Kevin Anthony 0:05
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast, the place to be for honest and real talk about relationships and sex. Whether you’re a man or woman, single or couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony, and I am here to help you have the relationship of your dreams and the best sex of your life.

Kevin Anthony 0:26
All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 414, and it is titled “This One Thing Is the Deepest Expression of Feminine Power. We’re going to be talking today about feminine power and who knows what else? Because the guest I have today is so much fun to talk to. We’re gonna have a great time. We’re gonna talk about, you know, expressions of femininity and feminine power. We’re gonna be talking about surrender and how that factors in. And I guarantee you, we’re gonna go off in a bunch of other directions as well, because, as you know, long-time listeners know, I always speak to my guests before I have them on the show, and we just had such a fun conversation just in the pre-interview that I’m sure this one will be as well.

Kevin Anthony 1:14
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Kevin Anthony 2:08
Okay, my guest today is Regena Thomashauer, better known as Mama Gina, and she’s a pioneering voice in women’s empowerment, a best-selling author, teacher, feminist icon, and the founder and CEO of the School of Womanly Arts, which began in her living room in 1998 and has since grown into a global movement. Welcome to the show, Regena.

Regena Thomashauer 2:32
I am so happy to be here with you, Kevin, and with all of the men and women who have the genius to follow you and listen to your podcast.

Kevin Anthony 2:42
Well, thank you so much. I’m excited to have you too. I mean, you’re so well known. My wife, when she was alive, loved you. Your book is right back here on the shelf. It’s a little blurry, but it’s literally right there.

Regena Thomashauer 2:57
That’s so cool. Thank you.

Kevin Anthony 2:59
I’m definitely excited to have you on the show, and I know so many people that follow my work also love and appreciate yours. So I’m sure that they will enjoy this interview. So to get started, obviously most people know you from your previous book Pussy, right? Which I mentioned to you in the pre-interview call. It’s one of the ones that I have on the list that I often recommend to female clients.

Regena Thomashauer 3:29
Thank you.

Kevin Anthony 3:30
Just because I think you know, I used to talk about this a lot. Where, like, just to use one example, and I think we may have talked about this earlier, but I used to hear from women all the time that like they never even looked at their own genitals, right? And it used to blow my mind because as a man, I’m like, we’ve looked at our genitals upside down, forwards, backwards, every which way you can think of. Granted, we’re external, so it’s easier for us. But it always kind of blew my mind that women weren’t as exploratory in their younger years, and of course, having spoken to so many women, it became clear all the social conditioning, told not to look at it, not to touch it. It’s wrong. It’s like all this stuff, and it started to make sense to me. And so, one of the things that I love about your previous book, and I’m sure your new book as well, is that it was helping to empower women to get past all of that stuff, right, and start taking their power back, and that’s why I thought it was such a powerful book for people, and that’s why I often recommend it to women who are struggling to really take the power of their sexuality back.

Regena Thomashauer 4:39
Yeah, Kevin, you know I have been teaching classrooms of women. Started with a handful of women in my living room, grew to 1000s and 1000s of women, and I would always ask the same question on day one: be like, “Hey, what did your bits and pieces get called?” Reasonable question, and by the way, when I would ask roomfuls of men the same question, the guys would be like, “Penis, what’s your problem? But you ask a roomful of 1000 women, what did their parts get called? Half of them will say nothing, and the other half will say little funny names like coochie and wee wee and my purse and my front bottom and my kinish.

Regena Thomashauer 5:33
So like hundreds of funny little names. And some women will say my vagina, which is technically wrong. You know, vagina is not your vulva, and by the way, if you’re a mom or a dad listening to the show, make sure you teach your little girl the word vulva and your little boys too, because it’s time that we come out of the closet and of shame and you know call a vulva, because when you do not, you know, when a girl, a little girl, knows that there’s a part of her body that is so shameful, she cannot even have a name for it. That shame starts in her poster, her vulva, but it starts to spread, and soon she thinks, “I’m too fat. No, I’m too thin. No, I’m too tall. I’m too short. Oh, wait a minute. I’m too emotional. The shame spreads like a virus when a woman is disconnected from the heart and soul of her femininity, which happens before we can talk. I mean, it’s like a linguistic clitoridectomy, to not give the little girl the name and address of the heartbeat of her feminine power.

Regena Thomashauer 6:49
So women are living inside of a culture that creates this disconnection. She would actually be going against everything she’s learning in her religions, in her family culture, if she were actually to connect to her erotic aliveness. So you know, we want to be just like our mommies, so we learn disconnection because that’s what our moms show us because that’s what her moms showed her, and so on and so on. But you know that we are all a part of the generation of transformation, which is that we are now taking ownership of the places in our lives where we once had shame or disconnection, and now we are connecting. So when I wrote the book Pussy, it was outrageous. You know, my publisher didn’t want me to put that as the title. I had to beg to be because I just had a feeling I was like, you guys just trust me. I know what the fuck I’m doing. Just put Pussy on the cover, we’re all going to be fine, and the thing became a New York Times bestseller.

