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Rane: Hello, my name is Rane Bowen and this is the Flow Artist Podcast. Together with my co host Jo Stewart, we speak with extraordinary movers, thinkers and teachers about how they find their flow and much, much more. Before we dive in, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and honour the traditional owners of the unceded land where this episode was recorded. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our deepest respects to the elders, both past and present, and acknowledge the emerging leaders within their community. In this episode, we're speaking with Eve X, who also goes by Arwen, and their partner Sai Jayden Lillith about the Australian School of Sexuality and ASS Fest. As the name implies, this is a frank and open discussion about sexuality, sex, work and the ethics and activism incorporated within these themes. So it's an adult conversation that may not be suitable for many workplaces. The Australian School of sexuality started in 2023 as the butt of a joke. You'll hear many butt jokes within this episode and are now preparing for their third festival in Naarm Melbourne this May ASS Fest expanded to include courses, activism and resources. Eve X and Sai are passionate about bringing together different realms of sexuality education to share knowledge and work together to create more pleasure and love in the world. We also discuss censorship, living and working with an invisible disability, and the importance of staying politically engaged and active. It's a great conversation, so let's get into it. All right, well, perhaps we could start. We've already not decided who's going to talk first, but maybe we'd like to start by either one of you telling us a little bit about your background and where you grew up.

Eve X: So I will go first because ASS is primarily my project. I grew up in Melbourne, kind of in a pretty alternative bohemian kind of lifestyle, so my father was in the arts and events and running a technology magazine, so there was a lot of curiosity and exploration in my upbringing. But I also spent a lot of time in the country and so the bush and land is really important to. In terms of my background. Ancestry is something that's become really important to me in the last few years, so particularly looking into first nations heritage. And it's a bit of a muddy story, as is the case for so many of us. And then also looking back at my Celtic roots from all over the place, a little bit of Portuguese and Indian and unexpected elements that are now informing my work around sexuality, decolonisation, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. What else would you like to know about my upbringing? Slash, where I come from? I guess in my 20s, my thing wasn't sexuality. I was working with food, mostly with books, and then in academia where I did honours thesis on zombies and started doing some work on utopias, dystopias, apocalypse, climate change, robots. Lots of fun things.

Rane: Kind of cyberpunk stuff as well.

Eve X: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Technological singularity, artificial intelligence, rocket ships, all the stuff that's going on in contemporary political and scientific culture at the moment. So it's really fun because I was doing my PhD on that about 10 years ago and I had to stop because of health reasons. But now, after having worked in embodiment for about 10 years or so, I can feel all of those tendrils of the old research sort of coming back in and connecting with this stuff around embodiment and land and it's all coming together. So, exciting times.

Jo: How does it feel to be currently living in an AI dystopian future that you researched?

Eve X: There's a bit of the Cassandra thing, right? I mean, I've been fascinated by this stuff my whole life and read so many books which have templated out this time. So it's sort of like, how did we not see this coming? How have we not had better conversations about this together collectively? And yeah, just the horror of sort of seeing it all come true and how we navigate survival activism in this era to try and still create this better world that we want to see, even when things seem to kind of be kind of hectic at the moment.

Jo: And how about you, Sai?

Sai: How about me? Well, something that I find really relevant to all of this, that I did spend my early years growing up in Singapore, so that would have been in the early 80s and censorship was a huge part of the landscape there. So I'm really passionate about, you know, a free flow of information and the kind of society that that kind of really prescriptive, like, sense of what's allowed can lead to. You know, I was quite full on in Singapore. Like there were things that we, you know, would take for granted that were being shown here even back in the 80s when I moved here, that you just couldn't see in Singapore. Like anything mildly erotic was just like erased from public view. My parents were journalists and then PR consultants, so I both have a deep appreciation of the sanctity of truth as well as how to manipulate it in various ways to get a desired result. So when I see the online landscape and how that's being shaped and how censorship is being used to gatekeep and even erase information about sexuality, gender, minorities, you know, and how that can, like, Shape an entire landscape that might not be aware of it like that. I'm really passionate about that. I'm really passionate about making sure that the truths can be heard. And I say truths because, like, I don't ascribe to any one truth except that the truth should be heard. Yeah. So that's kind of my background in terms of knowledge and the freedom of that knowledge, which is why one of the big things I'm passionate about, this project, you know, and moving here to Australia, actually I was blown away by the land, by the vastness of it, by the connectedness of it. Because growing up in Singapore, it's a tiny corporate mall in the middle of an ocean with no beaches. So that's my history there. And so I feel that alignment with Arwen in terms of the land connection and discovering it at such a. At 8 or 9, instead of just being around it all the time really left a strong impact on me. I've worked in a variety of jobs on my way here. We have a shared history within the book industry as my parents owned bookstores for ages. So again, that was a place where I had a free flow of information. My upbringing was actually fairly sexually gender liberal. My parents tend to not really care as long as I was being safe and as long as I was in the know, there no issues with any of my gender or sexual explorations. So it's just like, are you being safe and are you studying? Yeah, so that's, that's the background I come from. So I do find it quite strange when I think about restrictive upbringings and that sort of thing and the supposed goods of that and how like moral corruption will spread. And I'm just like, you know, I hold to really strong standards of ethics and morals. I just also like being loose with my pleasures. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Eve X: I think we both share this very deep commitment to knowledge as an ultimate value, to the continuing pursuit of that, continuing to learn and to continuing to share. And it is something that feels quite imperilled by the approaching election and by international political conditions. So there's quite a bit of urgency. Urgency to how we're sort of talking about, about knowledge and information and accessibility, all of that sort of stuff at the moment.

Jo: And I guess that leads into your professional lives and your activism and your creative expression because you both do lots of different things and some things together and also personal projects. Do you want to give us a brief outline of like what you've got going on at the moment?

