create all these little stories around it, because I just wanted the love and validation. But if you can give yourself that validation purely by actually just being regulated. You don't have to change any external things, you don't have to lose weight, you don't have to have better skin, you don't have to be having a better hair day or anything like that. You just have to actually feel safe within the body. But I think so many people don't feel safe within their body. So this is totally out of reach to be able to be safe in your body. 

Nadège: Yeah. And then the first step just starts with a little bit of breath, a little bit of checking in. Again, that's what's so beautiful… I think people can get confused emotionally when they hear about this work because it's simple, but it's not easy. Right? And like what you're saying, okay, breathing, talking to yourself, simple, but not easy. And I think the hardest thing is that consistency of maintaining this practice. And I know something for you that you find so helpful with somatics, which I think is also helpful for sex, is routines. Talk a little bit about routines and what those mean to you as someone who helps others heal trauma and helps people connect to their body.

Lyss: Totally. I'm really big on just trying to build consistency in general, because if you're somebody with anxious or disorganized, avoidant, any, you know, any attachment where you're like-

Nadège: Here, here!

Lyss: I’m all of them. Building those routines of like, yes, every day I'm going to do something in my body first, before I reach for Instagram, before I go to work, before I chug eight cups of coffee or whatever these things are. For me, any sort of daily body practice, whether it's dancing, stretching, a little bit of yoga, like I said, sometimes when we follow something like weightlifting or we go to any sort of class, it can become a little more aggressive and pulls us out of our body because it's so ego. 

Nadège: Oh my god. That's so true. I'm literally having flashbacks of dance classes because y'all I am that white girl who can't dance. Love dancing. But you're totally... I just had a… And that's the other thing about doing the bodywork. Your body will remember those moments, right? It can be hard to do that, but go on. I love this. 

Lyss: Yeah, and see then that becomes the next practice is learning to dance and not judge yourself for it. It’s the same as having sex and not judging yourself for it. You know what I mean?

Nadège: Yes! Oh my god, preach! That hit me.

Lyss: Totally. I think I'm a great dancer, sometimes it's tequila induced and I actually have no idea whether I'm good at dancing or not, I’m just hanging out vibing, but when we actually learn to slow down that's the somatic practice, like can you listen to slower music and just start to move your body a little bit to whatever the noise is. And then maybe it speeds up eventually, but that's just how sex is, because sometimes people pull you in right away and they're just like, ah, so aggressive, so fast, no foreplay, no lube, let's just get it, you know? Where if you ease into it, this is how we should start our day, easing into it, the soft, the sensual, I wonder if anybody on here will be able to guess my zodiac sign.

What we can actually really start to incorporate all the senses for that experience and treat your body like you want a lover to treat your body. So, and nourishing food, that's going to be good for your nervous system. Having your long ass shower routine, and I get it, people have jobs. They're like, you've got to be listening. It's like, I don't have time for all of this. It's about incorporating the mindfulness into the practices that you're already doing. So, when you're just haphazardly putting shampoo in your hair, can you actually make an essential experience and smell the shampoo and feel your hands in your hair, and all of that, maybe even give your hair a little pull if you're into that, I am. 

Nadège: Yes, I can agree. 

Lyss: So that way, when you're listening to music in the car, sing, listen to yourself sing, dance a little bit, enjoy it, don't hit the car in front of you, pay attention. Whatever those things are that you can incorporate being more present and more in your body and more in the senses, the better. 

Nadège: Yes. 

Lyss: Because that's just going to translate into those other areas in the sexual areas of your life.

Nadège: Absolutely. And I also think we all have the limiting belief that we don't have enough time. And somatic practices will also help you unlearn that belief. Because just like you said, you have time to massage your head during the shampoo. You have time to sing in the car that you're already in. You have time to enjoy your coffee. And like that is, I believe, the sense of urgency we have around time, I think also affects our pleasure, affects sex. 

