Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:14]:
You’re listening to the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. Interesting chats with interesting people about interesting things and no adverts. Here’s your host, Keith Blakemore Noble. Hey, hello, hello. Welcome back, dear viewer, dear listener, however you’re catching us, thank you so much for joining me for another fab episode. I have a guest this episode, of course I do. It’s an even numbered episode. I have a guest, My guest this week, my guest is a lady called Naomi.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:51]:
And Naomi is a sexual and genital pain specialist. She supports women to heal their pelvic and sexual numbness, their lack of libido and orgasm, their pain and discomfort so that they can live a life. They can live a turned on life full of pleasure, passion and epic sex. That’s my guest today, Naomi Harris. Let’s bring her in. Naomi, are you there?

Naomi Harris [00:01:17]:
I am here. Thank you so much, Keith. It’s so fun to be here.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:21]:
Oh, thank you so much for coming along as well. The whole ethos behind the show is interesting chats with interesting people about interesting things. So we can cover all manner of topics. Yours is a topic we’ve never covered before and it’s a topic which is going to be an important topic of interest to a lot of people, men and women, women so they can understand how they can, they can help themselves and men so they can understand what’s going on and they can help as well. So I’m looking forward to learning a lot from this before we dive in, though. Before we dive in, Naomi, we’ve heard your bio, but who is Naomi? Who’s the lady behind it all?

Naomi Harris [00:02:05]:
This is the hardest question ever, Keith. Who is the, who is the face behind the bio? So you can possibly guess from the accent that I’m an Aussie. I’m living in Europe though, and I am passionate about women’s bodies, women’s pleasure, about breaking through some of the stories and the, the things that aren’t true that we’ve been taught about our own bodies and about our own sexuality and that unfortunately have led, led to a lot of women experiencing pain or numbness or issues with orgasm and. Yeah, changing the landscape of what’s actually going on out there. I do say I’ve got the best job in the world. It’s the most amazing thing that I have the privilege to do and I’m deeply passionate about it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:51]:
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s must be amazing when you, when you help these women to, to be able to, to overcome all of those, all of those problems and to actually experience The. The joy and passion for themselves.

Naomi Harris [00:03:04]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:05]:
I have to ask, how did you get in? How did you get into this? I’m guessing you weren’t at your careers counsellor at school going, you know what I want to do when I grow up. How did this happen after? You.

Naomi Harris [00:03:20]:
Just imagine if the careers counsellor was directing people down this route. Yes. I think, you know, Keith, it’s a little bit of a cliche, but it’s also true for me that I got into this through my own life experience. So I am my perfect client in a lot of ways. I was completely shut down. I didn’t orgasm. I was having terrible sex, to put it bluntly. And I had pain with sex.

Naomi Harris [00:03:43]:
And so when I started going down and. But I was also at the same time, working as a naturopath. I was already working in the healing profession. So when I started going down this path of working out for myself what was going on in my body, it just made sense that I would combine what I was learning with. With what I was already doing. And it just took off from there, and it’s been growing ever since.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:10]:
Wow. So. And that’s. That’s. That’s the thing with so many. So many people, I’m finding these days, they. They do what they do because, yeah, they needed the help originally, and there was nobody else around, so they figure it out, and they. And then in turn, are then able to help countless others as well.

Naomi Harris [00:04:28]:
Yes.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:30]:
That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. So when we were. When we were discussing the idea of. The idea for this episode, you gave me a couple of stats, which, really, I’m not gonna lie, they stunned me. You want to share those stats with. With our audience?

Naomi Harris [00:04:47]:
And look, the stats are in some ways debatable, because is the thing like, who’s talking about this? Women aren’t talking about this. Women aren’t talking about this with their closest friends. A lot of them aren’t even talking about it with their partners about the reality of having pain with sex or numbness or not orgasming or just not enjoying sex and pushing through. But what we think is around 70% of women will experience pain with penetration at some point in their lives. And up to 30% of women are having chronic symptoms of some kind of pain. And that’s just the pain, the numbness is probably a lot higher than that. Numbness is one of those things that. Because it’s an absence of feeling, that we’re not feeling something, it’s kind of one of those things that you don’t realise what you’re not feeling until you start feeling it.

