The Sexual Wellness Sessions

There is a real lack of conversation around many medical conditions, and especially those which are not immediately visible, and MRKH falls into this category. Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome is a congenital condition which is characterised by the vagina and uterus being underdeveloped or absent, alongside other symptoms. As there are no physically outwards signs until someone reaches puberty and doesn't start their period, this leaves many discovering that they have the condition and everything that comes with it, typically around ages 16-18.

There are so many factors that can impact someone with the condition from being unable to carry a pregnancy, to uncomfortable, painful and sometimes impossible penetrative sex; through to the psychological influence, thoughts and shaping of identity and self-esteem, and the way that it can potentially shape relationships.

My brilliant guests for this conversation are both women with MRKH and huge advocates and conversation starters, and they bring so much of themselves to this episode as well as so much information about how we can get educated about a condition that impacts so many, but is still rarely heard of. 

Ally Hensley is an author, speaker and global ambassador for women's health. Born with MRKH syndrome, she advocates for awareness and support of this condition. Ally co-founded MRKH Australia and Global MRKH, and serves on the board of UK's MRKH Connect. Her podcast, Stigma Shakers, tackles taboo topics and has gained international recognition, and her debut memoir releases later in 2024.

Ellamae Fullalove, is an artist, speaker & founder of Va Va Womb, where she also runs her advocacy work - Mind Over MRKH. She founded a community where she curates social and mindful events in the UK , produced the worldwide MRKH podcast & sends gift boxes to MRKHers.  By day she works in social housing.

Follow Ally Hensley on Instagram at @Ally_Hensley and Ellamae Fullalove at @Ellamaebeing

This series has been brought to you by the luxury sexual wellness brand Lelo, who are offering listeners 30% off all Lelo products purchased on BeautyBay.com  Use the code KMOYLE30 until 11.59pm on 31st December 2024.

The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast, and always seek the advice of your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider.

When it comes to sex and intimacy, one guarantee is that everyone has questions - it's impossible for any single person to know everything there is to know about sex and relationships. The lack of normalising conversation around the topic of sex leaves so many people feeling like they don't know how to ask or where to go to get their questions answered, but the truth is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer and no magic formula - but there are ingredients to great sex.

So to get some of these most asked questions answered and find out what the ingredients are, I invited Sex Therapist and Intimacy Coach Charlene Douglas onto the podcast to discuss how we can make intimacy last, communicate better and improve intimacy and sex, whatever stage of our lives and relationships we're at. 

Charlene Douglas alongside her therapy work is also the author of Come Closer Everything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Sex and Relationship Therapist, and is one of the expert's on E4’s Married at First Sight UK and Channel 4's award winning series Jon and Lucy's Odd Couples, as well as The Sex Clinic.

Follow Charlene on Instagram at @CharleneDouglasOfficial

This series has been brought to you by the luxury sexual wellness brand Lelo, who are offering listeners 30% off all Lelo products purchased on BeautyBay.com  Use the code KMOYLE30 until 11.59pm on 31st December 2024.

The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast, and always seek the advice of your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider.

Relationships come in many different shapes, sizes and configurations and every relationship model comes with its own set of benefits, challenges and complexities. When it comes to opening up relationships it can be hard to know where to start, how to talk about it and how to manage the emotions and logistics that accompany a new relationship structure.

In this episode I interview Niki D, who is a relationship therapist with over 30 years experience who specialises in working with non-monogamous relationships helping people to explore relationship challenges and conflicts and where those may be coming from, and helping those that want to, to explore what opening up their relationship may look like, alongside working with those who are already in open relationships. 

Alongside being a therapist for over thirty years, Niki D runs the UK's first in-depth open and polyamorous relationship therapy training, has been a tutor and visiting lecturer at three psychotherapy courses for over 20 years, and has created the Seven Step Model for Co-creating an open relationship alongside publishing multiple academic chapters on sexual and relationship diversity.

Follow Niki D on Instagram at @OpeningUpCPD

This series has been brought to you by the luxury sexual wellness brand Lelo, who are offering listeners 30% off all Lelo products purchased on BeautyBay.com  Use the code KMOYLE30 until 11.59pm on 31st December 2024.

The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast, and always seek the advice of your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider.

If sex is a skill to be learnt then can sexual fulfilment ever be really achieved, or is it something that changes with us throughout our lives?

