Tara Galeano, founder of Rediscovering My Body and Boulder Sex Therapy, is an Author, Retreat Host, Speaker, and Sex Therapist who has worked with women for over two decades to get their sexy back.
She knows that there is pleasure in the body, beyond our wildest dreams, and every woman can access it. In “Rediscovering My Body”, Tara teaches women how to show up for pleasure in their lives. She rediscovered her own body after leaving her twenty-five-year marriage. Realizing that she had given so much of herself away, she knew that she needed to come back to the inherent wisdom of the body. Through reconnecting with her body, Tara was able to know what was true for her, how best to proceed from this wisdom, what was true pleasure, and most importantly, how to teach these lessons to other women who are clamoring for the same truths so that they too can transform their lives and reclaim their sensuality. Now Tara has embodied this path and is moving forward to share this with women everywhere with her book, her online courses, and community, and her retreats. She lives in San Francisco with her soul sister and is learning how to live more fully in her nomadic heart.
In part 1 of our discussion, Tara and I will discuss wealth, abundance, and the ability to claim one's own desires - not just sexually, but in all areas of life. Being able to really know and articulate what you want extends to health, wealth, and even to overindulgences such as food.
welcome back to a Magical Life. I'm your host Magic Markley, and today I'm joined by Tara Galiano. And Tara is a very interesting lady. I'm going to preface this episode and our next, with the fact that we're going to talk about. S E X. Okay, listeners, we're not trying to upset you. We are trying to inform you and give you healthy information as always. But I will tell you, s e X will come up in the conversation and hopefully you can listen to this episode and really gain some valuable insights. Now let me introduce our guest. Author Tara Galliano has worked with women for over two decades to get their sexy back. She's a certified sex therapist who has worked with women and couples for those two decades and more, and she really knows that there's pleasure in the body. Beyond our wildest dreams, in fact, and that everyone can access it in her book, rediscovering My Body. Tara teaches us how to show up for pleasure Through reconnecting with her body, Tara was able to understand what was right and pleasurable for her and how to best proceed from this wisdom and most importantly, how to teach these valuable lessons to others so that they too can transform their lives and reclaim their sensuality. Tara offers unique couples retreats and ceremonial sensual journeys that open doors to new experiences and communication with one's and partners. Welcome Tara.
Tara Galeano:
Thanks so much. Magic. It's a pleasure to be here. It's certainly
Magic Barclay:
interesting having a person like you on the podcast. We don't often in mainstream society talk about sex and, you know, the, the healthy benefits that intimacy can provide. So first of all, how did you get into this area?
Tara Galeano:
I love it. Yes. So I had always dreamed about becoming an educator, and I imagined when I was young that I would be teaching the English language, which I did for a short time, I guess a few years. And I taught English as a second language to people who were native speakers of other languages. And I did that all over the world. And then I did that in the United States. States, and then I really honed in on teaching literature and in between teaching Baerwolf and Macbeth. What I found was that I was much more curious about the lives of my students. They were grandmas coming back to get their diplomas with their grandchildren. They were high school students who were pregnant. They were high school students who really needed to. Be in the adult world because I needed to support their family. And for me that was amazing and I wanted to learn more about who they were. So I stopped being an educator for a short time and went back to school and focus my graduate studies on psychology so I can begin to not have to focus on be Wolf and McBeth, but really focus in more on the process of who these people are and how to help them better become who they're becoming. And in that process I graduated with a degree in psychology. I became a clinical therapist and then. People started talking to me about their relationships, sexual preferences, intimacy, sexual identity, and all sorts of topics that in my graduate studies, I'd actually not studied. I had zero classes on human sexuality, ironically, and I needed to get up to speed because what I felt like was if people are feeling comfortable enough to speak with me. About these intimate topics and be vulnerable. I needed to get up to speed and meet them. And what I found over the years of doing this is that I actually am helping people create a language, a common language for them, and they're beloved because they're. Learning words to name parts of themselves and experiences that they hadn't really been taught in any other way. So I'm actually teaching people to create a vocabulary for themselves to talk about pleasure, to talk about intimate subjects where there was no education for them.
Magic Barclay:
Fantastic. Now, Tara, I ask all my guests the same three questions and here comes your first one. What can your expertise do to accelerate health? Be it physical, emotional, or spiritual?
Tara Galeano:
Ah, uhhuh. Yeah, I, I mean, and I think sex hits all of those. So in Ayurveda, sex is one of the three pillars of health, along with sleep and nutrition. And so it is part of our vitality. It helps release endorphins, it helps release hormones that bond us to another person. So oxytocin is one that's often mentioned when people are intimate with another person, and that all of these are healthy benefits of sex and that I would say attunement. And healthy attachment to another person creates a sense of security that that is foundational for our psychological wellbeing. I feel like health healthy attitudes towards sex and sexuality are really critical, and that oftentimes we don't. Receive it, comprehensive education when it comes to sex and sexuality and that my work actually fills in a lot of the blanks or disrupts a lot of the myths that prevail in people's mind around sex and sexuality. And I, I'm really happy that I'm able to do this work.