Naomi Harris [00:05:37]:
And so there’s a lot of numbness going on out there that isn’t really even being noticed. And then the orgasm thing, like the orgasm gap, as it’s often called between men and women is often talked about. And it ranges from anywhere to 30% to 60%, depending on who you read and what you look at. But it’s enough women that it’s something that we really need to talk about and address.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:59]:
Yeah. And that’s what totally, totally stunned me when you said that. I mean, up to 70% of women have pain with sex at some point, and up to 60% of women just don’t experience orgasm at all.

Naomi Harris [00:06:18]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:18]:
Which is. I mean, I imagine if just 6% of men didn’t experience orgasm, boy, would we never hear the end of it.

Naomi Harris [00:06:29]:
There would be something that would be done. That’s no doubt about it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:32]:
Absolutely would. So let’s explore these two facets. Let’s start with. Well, let’s jump straight in with the orgasm. Why is it that so many women.

Naomi Harris [00:06:44]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:45]:
Don’t experience orgasm?

Naomi Harris [00:06:47]:
Oh, okay. So this is not that. It’s actually not that easy. It would be so wonderful if there was an easy answer to this. And if there was an easy answer, we could push that button and then all the problems would be sorted and then I’d be out of work, which would be wonderful. But it’s complicated because women’s bodies are complicated and women’s pleasure and sexuality and sensuality is really complicated. And there are so many different reasons that orgasm isn’t something that. Is something that a lot of women are struggling with.

Naomi Harris [00:07:19]:
So there’s reasons like women are not educated about their own bodies. I’m a really, really strong believer in education and true education about the capacity of the female body to have pleasure and to have sensation. But, you know, I don’t know about you, Keith, but my sex ed at school and as a young person was, don’t get diseases, don’t get pregnant, and don’t do it until you. That was my religious upbringing. There was no consideration of, by the way, you’ve got this amazing body and there’s things that you can discover, and why not work that out for yourself? And why not touch yourself and learn yourself in those ways? And so a lot of women are coming into adulthood without ever having had experiences of their own, positive experiences with themselves, of themselves, to learn themselves. So that’s the first thing. How can we know what we like if we never experience it? And then women are unfortunately, having not very positive sexual experiences with, with other people a lot of the time. Porn culture has a lot to answer for, unfortunately.

Naomi Harris [00:08:23]:
It’s really setting women up to not succeed, especially young women who are coming through now. There’s been a massive impact in the ways that women’s bodies are being approached and that sex is happening. And it doesn’t always often doesn’t suit the female body. So that’s a couple of things. And then, you know, there’s things like a woman, a woman’s body needs safety in order to fully relax and surrender. And it’s a very vulnerable thing. People, Sex has become such a commodity that it’s, it’s such a. Like people are so blasé about the act of it, right.

Naomi Harris [00:08:57]:
Like something is put inside another person’s body and technically there’s going to be pleasure coming from that. But nobody stops and goes, something’s being put inside another person’s body and it’s so deeply vulnerable and it can have such a huge impact, whether it’s a positive impact or a negative impact on the, on the female body. And a lot of the time, like things have been put inside our bodies without due care or without an understanding from the other person that maybe there needs to be a certain energy around it or a certain safety or a certain way of doing this that really supports, supports the body to fully open up. And women are, you know, we’re not speaking up for ourselves and we’re not saying for what we want. And if we don’t already know, if we’re not investigating for ourselves what we want, how can we ask for what we want, let alone feeling brave enough to ask for what we want? And that’s literally the tip of the iceberg of the reasons why. Like, we could talk about that for hours. The reasons why it’s so complex.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:09:56]:
Yeah. And I, I can imagine because let’s face, the human body is, yeah, very complex, complex machine. And they’re all different in, in some way, shape or form.

Naomi Harris [00:10:05]:
So that’s, and that’s a really important thing. We’re very much taught as well that the clitoris is the go to for the orgasm. But for a lot of women, the clitoris actually isn’t a go to at all. But we’re never like, encouraged to go. But what if your best orgasms come from a certain point right within, inside the vagina? And unless you go for a treasure hunt, you’re not going to find that. So you might just end up disappointed all the time because every woman’s body is Different.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:32]:
Exactly. Exactly. So I’m going to assume that part of the. I’m not going to say responsibility. Part of the cause of women not experiencing orgasm. Part of it may be down to the woman, and part of it maybe down to the partner. First of all, the woman, what can she do to alleviate this or to overcome this?

