In this episode of Universal Intimacy on ⁨@TempleofLoha⁩ host Josephine Lauer sits down with Ashley Summers and Nicole Sonnefeldt, co-founders of the upcoming women’s empowerment retreat UNLEASHED: https://www.thisisunleashed.com/ taking place in Chicago on February 21, 2026. Together we explore the deeply personal journeys that led Ashley and Nicole to create a trauma-informed, sex-positive space for women to reconnect with their fullest selves.Ashley shares her evolution as a photographer, creative, and mother, weaving together her background in therapeutic recreation and her path from religious shame to embodied self-expression. She reflects on how boudoir photography became a powerful tool for trust, vulnerability, and helping others feel truly seen—what she calls her “ultimate kink.”Nicole brings her perspective as a coach, former therapist, and sex-positive activist. With a background in counseling psychology and trauma-informed modalities, she opens up about her experiences with polyamory, pansexuality, and the challenges of navigating professional boundaries while honoring her own sexual authenticity. Her transition from therapist to coach allowed her to work more freely with individuals, couples, and polycules seeking expanded ways of relating. The conversation culminates in the vision behind UNLEASHED: a retreat designed to help women unlearn shame, soften into connection, and experience open-hearted community. UNLEASHED offers a somatic, trauma-informed flow—combining movement, reflection, and intimate workshops—to support deep feminine connection, surrender, and self-acceptance. This episode is an honest, expansive dialogue about 3 women's journey thru sexuality, creativity, healing, and what becomes possible when women are supported in showing up as their whole selves. We cover topics including, Ethnical Non-Monogamy (ENM), The Power of Community, Competition vs. Support between Women, Trauma and Touch and Co-Regulation.Register for the retreat at: https://www.thisisunleashed.com/

Use code "PODCAST" for an 11% discount off ticket price

Lana Shay is a lifelong holistic living advocate, medicine woman, psychonaut, and practitioner of the Tantric arts whose journey weaves together sensuality, spirituality, and deep healing. With a background spanning integrated holistic medicine and psychedelic-assisted therapies, Lana brings a bold and embodied perspective shaped by transformation, devotion, and lived experience. In this episode, Lana shares her path of guiding others toward holistic living through alternative healing, erotic arts, plant medicines, entheogens, and a profound connection to Source. Her unique lens explores what it means to be deeply seen, nourished, and loved—blending sex, food, and healing into a sacred, intentional way of life. She also introduces The Pure Way, her philosophy and company born from the fusion of ancient wisdom, modern wellness, and personal integrity. At its core, The Pure Way is about harmony: sensuality and spirituality, discipline and pleasure, self-awareness and sacred relationship—offering a pathway to embodied wholeness and conscious living.You can her weekly writings and audio transmissions on Substack: https://substack.com/@lanashayFollow along for more on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamlanashay/

Welcome to Season 2 of Universal Intimacy! On this episode, I welcome Selene Ashé: a multi-disciplinary artist, erotic dancer, author of The Diary of a Bad Bitch: True Stories of Sensuality, Self-Discovery, and Spiritual Alchemy, and the mastermind responsible for "Conscious Cabaret" a sober cabaret that seeks to provide a safe space for erotic artists to express themselves fully and to cultivate presence for all involved using the magic of Eros.

In the following conversation, Selene takes us on a journey through her life and shares the wisdom she has gained along the way. She speaks to how her Cuban roots have influenced her relationship with her own sensuality and expression, her firsthand experience with listening to the wisdom of the body, how having trust in herself and her art has transformed her life and so much more. Selene is a wealth of knowledge for women seeking to face their shadows, stand in their power, and honor their creative artistry.

To see more of Selene, you can find her at:

https://seleneashe.com/ to find her current offerings

https://www.instagram.com/sutra_musa/ to follow her dance practice

https://www.instagram.com/seleneashe/ to follow her writings

https://www.tiktok.com/@seleneashe to see her silly day-to-day antics

If you would like to learn more about Selene’s journey towards embodiment, you can find all of the juicy details in her book, The Diary of a Bad Bitch: True Stories of Sensuality, Self-Discover, and Spiritual Alchemy, available online at: https://www.amazon.com/Diary-Bad-Bitch-Sensuality-Self-Discovery-ebook/dp/B0F6T9DNZR

In this illuminating episode of Universal Intimacy, host Josephine Lauer sits down with Cheyenne Sapphire—a Divine Channel, Tantric Practitioner, and visionary guide known for her transformational Surrender Sessions. Together, they explore the rich and intricate terrain where art, spirituality, healing, and empowerment converge. Cheyenne, an elite empowerment coach and multi-modality healing artist, brings her signature blend of elegance, sexuality, spirituality, and raw creative expression to the conversation. Josephine and Cheyenne delve into her path as a practitioner, discussing how she weaves ritual, embodiment, and artistry into potent forms of personal liberation. They explore Cheyenne’s pioneering work in Prayerformance—a fusion of prayer, performance art, and ritual theater—and her role in crafting immersive erotic and spiritual experiences around the world. At its heart, this conversation is an exploration of what becomes possible when we surrender to authenticity, reclaim our embodied wisdom, and let creativity become a spiritual path. Cheyenne’s name has become synonymous with liberation and inspiration—and in this episode, Josephine reveals the depth and devotion behind that legacy, while also bravely moves into territory often left untouched—unpacking the taboo intersections of race, sacred spaces and the nuanced, sometimes controversial realm of esoteric teachings.