Regena Thomashauer 8:06
And I will tell you this: they gave me an equally hard time with my brand new book called “On Our Knees, because I love going to the places in the culture that hold shame. I think you learn just as much about a culture by what it ignores as what it embraces, and I’m always very curious about what a culture ignores. And in the case of on her knees, it’s about the connecting both men and women to their darkness, to that you know those places where we are emotionally pressed, either at graveside or in the hospital room when the monitor flatlines, or in awe when we see a mother, and you know, Mother Nature, a gorgeous sunset undressing this guy, the most moments of our lives when we’re there is no other place but our knees, and that’s what that book is about.

Kevin Anthony 9:13
Yeah, and we’ll be talking a lot about that throughout this episode. You know, I just want to say I’m so glad you fought to get the publisher to stick with that title.

Regena Thomashauer 9:23
Oh, thank you.

Kevin Anthony 9:24
Because I know so many women who’ve read this book, and they all love the title. They love it because obviously it’s called a reclamation. But that’s exactly why they love it because they felt like that gave them permission to take back that word.

Regena Thomashauer 9:42
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And we need that permission slip. I, you, and at the same time, when the book came out, I could not promote it on Facebook or Instagram. You can’t. Put the word “pussy” on Facebook. That’s not loud, you know. So I, I had like this very interesting problem called “How do you promote something that is about sacredness, but that the world perceives as not sacred, as pornographic? How do you bring that back? And I was really helped by the great pussy in the sky, and all of my I was helped by my followers as well because the men and women who, you know, have taken my classes or come to my events- I asked them, I said, please support this book, and they did, and we hit the New York Times list, which was huge.

Kevin Anthony 10:44
Yeah, and obviously you had the School of Women in the Arts for a while before this book came out. But this book just, I think, is the kind of what shot you to, you know, sort of stardom in the space. That’s when I just started hearing everybody talk about Mom and Gina.

Regena Thomashauer 11:02
Yeah. Well, I think there is, you know, anybody who, let’s say, whether you’re a writer or an actor, or anybody in the public eye, there is no shot into stardom. It’s like a long path because that pussy was my fourth book. On Our Knees is my fifth. You know, I’ve been teaching for 3030 years almost. So it’s, you know, starting small, and anybody who’s got a big dream but they’re feeling nervous. Do you think you could ever set it on its feet? And what I want to say: Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You just start walking, and soon you’ll gather momentum and more momentum. My first book was called Mama Gina’s School of Womanly Arts, and it was after I had been teaching a school of womanly arts for a couple of years, so I wrote that one and three books in three years, and I did a whole lot of TV appearances. I appreciate every single break I got, and I got many of them, and they were all so meaningful and valuable and so much fun.

Kevin Anthony 12:21
Well, you know, given the subject matter, I’m glad that you were able to get those breaks because I’m sure it was not easy to make those things happen. I know what it’s like to try to promote anything in, you know, the field of sex, love, relationships.

Regena Thomashauer 12:37
It is a challenge.

Kevin Anthony 12:39
Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer 12:40
Yeah.

Kevin Anthony 12:41
So let’s dive into your new book a little bit, and by that, like you titled the book “On Our Knees: Loving Your Life When You Hate What’s Happening, and I know from the pre-interview we talked a little bit about what inspired you to write this book because on the surface it sounds rather different than what you’ve done in the past. Tell the listeners a little bit about your own personal story and how you came to write this book.

Regena Thomashauer 13:10
Well, this book was-it’s almost like the next chapter after Pussy. One of the things that I noticed, both in my own life and in my work, is that as soon as a woman would reconnect with her pussy, all of the backlog of heartbreak, grief, places where she has perhaps been abused or had a date rape, some kind of someone breaking boundaries with her injuries in her lineage, because there’s so many women in our culture that have experienced some kind of abuse, whether it’s verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, or just being ignored or treated as second class in this patriarchal world culture. So all of the vast storehouse of what women have been sitting on when they finally connect with their erotic power, or their orgasm, or their pleasure, or their aliveness. It’s almost like the floodgates open, and your body says, “Okay, I can handle you now.

Regena Thomashauer 14:37
All of the, you know, whatever was in her lineage that needs reclamation, and one of the things that I found because I’ve had this opportunity to work with 1000s and 1000s of women in my classrooms is that this. The capacity that a woman has to turn on, and to connect with her radiance and to connect with her aliveness. It’s not just about sensual connection. It’s not just about seduction. It’s not just about the pleasure she’s taking in the world and in her life, although those things are so important and almost like the care and feeding of a woman has to and must include pleasure. But that erotic aliveness is something that I would call life force. It runs through everything. It’s the sunshine streaming from the sky. It is the wind. It is the rivers, the energy that grows the grass and grows the trees, and that erotic aliveness must stay of utmost priority in a woman, even when she’s experiencing rupture or some kind of huge life change or life passage.