Naomi Harris [00:11:00]:
Yeah, I think the first good thing to do is to actually start being really honest and speaking up about what’s happening because we can push things aside and make everybody else’s happiness and our own responsibility for a very long time. We’re well trained often as young girls to do that, but to really stop and go, hey, this isn’t working for me. And it hasn’t been working for me for a while. In fact, it possibly never has. And I want that to be different. That’s a really good first step. And then it’s to start to slowly investigate what we do want. You know, I talk to my clients often in my community that we rarely touch.

Naomi Harris [00:11:42]:
I don’t know about you guys, Keith, but as women, we rarely touch our genitals for anything other than medical reasons, for cleanliness, hygiene reasons, or to, you know, like use a vibrator on a clitoris in order to get an end result of an orgasm if we’re having them. And that’s like, that’s it. We don’t spend time with this part of our body. We’re not friends with this part of our body. It’s not integrated into our whole being. And that comes at a cost, I think, because we’re not coming. We’re not coming into this relationship with our bodies from like an empowered place. And yeah, so that’s one of the ones.

Naomi Harris [00:12:22]:
And then like I said already is like slowing down and touching ourselves. And one of the more difficult things that I suggest, and I’m aware that this is difficult and yet it’s really, really beautiful and important is when we’re touching our genitals. So say there’s a woman listening. And she’s like, right, okay, I’m going to sort this out. It’s time. And then she’s like, well, then I’m going to investigate what’s actually going on and I’m going to learn my own body and I’m going to work this. This all out. We tend to go into these experiences ticking off our to do list.

Naomi Harris [00:12:53]:
We’re like, okay, I got to get this thing sorted out next. And the body is sitting there going, but I’m not a to do list. Stop it. And it actually just wants to be related to and it wants to be touched and it wants to, there wants to be a relationship. So touching our bodies without having the need for an end result, whether that’s an orgasm or something else, is really important. Like just touch our bodies for the sake of touching them and for being present with our own bodies is really, really important as well and can be really difficult.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:24]:
So I guess, I guess basically just get comfortable with, with touching and with exploring as you say, without having an end goal in mind other than simply to enjoy the experience of, of exploring and the more. Yeah, you will start to find what, what does do it for you and what doesn’t.

Naomi Harris [00:13:45]:
Exactly.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:46]:
Yeah, basically. Basically the thing teenage guys have been doing for years. Unfortunately, women tend not to get, well, get actively discouraged from, from anything like that, which is.

Naomi Harris [00:13:56]:
Yeah, I mean we didn’t talk at the beginning about the reasons why, but I mean talking about shame and fear and the ways that we’ve been, you know, taught to not touch our own bodies has often been quite harsh, you know, in a lot of ways, let alone the traumas and things that can also come with having a female body. So yeah, there’s a lot going on there.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:19]:
Absolutely. So that’s, that’s what the woman can do for herself to, to start to explore and basically figure out what does do it for me, what doesn’t, what do I enjoy, what don’t I enjoy.

Naomi Harris [00:14:32]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:34]:
How can her partner, if she’s with a partner, how can a partner help through all of this?

Naomi Harris [00:14:42]:
So I suspect that with the female bodied partners it’s a little bit easier because you’re coming at this with similar genitals and there is a common language that’s being spoken. Right. So I’m going to address the male partners because I think that’s where the bigger gap is. So the first thing that I would say to the men is there needs to be. Well, maybe that’s a bit strong, but it would be supportive for a lot of women if there could be an understanding that women’s sexuality and women’s bodies are really complicated and if she needs to speak up and say, hey, this isn’t working for me, it’s not personal, it doesn’t mean anything about you, it doesn’t mean anything about your skills or about how much you’re providing pleasure for her or whatever is going on there, there’s just a mismatch there somewhere. And talking about it is an opportunity to bring it to life and do something about it. I know from conversations with a lot, a lot of women that, that it can become a little bit of a, an insult to the men if the woman says, hey, I’m, you know, this isn’t working. While it could also just be an opportunity of going, oh, wow, so what does, you know, like, show me what does.

Naomi Harris [00:15:58]:
So that’s one thing. The second thing is coming towards a woman’s body. And again, like I mentioned at the beginning, and I really can’t overemphasise the need for safety for a woman’s bodies. A lot of us don’t actually understand how it feels to be safe in a nervous system. And by safe I mean able to fully relax and fully surrender without any edginess or without anything kind of holding us back in any way. And so the more that a man can regulate his own nervous system, do the work of leaving his emotions out of the bedroom just like she needs to as well do the work of leaving his day behind and not bringing all of that into intimate experiences just like she needs to do as well. Like this is going both ways as well to actually come together in intimacy as a, as a separate act from everything else that’s going on in life. And it’s a lot like we talked about before we started recording.

