Founder of HolyMama + Author + Speaker: Claudia Spahr
Claudia Spahr is an international best-selling author, inspirational speaker, business leadership mentor and global pioneer in the retreat and wellness industry. She is the award-winning founder and CEO of HolyMama and has trained retreat leaders in over 20 countries across 6 continents. She's hosted hundreds of transformational retreats, garnering critical acclaim by the Guardian, Telegraph, Huffington Post and Psychologies Magazine. Named as the #1 retreat company and business growth catalyst for mothers. Claudia is above all mama to three amazing children. Prior to being in service to the Rise of the Feminine Claudia worked as a radio broadcast journalist and TV foreign correspondent.
Here she answers the Mama Sex Six:
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase "mama sex"?
The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the term ‘Mama Sex’ is how loaded it is. To become a mother, you have obviously had sex. Mama and sex go together like hand in glove, one is a natural consequence of the other. But in our western culture, there's this disconnect.
I believe it’s because society disassociates the two terms, due to our patriarchal culture having created polarity around sexuality. In Christianity, it’s the virgin/whore mythos. A sexual mother is either fetishised, or shamed. We’ve also lost our true connection to the senses and the body due to thousands of years of collective trauma. All the wars, famines, plagues and torturous practices - often instigated with moral self-righteousness by institutions like the church - meant we had to exit our bodies and nervous systems to stay ’safe’. On top of that we have thousands of years of societal constructs that made us detach from the senses and see sexual pleasure as something wrong, evil or dirty.
I believe we’re now witnessing an evolutionary quantum leap because we are beginning to understand that we are of nature, we are not above nature. We are descending back into our bodies and remembering that this life is to experience the senses and the limitations and pleasures of the physical body.
What inspired you to work/create/advocate on the topic of "mama sex"?
It was my own experience of what happens once you're a mother and how the tiredness just overshadows everything. The expectations that you have on yourself, and often your partner has on you, can make the sexual experience negatively charged. Sex is the last thing on your mind when you're tired. We know that sleep is so important for our well-being and our sanity. And unfortunately, it’s what we have least of when we're mothers, especially in those early years.
There’s probably never been a more challenging time to be a mother. Most of us have careers i.e. jobs outside the house, we are homemakers, we’re cooks and cleaners. We’re also responsible for the children. Everyone turns to the mother. So no wonder at the end of the day mothers just have nothing left to give and the last thing they want is a man with needs scratching at their thigh.
I hear from many mothers that they feel like they’re merely a wank vessel for their partner.
Especially in the early years babies need so much from us. This is why it's important for us to nourish ourselves first. If a woman is breastfeeding there is already a sensual saturation with the baby and all the juices go to producing milk. As the baby grows the mother can begin piecing herself back together from what may have been a traumatic birth or simply redefining herself as a mother. She realizes she’s a changed woman and that she can still be sexual but that her sexuality has transformed. I believe sexuality is never stagnant, it is for ever in transition and changing. It goes through cycles.
I saw through my clients, the hundreds of women who have come on my retreats, how challenged they are by society to be seen as sexual beings. It is like once we're mothers, we cease to be attractive to other men. I think this has to do with our culture of wanting to control woman and own her, like property. Because if she is unattractive to other men, she's less likely to stray.
We’ve come to a point where we have to reclaim sex for women, and mothers especially. We have to redefine the mother box and break the container with a very Shakti-like wild energy. This energy of the wild feminine, bursting out to create something new, is what is most needed right now.
In your work/practice/art, what are the biggest hurdles mothers are facing in terms of their sexuality?
Well, I think the biggest hurdles are the expectations mothers face from society.
In mainstream culture there simply aren’t enough arenas where mothers can express themselves sexually or reconnect with their sensuality. The mother has a different sexuality to the maiden. The mother is voluptuous, abundant and fertile; whereas the maiden is only just beginning to blossom, she is less aware of her immense power to create life. The mother sits on that throne via the experience of pregnancy and birth.
What happens during the next life cycle when women come into peri-menopause and menopause can also be powerful sexually, because it is the Kundalini energy rising from the ovaries to the brain. I like to tell women; “The best sex of your life hasn't even happened yet”.
I advocate enabling mothers to express themselves sexually, in a way that is NOT through the male lens of taking ownership and making our sovereign sexuality into something that it isn't. I want to see more conversations around women expressing themselves through the female lens and that's why I appreciate the work you do so much, Sarah. You’re enabling us to address sexuality via the feminine lens.
What do you think society at large should know about motherhood and sexuality? And what is society getting wrong right now in regards to it?
I think we should acknowledge that motherhood and sexuality are intrinsically linked, they naturally and organically go together.
We've got it all upside down, as I’ve mentioned, because sexuality and motherhood have been defined by the patriarchy, the controlling male lens and thousands of years of collective trauma and psychosis. Our dominator culture portrays a young sexually active woman (who's not a mother yet) as the most desirable and appealing. I believe this is because she is easier to control and dominate due to her ‘innocence’. We’ve often been told it is because a young woman is seen as fertile. But in effect the most fertile is the mother who's in the midst of her childbearing years.
Once a woman becomes a mother she unleashes this powerful fertile force. It is this fertile, powerful force that men have been so afraid of for millennia. It is the great unknown feminine mystery than man has wanted to dominate, so we have subjugated women, like nature has been subjugated. This is all changing now because it has to change, or we will completely annihilate all life on the planet.
What piece of sex advice would you give mothers? Was there something you wish someone had told you?
I think we undervalue the role of sensuality. Sex is portrayed through the lens of performance, whereas sensuality is a journey.
The journey is the way, not the goal. It is about the full experience, not how it ends. I would say - and this might sound leftfield to some - that having a sexual experience with another woman can be an eye opener. It's like looking in the mirror and understanding your own sensuality, the softness of your skin, the lushness of your vulva and the immense power and pull of the womb. It allows for a sense of feminine embodiment that isn’t possible by being with a man. You could compare it to opening the doors of perception, like Aldous Huxley described LSD. However, I am not advocating to go out and begin consuming female bodies just so you can tick it off the to-do list. What I'm saying is open your mind that sexuality can be experienced differently when there is less focus on the performance.
Connect with your senses - and you can do this in complete privacy and sovereignty via masturbation - to get into the temple of your body. This is a very Venusian, sensual, somatic, fully embodied experience; rather than the dissociated, external, ‘how do I look?’ focus on sexual performance we are used to from pornography that numbs the senses. I believe embodiment practices enable us to connect with our sensuality.
Practices like dance, movement and using a Yoni egg can help heal any sexual or birth trauma. When we give birth to a child there is a fragmentation that happens physically but also psychologically and energetically. When we bring our fragmented selves back together and regain our boundaries and energetic sovereignty, we’re able to reclaim our sexuality and that is where true power resides.
Let's amplify our voice: Who are some mamas you love following on social media?
All my Retreat Leaders who did Certification: https://holymama.info/leaders
Nisha Moodley @nishamoodley
Louise Boyce @Mamasstillgotit (she’ll make you laugh)
Aleksa Costa @aleksa_costa (She came on one of my retreats)
Flavia Kampf Spahr @flavia.kaempf.spahr (my sister for her designer eye)