Eve X: So hilariously, we actually work as Eve and Lilith. So we have this idea of knowledge very much embed in our mythology that we work with together and collectively. We do.

Sai: Knowledge and rebellion. Yeah, Knowledge and rebellion.

Eve X: Yeah, yeah. Oh, we do so many things. So our collective projects fall under New Eden projects and within that we have our arts department. So we do live ritual theatre performances featuring shibari and dance and a whole lot of other weird, different aspects. Sometimes they're collab with other performers or musicians. Get to that in a moment. We also, those. Those are kind of quite deep ritual spaces for us. We do, you know, they are collective, public, ancestral sex magic rituals, basically, where we really tap into the history of trauma that we're all sharing and try and transmute that for people to witness and share and feel touched by or opened by. Hopefully. We make films together under Canto 5 Films. Canto V Films by Canto 5, if you're looking it up online. And we've been making erotic content together for like six years or something now, but we started Canto 5 last year and it's sort of the formalisation of our erotic union. It really represents the up levelling of our technical capacity to really fulfil our creative visions there. There's a lot of magic in it. But we're also just in the middle of a huge project at the moment, which is an homage series of 12 interlocking vignettes featuring a whole lot of people from across the sexuality communities in Sydney and Melbourne. It's going to be epic. We're going to do a director's cut which will be out by the end of the year. So that's also another huge project we've got going on at the same time as this festival.

Jo: I don't think you've told us about the festival yet.

Eve X: Oh, we haven't told you. Yes. So the big thing, the big thing that we're here to talk about today, ASS Fest. So this is taking up all of our time and attention for the next two months because it is wildly massive. So we ran our first Australian School of sexuality festival in 2023 in Sydney in September. And it was quite small. It was six facilitators, six workshops and a temple night, a small cohort. I think we had 24 people or something going through and it was. It was beautiful. It was really lovely and we felt very much inspired to keep going with the project. And then Melbourne in April last year was big. So we had 18 facilitators teaching 18 workshops across two days, a launch party and a temple night. We sold out with, I think it was around about 120 tickets or something of people going through this immersive weekend experience together, exploring consent, embodiment, intimacy, relating kink, sacred sexuality, all sorts of weird and wild and beautiful things. It was gorgeous and everyone had a great time and wanted another one. So here we go again. But this year it's gotten bigger again. So we had. The art is spreading, we are spilling out over our jeans. So we had just so many amazing facilitators apply this year and. And again, the urgency around the election made me kind of want to do something a little bit more, you know, if this election goes the bad way, we may not be able to do this again, you know, in the same way. So this is a moment to really celebrate what we have and to take an opportunity to spread the awareness about how privileged we are here in Australia. We have very progressive policies around sexuality. So this time around we're doing a 10 day festival.

Jo: Wow.

Eve X: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of pieces. So we're running from the 9th to the 18th of May over some. There's a couple of birthdays around then, I don't know. And we will be doing seven days of the Rim. So the Rim is the week before the big weekend. And during the Rim, we'll be popping up everywhere we can around Melbourne, finding venues everywhere we can poke ourselves into.

Sai: So if you haven't guessed, a big part of our brief responding is many scatological humour.

Eve X: This entire project runs on butt jokes. Yeah, yeah. Yep. That is our fuel.

Rane: Jo and I both love a double entendre.

Eve X: Yeah, look, anytime I get frustrated or overwhelmed, I just crack a butt joke and it's all okay.

Sai: Fills a void.

Eve X: Yeah, yeah. So I walk in, I'll just be cackling away to myself in the corner. And look, there's a real point to this as well, which is that using these butt jokes does kind of cut beneath a lot of our adult conditioning. Get back to earlier sexual conditioning when we're first discovering this stuff and feeling playful and curious and before all of the shame starts building up. So there's kind of. There's a point to the name beyond it being funny.

Sai: So I interrupted your description of the Rim.

Eve X: So during the Rim, we'll be popping up all over the place with extra events, extra workshops, masterclasses. We'll be trying to spread out to different areas of the city. So our main weekend's in Collingwood, but during the room will be popping up over in south side and in Footscray as well. There'll Be some performance nights, possibly some art things. This will all be landing next week, so keep an eye on the website for the room schedule, which will all.

Jo: Be up online when this episode comes out.

Eve X: Yeah. Oh, brilliant. Excellent. So, yeah, we're also partnering with some other amazing event people around Melbourne to promote their events, just so people can see what's happening. How much is happening in this amazing city at the moment? It really is booming since COVID there's just community is really blossoming and opening up. Yeah.

Jo: So what happens when you're done with the room?

Eve X: So we're going to take a night off first on a Friday night because there's a lot of parties happening in Melbourne, so we're not hosting a thing for ASS Fest. We'll be recommending you go and hang out with our friends because on Saturday we're going to start our immersion deep dive. So that will be the 18 workshops held by 18 facilitators, a fair few interstate and a few international people coming through for that. And in the evening, we'll be gathering for Temple of ASS in one room and an erotic art festival in the other room. So the erotic art festival will be a screening of some amazing local films and some really incredible international ones that are very great, groundbreaking. We're very passionate about erotic art. It's also a very controversial issue, but for us, we take quite an integrationist approach. We believe that erotic art has always existed and is a way that we as humans, we use it to explore our relationship with our bodies and selves and each other and the universe. So we don't believe that we should try and eradicate that stuff. We believe in highlighting the good things and talking about good online literacy skills to navigate that world. Well, in one room, we'll be screening some films, we'll be having some performances, and we'll also be doing a little launch party for our Canto 5 film Homage. And then the temple is a pretty wild experience. It's based on the ideas of the ancient goddess temples of Egypt and Greece, places where people could come to explore their eros and have journeys facilitated. So in that space we have temple guides who first of all create a space of navigating consent, boundaries, limits, all of that sort of stuff. So it's a sense of safety is really well established in space. A regulated nervous system is important to a sense of safety in the space. And then we have beautiful, amazing performances happening. There's some very incredible stuff lined up. It's very hedonistic, decadent, an evocative kind of immersive experience if you're not spiritually inclined. And if you are, there's actually really amazing things that can. That can happen in that space. If you're open to evolution, I guess, and self development. Yeah.