Naomi Harris [00:16:56]:
Life is what it is right now. But to make intimacy like something a little bit more gentle and a little bit more sacred would be very supportive for women. And there’ll be women listening to these who are going, that doesn’t relate to me. And that’s, that’s nothing to do with me. And what I’ll offer to them is that for a lot of us, we don’t actually know how it feels to not be either going, I’m going to have sex in order to get something, which is an orgasm or something else, or I’m just going to push through it or like to actually relax and surrender and spend the time that the body needs is really, really important. So that will be my big ones is let’s do the work on ourselves and encourage women to speak up without having any, like, blowback from that.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:42]:
Yeah. And I think, I think one of the key things for men in such a situation is, guys, don’t be a dick. If the woman is saying, this doesn’t do it for me. It’s not, it’s not you, it’s nothing with you. It’s simply that that’s not what does it for her. However, if she says this doesn’t do it for me and you ignore her, then it very much is on you. So if she says, honey, this Isn’t doing it for me. Okay, well, what is? Let’s explore.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:11]:
Let’s explore together. Find out what really does it for you.

Naomi Harris [00:18:14]:
Absolutely.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:16]:
Yeah.

Naomi Harris [00:18:17]:
And Even if it’s 15 years after you got married, she’s finally spoken up.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:22]:
Yeah.

Naomi Harris [00:18:23]:
That can be a lot. I know that can be really confronting because for a man to realise that his woman hasn’t been enjoying herself for decades, I totally understand the weight of that and how much that can really impact. And it could also be looked at as a celebration of, okay, now we can do something about it. You know, like, you can reframe these things a little bit. And it’s a conversation. Why didn’t you talk to me? What’s actually going on here? Because there’s something going on. If that’s happening.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:55]:
I would suspect the key thing, if you’ve been in that marriage 15 years and finally your wife says, you know what? It just doesn’t do it for me. I guess the key thing is acknowledge her vulnerability and openness. Don’t go there. Oh, well, why have you never said anything before? Because she’s never been able to. And the fact that you then start questioning it maybe suggests she was right not to say anything. But on the other hand, if you go, oh, okay, well, what can we do so that the rest of our marriage. You do enjoy it, then that’s a much more. Much more helpful position in which to be.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:31]:
And that will, in turn help her to open up more as well. Yeah.

Naomi Harris [00:19:36]:
And just acknowledging that relating is difficult. Let’s be honest. Two or more people coming together and trying to work stuff out, it’s not easy. It’s not easy. And sometimes getting help is useful in these situations as well. A really big one that’s coming up.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:51]:
So. Yeah. So we’ve explored orgasm and why 50 or 60% of women don’t experience orgasm. And we’ve had a look at what the woman can do and what the partner can do, because it is a partnership and both can contribute. Just for that. For the. The briefly. For the latter part of this episode, the other statistic you.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:17]:
You came up with your. That you shared was that 30 to 70% of women will experience genital and sexual pain at some point. So what’s going on there?

Naomi Harris [00:20:29]:
Okay, so pain. It’s. This is a complex one, Keith. This is really complex. So it’s another situation where it’s not the same for every woman. And in fact, it’s never the same for every woman. And honestly, it’s also another situation where it can be quite surprising for women to finally realise that they have pain. I think I had sexual pain for about 12 years before I finally admitted it to myself that it was hurting.

Naomi Harris [00:20:55]:
I just blocked it for that long. So it is complex on many, many layers of our being and it also affects many, many layers of our lives. And you know, everything from confidence all the way up to relating and, you know, everything in between. And so, and it’s, and it’s also a complex situation where we have just the straight up physical things that could be going on in the body and then we have the belief patterns or the, the mind body or the mind sexuality connection that could be feeding into it as well. And then of course we have things like traumas that we’ve experienced that are definitely impacting and just to say as well, so I have clients who come to me and go, I don’t understand what’s happening. I’ve got this incredible pain. I can’t, for example, I can’t have penetration without it being excruciating. And it’s actually just not possible.

