Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers podcast show. I am your host Tatiana Berindei, and today I have with me Kanya Ford, and we are going to be discussing what else but your relationship to sex. Before we dive in let me tell you a little bit about Kanya.
She is the owner and founder of Kay’s Kandi and Love and Intimacy 101. Her goal is to educate and empower people everywhere about their sexuality. Kanya begins her every day with the thought, who will I influence today? Before creating her two thriving businesses, Kanya was, and still functions as, an HR professional with over 15 years of experience in people. Being an HR professional, it was a smooth and natural transition into becoming a sexuality coach and lifestyle brand consultant with bedroom candy. As a mother of five, three girls and two boys, Kanya’s life mission is to ensure she creates a legacy to make them all proud.
Welcome to the show, Kanya.
Hello. Thank you.
Yeah. Before we dive in here, will you let our listeners know what your super powers are?
My superpowers are the gift of gab, the openness in my heart to influence and let people in, and my open-mindedness to help and guide.
My superpowers are the gift of gab, the openness in my heart to influence and let people in, and my open-mindedness to help and guide. Those are my super powers.
Beautiful. Beautiful. There was something in your bio that I really want to flesh out here before we dive more into this topic of your relationship to sex, because you draw this. In your bio, you talk about being an HR professional and how that was a smooth and natural transition into the work of sex and intimacy. For me, that’s not where my mind goes when I think HR, so I would just really love to hear what that connection is for you and how that process has been.
Well, once you get behind closed doors and you’re helping some of the people that come to you, initially you would think they’re coming in for career coaching. But usually, it’s a behavioral item that they’re coming to see you about, and a lot of times, it relates to just personal relationships, and some of those personal relationships go well beyond the work world.
I’ve been guiding people in their personal lives, whether it be something that happened with a boyfriend or a spouse or their mom, or something like that, so a lot of the human resources work that I’ve done, it’s a lot of interpersonal versus the disciplinarian part of it. That’s where that shift kind of went into, because in HR, you hear all kinds of stories. You get all of the details by being able to guide people through those situations. You would think of human resources, becoming a certified sexologist is not the next step that you would naturally think about, right?
I mean, becoming a certified sexologist is really not the natural step that most people think of. That’s why I love this show and I love this work, because I love to talk about the things that people don’t normally think about. But to me, I mean, I do get it: Â When you work with people, you’re going to end up working with sex eventually, if you’re really doing your job.
Correct. It’s everywhere.
Yeah. So I guess, what are some of the common things? I have some real genuine curiosities myself, because I’m actually currently putting some programming together to go into workplaces and work on just that, on our sexual dynamics in the workplace. What are some of the most common threads that you saw, or common challenges that people were coming to you with?
Not being able to give a happy, open, and inviting environment to the customer because internally, that person was hurting and in need of help.
Unfortunately, a lot of the challenges were surrounding abuse, and a lot of mental and physical abuse, and not having the outlet to understand that it’s not your fault. But also, they didn’t take those steps to kind of seek guidance, to get them out of that pattern of poor behavior, and those behaviors started to play out in the work world, unfortunately.
Can you give us an example of what some of those behaviors might be?
Oh, yeah. Lashing out at others at work, being in a depressive state of not being friendly, because a lot of the work that I was in was customer service, so kind of being mundane, down, depressed. Not being able to give a happy, open, and inviting environment to the customer because internally, that person was hurting and in need of help. Being overly sexual within the workplace, so being extra flirtatious could be one of those behaviors, and sexually defiant. Those are some of the behaviors that showed up.
So, when you say sexually defiant, what does that mean?
I would almost call it acting out. It’s someone who would say, “Why are you in here? You’re showing all your boobs and you’re doing XYZ,” when that person that was asking those questions is rubbing up against folks and making it seem like it was an accident, or touching people inappropriately. So, it’s like you’re acting out these things, but you’re calling someone else out for one themselves.
Yeah, that’s pretty common.
I really want to dive deeper into this conversation. We do have to go to a quick break. Before we go to break, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work?
Absolutely. You can always visit my website, which is loveandintimacy101.com. All of my social media, you can find me on Instagram, I am coachkay18. On Facebook, I am Love and Intimacy 101. Anyone can ever call me if you ever need me at 804-967-4551, or reach out via email at [email protected].
Beautiful. Okay, we’re talking with Kanya Ford about your relationship to sex. More when we get back, so stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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