Sai: I think of people wondering what's actually going on in these workshops and things. It is an intersection of sexuality practises, BDSM, kink educators, sacred sexuality, esoteric mindsets and things like that. So it is drawing from a wide range of modalities to be able to explore the spirit of Eros and to, you know, gain more truth about ourselves.

Eve X: Yeah. A huge part of our manifesto with the Australian School of Sexuality is to bring together these different realms of the sexuality industry and to get them to chat to each other, share knowledge with each other and also with the broader community.

Sai: They don't always play well together, do they?

Eve X: They don't. They don't. Sai and I are both sex workers and within sex work, there's a term called whorearchy, which is about how some. Some groups of people that work with sexuality judge other groups of people that work. It happens all throughout. So escorts, dominatrixes, sacred sexuality people, kinksters, they all have preconceptions of the other fields and what that's all about. So this is a space where we can kind of start to break down those ideas a little bit and see where the intersections lay for people and possibly open up some new possibilities.

Sai: Yeah, we kind of like to think there's, like, no right or wrong way, except for the way that someone else really doesn't want you to do.

Eve X: That's the wrong way.

Sai: That's undeniably the wrong way.

Eve X: I would also possibly add the way that someone really, really, really wants you to do, that's also a little bit of a red flag.

Jo: And you've kind of touched on a bit of this already, but you obviously have some really foundations of core values underpinning all of this. Do you want to take us through what those might be?

Eve X: I would love to, but I'd also love to stop for a second and just cut back to. We didn't finish the other question. Do you want to go back to that now?

Jo: I've already forgotten it.

Eve X: Our other projects. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful. So wrapping back up backwards for a moment. So Australian School of Sexuality is our big festival. That is a big collaborative space that we create for other educators to come and play with us. Si and I also run Sacred Primal Arts, which is an ongoing educational space. We run workshops in Melbourne and Sydney most months of the year. That's been running since 2019, but it really kicked in maybe 20, 23 or so. I think we've run oh maybe 80 or so educational spaces since then. I can't remember the numbers, but good amount of people have come through our little educational hub.

Sai: I think I ran like half again that many before we started Sacred School.

Eve X: Yeah. So we're very passionate about that. We also run events, so a couple of those are on the back burner at the moment because we do have some big things on. But one of the big events is the Soft Machine Productions which I'm going to roll over to Sy for because this wraps up Z Cluster, their band, a little bit about our Infernal Desire Machine collaboration pieces.

Sai: Yeah, so that's the Soft Machine is my baby. And it is really inspired by the Jim Rose sideshow and kind of the chaos of just jamming like you know, edgy performance art pieces with sort of underground music. So I'm just trying to create the kind of events that like I want to go to where you know, there's a real strong freedom of expression vibe. You know, we have like a kind of erotic ritual circus thing going on where there's a lot of focus on shibari suspensions and industrial gothic bands and edgy music, experimental electronica, that sort of thing. And we like to match things together. We like to make them kiss. So you know, often like in my, I like to call it carnal industrial gothic project, Z Cluster. Like I'll often be in full suspension bondage by. By another. Another rigger while I'm singing in this piece, in this project, hanging upside down.

Eve X: Spinning around, singing from the top bottom of their lungs. I don't even know what direction I have.

Sai: I have strong needs in my sessions. My play scenes are very involved.

Eve X: There's a large degree of witnessing involved.

Sai: That's right. Not an exhibitionist in any way. Yeah. And you know, it's a platform for Infernal Desire Machine to collaborate with like other artists and to you know, co create a ritual where we're adding to the energy or the visual aesthetics of the piece. And I love encouraging like other performing groups and artists to like sort of of jump in and just mash this stuff together and just create this rolling chaos circus kind of vibe that does have a strong heart, a strong ritual heart. On the surface it can look like, oh, this is all very edgy and hard and provocative and transgressive kind of for the sake of it. But there's been so many people who've walked away from it. Just going like, there's so much heart in this. And I actually didn't expect the intimacy and connection that I witnessed during these events. So that's something I really want to bring into the scene as well, where there's a lot of posturing and sometimes a lot of denial of that vulnerability to actually say, hey, you can just cut loose and open up. And the stage is a place for me, I found with a number of things like BPD and ADHD and all that sort of stuff, but it's where I can literally turn off the filters and just express these kind of really intense energies within me without fear of, like, harming anyone. That's part of the thing of being tied up on stage, you know, just got to contain that demon. Yeah, yeah. It's a very real space for me and I'm proud of that platform and being able to kind of make it kiss the ass fest.

Eve X: So Soft Machine. The next gig will be in Melbourne on, I think, the 21st of June.

Sai: Yeah. Winter solstice.

Eve X: Yeah. Tickets will be up any day and possibly by the time this podcast is out. But one of the pieces of feedback we quite regularly get is that our spaces are very wholesome, which is counterintuitive, not what you would expect from these sorts of edgy exploration spaces of sexuality. But we're all about trying to create safer spaces, spaces that are accessible and inclusive for different demographics. So, as Sy mentioned, like, we have a bundle of. Different bundle of alphabets after both of our names. And it's really important for us to make spaces that feel welcoming to people who have physical disabilities, mental health stuff going on, neurodivergence. These are our peeps, and we want them to feel welcome in our spaces.

Sai: Yeah, I think that does address, like, there is this really strong misconception that the darker kind of edgier spaces are hard, and they're about this kind of rampant intensity that overrides the softness of the inside. But. But it's actually quite a vulnerable space for people involved. And that's one of the things that we are here to teach, is how to navigate those edge spaces so that they also allow for heart spaces in them.

