want an orgasmic life? follow coach lara catone, erotic muse, wild woman

What if pleasure is the ultimate fuel you need to not just be happy and live lusciously, but also thrive in all areas of your life (yes, including work)? Turns out, it is. Through her Powered by Pleasure podcast and coaching practice, Lara Catone helps us dismantle what she calls "the well-behaved woman" syndrome and ignite the wild woman inside each of us. Once you turn on that switch (and turn off the habits keeping you burnt out), that thriving, orgasmic thrive will be yours.  Read our interview with Lara to discover how to unlock that pleasure-filled yumminess in all your moments from the ultimate erotic muse herself.  

xxx

What is an orgasmic life and how do we get one?  

Lara Catone: 

Imagine yourself on vacation in Hawaii. It’s the perfect temperature. Your body feels relaxed and juicy. There’s luscious plants and bold, sensual flowers everywhere. The air smells like fresh earth and ocean. Everything is teeming with life. You’re surrounded by beauty. You feel full of life. Beautiful and sensuous. You wake up early and let your body slowly unfurl. You meet the day with joy and presence — taking it all in. You eat a breakfast of mango, passionfruit and papaya. You feel light and free as you walk barefoot on the beach. Your heart swells with appreciation. You are in love with your life. 

This is how an orgasmic life looks. Living everyday as if you’re on vacation in Hawaii. You’re nourished and rested. You’re present. You bask in sensual pleasure. You’re engaged and productive in your work. In an orgasmic life, pleasure is no longer a destination, it becomes the very path that you walk. And how do you get an orgasmic life? Well, there are likely a number of ways to get there and I offer a very precise path of steps and skills. I have distilled the journey from exhausted and overwhelmed to pleasure-full and orgasmic down to five steps. These steps came from my own life experience and working with dozens of women over the years. The steps seem ridiculously easy and obvious, yet, most women run into obstacles in trying to take these steps. 

The steps are: 

Get luxurious amounts of sleep.
Indulge in beautiful food.
Bask in sensual pleasures.
Listen to, and act on, what you know.
Pleasure yourself.
 

These steps seem straight forward and yet there are many reasons that they can be hard to take. There is a set of skills that go with each step. The skills help to dissolve the obstacles that get in the way. 

Love your take on burnout — that it isn’t about all the doing, stressing, multitasking, achieving — it’s doing those things when they’re not guided by pleasure. Will you explain what that means?  

Lara Catone: 

Yes! Women have been conditioned for centuries to serve others at the expense of themselves. This conditioning can have us striving for outside approval and giving tirelessly to others. We’ve all been there, because we’ve all had this training, so it’s easy to recognize. It looks like skipping meals, squeezing on sleep, forgoing exercise, not having nourishing time with our friends and trying to be everything to everyone. We run ourselves ragged and have thoughts that we’re still not doing enough and will never get caught up. I think of this as a trap we get caught in. It looks like a hamster wheel — we step onto it, it begins to spin and then we can’t get off. I feel exhausted just describing it! The point is that when we are acting from obligation and guilt we end up in burnout. Because we literally burn the candle at both ends.  

When a woman is grounded in her pleasure, engaged and enjoying every day — like she would a vacation in Hawaii — her life can be full, dynamic and one of service, but it doesn’t drain her. Instead, pleasure becomes a fuel that propels her forward. When we live and lead from pleasure, there is no room for burnout, it can’t exist.  

What is “well-behaved woman syndrome” and how can we sidestep or get out of that trap?  

Lara Catone: 

The conditioning I speak to above is what I refer to as well-behaved woman syndrome. When we are well-behaved women, we are following the cultural rules that say women should be in service to everyone else. This can look like playing small to help others succeed or doing things out of guilt and obligation. The antidote to well-behaved woman syndrome is the wild woman! The wild woman is the part of us that has been tamed and repressed by society. However, we need the wild woman to live in our pleasure. The wild woman always protects herself and only lives in her pleasure — it’s her essential way.  

