Power & Play: The Shortcut Series (with Ruby Ray)

My best friend Dani Beutell joins us for this one!

We've known each other for nearly a decade through our shared lineage of nondual classical Tantra (also sometimes referred to as Kashmir Shaivism), and after years of daily voice memos, spiritual inquiry, heartbreak processing, silly sapphic witchcraft, and relentlessly calling each other forth toward the truth, I invited her to interview me about the story behind my work.

We go all the way back: growing up Mormon in Idaho, my childhood rebellion and longing for magic, achievement addiction, Duke and Google, discovering coaching and Tantra, motherhood, my queer awakening, the dissolution of my marriage, heartbreak, and the underworld years that forced me to confront some of the deepest places I'd still been abandoning myself.

We also talk about what all of this taught me about liberation: learning to trust what you already know, telling the truth before you know what comes next, disentangling yourself from conditioning, and becoming increasingly unavailable for the ways you edit, diminish, or abandon yourself.

Plus: lesbian nunnery, gay-girl pants, pussy worship, weird-girl magic, sexual energy as a source of inner power, the Goddess's ruthless methods, and why healing gets a whole lot more effective when you remember your mischief.

In this episode, we get into:

• The childhood signs that I was never going to follow the prescribed path
• Internalized patriarchy, shame, achievement, and the need to be impressive
• Why getting everything you thought you were supposed to want can still leave you “dying on the vine”
• My queer awakening and the terrifying work of telling the truth
• What my biggest relationship endings taught me about self-trust
• Why liberation doesn't necessarily mean blowing up your life
• How self-abandonment shows up in careers, relationships, leadership, and everyday decisions
• The intersection of leadership coaching, somatic work, Tantra, and sexual energy in my work
• The question I return to when I need clarity: What do I already know is true that I haven't been willing to admit?
• Why nobody can do your inner work for you—and why you're also not meant to do it alone
• Power, pleasure, play, and taking the fast(er) track to freedom

Come play with me:
Join my free 7-Day Power & Play Challenge for a week of practices, experiments, and playful little dares designed to turn up your power, pleasure, and full expression.

Join the free challenge: https://rubyray.kit.com/power-and-play-challenge

Find me on IG: https://www.instagram.com/_ekatpetrova/

Find me on Substack: https://ekatpetrova.substack.com/

Find Dani:
Dani teaches lineage-based classical Tantra through Kanta Tantra, her intimate practice and study community.

Website: https://www.kantatantra.com/

Weekly "Tantra in Real Life" study group: https://kantatantra.circle.so/checkout/tantra-in-real-life-monthly-membership

IG: https://www.instagram.com/kantatantra/

Substack: https://danibeutell.substack.com/

There is a faster way to heal and grow…

and it lives between your legs.

In this episode of Power & Play: The Shortcut Series, I’m talking about something I’ve been hesitant to share this openly—until now:

pussy as a portal to healing, confidence, pleasure, intuition, and self-liberation.

I share my personal story of struggling with deep unworthiness—including a pivotal Ayahuasca experience that revealed just how low my self-esteem was—and how years of mindset work, therapy, spiritual practice, yoga, meditation, and coaching didn’t fully shift it…

until I started working with my body in a completely different way.

In this episode, we explore:

• why so many women and vulva-bodied beings feel disconnected from their bodies, and how early shame plays a role
• why your nervous system—not just your mindset—is the key to real transformation
• how attention, pleasure, reverence, and corrective experiences can help rewire your sense of safety
• why and how your pussy can be a powerful access point for healing, intuition, confidence, voice, and desire
• what I’ve witnessed inside my Pussy Worship Ceremonies and yoni self-portrait painting parties
• the difference between conscious self-connection and goal-oriented self-pleasure
• simple practices for beginning a magical relationship with your pussy
• an important invitation around consent and learning to listen to your body’s yes and no

This is not about being “more sexual.”

It’s about becoming more you.

If this episode resonates, you can:

• Explore deeper reflections and practices on my Substack, including my piece on what happens inside my Pussy Worship Ceremonies
• Get my 10-minute “power reclaim” guided audio for when you’re feeling stuck, small, or disempowered
• Book a Sacred Mirror call to explore working together

How to stop fighting your shadows and extract the life force they hold

In this episode of Power & Play: The Shortcut Series, we descend into the Underworld — the inner realm of shadow, repression, taboo, and buried life force.

If you’ve ever felt ashamed of your rage, neediness, fantasies, or any part of yourself that doesn’t fit the image of being “healed,” “good,” or “spiritual,” this conversation is an invitation to stop trying to transcend those parts and start listening to them instead.

Because what you exile does not disappear.

It waits for you in the underworld — carrying some of your most potent medicine.

In this episode, we explore shadow work not as darkness for darkness’s sake, but as a path to more aliveness, more truth, more pleasure, and more wholeness.

We cover:

• What the “Underworld” actually is in the psyche
• How shadow forms through repression, shame, and social conditioning
• Why shadow work can return abandoned life force
• Emotional constipation and how undigested emotion gets stored in the body
• Why you cannot selectively numb pain without also numbing pleasure
• Emotional digestion as a core practice for wellbeing and ease and flow
• The Underworld as initiation, including dark nights of the soul
• My personal story of understanding jealousy in a whole new way through aspecting at The Jealousy Playground
• How a shadow part can reveal wisdom, power, and erotic intelligence
• Why the needy and desperate parts of us are often the hardest to sit with
• Existential Kink and the unconscious charge we may derive from patterns we consciously say we hate
• How kink can be an intentional underworld practice
• How erotic energy can help transmute shadow into creative power

Resources:

Blog post: 3 Secret Weapons for Surviving a Dark Night of the Soul

Blog Post: Are You Emotionally Constipated?