Eve X: Yeah, I mean, the edge spaces are where we heal often. Part of the thing with this idea of the wholesomeness, I think, is that in our spaces, where we're often sort of trying to come back to what is it to be human? What is that really? And strip back a lot of the bullshit. Can I say bullshit? Yeah, bullshit.

Jo: I think we'd already flagged this whole conversation as not safe for work. So just go ahead.

Eve X: A lot of the bullshit of hyper capitalism, you know, it's very individualistic, very demanding, that we don't have a lot of time and space to breathe, to really connect, to get in touch with our desires and needs, to dehumanise. Yeah. Let alone be able to communicate them and find that space of community with others. So, yeah, what we're really about is trying to create these little safe spaces away from this hyper capitalist chaos where we can come and explore that together. We don't have the answers for what that looks like, but we reckon if we can sit down and look each other in the eyes and talk about it, we can start to maybe figure it out again. That's a big part of the ethos of the Australian school of sexuality. And everything that we do is how do we strip back a lot of the structures that we have placed around ourselves over millennia. Sexuality around embodiment, around what it is to be a human, to be here, what our values, priorities are, purpose, and to reconsider that. Yeah.

Jo: And I think just from what you're saying, like, a lot of times when we see sexy people represented online, like, they're never disabled, and, like, there's a lot of disabled people in the kink community, and a lot of disabled people do sex work because it's more flexible and, you know, you can base it around your needs. Do you want to, like, kind of go a bit more into the disability and sexuality realm?

Eve X: Yeah, it's fascinating. Hey, you know, first of all, just as an overview, there's a whole lot of overlap between disability and somatics and embodiment and how we experience pleasure and pain. But then looking really specifically at sex workers and visions of beauty in the world. Lots of sex workers are disabled. Yeah. And it is the invisible disability. So, you know, we're looking at people and we're going, they're so pretty. And we're putting them up as a pedestal of beauty. But actually their physical experience of their body is much, much more complicated.

Sai: I don't know if you've actually spoken, like, directly about your invisible disabilities as someone that's, like, really, like, embodied and doing a lot of active stuff.

Rane: Yeah.

Eve X: Yeah. So it's been a huge part of my journey. I was first diagnosed with an eye condition, an autoimmune eye condition, when I was 12, and rheumatoid arthritis not long afterwards when I was 12 as well. And then I got cataracts and glaucoma when I was around about 16 or so. So I've had a big journey with vision on a lot of different levels. So there's like the medical trauma aspect of that, there's the sort of symbolic stuff I've been working through. Around the gaze actually plays into my work quite a lot. But then also the. The arthritis, probably in hindsight, was Ehlers Danlos syndrome. So I have a collection of things, a systemic issue, an Ehlers Danlos system. Ehlers Danlos syndrome is a genetic disorder that is basically an issue with collagen production and affects your entire body. So everything is always kind of falling apart and it can affect your vascular structure as well, it can affect your brain. So a lot of people with Ehlers Danlos have migraines, a lot of people have neurodivergence and. Yeah, just all sorts of things. So if you. If you've, you know, as a listener, if you've got a lot of weird stuff going on, have a look at Ehlers Danlos syndrome. Up until quite recently, it was something that was very under diagnosed because it was predominantly a condition that women experience. So it falls into that set of things that really haven't seen a lot of medical research. But in the last 10 years there's been a lot more coming out and it looks like the incidence of it is much higher than previously thought. It's something that there is no cure for or any real medical support for. And basically what they say is it's lifestyle stuff, right? It's getting your diet under control and your sleep and your exercise and all of that sort of stuff. And it's part of. Big. Part of my whole life journey has been exploring these different things that affect my health and they're wrapped into, like, ecological and philosophical and political things for me as well. I feel like I've gone off on a rant here.

Jo: It's good. I would also say that I think it is overrepresented or like many yoga teachers have connective tissue disorders and maybe don't realise it. And it might be why you came to yoga, because it all feels really good and really easy. But also a lot of people with hypermobility conditions feel like their muscles are really tight all the time because your connective tissues aren't holding things together, so your muscles feel tighter, so you feel like you've got to stretch more. And it can be a bit of a cycle.

Eve X: Yeah. And dancers as well. A lot of the people that we look at and we go, oh, they look great, you know, their bodies are all long and stretchy and flexible. But actually, you know, their, their embodied experience is very different. Yeah, it's something that I have been working through, how I talk about for many years, because working in the sex industry, it's not. It's not sexy to talk about my disability. Right. But it is important.

Sai: That's very specific.

Eve X: It's a specific thing, but it is really, really important. And because so many people are, you know, don't have, you know, this perfect relationship with their bodies. Shibari in particular is something I talk about a lot with people and I talk about it as a somatic practise and not just a sexy practise because it's great for pain management. It's. It's really amazing. So many people who explore shibari aren't doing it it for erotic purposes, they are doing it for something else. There's a lot of different reasons why people would engage in kink practises and some of them are about pain relief or mental health.

Sai: Pain relief and control and agency over the type of sensation they're receiving. In that extreme area, it's like you can choose the kind of pain that you wish to experience that takes you away from the path that you actually can't consent or negotiate around those.

Eve X: Yeah, I mean, I feel quite like, like privileged in certain ways in the position that I'm in, to be able to speak about this reasonably openly. But, yeah, I have made the conscious decision over the last few years to really dive into exploring these questions of disability, particularly in our erotic content and on stage in our live performance pieces. So those are very deep, intense pieces for me. Really diving quite deep into my own trauma and sharing that with people. You know, I'm really, really showing them my human and inviting them to. Yeah, to do the same, to feel safe, to like express their human in the world.

