Lona: Chapter Two

How did I get here? And how the hell did I let go of all that trauma that I was carrying. Well, carrying might be an overstatement. I was drowning in it. I couldn't get out from under it. I was lost in it. But the universe had other plans for me. I could have easily become a hopeless drug addict, and no one would have blamed me if they knew my story. Here's how I changed my entire life using pleasure, Tantra, and Layla Martin.

This is the second part to a blog I wrote a few years ago called: Lona: Chapter One (click to read it). Here's a quick recap though. I harbored a secret in Delaware, one that I kept from everyone but one person, my 11-year partner, Dave. Childhood sexual trauma. A generational curse. When I finally moved away from Delaware, I thought it would disappear. I laugh at my naivety. Then additional traumas piled up like a triple decker biscuit smothered in messy gravy, ready to topple at any moment. I finally went to therapy.

But therapy wasn't enough for me to thrive. Therapy helped me survive. I was able to be a better partner, for the most part. I could talk about and understand my trauma and its messy tendrils. But I was not thriving. No, it would take somatic and Tantric work to do that.

I became a Neo Tantra teacher and spent years doing that work. I liberated my energy, I accepted who I was, I found sexual freedom. But I rarely had one-on-one attention. And my traumas went deep. I needed more. And the workshops were amazing, I absolutely loved teaching them, but I knew they wouldn't be able to support me fully financially. And I wanted a deeper, more individual way to help people become liberated.

So, I did what any pondering, confused, millennial does... I googled it! Types "Tantra Coaching Program" into search bar. The first thing that came up was Layla Martin's VITA program. I had never heard of her. But as I clicked around her sales page something inside me lit up! This felt right. And I was in perfect timing to get on for the coming year cohort in 2023. I took a day to consider it and continued to click around the search page for more options, but there didn't seem to be anything this intense, this full-bodied, this Tantric! And this program was expensive! The most I had ever spent on anything up until that point! $12,500!

The next morning, I woke up and knew that this was the right choice. I wanted to do Layla's 600-hour, yearlong sex, love and relationship coaching program with a Tantric focus. But, how did I have the money to do all this? At the time I was only teaching workshops, making a couple hundred bucks a month. But the universe provides to open a path to your highest mission. And I was flush with cash at the time.

My father had died in 2020 after he lost access to his in-person AA and NA meetings. You see, he was an addict, had severe bi-polar disorder, and was wanted in America (he's Canadian). We were never close, but the closest we ever got was the few years before he died. Overdosed. I was the only one of his 4 children who met him as an adult. He had been clean for over a decade with a few relapses here and there. But when he lost access to his support system when it all went online in the pandemic, he relapsed hard. Alone in his condo, and disconnected, he used. I don't know if he knew he was using fentanyl or not, but that's what did it.

He had 4 children, and I was the youngest. And he was a terrible father that caused all 4 of us trauma, but if there's one good thing he did in his life it was that when he died, he had managed to save up money, invest in the stock market, and owned his condo. Split 4 ways, we each got a pile of cold, hard cash.

So, I was ready to spend $12,500 for my development, more money than even my down payment on my house! I barely even noticed the day it left my account. And then I was fully in on Layla's program. The beauty of her program is the first 4 months is all about personal development. Every week for about 15-20 hours a week I worked on myself. With no distractions, except my workshops, and a thriving community to engage with.

The second 4-month period was devoted to learning to become a coach, and every week I was coaching other peers, and getting coached by them. Even though these were brand new coaches, the methodology is so rich that the healing started to flow in even faster in my life. Where I was struggling to thrive, I was discovering new ways to liberate myself from my past pain and trauma.

The tools Layla teaches are somatic, and many of them are taken from Osho's work. Osho is a profound Tantra Guru, who liberated thousands in the 70's and 80's. He was the first guru I heard speak because his followers recorded so much of his lectures. You can find so much of his prolific work on YouTube now. His aspecting work is truly life changing, and where Layla drew a lot of her methodology.

Instead of just talking about my inner child, I met her face to face and created a safe space for her to live inside of me and play together. Instead of talking about my pain with my father, I got to speak to him in front of me, sharing how he hurt me and how he helped me, and healing generations of my family through it. We didn't rely on the logical mind, but learned how to speak to the body sensations, which can't lie. By letting the sensations lead, and actually moving around in the space, I was able to meet parts of myself that had been locked away for years. I was able to love all versions of myself, even the parts that I had hated.

I saw that hating a part of me was counterintuitive. I had to build a bridge of love to all these pieces of myself so that I could move forward whole. I had to create new roles for the difficult pieces to hold, so they would stop interfering with my liberation. One particular one was my inner teen, Lolita.

Lolita was a badass rebel with hated in her heart. She was no nonsense, bitter, and violent. She had cut my head off multiple times in our work together through the coaching. She doesn't put up with softness. And the truth is that Lolita helped me survive all those years in Delaware when I had no one. I got the chance to share face-to-face with her my gratitude for all she had done for me. I let her kill me over and over again until she got out all her frustrations with me. She saw me as someone who held her back, and she's right.

I never said anything, I never shared how hurt I was, in fact I buried it all with having sex with strangers and drinking until I blacked out. There were times when I was a teen that I seriously considered suicide (dial 988 from any phone in the US to reach the suicide hotline if you're struggling). I piled trauma on top of trauma for years before I got help, and then several more years before I truly started to thrive. But being able to let her be mad at me and love her anyway was a transformative experience.

Right in front of my eyes, she evolved from the angsty teen into my Dark Goddess. Giving her this new role and power in my life regenerated parts of my nervous system that were on the verge of collapse. The Light Goddess within me is a future version of myself, but the Dark Goddess was now a past version. Together they balanced each other, they worked in harmony, they supported me in ways I couldn't imagine.

And by the time I was finished with Layla's program I felt like a whole new person. My pleasure was flowing freely because I had liberated the Queen of my Pussy, and I was doing hours of pleasure practices a week! My relationship was thriving, even after we had broken up for a year then got back together because I knew my worth and could see his actions clearly. I loved myself in brand new ways, and accepted all aspects of who I was, where I had come from, and forgave myself for allowing it to go on so long. I graduated the 600+ hour training in just 14 months, which included 65 hours of coaching others.

That program changed my life in so many ways, and now my job is to help liberate even more people through this life-changing methodology! I can't thank Layla enough. The program wasn't perfect, there is room for evolution, but for me it was everything I needed and more to become a Sexual Liberation Coach! I even still get coached every couple weeks with one of my peers. We both can't get enough!

So, that's how I catapulted myself into a new timeline. And now I fucking love my life! Even though I'm going through some health issues now with my hormones, my life is epic! I'm truly thriving. And thriving doesn't mean there aren't issues, it means that when issues arise, I meet them with love, acceptance, and ease. And I couldn't ask for anything more.

My motto is pleasure first, healing follows. Because when you truly put pleasure at the forefront of your healing journey, it can lead the way to epic transformation. Don't let pleasure be a bonus, something you get after you heal, let it be your compass. And if you do that, you'll get to the evolution so much faster. When we leave pleasure out of the process, we don't address the deepest issues, where we are most vulnerable. And if you're not getting to the root, you'll just keep repeating the same patterns over and over.

Are you ready for epic pleasure and devotional love beyond your wildest dreams? Coaching | Lona Teaches Bliss

INSPIRED ACTION: Make time for pleasure. Even if you feel like you haven't made time lately. All it takes is one step to begin the process of connecting to your pleasure again. Don't make excuses that you haven't tried. Resolve to do it tonight! Your pleasure can be one of your most powerful tools on your journey.