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The Be Fully Alive Podcast On Patreon
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"We all carry the potential to realize, in real time, that the vibrant energy we experience
when we feel truly loved, seen and met, is who we actually are." Dawn Cartwright
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Episode 294 . The Authority of Desire
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
In this week's Authority of Desire episode we launch an illuminating exploration of the origins and psychology of human desire. Drawing from archaeology, anthropology, neuroscience, and modern sexology, we'll discover the profound impact ancient partnership cultures and dominator structures have had on our relationship with wanting—both collectively and personally.
We journey from the egalitarian societies of Neolithic Asia, where desire was understood as sacred intelligence, to the emergence of authoritarian systems that shaped much of civilization’s approach to pleasure and connection. Then weave together research from pioneers like Riane Eisler, Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, and Emily Nagoski, highlighting how chronic threat and suppression distort authentic desire—while genuine safety allows our bodies to reconnect with their deepest signals of aliveness and care.
This episode is more than historical analysis—it’s a personal invitation to examine the atmosphere within ourselves and rediscover the wisdom of our own wanting. An extended, thought-provoking session that not only traces the roots of desire, but also empowers us to cultivate the conditions that allow our authentic desires to flourish.
I hope you'll enjoy listening.
Dawn
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"Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near."
— Sutra 99 . The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
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 | The Return To Authentic Desire
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Live Practice Session . Zoom . NeoTantra Workshop
We are tracing the deep history of desire — following the sacred thread of erotic intelligence all the way back through the partnership cultures of Çatalhöyük, through the wisdom of the Tantric lineages, to today's exploration of NeoTantra. It's time to bring it all into our bodies.
We'll melt into practice together.
In this workshop, together around the world on Zoom, we'll dive into the history, the neuroscience, the poetry, the practice — and we'll meet our desire. As connection. As feeling. As homecoming.
Most of us have learned to, quietly and thoroughly, manage our desire. To put it on a shelf. To wait for the right conditions, the right relationship, the right version of ourselves before we allow ourselves to feel what we feel. We've been running the dominator culture's most intimate program — the one that lives not in history books, but in our own minds.
The partnership cultures of the ancient world were not ashamed of their desire - desire wasn't a problem to manage. It was the sacred thread itself. Desire is our connection to our most natural selves. Our body's most direct way of knowing what is true and what is real.
Let's stop waiting.
Through gentle movement, breath work, somatic body scanning, guided visualization, and a beautiful paired practice, we'll turn toward our authentic embodied desires with curiosity and welcome. We'll allow our erotic intelligence to lead. We'll invoke the sensual intelligence that is already here.
The Return To Authentic Desire
Be Fully Alive LIVE Practice Session
Tuesday . April 7th . 11:45-12:45 pm Pacific Time
Via ZOOM . A Recording Will Be Available
In this workshop we'll explore . . .
• Arriving in the body A somatic scan that dissolves stress and distraction, awakening our erotic intelligence from the inside.
• The sacred thread practice Gentle movement and breath work to attune to the partnership thread that exists within us — the desire, aliveness, and knowing — that is already alive in our bodies right now.
• Releasing the inner dominator A guided visualization to see, name, and gently dissolve the conditioning that has kept our authentic desire on a shelf.
• Turning toward desire A guided inner landscape practice — meeting desire with presence rather than management.
• Partner practice A beautiful paired exercise in which we practice connecting with and sharing our desire.
• Integration Breath, poetry, and a closing practice to carry the thread into everyday life.
Who is this workshop for?
This session is for anyone who is ready to move from understanding these teachings to living them — and for anyone new to NeoTantra who is curious about what it means to have a truly embodied relationship with desire.
No prior experience is necessary. All practices are gentle and can be done from anywhere. All genders, all relationship structures, all bodies are welcome.
What Time Is This Workshop In My City?
Join Our Monthly Practice Community
Monthly live practice sessions are one of the most intimate and transformative ways to deepen your NeoTantra practice. Every first Tuesday of the month, we gather live on Zoom for 60 minutes of guided practice, community, and connection.
EMBODY TIER MEMBERSHIP
$40/month
- Full Access to the Be Fully Alive Podcast
- Monthly Zoom Workshops with Dawn
- Zoom Workshop Recordings
Join EMBODY Now
EVOLVE TIER MEMBERSHIP
$125/month
- Everything in EMBODY +
- Private Coaching Sessions with Dawn
- Personalized NeoTantra Guidance
Join EVOLVE Now
A recording of each session will be available for all members.
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 | Episode 295 . Our Body Knows First Practice
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
A powerful exploration of how our bodies hold the keys to our deepest desires and authentic experiences.
Inspired by insightful research—including Emily Nagoski’s dual control model—we discover how the “brake” in our nervous system, shaped by generations of conditioning, often silences our genuine desires before we’re even conscious of them.
Through gentle guided practice, we'll tune into the subtle signals of our bodies, we'll discover the difference between authentic and compliant "yes" and "no"—creating safe internal space for true desire to arise.
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 | The Be Fully Alive Podcast
Meet Yuki—a gifted architect whose journey of self-discovery reveals the quiet ways in which many of us override our own desires for the sake of accommodation and ease.
You'll hear how Yuki awakened to the subtle, powerful influence of dominator culture and learned to reconnect with her authentic preferences through small, honest pauses and practices.
You'll discover what happens when we begin to tune deeply into ourselves, letting go of automatic "yes" responses and embracing the basics of genuine self-direction. You'll hear about Yuki's incremental transformation from fluent accommodation to a new clarity around her true wants, as well as how practicing responsive desire can create profound shifts not only in intimacy, but in every aspect of life.
Episode 296 . Yuki’s YES
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 | NeoTantra: A New Introduction
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast . 8-Week Series
We are living in a remarkable moment of convergence.
For centuries, our world has been divided into two perspectives:
The scientific — expressed as formulas, data and peer-reviewed research.
And the intuitive — expressed as oral tradition, poetry and sacred story.
We are now discovering, through neuroscience, somatic research and quantum physics, that the songs and stories of the ancients carried knowledge that no formula or graph could contain.
The practices and the history. The 25,000-year arc that reveals that the sacred erotic was once celebrated, then buried, and is now, in our lifetime, being re-membered.
This is that introduction.
WEEK 1: NEOTANTRA: A NEW INTRODUCTION
The split, the re-membering, and the invitation home.
Episode 285 (Mon): NeoTantra: A New Introduction
The origins of sacred sexuality. Seven thousand years of evidence. Why our relationship with the sacred erotic is an act of cultural reclamation.
Episode 286 (Wed): Sacred Encounter
Arriving in the body temple. Body, breath and energy. A practice in arriving so completely that something long forgotten awakens.
Episode 287 (Fri): Aiden & Zara's Progressive Marriage
They've aced couples therapy. Read every book. Zero sex for three months. What happens when ancient repression unconsciously clouds our own values?
WEEK 2: THE ANCIENT TECHNOLOGIES
The practices ancient cultures lived by — and what neuroscience, somatic research, and physics are finally catching up to.
Episode 288 (Mon): The Forgotten Arts & Eros
Some of us find our way home through devotion. Some through data. NeoTantra embraces both — and in that embrace, something awakens.
Episode 289 (Wed): The Gap: Entering the Still Point
There is a space between thoughts. Between breaths. The mystic's doorway. We'll practice finding the gap - and entering it.
Episode 290 (Fri): Marcus’s Story: The Professor, the Spreadsheet & the Practice That Changed His Mind
A professor. A spreadsheet. The story of Marcus' nervous system activation, the shattering of his concept of who he was - and his integration.
WEEK 3 A LIFE REIMAGINED
What partnership cultures, Maslow, and the neuroscience of flourishing tell us about how we might actually live.
Episode 291 (Mon): Partnership Cultures: The Original Thread
Partnership cultures found power in the body — in pleasure, in desire, in erotic intelligence. Does that thread still exist?
Episode 292 (Wed): The Sacred Life Design Practice
Extraordinary moments hidden in our seemingly ordinary lives. A practical practice for attunement.
Episode 293 (Fri): Kaia's Thread
The sacred thread runs through rushed mornings, full days and moments that feel compressed. This is Kaia's story.
WEEK 4: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF SACRED UNION
The Sacred Marriage, Buber's I-Thou, and what attachment research is finally confirming about erotic connection.
Episode 294 (Mon): The Erotic Intelligence of Two
Not ritual — cosmology. Buber's I-Thou, attachment theory, and the neuroscience of polarity. What the ancients knew about erotic union we're beginning to name.
Episode 295 (Wed): Eye Gazing Practice
Two minutes of eye contact can do what months of conversation cannot. Attachment research confirms ancient wisdom.
Episode 296 (Fri): Chen & Wei's Story: Two Traditions, One Bed
Taoist lineage. Kabbalah. Same longing, different maps. What if their difference is not the obstacle but the practice itself?
WEEK 5: THE BODY RECLAIMED
Wilhelm Reich, body armor, and what somatic research reveals about blocked energy — and how to release it.
Episode 297 (Mon): Why Wilhelm Reich Terrified the Culture (And Why That Matters)
Body armor. Blocked energy. They burned his books. What Reich got right — and why somatic therapy, trauma research, and NeoTantra heal the split.
Episode 298 (Wed): The Reichian Breath Practice
The seven armor rings, where we learned to contract, brace, disappear. Gentle and thorough. Have a blanket nearby. Allow time afterward.
Episode 299 (Fri): Neve & Beckett: When the Practice Moved What the Conversation Couldn’t
Talking had not moved it. Understanding had not. One night they stopped explaining and started breathing. The body did what words had not.
WEEK 6: SOLO AS SACRED
The complete path. The neuroscience of authentic desire — and what the body communicates when we finally listen.
Episode 300 (Mon): Wanting What You Actually Want
Solo practice is not the consolation prize. It is the complete path. Authentic versus conditioned desire. How to find what we actually want.
Episode 301 (Wed): The Desire Map
Not what the body performs. Not what it has been taught. Quiet aliveness that belongs only to you. Desire as information, not obligation.
Episode 302 (Fri): Yuki's Story: Forty Years of Yes
An excellent lover, generous and attuned. The one thing she could not locate: what she herself wanted. Thirty days of no. Then: her own yes.
WEEK 7: THE ESOTERIC DIMENSIONS
Classical Tantra's deepest practices — and what physics and cymatics are beginning to measure.
Episode 303 (Mon): Sacred Geometry, Sacred Sound & The Energetic Body
Sacred geometry. Sacred sound. What the classical traditions practiced — and what modern physics is beginning to confirm.
Episode 304 (Wed): The Inner Temple: A Visualization Practice
Building the inner temple, not metaphor but a real place the practitioner learns to inhabit. A home base for everything that follows.
Episode 305 (Fri): David's Story: Everything Was Performance
He knew every word. Practiced for years. Partners called him conscious, safe. One left and named what was happening. Practice begins there.
WEEK 8: LIFE AS PRACTICE: THE INFINITE PATH
Where technique ends and life begins.
Episode 306 (Mon): Beyond Technique: Life as NeoTantra
Flow states, transcendence, the practitioner who has forgotten they are practicing. And why embodied eros is among the most political acts available.
Episode 307 (Wed): The Returning Practice: Coming Home
Not a finale. A homecoming. Body. Breath. Ground. Return here when we forget. We will forget often. That is not failure. That is the path.
Episode 308 (Fri): Silas’s Story: The Workshop Was Always a Temple
He builds instruments — vessels designed to carry resonance. Silas, 62, never married, has spent forty years in devotion to craft without a name for it. The series doesn’t change his life. It gives him a new lens to see what his life truly means to him.
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
I look forward to welcoming you into the Be Fully Alive Podcast community. We're diving deep into the elegant systems that transform complex lives into embodied aliveness.
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Thank you for being part of this evolution with me. I can't wait to share what's coming next.
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 | Making peak experiences a way of life.
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
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