Rane: Would you like to do some yoga with Jo or myself? Of course you would. That's why I'm excited to let you know that we're now offering lifetime access to our online video library. We have over 240 chair yoga, aerial yoga, Nurturing yoga and Pilates, Yin yoga, gentle yoga and south massage class videos for the early bird price of $89. Previously, these videos were only available to our monthly members, but we know the subscription model doesn't work for everyone, so we're excited to be able to share in this way. Just like our live classes, our videos all include multiple options for accessibility so that you can practise in the way that feels right for you. We also include options to improvised props if you're Practising at home. We've been getting some great feedback about these classes. You can check them out in the library section of gardenofyoga.com and there's even a few free samples there to help you get started.

Jo: And I did want to talk about trauma stuff because in the world of trauma informed yoga, like you very rarely touch someone and it's like a whole consent conversation before you do. But there's the same sense of giving people space to feel into their own agency and to work out what that might be and what their bodies might need and what their brains might need. But like when you guys are working with trauma, it's a lot more hands on, sometimes other things as well. Do you want to kind of talk about that interplay between, I guess, just different ways of working with trauma?

Eve X: Yeah. So I'd say the main, the main thing is that there's two, there's two general approaches, which is the cathartic, transcendent kind of approach where you're. It's often associated with more intense experiences where you're really trying to access stuff that's quite deeply buried and bring it up to the surface and do so in a container where it's supported and able to be seen and rewritten. And then there's the sort of titration method which is more of a somatic sexology kind of approach which is slow and steady. So it's more about let's slowly figure out where that edge is and maybe we're just going to stroke the edge instead of poking it a bit.

Sai: Yeah, I think, yeah. Between us we cover those two approaches. I'm definitely more of a cathartic experience approach type of person. That's how I personally experience my transformative moments and what I'm sort of more well versed at in a lot of ways, leading others through and holding that safe container for them to feel like they can just ask for that cracking open and know that there's someone there who's able to actually contain all of that, able to actually see and feel and experience the most intense things with them and to not actually shy away or look away from it and to say this is okay and to hold them there. And it is complicated. It does involve a lot of negotiation and making sure that the appropriate supports are going to be present before, during and after things that you do. But I also think that if someone's advocating for a certain kind of experience to explore and maybe even heal their traumas, then I'm going to be there to facilitate that through Them, I'm not actually going to judge them. I'm going to allow someone to have their own agency over how they would like to conduct their own journey.

Eve X: This actually gets to a really pointy issue within specifically the sacred sexuality industry. It comes up everywhere. But in sacred sexuality there's certain spaces reasonably common to have like high intensity peak spaces, retreats and immersions and things where people are taken to their edges. And there have been quite a lot of stories of trauma associated with these spaces. So, you know, there's the most clear cut sort of allegations of sexual misconduct and exploitation within some of these spaces, but there's the sort of more subtle nuance level beneath that of the responsibility of holding these transcendent cathartic spaces and what can happen and making sure that people are fully informed that that's possible, but also. And yeah, letting them make a choice about that. I mean, we are all grown up adults here and if we want go through a fiery ritual, then we should be able to do that. Some of the conversation about what needs to happen to keep these spaces safer more generally are really advocating for more of this titration, slow method. And while I think that's important to bring in, it's a different thing. It is really changing the game quite a lot. And I think that there are important functions for these cathartic spaces. We just have to be a bit more careful about how we're communicating that, about how we're managing those spaces in the aftermath of that.

Sai: Informed consent.

Eve X: Right.

Sai: If there's going to be a heavy cathartic moment and these are the possible outcomes from it, then I'd like people who attend that to be informed and be able to make a decision based on their own safety parameters.

Eve X: Yeah. So we have a lot of consent work that goes into the festival, to creating support systems, to teaching consent within the festival itself, to a consent team running during the temple space to keep the participants safe while they're engaging in free play. And we also have our. We have a code of ethics up on our website and we have quite a rigorous code around stuff. So some of our code is quite different from what is commonly seen. So for instance, one of the issues that comes up, should I bother diving into nitty gritty details about. There's so many little nitty gritty details. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that we come up against quite regularly is best practise versus real world. So best practise for how you would run these spaces is that you would have no engagement between team facilitators staff, volunteers, et cetera, and attendees during the festival and probably for a period outside the festival. That's best practise and what a lot of people would put into their code of ethics. For us, that is unrealistic. Like we look at the real world and we see that so many of our people are entangled in various ways. They have pre existing dynamics and they have different relationships to our festival. So our volunteers are also attendees, our facilitators are also attendees, they're also learning there. So what we're choosing to do this time around is to give everyone a series of ribbons so that all of their relationships to the festival are denoted so people can see the power dynamic very clearly. Just straight up as a physical thing. This person is a facilitator and also, you know, a consent age. And also this. And also this. Do I feel comfortable engaging with them or do I feel this power imbalance? And actually it's probably not a good idea. Yeah.

Jo: Something else I just wanted to unpack a bit is just the term sacred sexuality.

Eve X: Let's go. Yeah. So I'd love to find another term, to be honest. So sacred sexuality is a kind of a catch all for a range of different esoteric and non dominant cultural practises that have come together and like what's, what's taught by our community at the moment. So it's the key one is Tantra and the, the big issue around that is that Tantra is an ancient spiritual practise and what is often taught around sexuality in the west in contemporary times is very different. It's something called Neo Tantra and it is Tantra stuff kind of applied to sexuality and relating. It's really cool. But it's not traditional Tantra. So Neo Tantra sits with other Buddhist philosophies, pagan traditions, shamanic traditions of sexuality, these goddess traditions, the idea of Greek and Egyptian worship, cults of erotic goddesses or gods, all of these sorts of things are pulled together under the term of sacred sexuality. So it's pretty muddy out there. And part of what we, we do with us, and what I specifically do with my work is try and just like share some definitions around what we're actually talking about when we, when we do this. When you see someone teaching a Tantric workshop, you know, what are they, what are they actually offering there? And partly that, you know, this is about the informed consent thing, so people know the space that they're walking into and the possibilities of that. And it's partly respect for tradition as well. It's like, you know, where does this come from? What lineage are we teaching? And at least giving a quick nod to that.