Magic Barclay:
We talk about wealth here as well. We're not just talking about financial wealth, but also personal or emotional wealth. So what are your top three tips to creating
Tara Galeano:
wealth? Yeah, I love that because I think that abundance and prosperity are values that I hold high. And for myself when I'm working with clients, I really want them to envision that they can have so much more in their lives. And one way that I specifically work with wealth is through the. Claiming of one's desires is that it is my belief that we're all here with a unique mission or a unique expression to fulfill and to live out, and that when we are really clear about what it is that we truly desire, and not just limiting it to sexual desire. But to the truth of what it is that we actually desire, and we can know that with such clarity that we can really live into it and begin to express it. And that the profound thing is that oftentimes, particularly sex, because there's so much shame and so much miseducation that people are not, Able to vocalize their pleasure or be able to articulate what it is that they desire. And that's not, again, not just sexually, but what it is that they wanna manifest in this life. And when people can identify that clearly within their bodies and begin to speak it out loud, the expression of that gets amplified through many layers of their being. And wealth is one of those that is activated at that point.
Magic Barclay:
Fantastic. Now many of our listeners struggle with their weight, be it weight loss or weight gain, and certainly, you know, it's often quite a needless struggle or journey. So what can you offer the listeners to help'em along that journey? And obviously to deal with stress, which we know is a major contributor.
Tara Galeano:
Well, one of the things that I know about sex is that it is a great way to relieve stress. So there's that, and body image, particularly for women, is one of the biggest factors that inhibits. Sexual connection. And so when we have a poor body image or we feel like we're overweight or we don't feel sexy, then that is a factor that will contribute to lack of intimacy in a relationship. And when we feel comfortable within our own body, no one can begin to be a little bit more adventurous. We can be a little bit more communicative and we can be more connecting with ourselves. And with others. And for me, weight is really just a number that we all have different weights, we all have different ideals, and we need to come into the truth of our bodies. And that when we understand what works best, For our bodies. Then we're tapping into the wisdom that is inherent in our bodies, and we can then forego the number on a scale, but begin to feel into the foods that work for our body, the nutritional value of those foods that work for our body. The timing of. The eating of those foods that work for our body, because appetite really is not just about food, it is appetite for life, and oftentimes coming back to. Clients are coming to me with sexual desire issues because they say they don't have enough or they have too much, or it's not compatible with their partners. And for me, it really is about appetite. How voracious is one for life, and how are we feeding those appetites? Oftentimes what I find is when people are more willing to engage. Their sexual appetite, other appetites fall away because they're not eating as much because they're actually fulfilling themselves in ways that they had not been fulfilled before.
Magic Barclay:
That's a, a very interesting take and I just wanna explore that just a little bit more. So obviously when we reach menopause, our. Libido may drop, it may wane, but sometimes it accelerates. And often our partner, you know, who we may have been with for a number of years, or maybe we're with new partners, if we're with someone for a number of years, maybe their appetite isn't the same, their libido isn't the same. Or if we're seeking new partners, maybe we don't really understand. The new way our body communicates the need for intimacy. So how do you suggest people get around those changes?
Tara Galeano:
Yeah, I'd say embrace them, right? There's no need to get around them, but really live into them because what I know is that as human beings, We are dynamic and it is always about embracing that change, whether it is a hormonal change that happens through pregnancy or through the men arc or through menopause, right? That we have different variations of how we express our being at different times in our lives, and that the opportunity is to embrace the newness. What I find is that there is a certain pathway for some women who've gone through menopause where there's this reconnection to their vitality. In Chinese medicine, they say menopause is a second spring, and so the opportunity is to have. A second spring and reclaim more sexual desire in their lives that may not have existed for them in the past because they were fearful of getting pregnant or they were fearful of something else, if that was true for them. Um, and the opportunity is to live into that. And they may not have the skills or knowledge to do that because they may not have been as sexual in the past. Or maybe they have a new partner and they're feeling more sexual appetite or maybe. It is the opposite, and their partner has more sexual desire than they do, and really the opportunity is to begin to embrace that change, to not shame it, to not try to eradicate it, but to begin to understand it and be okay with that and that what does that information give you about yourself and how you begin to embrace it in a gentle way where you can explore intimacy with. Kindness that maybe it is not intercourse you're engaging in, but maybe it's handholding or maybe it is hugging each other, or, I had some clients who were going through cancer. Who would just lie naked next to each other and there was no intercourse, but it was that quality of intimacy that really helped them connect on an emotional, psychological, and spiritual level. And what I find oftentimes is the predominant thread that goes through as we mature is that we desire more intimacy. It's not always equated with. Sexual intimacy, but it is more of the emotional intimacy that we desire and how we attain that changes as we get older.
Magic Barclay:
Some great information there. Now, Tara, we love freebies here. So what can you offer the listeners and where can they find it?
Tara Galeano:
I love it. I love freebies too. So my gift to this audience is a body wisdom journal. I am a firm believer that we are the experts on our experience and that myself as a clinician, I'm just a guy. I'm just a support person to help you find some tricks or tools that may help you discover what is most unique and brilliant about you. And so I created this. Body Wisdom Journal with the opportunity to begin to explore different topics where you get the sense of what is going on in your body and what your experience has been. The felt sense that we experience in our bodies. Interception is a very powerful one and one that I believe that gets dismissed because we live in this Cartesian society where I think therefore I am. But the body wisdom helps you bring that reference point back to yourself where I believe we all need to live more of.
Magic Barclay:
Fantastic. And your website is rediscovering my body.com. Is that correct?
Tara Galeano:
Yes, and they can find the Body Wisdom Journal there.
Magic Barclay:
Fantastic. Listeners, this was your episode 1 94 in 1 95. Tara rejoin us and we'll talk all things intimacy and relationships For now, thank you for your time. Go forth and create your magical life.