Hello everybody, welcome back to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers podcast show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei and today I have with me Z Griss, and oh, I am so excited about this juicy topic. We are going to be discussing exploring sexual power dynamics. Oh yeah it’s gonna be a good one.
Z Griss is the founder of Embody More Love, providing performance ritual, embodied coaching and leadership trainings for dance and sexuality facilitators. Z helps people find states of ecstasy and clarity so they can live a life of self love, liberation and intimacy. Z comes from 35 years of dance training with certifications in Yoga For Birth, Esalen Massage, Deep Body Work, Urban Tantra, Pilates and Health Coaching. Z is a currently touring a performance ritual, Waters of the Soul; Exploring the Power of Grief and Orgasm, which is so perfect I just had an awesome interview.
Awesome.
Z is a Queer Gender Transcendent Kinky poly-dancer who directed Spiritual Nourishment for Consciousness Activism in collaboration with Deepak Chopra. Z has been listening to, speaking in and facilitating spaces to acknowledge and transform White Privilege since 1999. Thank you for that work and welcome to the show, Z. I’m really happy to have you here.
I connect people with the play, the joy, the love in their own bodies.
Yay, thank you so much. Yeah, grateful to be here.
So I’m gonna start off with our infamous question at this point but I don’t know how infamous it is but it hasn’t done anything terrible.
We will see. We will see.
We will see. It’s true. I guess I can’t really say that with full knowing, but I want to know what are your superpowers?
Fun. Play. I connect people with the play, the joy, the love in their own bodies. And I connect to people deeply in their own self-love.
That is so beautiful. That is quite a superpower.
Yeah, it delights me.
And how did you come to this work? I’m often curious whenever I interview people who are in the world of sexuality because it’s not one of those career choices that you can pick at the guidance counselor office. So I’m just always really curious like how people come into that space.
Yeah. Well the simplest way to answer that is that I absolutely love sex. I grew up feeling like I had way more sexual energy than I was comfortable expressing. That given my appetite and delight in it, I was like, “I need to really learn some skills and build a community that has conscious conversations around this so it doesn’t take over my life.”
So it just started as like, “How do I take care of myself?” And then I started looking at who are the people that really inspire me with their connection to Eros and the way they’ve designed their lifestyle and agreements and the way that they play? And as I started to get to know those people, they started as some of my teachers and then my friends and then my lovers and then became my collaborators and then my students. And yeah, but that’s the simplest way. I definitely did not think as a young person that I would be a kink educator or a sexuality educator. I did always know that I would be a dancer and dance has remained at the center of how I explore all of it.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
So I want to talk about kink a little bit since our topic is exploring sexual power dynamics. I think there is a tremendous amount of misunderstanding about what goes on in the kink community. What kink even is? And I think that probably different people have different interpretations of what kink is and what goes on in the kink community and what the kink community is. And I’m sure that it’s probably not just one solid community, but it’s something that I know very little about. And so I’m always curious when I meet people who are actively in that world and are so open about it. I want to hear more about what draws you to that world and what’s going on in there.
Great. Yeah. well, my definition of kink is sexual desires, behaviors, identities that challenged social approval, giving you the opportunity to explore your courage, your shame, your pleasure, and your freedom, which you’ll notice, it says nothing in there about rope or knives or it’s not about the activity. For me, it is about the willingness to follow what is true and to not use social approval as the guide for what will actually be fulfilling for you.
I get that.
And for me, like, yeah, it doesn’t have to look like a dominatrix in a dungeon with a whip, but it could. But if it does, it’s because that’s what really thrills you, not because you have a story that you need to do the taboo thing and therefore you’re using social approval as your map.
I also want a presence, one of my colleagues and teachers, has another beautiful definition, which is the search for a change of state created by a temporary redistribution of authority, hierarchy and control. And one of the things that’s important about kink is that it can be contained. We often call them scenes. That there’s a beginning, middle, and end to a state change.
Now, for people who might be newer to Kink, you could think of what’s a state change? Meditation is a state change. Dancing can be a state change. Going for a walk in nature can be a state change. All of those examples are examples where there’s an intention to change a state and then you’re entering that and then there’s kind of a discovery. Like you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but you have a sense of the mood, the energy of what happens when you enter those practices and then you’re willing to experience a state change. Then there’s a conclusion to it, and then there is an integration and you kind of return back to your next part of the day.
There’s always a power exchange happening in our life.
The same is true in kink. It doesn’t mean that you stay in an extreme state 24/7. It means that there are intentional moments where you engage in a state change. And some of that could be about a power exchange. There’s always a power exchange happening in our life. It’s a matter of are we putting our attention on it and are we bringing consensus and intentionality to the exchange.
Yeah, I think that there’s so much that’s like bubbling up in my mind right now. I’m like, “Oh my God, we could take this in so many different directions.”
Yeah.
So I am thinking that it means that we need to take a quick break before we open up more of this conversation because this is great. There’s a lot of places to go. So we’re going to take a quick break and then we’re going to dive into some really juicy conversation and I have no idea which direction it’s going to go, but I know it’s going to be good. So if you’re listening to this right now you’re going to want to stay tuned.
Before we go to the break, Z will you tell everybody where they can go to find out more about you?
Sure. My website is embodymorelove.com.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Go check out their website. We’ve been talking with Z Griss about exploring sexual power dynamics and we’re going to do the high vibe deep dive when we get back. So stay tuned. You don’t want to miss this one.
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
Podcast: Play in new window