Jo: And so say you were interested in exploring this realm, what would be some red flags and I guess some green flags to look out for?

Eve X: Yeah. So first of all, there is a great Facebook group called Tantra Not Trauma. And that is, you know, it's a pretty hectic space, but it is also a space to really clearly go and see. You can do a search in there and see if there are red flags. Although I have a feeling Facebook did something to the search function because.

Jo: So is that people sharing their experiences in past workshops.

Eve X: Yeah, yeah. And just discussions about how to keep this realm safe and. And the people that have serious incidences against them. There's a lot of news articles that get shared through there. It is a useful resource, but it's also not a positive space to engage. There's a really amazing woman, Perth born. She's now international. Her name's Luna Agneya, and she has a Tantra school, but she teaches with a lot of nuance around Tantra versus Neo Tantra and also queerness and disability and these other factors that are often ignored in the sacred sexuality scene. So I would say, you know, in sacred sexuality, yeah, you really want to clear, as with most things related to sexuality, you know, somebody is telling you this is the path, this is your path to redemption, then you might want to question that because your path is your path and you might share your path with that person for a time. You know, there might be amazing things to learn from that them, but that kind of totalitarianism about. About what is the right way to be about, the right way to have sex, to relate to your body and each other is a huge red flag.

Sai: Yeah, there's. There's a lot of attitudes that, like, really, you know, even though they're meant to be differentiating themselves from like, mainstream, like, religion and stuff, that really reeks of the same kind of purity culture that comes out of like, really evangelical Christian viewpoints on the role of sexuality or, you know, they're. The only invalid sex is one between a man and woman in union to create a child. And anything else is like, you know, abhorrent. And a lot of these. A lot of these structures do advocate a. You know, this is the one true way to experience your eros in any other way as suspect. And you are lesser than if you use them. And those are things to be really, really, really suspect of. I think if someone's telling like, like you said, if someone's telling you this is the 12 way likely you'd have to examine the motivations around that. And I truly can't believe on an intellectual experiential level that there is one true way to do anything unless it's like the way that's not actively harmful to another person.

Eve X: It's funny because traditional Tantra does have quite a prescriptive way about how you do the practise. But again, best practise versus real world best practise you would do the traditional path because it has a lot of safeguards built into it. But real world is people have kundalini awakenings happen all the time and you don't have to do that thing to achieve that thing. Right. Another big red flag I would definitely keep an eye out for is how people speak about polarity. So polarity is a really common theme when we're talking about Tantra and particularly Jungian sorts of explorations. But it's often used as a way to reinforce the gender divide and traditional stereotypes.

Rane: So is this when we hear things like the divine masculine or divine feminine that sort of.

Eve X: Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's complicated stuff because there is some really, you know, gender is a part of how we explore this stuff and it's, it's not necessarily easy. But the better teachers that I know tend to talk about the divine union of divine. The union of divine, masculine and feminine within self. So rather than, you know, you being the perfect woman and finding your perfect man or vice versa, it is about start exploring how our internal relationship with ideas of femininity and masculinity and coming to some sort of agreement there. Balance.

Sai: Yeah. At this energetic internalised and connective way the concepts of feminine and masculine, a lot of the time it's like a catch all to grab a whole bunch of other concepts and throw them into one bundle that have often been stereotyped and proven true throughout stereotyping because of the way our society actually approaches concepts of masculinity. Femininity for example. At one point it would have been described as very unfeminine to possess an interest in the sciences. But now we know that's kind of insane. Sorry if that sounds ableist, but I am crazy.

Eve X: So I can.

Jo: I think it's like with that divine masculine and feminine. If the gender identity of feminine is receptive and passive and masculine is dominating and forceful, well that just sets up a dynamic for like abuse.

Sai: And also listen to those words you just used. They're much better descriptors of the energies that you're trying to engage with as opposed to just using this woolly. Oh, feminine and masculine. Right. Could have just said like this is a dominant energy, this is a receptive energy. These are, you know, giving the details is like, you know, one of the keys of success.

Eve X: I like generative and receptive energy is a really great one to like, you replace kind of quite a few of the things that we use feminine mask for.

Jo: Or like sun and moon.

Eve X: Yeah, yeah. And like I, I love polarity work. I actually think it's really amazing. I mean the universe is. There are like these binaries everywhere, right? But also the binaries are kind of like platonic ideals. They don't really exist. The entire universe is made up of the grey area between polarities. Like so like polarities are really useful to explore these like end points of our possible humanness. But we're all somewhere in the middle and moving around most likely.

Sai: Yeah. And I think, and this is approaching a very controversial topic here, but I think when you strip away a lot of these concepts that can be described by other words, you start to come to a bit of a. What does sit within this sphere that we could assign these terms to? And it's like my embodied experience of owning male genitalia is an experience and the embodied experience of someone that owns a womb and like, sorry, I gendered my genitals. Having a penis and testicles, then the experience of having a womb, having periods are very fundamental core experiences that actually are non transferable in a whole bunch of ways. And there's no judgement around that and there's no judgement around what makes. And once you strip away a lot of these attributes that people would love to define themselves with but feel trapped because they're contained within gender identity identities, then you get to these core ideas. And I'm truly, truly not advocating any kind of gender essentialism on the level of defining someone's identity. But when you're exploring certain energies, it does become appropriate to encapsulate them within certain containers and words. Right.