I can't say how many couples that I've had either be students of ours or that I've worked with who are like, well, we have kids, we don't have time. We don't have time for this, we don't have time for that. And it's that same thing, you know? Somatic practice with your lover. Maybe you two work big jobs, like you don't have kids, but you got dogs and responsibilities, or maybe you do have kids. I don't know what your situation is, but I know that you can notice how nice it feels to hold your lover's hand. I know that you can get flowers when you're at the grocery store, because I think when it comes to couples embodying, you can also bring in external, well, also in yourself. You could bring in the flowers, you could bring… Cause I feel like that helps me with my somatic practice, and connecting to the body means connecting to earth. Let me get more flowers. Let me get plants, you know? 

Lyss: All the senses, like you said. If you were to seduce yourself, yeah, of course have those flowers. Hello, buy me flowers. You know, if you buy yourself flowers and you have those there and you're rubbing oil that has your favorite smell on your body after the shower. Even better if you're in the mirror and you're looking at yourself and you're connecting to yourself, it's just these little tiny things instead of rushing through your life that's going to allow you to invite that deeper connection and deeper relationship with your body and somebody else's body and their relationship to your body.

Because like you said, if we're rushing everything, oh my God, I hate that. I never… I know some people are into quickies. This might be controversial. I do not want a quickie. I want somebody to spend the whole afternoon on me. Like truly.

Nadège: I love that. 

Lyss: And I know it's unrealistic sometimes, but at least every once in a while I want to be treated like a five course meal, not a quick drive through McDonald's. And sometimes we treat our own bodies like a drive through McDonald's and we need to be treating our bodies like that five course meal.

Nadège: Absolutely. And I also think you know with quickies, we should redefine the quickie because the idea of a quickie, I think it roots back to the idea of something hard, sliding into something wet. And the thing about any type of penetration, whether you're penetrating a mouth or a pussy or a booty, the orifice will be sucking you inside if it wants you, like truly. And so many people don't warm up the body. And so we're slowly pushing our way inside. And I think one of the reasons why so many people are like, I don't like quickies either is because the assumption is something hard sliding into something wet and it takes time to get there. 

And so I even think if we want to enjoy the quickie, the quickie can be fun if we redefine it. Like, can't the quickie be a make out session? Can't the quickie be you playing with my nipples or giving me a foot massage or like, you know, something. It can be so many… It can be watching porn, it can be whatever you want. And again, that ethical porn, so many options. But I feel you. I'm not the biggest fan of quickies either, because I feel like so often the assumption is we're going to have a five course meal in one course. And that wouldn't even feel good if you're at your favorite restaurant. Who would want to that?

Lyss: We don't have time for this. And that's what I mean. I know for me and for my body, I need time. And I have to be able to communicate that with a partner as well. Like, yeah, I need time. Been through a lot of experiences with my body. So grateful for it, but it likes time. It likes ease. It likes the slowness. And I'm at least able to know that because I've spent so much time working on it that I'm like, wow, a quickie? Yeah, maybe if that quickie is like a, you know, a hot little make out in the car or whatever, that's great. But I don't want to be rushed for the whole experience in a short amount of time because I need to be able to like, I need to know that we're not on a time crunch.

Nadège: I agree. One of my favorite affirmations right now is I am the princess and the queen. And what you're saying is really speaking to that part of me who is like, yes, I'm the queen. Yes, I have an empire, but I am a princess, damn it. You don't rush a princess. That's not how this goes. But I love that. 

And you know something else I wanted to talk about with you today, because you're also an intersex educator. And this is an area that people are so uneducated about, which is wild to me, because intersex people are just as common as redheads. They make up 1.7% of the population. My mom was a redhead. My grandmother was a redhead. It skipped me, which is the bane of my existence. I dye my hair red with a vengeance. But when I found out that intersex people were just as common as redheads, I instantly felt that and was just sort of like, well, why does no one know about this experience? So what are some things that you would just love people to know?