Regena Thomashauer 16:20
And what I found, and that was, I think, the trigger for me, was finding out, like, oh, turning on your pussy, learning about orgasm. This is a huge and beautiful and important thing, and it doesn’t end with pleasure. It is a necessary thread to move through every phase and every facet of a woman’s life for her to begin to be able to transform whatever situation she is in, and to be grown by it and expanded by it, rather than contracted. And the culture doesn’t teach us that. The culture teaches a woman that if something bad happens- her boyfriend breaks up with her, she gets a divorce, she loses a job- that she’s wrong, that she’s bad or wrong, and she should be ashamed of herself, and that’s because women were taught to carry shame as a dominant aspect inside of themselves.

Regena Thomashauer 17:31
But when a woman can connect with her radiance and that sense of aliveness, no matter what happens to her in her life, if she connects with that erotic aliveness, then she has this experience that the floor becomes the door; instead of a door closing, is a door opening. So, it’s a book about how to fall in love with your life, even in the darkest moments, and that’s connecting to your erotic aliveness.

Kevin Anthony 18:09
You know, there’s something we’ve been kind of dancing around here that we haven’t really spoken to, which is, you know, all of these things you’re talking about when, like, women are taught to carry shame, and then, you know, all the things are not supposed to. It’s all honestly a form of control. It’s to control the feminine, and we all know that that’s why those things were done. And you know, one of the things that one of the things that I’m really trying to do in my work is, of course, break whatever control systems are there, but to bring men and women back into balance, or what I like to call synergy, right?

Kevin Anthony 18:48
Like, because we’re supposed to be equal but opposite halves of the whole, and whenever we repress one side or the other, it just gets too out of balance, and that’s why I love the work that you’re doing, and many others as well, which is trying to bring what’s been suppressed back into balance. So you mentioned this idea of, you know, when a woman is really radiant and glowing, there is nothing more beautiful in this world than a woman who truly embodies her radiance.

Regena Thomashauer 19:22
Yeah,

Kevin Anthony 19:23
Like, as a man, that is the most attractive. Like, what attracts me? If I’m walking down the street, what truly attracts me to a woman that I see? Is it her looks? Maybe somewhat. To the way she’s dressed, maybe. It’s the radiance. That’s the word that encapsulates the energy that’s coming from her, and that only happens when she truly steps into it herself and breaks through all those control mechanisms.

Regena Thomashauer 19:48
Yeah. Well, if you think about it, when somebody says, “How are you, Kevin? What were you taught to say?

Kevin Anthony 19:58
Fine.

Regena Thomashauer 20:01
Yeah, all of us were taught that we’re allowed to say fine, good, okay. But the full emotional range of a human being is like 88 keys on a piano, and we’re taught that we’re allowed to play middle C over and over and over and over again, and it doesn’t reflect the capacity, and what it has us do is continually shrink into fine, which is like formaldehyde for a human soul. So when a woman is able to bust through the, as you put it, controls of a patriarchal world culture that would have her limit herself to being fine, or limit her voice, or limit her sensual aliveness, or limit her radiance. When she’s able to embody all 88 of those keys and live her full emotional range loud and proud. The freedom that she has of connecting to her potency and her power and her voice, and to actually, because I think women are the greatest untapped natural resource on this planet, and the time to tap is now. And so when women connect to that aliveness and give voice to whatever their truth is, it’s utterly liberating. And that’s why I wrote On Our Knees because I want us to feel loud and proud about our darkness instead of ashamed of our darkness. It’s so yesterday. Ashamed of those trips into Hades, but it’s actually so expansive any time we go there.

Kevin Anthony 21:51
So I have an interesting question that is not on my list of questions here, and I’m curious what your thoughts are on it because one of the things that I see from time to time is you know women will embrace this idea of we got to be loud and proud and it’s our time, but I see them taking that idea and running with it to mean it’s time for us to take over, right?

Regena Thomashauer 22:16
I don’t, I don’t see that enough, but go ahead.

Kevin Anthony 22:20
Well, see, I’m curious what your thoughts are because, like I said just a moment ago, I think what, really, and this is just my opinion. You’re absolutely free to disagree, but I think how we really expand and thrive and grow as society and as a culture and, you know, humans is when we when we bring both of you know the masculine and the feminine into balance, and we work together. And so, you know, I’m just curious because sometimes I see some women taking this idea and thinking, “Well, it’s time, you know, to basically flip it, right? And it’s like time for women to be on top and men to be on bottom. And I’m like, I don’t think that’s really going to get us back to balance. I’m curious what your thoughts are on that.