Picture a tigress lounging in the savannah. As she roles onto her back and stretches through her limbs, pleasure ripples through her large, strong body. She’s not doing pleasure, she is pleasure. The tigress will also protect herself at any given moment. She can relax because her animal instincts are intact. We each have an inner tigress, or wild woman. She’s elegant and fierce. Pleasure filled and powerful. The skill helps you to get in touch with the wild woman is Honing Your Animal Instincts. 

What actions can we take to ‘fix’ or reverse pleasure deprivation (and subsequently burnout)?  

Lara Catone: 

If you take the steps I shared above; Get Luxurious Amounts of Sleep, Indulge in Beautiful Food, Bask in Sensual Pleasures, Listen to, and Act on, What You Know, and Pleasure Yourself, then you will be living from your well of pleasure and extinguishing burnout at the same time. 

How can we rewire our brains to be more pleasure-centric (w/no self-judgment around pleasure, time for ourselves, etc.) when the reality of life, work, bills is ever-present?  

Lara Catone: 

Great question! I am going to answer it in reverse order. We don’t have to escape the reality of life, work or bills to have time for ourselves and have lives fueled by pleasure. In fact, the path that I’m describing brings the “reality of life” including, and especially, work into the realm of pleasure. Work becomes pleasurable and productive without burning you out. We become more present and engaged with life. When we are present and engaged, there is delight and purpose in whatever we are doing. We can even pay bills with pleasure. It’s far more pleasurable to have money and to pay our bills on time than it is to not.  Self-judgment is part of well-behaved woman conditioning. When we have self-judgment around, “time for ourselves,” we likely have the well-behaved woman thought that “time for ourselves takes away from others.” While we’ve been trained to believe this on a deep level, it is simply untrue. We have plenty of time for ourselves and others. The wild woman takes time for herself when that is the most optimal thing for her to do. And she spends time with, or gives to others, when she can do so with pleasure. If you are running into self-judgment, you need to rouse the wild woman with the skill of Honing Your Animal Instincts.

You can retrain your brain by drinking in pleasure in your everyday life. Take time to savor the food you eat, feel the warm sun on your skin, do something simply because brings you pleasure. 

In this world of To Do lists, autopilot and habit, most of us don’t really even know what makes us happy or feel pleasure… how do you teach people to discover what brings them pleasure? 

Lara Catone: 

I think we do know what brings us pleasure. There are some primary things that all humans desire in life. We all want a comfortable home, friends to laugh and play with, to feel relaxed and present, we want to make a meaningful contribution through our work, we want enough money to not have to worry and to do the things that bring us the most pleasure. Almost all of us want to have delicious sex and amazing relationships. We want to thrive physically, financially and emotionally. We want to be in our power. All of these are also pleasurable. Because we already know what brings us pleasure, I don’t teach people to discover what brings them pleasure. Rather, I coach them to transform anything and everything that is in their way of experiencing pleasure. 

We create lingerie and accessories designed to fuel pleasure and also tailor to your different sexual moods/energies – playful, happy, angry, lustful, etc. — how can we use our different sexual energies to fuel success and joy in our daily lives?  

Lara Catone: 

Sexual energy, no matter its mood, is inherently creative. It’s a powerful energy that can be big and rambunctious. We all need to be in deeper relationship with our sexual energy because of how exiled (and distorted) it has been for centuries. Working with the different moods of your sexual energy is a way to be in relationship with it and the many ways it expresses. When we are in relationship with our sexual energy, we can harness and direct it toward anything we want to create including success, joy and pleasure in our daily lives. I have a skill for this too! It’s the skill of Engaging Your Erotic Energy.  

You’ve said that women will thrive when they’re turned on by pleasure, not when they’re using borrowed energy… what’s the difference and how do we make the switch?  