Sex-misinformation is rife, and many of us are set up by our sexual expectations which means that we and our partners will inevitably fail or struggle in some way to achieve these perfect and unrealistic versions of sex. Casey Tanner is a therapist who talks about how these ideas of failing come from a version of sex which is all about productivity and achieving, rather than focusing on feeling it all. Appropriately this is the title of Casey's newest book which seeks to fill in so many of the gaps that we have in our sexual education, and in this conversation we unpack this goal-orientated model of sex that so many of us subscribe to, and discuss how we can get to a place of improved sexual satisfaction and fulfilment and how we can build a more secure relationship with our sexuality.

Casey Tanner is an author, certified sex therapist, and prominent voice in the field of millennial and Gen Z sexuality.  They are the author of Feel It All :A Therapist's Guide to Reimagining Your Relationship with Sex, and founder of The Expansive Group, a therapy practice which advocates for an expansive, anti-oppressive approach to sexuality, gender, and relationships.

Follow Casey Tanner on Instagram at @QueerSexTherapy

This series has been brought to you by the luxury sexual wellness brand Lelo, who are offering listeners 30% off all Lelo products purchased on BeautyBay.com  Use the code KMOYLE30 until 11.59pm on 31st December 2024.

The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast, and always seek the advice of your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider.

“Why does sex make babies, and babies spell erotic disaster in couples?” ~ Esther Perel, The Secret To Desire In A Long Term Relationship, Ted Talk.

Dr Karen Gurney describes becoming parents as a 'relationship culture shock' and argues that it's unrealistic for us to expect our sex lives and intimacy to be unaffected by the competing priorities and mental load of parenthood. In this conversation we deep dive into how parents can approach their sex lives changing not as a parenthood vs sex battle, but as an opportunity to intentionally pay attention to desire, even when you aren't having sex.

As the first return guest to The Sexual Wellness Sessions, Karen offers advice from her new book How Not To Let Having Kids Ruin Your Sex Life and boosts our understanding of desire and how it functions, by sharing wisdom from her best seller Mind The Gap : The Truth About Desire And How To Futureproof Your Sex Life . She is one of the nation's favourite Psychosexual Therapists and Clinical Psychologists, whose mission is to translate sex science and therapy into everyday conversations and knowledge.

Follow Dr Karen Gurney on Instagram at @TheSexDoctor

This series has been brought to you by the luxury sexual wellness brand Lelo, who are offering listeners 30% off all Lelo products purchased on BeautyBay.com  Use the code KMOYLE30 until 11.59pm on 31st December 2024.

The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast, and always seek the advice of your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider.

Whilst it can be considered that loss is the impossible-to-avoid flipside of love, becoming a widow at age 30 defies all predictions of what building a life with someone looks like. But, this was what happened to my guest Lotte Bowser, whose partner Ben died age 36 in the midst of their plans for making a future together.

This conversation digs deep into Lotte's experience of the rollercoaster of Ben's illness, treatment and death, and how dramatically differently their lives changed direction at a time when everything was about looking forward to what they had to come. Lotte shares so many insights into our ideas about the landscape of loss and how we so often pathologise and have fixed ideas about grief, and also how she started finding and navigating love again at a time when she felt like she needed to get to know herself again too. 

Lotte Bowser is a writer, host of the Lemonade podcast and author of the forthcoming Bittersweet: a Story of Love and Loss 

Follow Lotte on Instagram at @LotteBowser

This series has been brought to you by the luxury sexual wellness brand Lelo, who are offering listeners 30% off all Lelo products purchased on BeautyBay.com  Use the code KMOYLE30 until 11.59pm on 31st December 2024.

The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast, and always seek the advice of your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider.

Many of the ways in which we meet, date and maintain love, sex and intimacy have changed across generations; but what happens when these adaptations come up to clash with our historical and ingrained beliefs and expectations of relationships?

Has how we love changed, or has the context around love moved on which has shaped our expectations and experiences of intimacy in new ways?

In this episode, author of How To Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind Todd Baratz talks about how we are ‘pursuing a marketed version of love’. We discuss exactly what he means by that, and the ways in which love, and what we want from love, and how we 'do' love have changed in the modern world. 

Todd Baratz is a renowned psychotherapist and sex therapist who has worked with thousands of people who are navigating their challenges with love and relationships, and he brings such interesting perspective to one of the topics which continues to be one of the most common but complex human experiences - love. 

Follow Todd on Instagram at @YourDiagnonsense 

This series has been brought to you by the luxury sexual wellness brand Lelo, who are offering listeners 30% off all Lelo products purchased on BeautyBay.com  Use the code KATEMOYLE30 until 11.59pm on 31st December 2024.