Regena Thomashauer 23:02
Well, first of all, I love what you’re saying because you know there’s this Cherokee legend about the bird of humanity. Have you heard this one? It’s so cool. I have not. It’s like the bird. The bird of humanity has two wings, and right now, the masculine wing is very strong, very articulated, and the feminine wing is kind of weak and disempowered. And so, what happens when you have very strong masculine, weak feminine? What does the bird do? It flies in circles, and it can’t get anywhere. And I think that’s your point, which is that you’re looking at this world, at this culture, where we have so much derision. There’s a climate crisis. People are more stressed. The fear about AI, financial instability, caregiving, aging parents, children-there’s so much pressure right now, and we don’t seem to be able to collaborate on behalf of each other, or our communities, or the world. You know, Mother Earth-we are not taking care of her right now.

Regena Thomashauer 24:20
I think it’s so true. And if you think about, like, we’re like that bird with the overdeveloped masculine flying in circles, and what we’re the heart and soul of my work is to bring that feminine wing to empower that feminine wing for women to learn that they can fall absolutely head over heels, irrevocably in love with themselves, with every drop of themselves. That they are exquisite, whole, holy, and that when that happens, that mother can teach her daughter that she is exquisite, whole, whole. Hot, sexy, fabulous, and so on and so forth, and then we begin to bring the masculine and the feminine wings in balance, and then together we can fly somewhere really transformative.

Kevin Anthony 25:13
Yes, I love that analogy, because yeah, that’s what it really takes. You need both of those wings operating equally; otherwise, you don’t fly so well.

Regena Thomashauer 25:26
Exactly, exactly. And I, I think the thing that you’re talking about is sometimes in this world, women have been taught that in order to achieve success, they have to imitate the masculine, you know, to become more goal-driven instead of community-driven, and to adopt, you know, even women have to wear power suit or something to their corporate office, and you wouldn’t show up at your corporate office in some flowy summer dress, for example, would not be considered appropriate. So, in imitating those masculine characteristics, she can lose connection with her femininity, but it can all be relearned and rebalanced.

Kevin Anthony 26:26
Yeah, I agree, and that has been what has primarily been taught to women: is that if they if they want to have a voice, if they want to compete in this world, that they basically have to imitate men, which I have always felt has done a huge disservice to women because I don’t think that trying to be like a man is really your superpower. I think you’ve got much different superpowers that are far more in line with who you actually are. Where you’ll actually feel better, you know, bringing yourself into alignment with your feminine power rather than trying to constantly imitate masculine power, but you know that brings me to one of, I think, one of the main premises of the book. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but based on what I know about it, and of course the title, I know that there’s an aspect of this, and I put it in the title of this episode about surrender and that being, you know, a deep expression of feminine power. Explain what that means exactly.

Regena Thomashauer 27:31
Yeah, I’m just. Thank you so much for asking. The way I’m using the word surrender, it’s not about submission or following someone else’s guidance. It’s about surrendering for a woman to surrender to her erotic aliveness only, always, and to connect to her erotic aliveness only, always, you know, and the path to that connection is pleasure. I think right now, women today are exhausted, they’re exhausted from living in chronic vigilance, with work pressure and caregiving, aging parents, finances, the unstable world-all those things that I articulated a moment ago-and the female brain and body are living in brace mode. When you’re living in brace mode, you can’t access your intuition, your creativity, your desire, or even love when your body thinks it’s surviving. And pleasure, and orgasm, and erotic aliveness-they are one of the few experiences that are powerful enough to interrupt that vigilance. Why?

Regena Thomashauer 29:07
Because when you plug into your pleasure, it tells the brain that life is not a threat, and from that moment, a woman can hear herself again. So I’m a huge advocate for a woman to surrender to her pleasure, to explore her pleasure, to investigate her pleasure, to be empowered by her pleasure, because pleasure reduces anxiety, and it reduces depression, and and it improves mood, because your the oxytocin levels increase, and that quiets the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that is the fear center, and it actually biologically turns fear down. And we keep trying to heal women through mindset or productivity or therapy or meds, but the female brain. Heals through safety and pleasure is one of the greatest ways for a woman to connect to safety in her body.

Regena Thomashauer 30:08
And I didn’t even talk about the dopamine or the prolactin. You know, all it’s all of this chemistry that we can connect to when we choose pleasure, so it and I think that orgasm is not just a recreational activity; it’s it’s actually a biological miracle, and and that pleasure is medicine because it triggers this hormonal fireworks that the pharmaceutical industry has been trying to replicate for decades with SSRIs, but we can actually create it in our own bodies.

Kevin Anthony 30:51
Absolutely, we can, and there are no side effects when we create it through our own bodies either.

Regena Thomashauer 30:58
So it’s, it’s insane, actually, how powerful it is because you have oxytocin, which teaches your nervous system to soften and trust, and then you have dopamine, and dopamine is called the hope chemical, and that’s a mood elevator. It’s an antidepressant, which is miraculous, and then you have the endorphins, which calm pain down, and then prolactin, which gives a person contentment and actually improves sleep. And why sleep is important is because that’s where trauma heals through sleep. It’s where trauma processing occurs, and memory integrates in sleep. So It’s powerful, and that’s the kind of surrender I’m talking about. Surrender to that pleasure that lives inside of each of us is a beautiful medicine cabinet that we all can access.