30-minute guided emotional digestion practice

🔥 PS. I’m currently planning a shadow work retreat so we can do this work in a deep way together in community and in-person. So excited about this!
If this episode resonated and you want to be invited when details drop, send me a DM on Instagram (@iamrubyray)

And make sure you’re on my email list so you hear about it first. (When you sign up, you’ll get a free gift: a 10-minute “power reclaim” guided audio for when you’re feeling stuck and disempowered in any situation.)

Next podcast episode:
Pussy as Portal: Erotic Energy, Truth & Embodied Power
We’ll explore the mysticism of embodiment and the oracle between your legs. Stay tuned!

In this third episode of Power & Play: The Shortcut Series, we explore pleasure not as a luxury — but as nourishment, leverage, and jet fuel for liberation.

If you’ve been living in contraction, exhaustion, resentment, or quiet burnout, this conversation illuminates how exactly to use pleasure as a daily practice that restores life force and accelerates transformation.

We cover:

• How pleasure starvation creates “dull yoni energy”
• The hidden cost of postponing pleasure
• Pleasure as nervous system regulation
• How presence transforms ordinary moments into nourishment
• Desire as a sacred compass
• The practice of identifying your “delicious yes”
• Why desire is information, not impulse
• Sexual energy as a high-leverage shortcut for empowerment
• Using pleasure practices during heartbreak and difficult seasons

Key ideas:

• Pleasure doesn’t replace challenging inner work — it supercharges it.
• The more you know what you want, the more you become who you are.
• Desire is not about getting what you want — it’s about becoming more alive in the wanting.
• A true delicious yes aligns you with the whole, not against it.

Practice invitation:

Pause sometime this week and ask:
“What is my ‘delicious yes’ in this moment?”

Shoutout to my teacher Kiran Trace for the teaching on delicious yes!

Check out her amazing podcast here.

🔥 Practice This Work Live With Me

If this episode resonated and you’d like to practice these tools in community, Power & Play is a 3-month group coaching journey where we apply this work to your real life — with coaching, support, and embodied practice.

The podcast is the philosophy.
The group is the laboratory.

We begin in May but you can get on the waitlist now. Learn more here.

In this episode of Power & Play: The Shortcut Series, we explore one of the biggest and most overlooked power leaks in women’s lives: believing our thoughts without question.

Building on Episode 1’s theme of responsibility as liberation, this conversation looks at how negative thinking, overthinking, and story-making quietly run our emotions, behavior, and sense of what’s possible — and how inquiry becomes a direct shortcut to reclaiming power.

You’ll learn:

• Why much of our suffering is created by thoughts that argue with reality
• How believing disempowering stories gives our power away
• Why thoughts are tools, not truths
• How inquiry loosens the grip of painful beliefs
• The difference between self-surveillance and real inner work
• How “purified thought” (śuddha-vikalpa) differs from positive thinking
• Simple ways to train the mind in everyday life — through meditation, neutral spaces, and identity re-orientation

This episode offers practical, grounded tools for interrupting mental loops and reclaiming agency — without bypass, self-blame, or spiritual platitudes.

Next episode: Pleasure Alchemy — how nourishing the nervous system and following your desire supercharges liberation.

🔗 Resources mentioned

* Guided meditations on my Substack: “Don’t Know Mind” meditation and more.

* Guided yoga nidra: Healing source energy

* Meditation app: Insight Timer

* Byron Katie

💬 Work with me directly

If you want support applying this work to your life, relationships, or leadership, I work privately with women, nonbinary folks, femmes and couples. You’re welcome to reach out to explore whether it’s a fit.

IG: @iamrubyray

Website: rubyray.co

Why most women are living at a fraction of their power — and how liberation begins inside

In this opening episode of Power & Play: The Shortcut Series, I introduce the core framework of the series: how self-liberation accelerates when we reclaim our power through responsibility and use pleasure and play as fuel.

You’ll learn:

• What the “inner patriarchy” is and how it runs your life from the inside
• Why most attempts at liberation keep women stuck and exhausted
• What it actually means to take responsibility without self-blame
• How decentering external approval restores agency
• Why power, pleasure, and play together form a shortcut to liberation

This episode sets the foundation for the entire series and introduces the key themes we’ll explore in future episodes — from inquiry and embodiment to shadow, eros, and embodied rebellion.

Next episode: Inquiry as Liberation — how to stop being run by your mind and start using it as a tool for freedom.

In the meantime, find me here:

Substack: High on Your Own Supply (with Ruby Ray) - be sure to subscribe!

IG: @iamrubyray

Website: rubyray.co

Free resources mentioned in this episode:

“Break Free from Victim Consciousness in 10 Minutes”

Guided audio practice to help you shift your energy and reclaim your power anytime things aren’t going your way.

Download it here

“Masterclass Video: The Tantrik Path to Liberation from Victimhood”

40-minute masterclass video on using radical responsibility and existential kink to break out of a disempowering victimhood mindset, or the “demon realm” as it’s called in classical Tantra.

Download it here