Eve X: Look, as you can tell we're fascinated by gender, right? So in our manifesto we have this little thing about sex. Part of the confusion about sex is it means different things. You know, it's gender, it means fucking, but and it's also like, you know, our physical genitalia. So, you know, what are we even talking about when we talk about sex A lot of the time and I think a lot of where, you know, the confusion that we're at as a society is that we, we haven't really clearly defined these things and. And dived into that because it's all a bit wicked and icky and gross. Right. But yeah, like, where we get really excited diving into the nitty gritty of this gender stuff. We both have complex and evolving relationships with gender. And in this era, it's not easy to talk about. It's a very emotional topic with a lot of ancestral trauma embedded into it. But it's something that, like, we're really keen to talk about through. Through the institution of us. Even though it's hard.

Rane: Hard.

Eve X: It's a hard set of conversations.

Jo: Would you say you're keen to talk through your ASS about it?

Eve X: Oh my God, out my ass. The fun never ends.

Jo: And like I've seen online and kind of people in my social orbit who've gone from leading kind of sexuality empowerment workshops specifically for women and like literally having workshops about embracing your inner slut to like, like going to far right political ideas. And that seems like a bit of whiplash, but do you want to like, unpack that pathway a bit?

Eve X: Yeah. And I guess that, that, that is that thing of, you know, there is some gender essentialism tapped into that industry. There are these ideas of, of right and wrong and like, you know, the days when things were better. There's a deep conservatism and you know, we all have a certain component of conservatism in us there like some harkening to a glory day when things were better. Whether it's the Garden of eden or the 15th century or the 50s. But it is somewhere there's a lot of commonality between the certain aspects of what, like the left wing or the conscious community. I mean, I find it fascinating because Jo and I met in organic shops and that was traditionally a domain of the left wing as well. The really lefty progressive thing to be interested in that is ecological. But in the last decade, decade or so, there's been a real shift there. And now it's a lot of the right wing people who are talking about raw milk and, you know, the effects of corn syrup and all of those sorts of things. So that's been a really interesting seed oils. Yeah. Really interesting demographic shift in relation to conservatism and the same sort of thing. Yeah. Happening in conscious community where. Where you would sort of expect a lot of progressive people who are in contradiction to the mainstream and tradition, like the sort of 1950s style traditional values. Yeah. Instead kind of like even maybe wanting to give up the vote and just be a housewife and make bread on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. Like there is this, you know, where in, in particularly goddess schools of sacred sexuality, there's a lot of. Of feminine essence stuff. And what is it to be. To be in your woman, to really honour your womanhood and honour your womb and all of that sort of stuff. And, you know, there is this gender essentialism underneath it where there's a fundamental belief that women, women and men are different, that how women are in the world is different, that it needs to be slower, more passive and receptive, all of these sorts of things. Now, I am agnostic on all of this, whether there is any fundamental differences in women and men due to biology, hormones, et cetera. But I will say that really making that fully your lifestyle to encompass this endpoint of ultimate femininity, instead of exploring what is actually true for an individual, what are your passions and desires, what makes you happy. If you're sciency, you can be a woman and be sciencey. That's okay. It doesn't mean you're corrupted by yourself, masculinity. It just means you're an individual with your own relationship with gender and science. Like, that's okay. So, yeah, like we're, you know, we're really about avoiding these concrete kind of things. We're all messy, we're all evolving. You know, we're deeply ethical about how we approach things, but we also try not to be prescriptive around how people can be in the world.

Sai: Yeah. And I think when you talk about like, you know, the surprising conservatism of these spaces, I think that's like an effect you see in any alternative space that becomes gentrified and accessible is because then you start to encounter the population bell curve. It's no longer like the province of this very specific group of people that came up with this idea. Now that the idea has taken hold and spread, it means everyone now has this idea. And within any group of people there's a certain percentage of assholes and you're never going to be able to escape that.

Eve X: There's a money thing there. I mean, like, I will say, like kink events are sort of generally a bit more accessible. And you do see that in who's represented in the spaces. Whereas sacred sexuality, there is a bit of a money thing there. There are some workshops that are excessively priced, but a lot of what's on offer is bigger courses, retreats, immersions, et cetera. And the price points are high. And the people that they really speak to is, you know, corporate burnouts, is people who are like, yeah, really overwhelmed, sick of living in this fake world and want to go and have a beautiful week and then they come out the end of it and they become a sacred sexuality practitioner. But yeah, there are some real like, you know, financial transparency and ethics is something we're really passionate around, erotic labour because it is something that traditionally there has been no financial recognition for erotic labour that's wrapped up into gender labour as well. So yeah, it's something we're very passionate about and really want to set a standard and have a conversation with the community about.

Sai: Yeah, I think like on a political level, like the terms like conservatism and liberalism are kind of like that's not the battleground anymore. It's almost like we're at the intersection of neoliberalism and socialism viewpoints and attitudes towards the world. And it's like, do we only care about relentless growth at the expense of all things or do we actually believe in like looking after people as we go along?

Jo: And how did that become radical?

Eve X: Like human rights? Yeah, I mean we saw that really kick up during COVID I think a lot of individualism and it was this question about individualism versus collective. And when we're dealing with collective conscious community, there is a bit of a. Like an individualistic thread where it's like, you know, if I just drop deep into my own truth and that will tell me all the things and it can be quite solipsistic. Yeah. Where whereas for me, for us, we really do feel quite a responsibility to engage with community where I feel like we take the idea that we are all one, we are all different aspects of the one and that we can always find places of connection and merging pretty seriously. A lot of our stuff is quite altruistically based and it is a bit of a gift to community. I'm not trying to make a lot of money.

Sai: We're like pinko, aggressively anarchic witch.

Eve X: Probably a pretty good sum up. Yeah.

Jo: I did also want to ask you a business question because even though sex work and by association workshops around sexuality, like all of that's decriminalised in Victoria, but I know that you do still face a lot of financial discrimination online and also like a lot of shadow banning and stuff off. How do you navigate an unfriendly online space when you're trying to run an ethical business?