Kevin Anthony 31:51
So surrendering to pleasure to your erotic nature, which helps you regulate your nervous system, and then once you know, once you’ve got all those chemicals flowing, then that allows women to actually access their innate talents and gifts and abilities, right? Which some of those you listed earlier, right?

Regena Thomashauer 32:16
Exactly, Kevin. Exactly. That’s why I’m so thrilled with you doing the work you’re doing, because that’s so important. Because within that, when a woman’s in embrace mode, she can’t access her creativity. She can’t access that, you know, all of the gifts that are hers to give. And when she is able to connect to herself through pleasure, she can start really tapping into her intuition, and it’s good for everybody. I mean, if we, if I, if I take myself back, I think eight or 10 years ago, I was so tapped into my intuition because I’m so tapped into my pleasure, that I could sit down with my editors at Hay House and I could say, “You guys, this book has to be called Pussy. I’m going to fight you on it. It’s going to be great. Just say yes, because I had a feeling, and women are so intuitive. Imagine if we had a world of women who felt so empowered to connect to that unnamable feeling, that intuition that’s so exquisite inside each of us that is connects us to almost miraculous outcomes.

Kevin Anthony 33:41
Yeah, I love this. I’ve been saying for years that feminine intuition is one of women’s superpowers, and I say all the time. I say, you know, men have intuition too. We can tap into it, but there’s something about the feminine that seems to be able to access it more easily than we can. And there’s something about there’s a story I love to tell. I’ve told this story a bunch of times on the show, so I’ll keep it short. But when my wife was alive, she and I used to go on this group trip down to Mexico every year with a group of friends, and we loved this trip. It was super fun, and usually I think we would start making arrangements because it would usually happen in like March of the year, and so around December we’d start kind of trying to figure out the arrangements for that. And December 2019, my wife says to me, “I don’t think we should go on the trip this year. And I said, “Really? Why? She’s like, “I don’t know why. She’s like, “I just don’t think we should do that. She’s like, we should do something else. Maybe we should just like stay here in the U.S. Maybe just like go to a different state and do a little different thing.

Kevin Anthony 34:50
And I was like, Are you sure about that? She’s like, Yeah. And I said, All right. I trust you enough. I’ve watched your intuition in action. I have no idea why. You’re saying this, but we just we told our friends we weren’t going to go this year. So what, of course, happens two months-ish later. COVID hits. The world shuts down. The international border shut down, right? And it’s just chaos in the world. And I was like, oh my! Had we ended up down in Mexico and gotten stuck there for the next six months during the insanity of COVID. I was so grateful. I just had to trust. I didn’t know why she was saying this.

Regena Thomashauer 35:32
What I can tell you about this incredibly great, powerful story, Kevin, is you must have made her pussy very happy.

Kevin Anthony 35:42
I hope so. I like to think…

Regena Thomashauer 35:43
Take the moment, Kevin. Take the moment. Because when women are connected to their pleasure, they can connect to their deepest, most potent intuition, and and that’s literally the why I wanted to write on our knees right now is because I wanted women to understand and men as well that when we move into a dark cycle, and I know you can verify this and validate this because of the experience that you’ve had with her loss, is that when something that absolutely ruptures us beyond whatever we could dream or imagine. It contains the most exquisite gift if we can stay connected to our erotic aliveness, and that’s why I brought in all the stories.

Regena Thomashauer 36:40
You’ll see when you read it. I brought in stories of 10 goddesses because these women, you know, who bled and led women like Aphrodite and Freya and Amaterasu and Kali and Inanna. All of these goddesses were women living their full wild range, which was not just about how many likes I can get on my Instagram post or how much money I can make. It was how deeply can I stand for my most sacred longings and my aliveness, and those stories are so much more inspiring for the feminine than stories of Abraham or Jesus or Moses, because these were the women that predated those religious structures who lived their full wildness in so many magnificent ways, and we can use them as inspiration as we take more and more and more ownership of the fullness of who we each are as women.

Kevin Anthony 37:53
Yeah, and that’s the next thing that I want to get into. I need to pause for a short break, but when we come back on the other side, I want to talk about how you’ve structured this and why you chose to use goddesses, and maybe we could talk about one or two of those stories to help inspire women. All right, we’ll do that on the other side of the break here.

Kevin Anthony 38:12
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Regena Thomashauer 39:15
Basically, Kevin, you’re looking at a goddess worshiper. It’s just what you’ve got here? I’m a goddess worshiper, and it happened by accident. You know, I was a little girl, about five years old. I grew up in a family where there was abuse, and the goddess would come to me when I was about five years old, and she would sit on my bed. And when I would turn to look at her, because my whole body felt radiant when she was in the room, I would turn to look at her, and she would disappear. And I learned that, oh, she lives in the periphery, which is actually true. You know, because what is the dominant culture? All the Abrahamic religions, Judaism. Islam, Christianity, even Buddhism, led by a guy, and there aren’t any female deities in a church or a synagogue or a mosque or, you know, a Buddhist temple.

Regena Thomashauer 40:14
So I felt strongly that this was some kind of crazy omission. I actually thought I was going to find a place where the goddesses were worshiped, and I, you know, spent my teen years before that actually looking because I thought maybe there had to be, but there weren’t any temples where goddesses were worshiped. But I did a lot of research through the work of Joseph Campbell, Maria Gimbutas, Merlin Stone, Ryan Eisler, and Carl Jung, who talks about all those archetypes and so forth, and I learned of the difference between the divine feminine spiritual practices and the masculine, and the feminine is about the sacred in everything and everyone. It wasn’t just about certain ways of behaving that are good. It was about the holy in everything. Birth and death were equally holy. We only celebrate birth. We try to ignore death, and we try to put enough Botox in our face that we will never even look like we’re dying, even if we are.

Regena Thomashauer 41:22
So, I was so inspired by these women, especially at different passages in my life. I will give you an example. When I got divorced from my daughter’s dad. It was right after I came back from a book tour for my third book, and I found out that my husband, who had been running our business, had, and it was me too. I just ignored everything business. All I wanted to do was the creative stuff and write books and do appearances and teach class. So because of me keeping my eye off the ball and him handling the back end, I realized we were a quarter of a million dollars in debt. Now, I was running a company. I had a kid. I never looked at a profit and loss statement. I never looked at our taxes. I didn’t. I did nothing.

Regena Thomashauer 42:31
And so, but at that moment, I realized, okay, a new part of me has to come online. I have a kid to support. I’m about to get a divorce, and so I called upon the goddess Freya. She’s a Norse goddess, and she is a warrior, and she would do anything to win this particular battle and access this special gold necklace called the Brizingaman, and so I was inspired by her and her persistence and her vigilance and her willingness to be outrageous, and I took myself from being a hippie chick that knew nothing about business but just wanted to write a lot of books about pleasure, and I turned myself into a baller businesswoman who took a company and scaled it from a quarter of a million in debt to making millions and millions of dollars and changing hundreds of 1000s of people’s lives through my work, and I didn’t get that from any of the masculine gods. I got it from plugging into the stories of inspiring goddesses that stood potently for what they longed for, and I, the business.

Regena Thomashauer 44:03
Mama Gina, got created alongside the icon, the author, the transformer, and I did the impossible because I got inspired by these legends of these women that also did the impossible, and that’s why I wrote about 10 goddesses in the book because I wanted women to know that there are, you know, for example, when I had to end that marriage, I called in the power of Kali. She’s the goddess of destruction, and she doesn’t destroy things willy-nilly, you know, like we do today, entering wars which are none of our business.

Regena Thomashauer 44:45
She destroys what needs to be destroyed because there is new potential that needs to grow, and that’s when Kali comes in. So I knew. Okay, I got to call upon the Collie power to end this marriage, the Freya power to grow this business, and so these legends inspired me to be able to become legendary to myself. And they will do the same for the men and women who touch this book, because not only do I tell the stories, but at the end of every chapter, I give an initiation. How do you access Kali? This is how to do it. How do you access Freya? This is the way. How do you access Lilith, and so on? And then you actually get to use these storylines to inspire you in your adventures.

Kevin Anthony 45:45
Yeah, you use the word “inspire” a lot when you’re describing this, and I know the answer to this. I’m trying to think of a good way to phrase it to bring this out without me actually saying it. But like all of those aspects….

Regena Thomashauer 46:01
You’re so adorable, by the way.

Kevin Anthony 46:03
Oh, I thank you. All of those aspects, right? That you’re talking about, that these goddesses embody-they’re already parts of who you are, right?

Regena Thomashauer 46:13
Exactly, exactly.

Kevin Anthony 46:15
And so, what this is doing is helping you get in touch with the dormant parts of who you already are.

Regena Thomashauer 46:22
Exactly. Well said.

Kevin Anthony 46:25
And I think that’s it’s kind of an important distinction to make because what what I don’t want people to walk away from this with is going, oh well, something external out there, some goddess or something external is just gonna. If I just call, they’re gonna. She’s gonna come in and solve all my problems, right? Where it’s about reconnecting with the parts of who you actually are that either have been suppressed, repressed, never indulged, or grown, or anything like that. And then, and then it’s really you yourself who is the person doing, like, in other words, to use the example of you becoming, you know, the businesswoman part of your business as well. That was always there within you. You just never embraced it before. You never were inspired to learn it.

Regena Thomashauer 47:20
Exactly, Kevin. You know, I was the first girl in my family to go to college. My mom got a high school diploma. My grandma, not even- you know, she was a potato farmer in Russia. You know, so like there weren’t stories in my lineage of women being powerful and running their own companies and changing the world. I didn’t come from people that knew that women could live into the fullness of that potential, which is why I wanted to inspire women with all those stories because we get so many stories. Like everybody knows the story of Jesus, even if you’re not Christian. Everybody knows who Moses was and Abraham and all those dudes, but we don’t know the true story of Aphrodite or Psyche or Pachamama. You know, and those stories. You know, I want women to be fabulous, and the word fabulous contains the word fable.

Regena Thomashauer 48:31
And what is a fable? It’s a story that brings the world back to itself. But if you don’t know the story, you can’t walk the path, and so this book is a gorgeous opportunity for mom to learn. Ah, whoa, the story of Persephone and Demeter, and how a mother stands for her daughter when her daughter disappears, and stands for the reunion, you know, in a powerful way. That becomes an inspiring story that a mom can really step into if she has a daughter that’s struggling in some way. And we sometimes have daughters that struggle.

Kevin Anthony 49:18
Yeah, absolutely. So we want to get people inspired to read this book. If there was….

Regena Thomashauer 49:25
Oh, now you’re saying inspired.

Kevin Anthony 49:26
Well, that’s what we’ve been talking about: how do we inspire women, right? So, if there was, if there’s one story in here that you think would inspire the most amount of women to pick this up and read it. Which one do you think it would be?

Regena Thomashauer 49:47
I think it’s my story. Honestly, it’s a story of a woman who had a dream. She had no. You don’t have a degree in. Starting the pleasure revolution, or a degree in nobody gives you permission to write five books or start a school in your living room, but when you have a dream, or a desire, or a longing that’s bigger than you, and you’re fueled by pleasure, erotic aliveness, you can put any dream you have on its feet. Any dream. I’m not ordinary. I’m just like a girl with a dream. Now, I’ve set many of them on their feet, and I think that that is one of the things that I would love to leave your audience with: that your dreams are not too big for you; they’re just the right size. That’s why you have them. That’s why they’re yours. And if you feed those dreams and desires not with doubt, but with pleasure-your pleasure. That eventually, something that seems impossible becomes possible, and the adventure of living your desires is unlike any other, you know. The fact that it’s you will inspire not only yourself but all the little girls in your life and all the women in your life and everyone who sees you having the courage to say yes to the longings that live deeply inside of you.

Kevin Anthony 51:38
Very beautifully said. Honestly, that is the perfect place to just wrap the show. But we got a little bit more time, and I’d love to continue this conversation. But like that, if that was, if I could have planned it better, that would have been where we would have ended the show right there, because that was great. And I agree. I think I think you know, I mean, everybody needs role models, but especially given all the things that we’ve talked about culturally with women, I think it’s even more important that women have really amazing role models to look up to for how they can create and really fully step into who they are, their power, what they could potentially create in the world. So, yeah, I think that’s amazing and beautiful.

Regena Thomashauer 52:24
That is so cool. I love what an advocate for women you are. It’s so beautiful. It’s so refreshing, and it’s so masculine, Kevin.

Kevin Anthony 52:34
Why? Thank you. I mean, seriously. I mean, I spent a lot of my life. You know, I’m in my 50s now. I’ve had a decent amount of time in this lifetime to learn. I spent a lot of time studying different spiritual philosophies and all kinds of other stuff. And like, it all sounds complicated and sometimes overwhelming to wrap your head around. But at a certain point, it just sort of clicks. And one of the things that clicked for me was this idea of how we have to bring ourselves back into balance, and that requires the feminine to come on up here where she belongs next to us. If that doesn’t happen, we don’t solve the problems.

Regena Thomashauer 53:18
We need to get those wingspan going, so we stop flying in circles, and we start flying somewhere wonderful together.

Kevin Anthony 53:26
Absolutely, I wish more people could see that for what it really is. At this point, it’s still a little bit of a struggle trying to get people to understand that, but we’re doing the best that we can, and we’re trying to open as many people’s eyes as we possibly can. So, you know, for me, like first of all, it’s a big compliment from you when you say that. And you know, sometimes people look at guys who are they’re like, super pro women and like, oh, you’ve switched sides, you’re on the other team. I’m like, no, that’s not what it’s about. There aren’t two separate teams. There’s one team, and we’re both supposed to be on it. I’m just trying to help my teammates come back into the game, right? Like that’s the way I see it.

Regena Thomashauer 54:09
Well, I I want to thank you so much for using your voice to open the door for this brand new book to get out there because I think it’s going to be of such deep kind of like service and assistance for women to fall absolutely head over heels in love with their darkness, and and we need to because we have a lot of darkness, and that’s where all the good Things grow is from all of those that beautiful mulch that life is continuing continually giving us. You know, women are we understand the cyclical nature of life. We are she who bleeds but does not die and gives life. That is what a woman is, and so the more that we can live into that, it’s almost like, well, it’s we are the source of life itself, and when we can live into that fullness, the world is a better place.