Lyss: Yeah, so like I said that intersex is that term used to describe all the things in between. So never make an assumption if somebody's like, Oh intersex, never make an assumption about what parts they're working with or how they identify or if they've had surgery or not had surgery because there's truly… every intersex person that I know has had a different experience and a different relationship with their body and prefers sex in a different way. 

So for me, I've really been on this whole journey of being forced to undergo dilation therapy at a younger age and feeling like, ah, penetration hurt, penetration scary, penetration, ow, this is for somebody else. So I've had to stop and then build that back up in my life to actually be okay with it. You know what I mean? Because penetration used to be something that just immediately sent me out of my body.

Then another thing that I think people should know is, if you ever have the privilege of getting to sleep with an intersex person, communication is even more important to me and to kind of go easy and again, not make the assumptions about body and preferences and things like that. I've had my fair share of trauma with doctors. So when I, you know, and communicating with a new sexual partner and they just want to go for it right away. I'm like, this is not going to happen. I'm immediately not going to be present. So there's definitely all of that.

Along with, you know, being intersex in the relationship to sexuality. So I know we started to talk about this right before we hit record. If somebody's intersex, it doesn't mean that they are also trans. Some intersex people are trans. If somebody's intersex, it doesn't mean that they're gay. This is just a wonderful side effect of me getting to be who I am in this human experience. Some intersex people identify as straight or something else because it is unique and it's just one aspect of that whole, you know, acronym.

I think other assumptions, again, people have this idea, we throw around the word hermaphrodite a lot as a society. And some people consider it a slur. So I won't use it on anybody but me. Other people like it and have reclaimed it in the same way that we've reclaimed other words. I will jokingly call myself a hermaphrodite and a dyke because I'm like, well, I'm allowed to call myself these things, but if some cis heterosexual man is saying it, I'm not loving it. It’s not a good time. 

When my whole high school found out that I was intersex and all those rumors started to go around. Alyssa Ball, I love that my last name is Ball. Alyssa has balls was this whole thing. Alyssa has a dick. Alyssa… it's like, wow, we have such a narrow understanding of what the term intersex actually entails because I was born with internal testes. I don't have them anymore. They were taken from me. That's why I'm on estrogen for the rest of my life. But some people still have them. Some people have larger external genitalia or different kinds of internal genitalia. There's this whole spectrum. 

So anytime somebody makes an assumption when I say, oh, I was born intersex, people, boom, they think hermaphrodite, this is what it is. This is what it looks like. It's so much more than that. The picture is so big. There's this whole spectrum of the way that bodies are made, in the same way that even just a vulva, we have the different lips.

Nadège: Oh, yeah. Oh my god, they're so diverse. Yeah, no two vulvas look alike. 

Lyss: Exactly. And same with penises, you know, like to be able to look at that and be like, wow, like, every body is already different. Intersex is really just showing you, wow, there's some different stuff out there that you probably just haven't seen yet, and that's okay. Because education and awareness, we can get rid of the ignorance that would kind of inflict more hatred and dismissing all of this. 

Nadège: Absolutely. Knowledge is so important. It makes people less radical, and that's just huge.

Lyss: Definitely. And to bring intersex into the whole argument about gender-affirming care for trans people, all of the policy that is trying to prohibit trans people from accessing gender-affirming care, specifically like underage children, there's always a little clause in there that says, yeah, but it's okay to do it to intersex people. Because intersex people have been undergoing genital mutilation always. 

I had no consent to the surgery that was done on me, as many intersex people have never gotten to actually consent for the surgery that now I'm on hormone replacement therapy for the rest of my life because I didn't get the consent to a surgery. So in those same bills that are like, don't let trans kids make a decision that they're, you know, asking to make, it says, yeah, but intersex kids don't get to make this decision. So I think that's also a really interesting little table debate topic if you want to fight with your family. I personally do.

Really, it all comes down to consent. Wow. We love that word. Our favorite C word is consent and how we all should be able to consent to what's going to be done to our body at different stages of our life. And really, that's our how we protect ourselves. And that's our homeostasis is the yes or no. And if it's not a fuck yes, it's a hell no.