You can learn more about Cheyenne's work on her website: https://www.cheyennesapphire.com/

and

IG: @cheyennesapphireofficial

Allan McGrath Isbell is an embodied intimacy mentor who works with men and women to truly live the teachings of sacred intimacy. At the core of Allan’s work is the sacred dance of polarity - the magnetic force that draws men and women together in their most natural and powerful expression. We talk about these concepts as well as a bit about Allan's personal relationship in this episode, sharing a deeply intimate view of masculine and feminine relations which I hope will inspire each and every listener to cultivate a deeper awareness and attunement to the masculine and feminine frequencies within themselves, as well as provide insight into how you can relate to the opposite sex in your life, via navigating conflict and connection. As Somatic practitioners, we discuss the importance of nervous system regulation, breath work, posture and presence, which is needed in the masculine to contain and hold the totality of the volatile feminine. Allan is the founder of Thirteen Pines, a men's group program, and host of in-person Polarity and Intimacy Immersions in Boulder, CO. You can find out more about him and his teachings at https://www.allanmcgrathisbell.com/

This episode explores a unqiue intersection between education, health and kink / pleasure-based healing with my guest Faith Laux. Faith is a Somatic Sex and Relationship coach based in Asheville, NC. In May of 2022 she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Since then she has been adding pleasure as a healing modality to help her and her clients thrive and enjoy life. Faith weaves her experience with emotional intelligence, erotic leadership, tantra, conscious kink, movement and somatic coaching to form a unique space for those she serves to connect with their authentic erotic expression. She is normalizing the conversation around sexuality, kink, illness and desire. When her cancer returned in 2025 Faith went on a supervised two week fast, drinking only water, to help reset her body and heal at a deeper level. It was a modern Vision Quest that’s left her more connected than ever to her purpose. She's here to share this incredible journey with us all, and help all of us have more pleasure in our lives!

Victoria Magnus speaks on grief, eating disorders, addiction, and the unexpected empowerment of sexual submission in this raw and real conversation on how losing control led her home to power, purpose, and feminine embodiment. This episode speaks to and for any woman, especially for the woman who’s done playing nice — and is ready to rise, raw and whole. This is for the woman who’s been silenced, shaped, or shattered, as a reminder that this path home might just look like surrender, radical reclamation, feminine fire, and taboo as transformation. Sharing this episode with her is incredibly meaningful because of the sacred sisterhood woundings we have healed together – proving that you can be triggered by other women and become deep, life-long friends with them. We explore the medicine that has been revealed in our collective journeys, and in our friendships with other women. Victoria Magnus is a multidimensional practitioner devoted to guiding others into embodied remembrance through the sacred technologies of Kundalini Activation, intuitive energy work, Reiki, channeling, and somatic body-based healing. Her practice is rooted in the alchemy of transformation—where shadow meets light, and the body becomes the bridge between the two. With a gift for navigating the unseen and unspoken, Victoria specializes in shadow work, helping clients uncover the parts of themselves that have long been hidden, buried, or silenced. She believes that within the depths of our repression lie the very keys to our freedom—the raw, wild, beautiful truths of who we really are. Her work invites the grief, rage, shame, and longing to surface—not to be feared, but to be honored, felt, and expressed. This is not surface-level work—it is the sacred art of returning to wholeness. And Victoria embodies this in this podcast episode as well, shedding the layers and going deep, to touch your heart and soul, as a sacred anchor for your becoming.

You can follow Victoria on IG: @the_sovereign_sage

Sign up for her next group workshop INNER ALCHEMY on Oct 7th in Chicago by going to www.cur8chicago.com

In this episode we explore the underground world of Professional Domme-ing, a space when femme embodied practitioners help support their client's growth via transformational healing journeys, sensory & edge play and being of service, all via the erotic expansion of individuals. Josephina is joined by 2 Pro Domme's, Honeybee and Queen Velvet Amethyst. Honeybee is the founder of Flow Temple Chicago, a femme-bodied se.ggs positive space where individuals, couples and multi-dynamic relational beings get to express and explore their fullest selves possible, all held of safe containers by trained professionals. She is also a dancer, performer, Temple Arts practitioner, producer and Creatrix, who weaves her artistry, poise and presence into a multitude of fields. Queen Velvet Amethyst is based in Tulum, Mexico and fuses her experiences in event planning, experience design, marketing and spirituality with her attuned capacity to take her clients on remarkable journeys that can blow their minds and crack open their souls! Our intention here on Universal Intimacy is to not just share with you their incredible expertise and energy, but to also de-bunk and de-mystify the world of dom'ing/domme'ing, because our society and culture can project shame, misunderstanding and fear onto this niche of the human experience. So many humans are curious about this world, and it is our hope that this episode helps you to understand it from an integrated wholeness - fusing spirituality, psychodrama/psychotherapy, trauma-informed healing, somatics, the arts, and energy together in a way that shift humanity from fear into love, from shame into acceptance and from seeing separation into feeling the interconnectedness of All.