Sai: So some context around that is everyone has to go through payment processes to accept currency in exchange for your services. And a very globalised community. The two big payment processes are Visa and MasterCard, who are American based, subject to American laws, legislations and like religious moors, quite honestly. So those are the like two really, really huge barriers that are there. Because no matter where you start from, no matter where you're funnelling to like that, that happens even if you're using Bitcoin, those, those transactions have to come out the other end in some way. Yeah.

Eve X: So those payment processes will happily support like weapons trading and things like that, but nothing related to sex. So we, our workshops have been okay, our local workshops have been okay for ticket sales. But the reason that we haven't put any online content up yet is because so many coaches and educators internationally have had their accounts removed. So many like it's. And we're just very reluctant to put in the amount of effort to create an online portal for our education if it's going to just disappear like that if there's no security.

Jo: And they take the money too, right?

Eve X: Oh, absolutely.

Sai: Freeze your accounts take the money even, even if it's a legitimate business in your jurisdiction because it has to go through these American based processes subject to their laws.

Rane: Yeah.

Eve X: So my stripe account was nixed a few years ago because of coaching work around sexuality. It's definitely not just, you know, the edgier stuff, it's anything to do with sex. If they figure out that's what you're doing, if you're providing coaching or education online, stuff like that, if it's got the wrong words in it, then yeah, your account's gone. And depending on how you set yourself up, your business is potentially gone as well. Yeah, we definitely have that issue with some of our other businesses really struggling to find the ways to get good funnels happening. We have some ways in, but they're just not necessarily publicly palatable. Right. The most obvious ways are through sex worker spaces that are designed to, to deal with this issue. And they generally take a big cut from us. And they're also things that the public, the general public aren't going to jump on a porn site to donate money to our project.

Sai: And this is why actually what seems like a fringe issue of decriminalisation of sex work actually becomes a wider societal issue. Because a lot of the laws and things that they use against your free expression of sexuality, gender, like the knowledge distribution of sexual education, that sort of thing, those things are shut down using laws that are made against sex workers, using obscenity laws, using laws that are based on like archaic moralities and things like that. And religious, religious like Judeo Christian institutions that have embedded themselves in our political landscape. When you vote for Decriminalisation. When you advocate for this, it becomes much harder to use those laws against a legitimate and protected section of society. So in Victoria we have anti discrimination laws for sex workers, which is unheard of. That is, I think, and also brings.

Eve X: Up World first really interesting international human rights issues. Like if we are protected, then what right does Stripe have or the payment processes to prevent us from earning a legal income? So I think there is. There's a huge, like international human rights issue here. That is a question we just have. Don't have the resources to really push it. The UN generally does favour decriminalisation as well. Is the supported model as far as social media goes? Yeah. I mean, it's a bit of a nightmare. You know, all of our language is censored. We do all of our promotion with pictures of fruit and nature, which sits with our ethos anyway. But it is also a choice that we have made to try and just avoid the whole issue of bodies. So many of our educators get their accounts removed all the time. Shadowbann. Yeah. Like actually getting in front of people is very challenging this year. Part of the choice to do the Rim fest was to really focus in 90s like, you know, style real world community promotion. Like you know, just getting in the cafes, chatting to people, word of mouth.

Rane: Yeah, I do recall seeing a great image of an aeroplane.

Eve X: Yes, absolutely. We rely on just, you know, I Google random things that look like butts quite a lot. That's part of my job.

Sai: That's the search term.

Eve X: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've just got it saved. Once a year I look it up, find all the new ones.

Sai: So please send us your images of random things that look like butts.

Eve X: We're here for it. I'm gonna love looking at my inbox the day after this.

Sai: No dick pics, just butt. Just random things that looks like.

Jo: And no actual butts because they can't use those online.

Sai: That's not a random thing. That's a literal image of ass. But please listen to the brief.

Rane: Oh, last question. Okay, sorry. I'm like deer in the headlights. So I guess. Last question. We asked this of all our guests. If you could distil everything that you've learned and everything that you share with the world down to one core essence. I'll give you one each. Could you tell me what that is?

Sai: I can go first. There is no sin, only love.

Eve X: I was just gonna make it even shorter and just say love. Ha.

Sai: Oh, well, there you go. Sorry.

Jo: Sauce.

Rane: Beautiful.

Jo: Well, thanks for sharing the love with us today.

Eve X: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it. We're pretty loving folk.

Sai: Yeah. Yeah. Everything's to that framework and I think it's the thing the anchor that kind of like. Yeah. Keeps is centred even as we're exploring the edges. It's quite easy to get lost in the. In the shadows like that. That is the issue.

Eve X: Yeah. But always coming back to love and coming from a place of love and yeah.

Sai: Yeah.

Rane: We really hope you enjoyed our conversation with Arwen and Sai. We've put all of their links in our show notes on our website podcast.flow artist.com if you'd like to learn more. And again, a quick reminder that we'd love it if you could write us a quick review. You on Apple Podcasts or leave us some stars on Spotify. This is a great way to help others find the podcast and show your support. We also love hearing from our listeners and finding out what you enjoy about the podcast. We also really appreciate it when you share our posts about each episode or leave us a comment online. You can find us at the Flow Artist Podcast Facebook page or look for Run Loves Yoga or Garden of Yoga on Instagram. Instagram We're a DIY operation and your community support really helps. Special thanks go out to our Patreon supporters. Your donations help us cover editing and hosting costs and we appreciate you so much. You can even join our Patreon for free right now to get the latest updates, so just go to patreon.com flowartistpodcast our patreon members get lots of perks, including activity access to our online library at the Flow Artist Tier. We'd also like to express our gratitude to Ghost Soul for granting us permission to use their track Baby Robots as our theme song. Be sure to check out gosooul.bandcamp.com to discover more of their incredible music. Once again, thank you so much for spending your precious time with us. We appreciate you more than words can express. He Aroha Nui Maua Kia Koutou Katoa, sending you big big love.