Nadège: Absolutely. It's so true. It's so true. And, you know, even really diving deep into the intersex experience brings to light something that I also think people don't think about or talk about, and that is medical trauma. That is the ways that we get traumatized in the doctor's office because we think someone knows more than our own relationship to our body. We can have our feelings or experience be completely bulldozed. And then like you said, in the experience of intersex children. And in this instance, correct me if I'm wrong, we're not just talking… like, with the trans bills and transgender youth, we're often dealing with preteens and teenagers at that point who are looking to transition. With intersex kids, we're talking about true children. We're talking about infants and toddlers that are getting medical procedures done on them without their consent. 

And so you know, there's also, when we're thinking of this debate, wherever someone stands on it… I mean, I just think you're so right. It's about consent. It's about, can we give someone the ability to say yes or no? This is my experience. This is my body. I have to live in this. You don't, you know? I mean, even thinking of women's reproductive rights. I mean, don't even get me started on that rabbit hole. My voice literally quivered. Yeah, it's tough, but it's just tough. I know it's hard.

But it's hard when you have people in power who do not have your experience or even your body making choices about your health and your body. And so.. and again, that just boils back into this empowering thing we can do, which is somatic healing, which is… and especially trauma informed somatic healing, you know? 

We did another episode with a BDSM expert talking about how kink is healing. And one thing that she said was, we need to have trauma informed people doing this, because you are going to… whatever you're trying to heal, we all have trauma people. Maybe it was a car accident. Maybe it was your mother. Maybe it was the divorce. Who knows what your trauma is, but sex is about your body and relationships are about your heart. So your trauma, whether it is that car accident or medical trauma or social trauma, it's going to be brought up during sex, and somatic healing can really be a vehicle that we can use to not just, I mean, I believe in therapy. I believe in working with sex coaches, all different types of people. You're a space holder, a somatic space, like people can work with you. And I believe in doing that work, but I also believe that you can heal yourself. You can be victimized, but you can never truly be the victim of your story. And at the very least, you can breathe, right? You can do that breath.

Lyss: Yeah. It's accessible everywhere. It's free. You don't have to pay for it, you know? I mean, I love working with people, as I'm sure you do too. But like, if anybody takes anything from this podcast, literally just breathe. And when we take that time to slow down, like you said, any of that trauma from those experiences, I don't want to be the victim of my story. When I came out and I started actually doing intersex advocacy work, I have been very clear, anytime any journalist has tried to reshare my story from their lens, I'm like, ugh, if it sounds trauma-y and victim-y, I hate it so much because I'm not a victim. I refuse to be a victim, you know? Survivor, I love that people use that term too, like any sort of sexual assault stuff too. I'm not gonna claim being a victim. I am the creator of my story. And I take my power back every day by being in my body and choosing to be here in my body, choosing to be here in this experience. Breeze.

Nadège: Ah, yes. I love it. Are there any simple breath work? You mentioned the deep breath where you're holding your hands on your belly. Before we close out this episode, do you have any other, you know, just simple breathing techniques that could be… maybe even one for sexy time? I don't know. Either one, though. Do you have anything coming to mind? 

Lyss: The sexy time ones can be kind of hard to, I guess, like teach in like a quick little thing. I know personally-

Nadège: Well then people just have to hire you and work with you then I guess. 

Lyss: Exactly. I guess so. Yeah, because I know that I'll play around with breath and breath play with a partner and with that, all of that, absolutely live for that. But the senses, and I'm always doing sensory inventories with my yoga students, with my one-on-one clients, it's always just like checking in with the senses and anchoring yourself here to this moment and breathing into that. I'm like, take a deep breath, notice the thing you smell, take a deep breath, notice what you taste, all these things to just bring you back into this moment.

And then of course humming. I think people forget that we can just hum, but when you inhale all the way and you hum the whole exhale and just do that over and over again, I'm doing that. I'll shake. I'm very big on putting on shaking playlists on Spotify and just shaking and tapping my body.