Naomi Harris [00:21:47]:
But I wasn’t abused as a child and I don’t understand why me and you know, because we can build up this belief or this understanding that things have to be very bad to have created something like pain. But the truth is that pain can occur from things like penetration happening before the body is ready to be penetrated. And the reality of arousal for a lot of women is that we need between 20 to 40%. 20 to 40 minutes. I’m so sorry, 20 to 40 minutes to be fully aroused and ready for penetration. And there’s a lot of women out there who are having sex where 20 minutes is not an option for foreplay with their partners, let alone the full 40 minutes that their bodies may need. Which means that we’re having penetration experiences where the body’s not ready for it. And that actually can set us up for pain because that gets stored in the body.

Naomi Harris [00:22:40]:
And if there’s the repeat experience that can also trigger things. But also childhood experiences that are not sexual in any way, shape or form can actually get stored in the pelvis for release when we’re adults and we have more capacity to release them. So just to say that if you are experiencing pain, if this is one of the things that you’re managing, don’t feel frightened about getting help because you’re not sure what you’re going to find out, it’s worth investigating, it’s worth speaking with someone, somebody about it to discover. And it can be really, really complex. But that doesn’t Mean that you’re stuck with it forever as well.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:22]:
Yeah, got it, got it. And the thing that struck me as most interesting There is the 20 to 40 minutes of foreplay for a woman to be fully ready, which I know there are going to be, I hate to say it, there are going to be some guys listening to this who we. 20 to 40 minutes. But yeah, take, take time, take the.

Naomi Harris [00:23:46]:
Time to, to really spend time. And honestly Keith, there’ll be a lot of women listening going, I don’t need that long. And there’s going to be a lot of women listening who had, don’t actually know what it feels like to have a fully aroused body because they’ve never had those experiences with themselves or with a lover. Because if we’re having the sort of sex that is just nipple, nipple clitoris and that’s, you know, that’s the foreplay, our bodies don’t have an opportunity to experience what full arousal feels like and looks like and is in the body. So there’s that as well. Yes.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:22]:
Right. Right. So in for both, both cases for the, the or lack of orgasm and also for the, the pain side of it, if I understand correctly, part of it is be aware that as a woman you are, you can have pain free orgasm.

Naomi Harris [00:24:44]:
Absolutely.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:46]:
And if you’re not, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you but it does mean you need to find out a bit more. Perhaps work with someone like Naomi and we’ll have a look at just how people can get in touch with in just a second like explore your body a bit more. Because women are so much stigma and so much about women exploring themselves whereas guys do it at the drop of a hat. And for the guys, if you’re, if your partner is saying this hurts or I’m not, not getting orgasm, listen to her. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong. It just means that you two haven’t found the thing which makes it magic for, for the two of you. So listen to her. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:34]:
Work together because it is a partnership and it can be something beautiful when you work together.

Naomi Harris [00:25:39]:
Yeah, Beautiful.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:41]:
Thank you. So, yeah, I know you help, you help many, many women to, to overcome these, these, these issues. How can people find out more or maybe even get in touch with you?

Naomi Harris [00:25:53]:
So my website is the pleasure naturopath there at the bottom of the screen and on my website there’s the opportunity to book in for a free chat with me. You can have a, come and have a conversation about what you’re experiencing. And I also have a lot of resources. On the top of the website, there’s a little tab called Free. And I’ve been giving free online classes every month this, this summer. And so there’s all sorts of things up there. And there’s actually also a class for men, all about women’s anatomy. So if you’re a man who’s listening and you want to learn more about women’s bodies and women’s pleasure and sexuality, that’s a fun one to come along to as well.

Naomi Harris [00:26:32]:
And then there’s a bunch of ones for women as well.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:26:36]:
Beautiful. So that’s www.thepleasurenaturopath.com.

Naomi Harris [00:26:42]:
That’S me.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:26:43]:
A whole bunch of resources there. A bunch of resources for women and a bunch of resources for men. Because a lot of it is our responsibility as well. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Thank you so much, Naomi. Unfortunately, time is marching against us as it’s always done. But I’ve learned a few things here.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:27:04]:
I’m hoping that listeners, men and women, will have learned some things here. Hopefully some will be going off to put some of this into practice, learning a bit more about themselves, learning a bit more about each other. Thank you so much, Naomi. Thank you, dear viewer, dear listener, however you caught us, thank you for listening. Remember, give us a like a share, a comment, subscribe, review us on your favourite platform. It all helps or helps to spread the word. And do go check and check Naomi’s site out as well. And that’s it for this week.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:27:40]:
I’ll catch you in another episode very soon. Thank you for joining us. You’ve been listening to the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. To find out more, Visit KeithBlakemoreNoble.com.