I help people who are tired of dragging their feet and living half-assed in life. I work with people who have decided they're ready for change and ready to level-up. I serve people who are ready to compassionately cut through the BS to get closer to where they want to be – personally, socially, in relationships and sexually. I coach people who are ready to discover their desires, passions and integrate this new powerful wisdom. I support people who are ready to be met with both passion and compassion. I am passionate, embodied and I teach you how to be too. I offer support to people who want education and facts to guide their process. I help people who want to feel and experience more. I work with people who may have been in therapy before or are ready to really take a deep dive into making changes that previous therapists just couldn't offer. I love helping people seeking guidance, strategy, sensitivity, accountability and who are committed to really working on what's getting in their way.
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, I'm now an honorary New Yorker. I'm a certified clinical sexologist (M.HSc, M.Nt, G.Dip. Couns, G.Dip App. Ling, B.Ed. and more) and Aussie-trained therapist & couple's counselor offering holistic counseling, sex coaching, marriage counseling, life coaching, and integrative couple's retreats in New York, plus online video consulting around the USA and across the world. I serve individuals, traditional couples and people in open, polyamorous, kinky and consensual non monogamous relationships. LGBTIQA & straight identities warmly invited.
What We Talked About
Cyndi welcome back to show. You know I have a lot of respect for your work and you have not one but a case report and an overview of somatic and sex therapy and working with the body in the present.
Today we’re going to talk about painful sex in addition to how we treat the mental and body (or somatic) experience of that pain. Out the gate, I ask Cyndi about what she references in her work about the body experience of our daily lives being downplayed and undervalued. A lot of us don’t realize that we even have bodies, we don’t pay attention to feeling them and being aware of them.
So, how do we bring somatics into sex therapy/clinical mental health overall? How does Cyndi start with a client to bring them to connection with the body?
Let’s talk about the connection between the experience of pain during sex to our fight/flight/freeze alarm system. Again, and again, I hear from my clients “My partner did not traumatize me…Why am I experiencing this? I want to experience pleasure during sex…Why can’t I just do this?”
Accordingto Cyndi, using somatics is a different way of addressing clients' needs. We’re not necessarily looking for what’s “wrong”, as in some traditional forms of therapy, but assessing what’s “present”, and even what's “right”, instead.
Maybe, we think, those of us who are helpers need to rethink our culture that views human bodies through a lens of shame and incorporate somatics into clinical practice alongside intellectual/ cognitive methods.
How to Find Cyndi
Facebook: cyndidarnellpage
Twitter: cyndi_darnell
Instagram: cyndi_darnell
These socials, and more, are listed and linked on Cyndi's website!