Kevin Anthony 55:20
Absolutely, yeah, you’re right. The literal source of life itself, and you know this show too. You know I talk a lot about sexuality, you know relationships and sexuality on the show. And one of the things I’ve said for many, many years, and guys don’t like it when I say this, but I say it all the time. And it’s like, honestly, women are by far the more sexually powerful of the two. Their capacity for pleasure and sexuality and moving sexual energy and creating with it absolutely dwarfs ours as men. There’s just and men. If you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Oh, here we go, sucking up to the women again, like if you don’t understand that, then you have not experienced the full power of what a really turned on feminine woman and her full sexual power can be. Because if you have, it blows your fricking mind.

Regena Thomashauer 56:16
Yeah, and I think that that potential, like learning to live into that potential, you know, sensuality and sexuality. It’s partially innate, and it also can be learned. You know, we can learn to expand our pleasure and expand our capacity to experience pleasure. It’s a worthy journey.

Kevin Anthony 56:38
I totally agree. Yeah, it’s amazing. I was having this conversation with my partner this weekend because, you know we were we were making love, and she had this really powerful cervical orgasm. And in that moment, I chose, you know, not to ejaculate, which I often do. And you know she was asking, “Oh, how come today you decided not to do that? And it just started this whole conversation. I said, because when I’m tapped in to you, and you’re having this powerful rolling cervical orgasm, I feel that I I use the analogy all the time. I’m like, I feel like I’ve just taken my penis and stuck it in an electrical socket. I get to ride that power that you have that lasts way longer than my own. You know, my own is over fairly quickly. You know, I mean, I can learn to draw it out a bit, but at the same time, you know, the male ejaculation happens fairly quickly.

Kevin Anthony 57:35
Whereas you’re just like going into these rolls. I’m like, I just love being on the receiving end of that, right? And then if I choose to, then I can add on to that and maybe stretch it out even a little bit more. But the capacity that you all have as women- I try to explain this to men all the time. Like, just learn how to last longer. Learn how to take her through those waves. Trust me, you will benefit from it. Also, you will experience something you have not felt before, and they’re like, “What? I don’t really get it. I’m like, “Just trust me.

Regena Thomashauer 58:11
That’s great. That’s beautiful work you do, Kevin.

Kevin Anthony 58:14
Thank you. Well, we are now officially at the end of the show. It’s been a wonderful conversation. Of course, please tell the audience where they can find the new book on our knees and where they can find you and your work. Because I know you’ve got a lot more than just this one book.

Regena Thomashauer 58:33
Okay, stay connected with me. How do you do that? Hit me up on Instagram. I’m at Mama Gina M A M A G E N A. If you want incredible blogs in your inbox every week, I write them, and you can go to my website Mama gina.com’s M A M A G E N A s.com and sign up for my newsletter because I love going back and forth with my audience with my blogs and hearing back from people after I write something really inspiring and seeing what it’s I teach incredible courses Coaching certification course, a course called the Orgasmic Edge, which is all about expanding orgasm, virtual pleasure boot camp, so many different incredible programs, and my books are available anywhere.

Regena Thomashauer 59:35
I say go to your local bookstore because I love supporting local bookshops that, you know, do the work of taking risks with authors, but if you want to just sit at home and press a button, you can order it on Barnes and Noble or Amazon, and I will see you there. If you hear this podcast before August 25, and you buy a copy of On Our Knees. You can come join me live. I’m doing a live event in Brooklyn at the House of Yes, which is going to be incredible. It’s a book signing, but not a book signing. It’s just like a wild, gorgeous, radiant experience with music, dancing experiences, and it’s going to be incredible. The evening is at 730 on August 25. So come join me for that.

Kevin Anthony 1:00:25
Sounds amazing. Well, Regina, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today, and you know, telling us about your experience, sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, letting people know about this amazing new book that you have written.

Regena Thomashauer 1:00:41
Thank you, my love. And if you and your lady want to come join me on the 25th, just text me or email me, and I’ll get you a link.

Kevin Anthony 1:00:49
Okay,

Regena Thomashauer 1:00:50
I think she would love it. It’s going to be really fun.

Kevin Anthony 1:00:53
Alrighty, I will. I will send that over in the email that I follow up with. Thank you so much again. It has been a pleasure speaking with you, and I wish you much success with the new book.

Regena Thomashauer 1:01:06
Thank you, love.

Kevin Anthony 1:01:09
All right, everybody, that’s all the time I have for this episode, and I will see you next week. I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoy this show, subscribe, leave me a review, and share it with your friends. And for more free exclusive content, join me in the Passion vault at https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. That’s https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. Thanks for listening, and remember, as Celine used to say, “You’re amazing.”