In this episode of Universal Intimacy 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, The Power of Community, Competition vs. Support: Women are taught to be in competition with each other, making it hard to unlearn that conditioning. The "new paradigm" is to celebrate and cheer on other beautiful, sexy women. Trauma and Touch: It is sad that, due to trauma, the majority of women shut down and do not feel safe to receive touch, even when given structured systems to feel safe, 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/@lanashay

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. 

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.

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 on 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 in order 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 unique 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 my sister also is meaningful because of the sacred sisterhood woundings we have healed together – proving that you can be triggered by other women and become deep 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.

In this episode we explore the underground world of Professional Domme-ing, a space when femme embodied practitioners help support the transformational healing journeys, pleasure seeking, edge play and erotic expansion of individuals. 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! My intention of hosting them on Universal Intimacy is to not just share with you their incredible practices and energy, but to also de-bunk and de-mystify the world of dom'ing/domme'ing, because I often feel our society and culture projects a lot of shame, misunderstanding and fear on this niche of the human experience. So many humans are curious about this world, and it is my hope that this episode helps you understand it from an integrated wholeness - fusing spirituality, psychodrama/psychotherapy, trauma-informed healing, somatics, the arts, and energy.

In this intimate and deeply personal episode, musician Dan Allen and Tantrika Josephine Lauer come together to explore what happens when sound, spirit, and soul align. Through the lens of their own relationship, they dive into a candid conversation about love, creativity, and what it means to live authentically. Blending musical expression with Tantric wisdom, they discuss how tuning into your desires—both emotional and sensual—can create a symphony of connection and truth. This is more than a dialogue; it's a dance of frequency, feeling, and fearless honesty. We go deep, we get really vulnerable...and some of our shares are a bit X rated, so listeners, please be advised and don't have this episode playing in the car when kids are present.

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

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

Meet Chef Greg Christian of Beyond Green Partners and theSustainable Food Institute of America, focused on supporting public institutions (K-12 schools, adult care facilities and carceral facilities) to transition from their current reality of mostly processed food to food that is made from scratch by cooks who care with ingredients that are locally sourced and as sustainably produced as possible. Greg has studied Systems Thinking with Peter Senge, Communication with Werner Erhard, Quantum Physics with Stephen Hawkings, Shamanism with Black Foot Medicine/men/women and Somatics with Marcela Widrig,+ fusing holistic practices into his 40 years of cooking around the globe to form his own methodology and approach to guiding cooks, food service works and lunch ladies/cafeteria employees into more embodied leadership for thebetterment of the communities they work in and the planet overall. Greg's work has touched thousands of individuals, including my own personal & professional life, as we have worked alongside each other for the last 20 years in this field of Food Systems Change. It is an honor to share him with myaudience as he has inspired me in everything that I do, as a mother, as a coach and as a human on this planet.

Inspired? You can reach out to him at [email protected], or at ⁠https://www.sustainablefoodinstitute.org/⁠

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