Lara Catone: 

Borrowed energy comes from caffeine, junk food, driving ourselves to do more than we want, or are able, to. It’s the energy we’re using when we are on the hamster wheel of “never enough” and it is exactly what leads to burnout. When we are powered by pleasure we thrive because we are well rested, nourished and plugged into that creative fountain of our sexual energy. We make the switch by taking the five steps I shared above; Get Luxurious Amounts of Sleep, Indulge in Beautiful Food, Bask in Sensual Pleasures, Listen to, and Act on, What You Know, and Pleasure Yourself. If you can’t take these steps, you can get on a call with me and I will diagnose your specific block. 

You’ve said you love lingerie! What do you love about it?  

Lara Catone: 

Well, most simply, it brings me great pleasure! Aesthetic and adornment are hugely important to my self-expression. Similar to what you described above, I like what I wear to match the mood of how I want to express myself in the world. This is true for my outer and under clothes. My ensemble almost always reveals a little lace.  : )

Lingerie is also great for adding new dimensions to love making (with yourself or others). It adds beauty, intention and novelty. You generally don’t just throw lingerie on so the very act of putting it on — with purpose and intention — begins to create a sexy vibe for yourself. And then in turn for a partner, who gets to be surprised and then to appreciate you in your look. Lingerie can also slow things down and bring creativity. Lingerie is meant to be savored. Since it is usually covering our most intimate parts, it provides opportunities to pleasure other areas of the body, perhaps in new ways.  

How do you use lingerie to fuel your pleasure, desire, creativity, confidence, etc.?  

Lara Catone: 

Lingerie can be used at different steps in becoming fueled by pleasure. Lingerie can be a way that I bask in sensual pleasure. Lingerie has so many sensual elements; color, texture, how it highlights my body, the way it feels on my skin. When I am basking in sensual energy, I am deeply connected to my pleasure. Or, wearing lingerie can be an avenue to engage my erotic energy. When you reach the final step of Pleasuring Yourself, you are rapidly moving toward your desires. And you begin to do things that bring you pleasure that you only previously dreamed of doing. That might include wearing something you always wanted to but wouldn’t have dared. Or expressing a part of yourself that was previously hidden. When you reach the step of Pleasuring Yourself, and your erotic energy is engaged you are well on your way to becoming a mistress of pleasure. You ooze creativity and confidence. In this case, lingerie becomes an outer expression of your inner experience. When I use lingerie to engage my erotic energy, I feel hot. I look hot. And my pleasure in all of it makes me unstoppable.   

How can women use lingerie to get in better touch with themselves, what they like?  

Lara Catone: 

Since lingerie is an outer expression of an inner experience. We can see what we are drawn to and rather than question or judge it, just delight in it. Lingerie can help us literally try on unexplored aspects of ourselves. What does your wild woman want to wear?  

When it comes to sex, women’s desire, passion, arousal is often taboo… how can we rewrite the script on our sex lives, ie more pleasure-based sex and juicy orgasms, to drive more self-pleasure?  

Lara Catone: 

Our minds are powerful and create our experiences. It’s crucial to notice the thoughts that we are thinking about our sexuality and pleasure. Sometimes it’s as simple as seeing a new possibility for your sexual-self and inhabiting a new thought. For example, decades ago I realized that I had a thought that it was shameful to self-pleasure (aka masturbate). This flavored my entire experience of self-pleasuring and I didn’t actually receive much pleasure from it beyond a quick release. I decided that the thought that self-pleasuring is shameful wasn’t actually true. I changed my thought to, “self-pleasuring is good for my health, helps me have better orgasms and is a beautiful way to connect with and love myself.” This new thought changed my entire experience of self-pleasure. I took more time, became more playful and tuned into what I really liked — and then did more of that. My orgasms have just gotten better and better ever since!  When we decide that we only do things from pleasure, including sex, anything that is not aligned with our pleasure will become very obvious. We then get to transform anything that is not part of the pleasure path into something that is. The steps to doing this are quite simple, and yet can feel really hard. If you want to know more about the steps to becoming fueled by pleasure, the blocks that prevent you from taking these steps and the skills you need to dissolve them, check out my podcast, Powered by Pleasure where I walk you through the path to pleasure in great detail! 

How are you powered by pleasure and inspiring your inner wild woman? Hit us below 👇💋