The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast, and always seek the advice of your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider.

The sexual wellness industry is booming with new products, platforms and apps joining the market all the time. When this is in combination with the huge role that social media and the internet plays in our lives, we can see that influencers have the potential to play a big role in starting conversations, raising awareness and breaking down taboos. Someone who has harnessed this is Shakira Scott, known as Scotty who Trademarked the term Sexfluencer™ to combine her sex education work with brand partnerships, being an advocate, and helping people to learn more about how to boost their sexual wellness and pleasure. Scotty talks about the importance of representation and how she wanted to be what she couldn't see when it came to these conversations - in a way providing what she felt was so missing for her. In this conversation we talk about what being a Sexfluencer™ is, how it works for her as a job and also some of the biggest challenges and misconceptions that she comes up against both in person and online.  

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Shakira 'Scotty Unfamous' Scott is a sex educator, Sexfluencer and multi award-winning erotic and romance author. For the last six years she's been helping people to unlearn shame, build confidence and embrace their desires with her 'How To Live Your Best Heaux Life' workshops.

Follow Scotty On Instagram At @ScottyUnfamous and TikTok @scottyunfamous_ and find out more about her work at https://shakirascott.com/

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The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

In this episode Jack Guinness describes how The Queer Bible is the book that the younger him needed and wished for. Growing up in Britain under Section 28 meant that generations of LGBTQI+ people grew up without seeing themselves or people like them in books, publications or media. This left so many feeling isolated in their feelings and experiences which Jack describes as a big part of his own life. He talks about how in telling the stories of many queer icons, written by and contributed to by so many other queer figures puts these stories out in the world where they belong, helping many to connect to their history. He describes The Queer Bible as a love letter to the LGBTQI+ community and its allies.

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Jack Guinness is the founder and editor of The Queer Bible,  Contributing Editor at GQ Magazine and is a British model, writer and presenter. The Queer Bible is a collection of essays which are a celebration of shared LGBTQ+ history and queer icons.

Follow Jack On Instagram At @JackGuinness 

Follow The Queer Bible On Instagram @QueerBible and find out more at https://www.queerbible.com/

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The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists nearly 3/4 women will experience pain during intercourse at some point during their lives, and yet despite this many struggle to get answers to why they are experiencing this type of pain.

There are multiple reasons that someone may be experiencing pain in their genitals and pelvic area. It can occur at different points during their menstrual cycle, can be a more constant pain, or it can be more acute at certain times for example during or after sex. Commonly associated conditions with pain during sex are endometriosis, vulvodynia, vaginismus, menopause, and skin conditions such as lichen sclerosus, and pain can be a side effect of some medications and treatments; but there are multiple other conditions and reasons that someone can find sex painful.

Many people also describe finding it hard to know where to go to help with these symptoms, or even how to describe them and so in this episode Dr Aziza Sesay, an NHS GP with a specialist interest in women's health discusses how we can get to know our own bodies and importantly our own normal, how to advocate to ourselves and what symptoms to make sure that we don't ignore.

Disclaimer - This podcast episode contains general health awareness information, and is not to be used for personal medical advice. If listeners have concerns about their health arising from this conversation, they should please speak to their doctor or a medical professional.

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Dr Aziza Sesay is an NHS GP, GP educator, Honorary Senior Clinical lecturer, speaker and health content creator. Dr Sesay is the creative director of Black Female Doctors UK organisation and is an Ambassador for The Eve Appeal

Follow Dr Aziza Sesay On Instagram At @TalkswithDrSesay

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This episode was brought to you by Ferly, the sexual wellness app empowering women and couples to overcome sexual challenges affecting their relationships. To date they’ve helped over half a million women and couples struggling with things like low libido, inability to orgasm, low body confidence and/or pain during sex. Ferly’s achieved this by guiding people through science-based tools and techniques that help them feel better in their bodies and their beds.

The app is available on IOS and Android.

Download it for free today and start your journey to a healthier, more confident and more pleasurable life. I have the privilege of working with Ferly as their resident advisor and I truly believe that the app has the ability to be transformative for female sexual wellness.

Find out more about Ferly at https://weareferly.com/

Follow Ferly On Instagram At @theferlymethod

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The Sexual Wellness Sessions is hosted by Kate Moyle, a Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, and author of The Science Of Sex : Every Question About Your Sex Life Answered.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy