What happens when desire fades, sex feels effortful, or intimacy keeps getting interrupted by resentment, pressure, or exhaustion?

In this episode of Practicing Love, I'm joined by Elana Auerbach, author of The Sure Thing: A Pleasure Practice to Revive the Spark, for a refreshing and deeply human conversation about desire differences, sensual connection, and what actually helps when intimacy takes a back seat.

Rather than pushing through, fixing, or forcing desire, Elana offers a radically different orientation: pleasure as a practice of presence, intention, and safety.

We explore:

• Why desire often disappears in long-term relationships, even when love is strong

• How resentment, withholding, and "trying to get it right" block sensual connection

• A new definition of orgasm as how much you can surrender to pleasure

• Why Responsive Desire needs context, safety, and curiosity to arise

• What to do when intimacy gets interrupted, and why nothing is lost when you pause

• How short, intentional pleasure practices (even 10 minutes) can rebuild closeness

• Learning to know what you want, and how to ask for it without pressure

• How devotion, play, and self-attunement can reignite the spark over time

This conversation is for anyone who wants more aliveness, more connection, and more honesty around pleasure, whether you're partnered, single, or somewhere in between.

Find out how to have the best love and sex of your life!

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/burble
License code: CHROXRSGACRHE8NP

Reclaiming eros can impact every area of your life!

In this episode of Practicing Love, Shana James is joined by Erotic Wholeness Guide Darshana Avila, whose work has been featured on Netflix's Sex, Love & goop, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and more. Together, they explore an expanded understanding of eroticism — not as performance or sexuality alone, but as the life force energy of Eros that supports your creativity, intimacy, passion, and aliveness.

Darshana invites us to rethink everything we've been taught about erotic energy, showing how cultural conditioning, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and nervous system dysregulation often suppress our erotic vitality — leaving us exhausted, and disconnected from our authenticity and from one another.

This conversation weaves together somatic wisdom, relational insights, and deep compassion as Shana and Darshana explore how reclaiming erotic wholeness creates safety, presence, and intimacy in sex and intimacy, as well as every area of life.

In this episode, you'll explore:

• What erotic wholeness (beyond sex) actually means

• How erotic energy fuels creativity, connection, and vitality

• Why many people feel disconnected from desire and aliveness

• The role of nervous system regulation in intimacy and pleasure

• How people-pleasing and perfectionism suppress erotic expression

• Why integrating grief, shame, and protective strategies is part of erotic healing

• How safety and relaxation allow erotic energy to flow naturally

This episode is an invitation to let go of pressure, performance and shame and find more of yourself -- your body, truth, and the full spectrum of your aliveness.

Find out how to have the best love and sex of your life!

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/burble
License code: WGWRQANBJDWAVVM6

A Conversation on Real Connection & Ecstatic Intimacy

What do we actually long for in love?

In this episode, Shana James is joined by Joanna Shakti, founder and facilitator of Ecstatic Intimacy, for a rich conversation about authentic connection, emotional depth, and intimacy that doesn't require shrinking, over-giving, or shape-shifting to be loved.

Joanna introduces the concept of ecstatic authenticity — the shift from hiding parts of ourselves to keep the peace, to honoring who we truly are in relationship and lovemaking. From this place of authenticity, deeper emotional intimacy, trust, and soul-level connection become possible — and passion becomes grounded in honesty, support, and delight.

Together, Shana and Joanna also explore masculine and feminine energy not as rigid roles, but as living polarities (like yin and yang) that can create greater attraction, freedom, and aliveness in conscious relationships.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why authenticity is the gateway to deeper intimacy

• What it really means to feel fully seen, understood, and "gotten" in love

• How conscious conflict can become communion instead of disconnection

• A more liberating approach to masculine and feminine dynamics in intimacy

• The conscious path from authenticity → intimacy → ecstasy

If you're longing for a relationship where you can be fully yourself — and experience passion, devotion, and real connection — this conversation is for you.

Find out how to have the best love and sex of your life!

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/burble
License code: OHMHFXBSHHFV307Z